Needed: One Convenient Husband(4)

An annoying hum of awareness Eva was desperate to ignore made her  tense. Adjusting the glasses, which were too heavy for her nose, she  frowned at the rapidly filling room. Her mood plummeted when she saw  Kyle. "Who do you mean, exactly? There must be a hundred people in the  room."

"He is hot." Jacinta, who was hooked into the sophisticated, very  modern dating scene with a new man on her arm every week, clutched  dramatically at her chest before pointing Kyle out just in case Eva  hadn't noticed him. "I'm in love."

Irritation flared, instant and unreasoning. "I thought you were dating Geraldo someone-or-other."

"Gerard. His visa ran out, and his money." She shrugged. "He went back to France."

Eva pretended to be absorbed in her own checklist of things to do.  "Don't let your heart beat faster over Kyle, because you'll be wasting  your time. He's too old for you, and he's not exactly a fun type."

"How old?"

The irritation morphed into something else she couldn't quite put her finger on. "Thirty," she muttered shortly.

"I wouldn't call that old. More...interesting."

Something inside Eva snapped. "Forget Kyle Messena. He isn't available."

Jacinta sent her a glance laced with the kind of curiosity that  informed Eva she hadn't been able to keep the sharpness out of her  voice. "Kyle Messena. I thought he looked familiar. Didn't he lose his  wife and child in some kind of terrorist attack overseas? But that was  years ago." She pointedly returned her gaze to Kyle, underlining the  fact that she could look at him any time she liked, for as long as she  liked.

Even more annoyed by the speculation on Jacinta's face, as if she was  actually considering making a play for Kyle, Eva consulted her watch.  "We're ten minutes behind schedule," she said crisply. "You check the  timing for service with the chef. I'm going to get a cold drink then  have a word with the musicians. With any luck we'll get out of here  before midnight."

With a last glance at Kyle, Jacinta closed the folder with a resigned snap. "No problem."

But there was a problem, Eva thought bleakly. The kind of problem she  had never imagined she would suffer from ever again. For reasons she did  not understand, Jacinta's interest in Kyle had evoked the kind of  fierce, primitive response she had only ever experienced once before,  years ago, when she'd heard that Kyle was dating someone else.

She needed to go somewhere quiet and give herself a stern talking-to,  because somehow, she had allowed the unwanted attraction to Kyle to get  out of hand, to the point that she was suddenly, burningly, crazily  jealous about the last man she wanted in her life.





Three

Kyle strolled to the bar, although if he were honest, the drive to get a  cold beer over settling for the champagne being served had more to do  with the fact that Eva was headed in that direction.                       
       
           



       

Eva's expression chilled as he leaned on the bar next to her. The faint  crease in her smooth brow as she sipped from a tall glass of what he  guessed was sparkling water somehow made her look even more  spectacularly gorgeous, despite the disfiguring glasses. It was a beauty  he should have been accustomed to, yet it still made his stomach  tighten and his attention sharpen in a completely male way.

She met his gaze briefly before looking away. An impression of  defensiveness made him frown. Normally Eva was cool and distant,  occasionally combative, but never defensive.

She placed the glass down on the counter with a small click. "I thought you had left."

The unspoken words, now that you'd made sure I hadn't secretly gotten  married, seemed to hang in the air. Kyle shrugged and ordered a beer. "I  decided to stick around. We still need to have a conversation."

"If it's about the terms of the will, forget it. I've read the fine print-"

"You've ignored the fine print." She had certainly failed to notice that he was her primary marriage candidate.

The faint blush of color in her cheeks flared a little brighter,  sharpening Kyle's curiosity. Eva was behaving in a way that was  distinctly odd. He was abruptly certain that something had happened,  something had changed, although he had no idea what.

She sent him a breezy professional smile, but her whole demeanor was evasive. "If you don't mind, I really do need to work."

Usually, Eva was as direct and uncompromising as any man. The blush and  the avoidance of eye contact didn't fit, unless... His heart slammed  against his chest, spinning him back to the long summer days they had  spent on the beach as teenagers. For a split second he wondered that he  had missed something so obvious. But he guessed he had been so absorbed  with trying to control the desire that had come out of left field that  he had failed to see that Eva was fighting the same battle.

She tried to sidestep him, but the bar area was now filling up with  people, lining up for drinks. Feeling like a villain, but riveted by the  discovery, he moved slightly, just enough to block her in. She stopped,  a bare inch from brushing against his chest.

Kyle's stomach tightened as he caught another whiff of Eva's perfume.  He knew he should leave her alone and let her get on with her job. But  the desire to evoke a response, to make Eva admit that she wanted him,  was too strong. "The whole point of Mario's will was that he wanted you  to marry someone who would actually care about you and who wasn't in it  for the money."

"I know what Mario wanted, no one better. What I don't get is why  you're so intent on enforcing a condition that is patently ridiculous?"

Kyle's gaze narrowed at the way Eva carefully avoided the issue of his proposal. "You're family."

"Distant and only on paper. It's not as if I'm a real Atraeus."

Kyle's brow's jerked together. "Your name is Atraeus."

Eva dragged in a breath, relieved that the unnerving sense that Kyle  had seen right through her desperate attempt to seem normal and  completely impervious to him had dissipated. "That doesn't change the  fact that I'm adopted. I'm not blood." And that she could still remember  what it felt like to wear secondhand clothes, eat cereal for dinner and  fend off her mother's boyfriends. She was a very poor cuckoo in a  diamond-encrusted nest.

"Mario wanted to help you. He wanted you to be happy."

She drew a breath. The clean scent of his skin deepened the panicked  awareness that was humming through her. "I'm twenty-eight. I think that  by now I know what it takes to be happy."

"And that would be paying some guy to marry you?"

Eva's brows jerked together. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but barely fifty  years ago, arranged marriages were common in both the Messena and the  Atraeus families."

"Last century, maybe."

"Then someone should have told that to Mario. And it underlines my  point that a marriage of convenience is not the worst thing that could  happen." And it wasn't as if she actually wanted to be loved. She had  seen what had happened to her mother when she had become emotionally  needy. Relationship train wreck followed by train wreck, the plunging  depression and slow disintegration of Meg Rushton's life. It had all  been crowned by her mother's inability to care for Eva, the one child  who had survived the disorder.

A young man tried to squeeze in beside Eva. Kyle blocked him with a  wolf-cold glance and a faint shift in position. In the process, his arm  brushed against hers, sending a tingle of heat through her that made Eva  even more desperate to get away. With grim concentration, she stared  over Kyle's broad shoulder at the bottles of spirits suspended at the  rear of the bar and tried not to love the fact that Kyle's behavior had  been as bluntly possessive as if they had been a couple. That was  exactly the kind of thinking she could not afford.                       
       
           



       

Kyle's gaze, edged with irritation, captured hers. "Let's put this in  context. If a man is unscrupulous enough to take your money for  marriage, chances are he won't have a problem pressurizing you until you  give in to sex."

Eva's heart thumped hard in her chest at the thought that Kyle could  possibly have a motivation that was tied in with caring about her, that  in his own hard-nosed way, he had been trying to protect her. The next  thought was a dizzying, improbable leap-that Kyle had a personal  interest in stopping her from having sex with other men because he  wanted her.

Annoyed that she should even begin to imagine that Kyle's concern was  based on some kind of personal desire for her when she knew he regarded  her as a spoiled, shallow good-time girl, she put the revelation in  context. Kyle was gorgeous, megawealthy and successful, but the reality  was that, like his older brothers and her macho Atraeus cousins, shunt  him back a few centuries, give him a sword and buckler and he would fit  right in. Just because he was being protective to the point of being  intrusive didn't mean he was attracted to her. It was just part of his  DNA. "I know how to handle men. Believe me, sex will not be an issue."