Bought: The Greek's Baby (6 page)
She swallowed, picturing how wonderful it would be to be his wife. How right it would be, to be married as they awaited the birth of their child. Perhaps then her body wouldn’t be so afraid for him to kiss her.
Perhaps her sense of honor would accept far more than a kiss.
“It would be selfish of me to accept,” she gasped, clinging to her decision by her fingernails.
He traced her tender, bruised lower lip with his fingertip. “It would be selfish of you to refuse. Marry me. For the baby’s sake.” He paused. “For mine.”
He thought she was being selfish when she was only refusing him for his own sake?
She exhaled. She couldn’t fight it anymore. Not when all she wanted to do was be loved and protected and make sure her baby was, too.
“Marry me,” he murmured between kisses to her eyelids, her forehead, her throat. She could hardly think straight. He held her so gently, so tenderly. With such love. “Marry me now.”
Her eyes were blurry with tears as she stared up at his darkly handsome face. There was a halo of light behind his head, and in the distance she could see birds flying up through the darkly shifting gray sky.
Then he lowered his lips to hers.
Her last thought before he kissed her was that she couldn’t remember loving him, but perhaps she didn’t need to remember.
Perhaps…she could just fall in love with him all over again.
K
ISSING
Eve was like falling into hell.
It was fire. Sheer fire running through him. Talos placed his hand on the back of her head, his fingers twining in her beautiful hair, as he deepened the kiss.
For months, he’d hated her.
Hungered for her.
Was that why finally kissing her now overwhelmed his senses more than ever before?
It wasn’t just desire that had changed the kiss, he realized. It was Eve. The kiss was different because
she
was different.
Wrenching away, he looked down at her. Her eyes remained closed. A blissful smile traced her full, bare lips. In her new clothes and hairstyle, she appeared sweet, natural and true.
The Eve he remembered had been none of those things.
Her eyes were still closed as she leaned forward, licking her lips with a tiny dart of her pink tongue. He nearly groaned. He wanted to take her to bed. Now.
He’d already started to pick her up to take her back to the hotel when he caught himself.
No!
He took a deep breath. He couldn’t forget who he was really dealing with. The kind, innocent girl in front of him was an illusion. The real Eve Craig was a shallow vixen, a selfish liar. She’d given him her virginity just so she could betray him for another man. He couldn’t let her win.
This time, the victory would be his.
“Marry me,” he demanded, barely holding himself back from kissing her again. “Marry me now.”
“All right,” she whispered. “All right.”
He exhaled in a rush. Pulling away, he looked down at her fiercely. “Today.”
“I’ll marry you today,” she murmured, looking up at him with a happy, almost tearful smile.
“Talos? Getting married?” a man said behind them. “I can’t believe I just heard that!”
Talos whirled around in consternation to see an old friend grinning at him. The man split his time between New York and Tuscany—what the hell was he doing in Venice?
“Roark,” he said faintly. “What are you doing here?”
“I never thought I’d see this day,” Roark Navarre replied with a snicker. “You always said you’d never get married. You gave me a hell of a time when I married Lia. How the mighty have fallen!” Laughing, he took a step forward. “I can’t wait to meet the woman who—”
Then Eve shyly turned to face him, and the grin dropped from Roark’s face.
He stopped, his eyes widening.
Eve snuggled back in Talos’s arms. A pink blush suffused her cheeks as she looked at Roark with quiet happiness.
His old friend gave Talos a sharply questioning glance. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Eve blinked, furrowing her brow. She glanced between the two men. “What do you mean? A joke?”
“He just can’t believe a woman like you would settle for a man like me,” Talos told her lightly, then over Eve’s head, he stared hard at Roark. “Isn’t that right?”
His friend got the message. “Yes. Exactly right.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m settling exactly,” Eve teased him, then looked back at Roark. “Have we met?”
Roark frowned, blinking as if he were in some kind of weird upside-down world. “Several times. At parties, mostly. You were once on a charity committee with my wife.”
“Oh.” Eve held out her hand with a friendly, apologetic smile. “I’m so sorry. I’ve had some memory problems lately. What’s your name?”
“Roark Navarre. My wife is Lia.”
“Lovely to meet you. Is she here?”
“No. She’s at home with our kids in Tuscany.” Roark shook her hand, then shot Talos a questioning look. “I came to Venice to buy her a gift. Today’s our third wedding anniversary.”
“How romantic!”
“Yes,” she said shyly, glancing back at Talos. She radiated contentment and quiet joy.
Roark had reason to look shocked, Talos thought. He was one of the few people who knew the whole story of how Eve had stolen the documents from his safe and given them to his American rival, who’d promptly released them to the press with all sorts of nasty insinuations. Roark was undoubtedly wondering why, instead of ripping her head off for nearly ruining his billion-dollar company, Talos had proposed that she become his wife.
Roark wasn’t much of a talker—the two men had become friends over mutually beneficial business deals in New York and the occasional Knicks basketball game—but any moment he might say something to give it away.
Once Eve realized their past wasn’t as rosy as he’d implied, she would never agree to marry him today. And she’d already had her first memory. The clock was ticking. The rest might come tumbling down at any moment. She could get her memory back, then all would be lost. His revenge. His child’s name. He had to marry her as soon as possible. Now, before she remembered everything and ran away again, this time taking his baby with her.
“Yes, we’re getting married today,” Talos confirmed. “And we have additional good news,” he said evenly. “We’re having a baby.”
A great time to leave. “So if you’ll excuse us, we’ll be on our way…”
“On your way!” Roark shook his head, clapping Talos heartily on the shoulder. “I wouldn’t hear of it. Come down to Tuscany, man. Just three hours’ drive from here. I was just headed back home.”
“But it’s your anniversary,” Eve blurted out. “We couldn’t possibly intrude.”
“Nonsense.” He grinned. “I’ll call Lia. She hasn’t planned an event for ages, since she’s been home with the babies. She’ll love the excuse for an impromptu party. And she’s been wanting a chance to show off the new place since we finished rebuilding the castle…”
“A castle?” Eve breathed. “In Tuscany?”
“Yes. The oldest part is the medieval walls around the rose garden. Particularly beautiful in September. ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,’ and all that,” he added, looking a bit embarrassed as he glanced down at the package in his arms.
“Keats,” she said in surprise.
“Lia loves poetry,” he sighed. He held up the wrapped package. “It’s a first edition.”
Eve shot Talos an imploring look. “It all sounds lovely.”
A romantic wedding? With his friends in attendance?
“Absolutely not,” Talos said firmly. “We’re fine with a quick visit to fill out the paperwork here.”
Leaning against his chest, Eve reached her arms up
over his neck and looked back at him pleadingly. “Oh please, Talos. I would far rather have a real wedding with some of your friends then just with strangers.” She paused and suddenly looked wistful. “With no friends and no wedding party, it wouldn’t seem quite real.”
No, it wouldn’t, Talos thought crossly. And that was just the point. This marriage
wasn’t
real. It was a means to an end.
“But I
understand,” she said with a sigh. “You don’t want to bother your friends on their anniversary.” She brightened. “Perhaps we could wait a few days, plan something here in Venice and invite them.”
“All right,” Talos said through clenched teeth. He would lose this battle to win the war.
“All right?” she repeated.
“We’ll wed in Tuscany.”
“Oh, thank you!” she cried, whirling around in his arms to embrace him. “You’re so good to me!”
“I’ll get my car,” Roark said.
“No.” Holding her in his arms, Talos looked over her head at Roark. “My men will sort out your car. We’ll take my plane. There must be no delay.”
“I understand.” Glancing between the two of them with an amused grin, his friend gave a snort. “I’ve felt that way myself, too.” He pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll tell Lia we’re on our way.”
Eve had never expected when she woke up that morning that today would be her wedding day. Or that she would get married in a castle in Tuscany.
“Believe me,” she’d added dryly, “there are a few things about my own marriage I wouldn’t mind forgetting.”
Eve had watched in awe as Lia simultaneously arranged for a designer to bring six wedding dresses into the bright morning room and organized flower arrangements over the phone, all as she chattered in Italian with her three-year-old daughter and nursed her new baby son to sleep in her arms.
“I hope to be a mother with half your skill,” Eve said wistfully as the wedding designer helped her try on yet another dress. She watched Lia tuck her sleeping baby into a nearby bassinet. “You do everything so well, and all at the same time.”
Lia looked up with a snicker. “It might look that way, but believe me, I always wonder if I’m doing enough, or if I’m even doing it right. I’m sure you’ll do much better.” She tilted her head at Eve. “You know, I never knew you very well, but something about you always confused me.”
“What?”
“You’ve cultivated this image as a party girl, but the time I worked with you on a charity fundraiser, I was
shocked at your hard work and drive. You are the most determined person I’ve ever met, but you just don’t let on. You hide it. Why?”
Eve blinked at her, then frowned, turning away with a sigh. “I don’t know what to think. Talos described me differently. And now according to you, I’m hardworking and driven? It’s like I’m two different people!”
Lia looked at her thoughtfully. “Sometimes we show different sides of ourselves to people for a reason.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. From a desire to please. From something to hide or something to gain. Oh, this one is lovely.” Zipping up Eve’s dress, Lia stepped back with a critical eye, then nodded with satisfaction. “Perfect.” She looked down at her three-year-old daughter. “Do you like it, Ruby?”
The little girl nodded, her eyes big.
“What do you think?” Lia asked Eve.
Eve looked into the large gilded mirror across the room. The dress was in simple cream-colored silk, cut to accentuate the swell of her breasts and her lush body, falling softly over her belly. Her hair looked glossy and dark, brushing the edges of her pale, bare shoulders. Her blue eyes shone back at her.
Her throat suddenly hurt too much to speak, so she just nodded.
“This is the one,” Lia told the designer, who happily started pinning the hem.
“I’m the flower girl,” Ruby intoned solemnly to Eve.
“Thank you so much,” Eve told her with a big smile.
But as Lia positioned a veil over her chignon, Eve saw herself in the mirror and her heart pounded in her chest.
In one hour, she would be married to a man she still barely knew. A man she’d only really known for the last few days.
But I’m carrying his child,
she argued with herself. And when he kissed her, he’d managed to brush aside all her nervousness, all her fears. Something about his kiss was magic. And tonight, he would be kissing her again.
More than just kissing her.
Tonight, their wedding night, he would take her to bed and make love to her.
A hot shiver went over her body, and suddenly, she could think of nothing else. All her questions went out the window. All she could think about was the bed that waited for them at the end of the aisle.
What would it feel like when Talos made love to her?
If it was half as wonderful as the kiss had been, she feared she might die of ecstatic joy.
“I hope you’ll be very happy, Eve,” Lia said to her softly, and there were suddenly tears in her eyes. “Marriage turns romance into love that lasts forever. It creates a family.”
A family. Just what Eve wanted more than anything in the world. She nodded, her heart in her throat.
It seemed scant minutes later when, holding freshly cut orange-red roses that matched the blush on her
cheeks, she stepped out of the Italian castle into a Tuscan fairyland.
Sunset was falling over the vineyard and green rolling hills. Outside on the covered terrace a million lights drifted from the ceiling, tangled in wisteria. Next to the terrace she saw an old medieval stone wall, overgrown with roses.
The fairy lights sparkled over her head as she stepped onto the stone floor in her simple white sandals. A musician sitting in the back played the first notes on a guitar, accompanied by a flute. All so simple and so magical.
Then she saw Talos.
He was waiting for her at the other end of the terrace. On one side of him stood a friend of Lia’s, the mayor of a nearby town who’d agreed to conduct the hastily arranged civil ceremony. On his other side stood his friend Roark. Eve saw the man’s face light up at the sight of Lia and their little girl walking ahead in a sweet, frothy cotton dress. At her mother’s urging, little Ruby tossed rose petals haphazardly in Eve’s path.
Roark picked up his daughter with delighted praise when she reached the end of the aisle. His smile widened as he met his wife’s eyes. Seeing their love for each other, as Lia held their plump baby son who looked so dapper in his little suit, Eve’s heart stopped in her chest.
This was just what she wanted.
A life like this.
A love like this.
But when she looked back at her bridegroom with a joyful smile, his expression stopped her cold.
His gaze was dark. Full of heat and fire. But there was something else. Something she didn’t understand that frightened her.
The guitar music suddenly trailed off, and she realized that she’d stopped walking halfway down the aisle. With a deep breath, telling herself she was being silly, she started walking again.
Stop acting like a scared virgin! she chided herself.
When she reached the waiting men, Talos pulled her veil up over her head. She looked up at him with a shy smile.
He didn’t return it. Instead, his gaze burned through her, incinerating every drop of blood and bone inside her body. As if they were already in bed.