‘I believe you—’
?
?Do you?’ he questioned sceptically. ‘Do you really believe me, Eva? Or do you still think your suspicions in regard to me to have been justified? Enough, perhaps, for you to have decided to give me a dose of my own medicine?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Are you implying that I might have deliberately gone to bed with you with the intention of—of—?’
‘I have absolutely no idea what today was about.’ His eyes glittered intently. ‘Why did you go to bed with me, Eva?’
‘I don’t—’ She gave a dazed shake of her head. ‘You were kind to me last night—’
‘And do you always spend the day in bed with men who are kind to you?’
Her face was very pale as she answered him quietly, ‘There really haven’t been that many.’
‘Men in your bed? Or men who have been kind to you?’
Both, as it happened, Eva acknowledged heavily. Just as she acknowledged that this conversation had now deteriorated to such a level there was surely no hope of the two of them continuing a relationship.
‘Eva, talk to me, damn it!’ Markos hands were clenched into fists at his sides. ‘Help me to understand what happened between the two of us earlier today.’
She released a heavy sigh. ‘Can’t we both just accept that we made a mistake—?’
‘Is that truly what you believe?’ He stood still as a statue and looked at her from between narrowed lids.
Eva nodded abruptly as she stood up to slip the shirt off her shoulders and slide it off her arms before dropping it down onto the barstool. ‘It’s time that I left.’
‘You have nothing else to say?’ Markos could only stare at her with frustrated anger.
She looked up at him with eyes of deep, smoky amber. ‘I’ve behaved badly, unprofessionally. Otherwise I don’t know what else you want me to say.’
Markos wanted Eva to dismiss the lies Donna Cresswell had told her about him—to assure him that she had come to know him for herself this past week, and that she at least liked what she had come to know of him, that they had spent the day in bed together because of that liking.
The guarded expression in Eva’s eyes told him that was never going to happen.
‘Nothing,’ he said flatly. ‘Obviously there is nothing more you can or wish to say to me.’
She nodded abruptly. ‘Which is why I am going to collect my bag from the bedroom and leave.’
Just an hour ago Markos had been filled with a feeling of well-being, of contentment in a woman’s company and in lovemaking such as he had never experienced before. Only for all of those feelings to have been completely shattered by one telephone call.
He nodded abruptly. ‘I will need to accompany you.’
‘I’m perfectly capable of seeing myself out, Markos!’ she assured him heavily.
His jaw tightened. ‘The lift will not work without putting in my security code, and the same applies to the outside door.’
Colour darkened the pallor of her cheeks at the obvious rebuke. ‘I’ll just go and get my bag.’
Markos was filled with regret as he turned to watch Eva leave the kitchen—her back very straight and proud, her hips swaying slightly, sensuously, as she walked, her legs long and shapely in the high-heeled black sandals—but he knew he was too angry still to attempt to set things right between the two of them.
If such a thing was even possible…
Eva held back the tears for as long as it took her to reach Markos’s bedroom, then she couldn’t hold back her emotions any longer and instead allowed the tears to cascade down her cheeks with the heat of molten lava.
How could this be ending so badly?
How could she and Markos be parting like virtual strangers after having made love together so tenderly, and then so wildly, only hours ago?