‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she murmured finally.
‘Thank you,’ he accepted gruffly.
Eva shifted uncomfortably. ‘Did you like living with your cousin and his parents?’
His grin warmed his eyes to the colour of emeralds. ‘Eventually. I w
as pretty traumatised the first year or so, and probably gave my Aunt Karelia a few grey hairs. But eventually I settled down, and I really couldn’t have asked for a better surrogate family.’
‘You and Drakon are close?’
‘As brothers,’ he confirmed without hesitation.
Eva raised dark brows. ‘I met him a couple of times when he was in New York. I didn’t find him a particularly warm man.’ Tall, dark and gorgeous, yes—just like his cousin Markos—but there was a single-minded ruthlessness to Drakon Lyonedes that he made no effort to hide.
Was it a trait his cousin also possessed…?
Probably, Eva concluded, remembering how Markos had changed on Saturday evening, his manner going from lazily charming to coolly precise, after she had made the comment concerning how he ended his relationships. In fact, apart from the heat of desire that glinted in Markos’s eyes when he looked at her—something that had certainly never been present on the two occasions when Eva had met the coldly remote Drakon Lyonedes—the cousins were very much alike: heart-stoppingly gorgeous and lethally powerful.
Markos’s grin widened. ‘That’s probably because you aren’t a blonde with sea-blue eyes named Gemini!’
‘Gemini is your cousin’s new wife?’
‘It’s been very much a case of “how the mighty are fallen”!’ Markos nodded. ‘One look at Gemini and Drakon was knocked off his feet.’
‘I somehow can’t imagine anything knocking your cousin off his feet.’ Eva eyed him disbelievingly.
Markos shrugged. ‘Neither could I until it happened.’
This conversation had become altogether too personal for Eva’s liking. ‘Interesting as this conversation is, it’s getting late, Markos,’ she said briskly.
He raised those dark brows. ‘Do you have yet another appointment to go to this evening?’
She could so easily have said yes. But instead… ‘Well…no. But—’
‘But what?’
‘But it’s Monday evening, and I always clean my apartment on Monday evenings,’ Eva rallied weakly.
He eyed her mockingly. ‘I thought that was what the weekends were for?’
She gave a disbelieving snort. ‘Admit it, Markos, you’ve never had to clean your own apartment, or anywhere else you’ve lived, at the weekends or any other time!’
‘Not true. I had to keep my own rooms clean when I was at university in Oxford.’ He grimaced. ‘Admittedly I couldn’t see the bedroom carpet for the clutter after the first few weeks, and I ran out of clean clothes on a regular basis, but I coped.’
‘By ignoring the clutter and buying new clothes, probably,’ she guessed derisively.
‘Guilty as charged,’ Markos admitted with an unrepentant grin.
‘That is so— Oh, wow…!’ Eva gasped as she noticed the view from the huge picture window behind him for the first time—surely testament to exactly how powerfully attractive she found Markos, because the view from the window was amazing. New York City in all its glory.
Eva continued to look at the New York skyline as she slowly walked over to the window, dazzled by the combination of the tall, gleaming buildings and the lush green park.
‘I seem to recall you said you thought of Lyonedes Tower as just another tall building blocking the view,’ Markos reminded her as he joined her at the window.
Eva gave a wince at this reminder of the bluntness of her conversation when they first met. ‘I may have been a little…impolite to you at the party on Saturday evening.’
‘May have been?’ he taunted softly.