CHAPTER NINE
EVA’S EYES WENT wide with disbelief as she continued to stare across the desk at Michael for several long seconds, before another emotion took its place, her eyes glittering with anger as she stood up abruptly, a flush to her cheeks now. ‘How could you?’ she accused emotionally, trembling hands clenching into fists at her sides, angry tears blurring her vision. ‘I knew from the moment I met you that you were a hard, cold man—’
‘Eva—’
‘—who didn’t believe a word I was saying to you—’
‘Eva!’
‘—but even knowing that,’ she continued as those tears began to fall hotly down her cheeks, ‘I didn’t think even you would ever be so deliberately cruel.’
‘Damn it, don’t cry...!’ Michael stood up to move quickly out from behind his desk before reaching out for her.
‘Don’t touch me,’ Eva warned through numbed lips even as she stepped away to evade his grasp. ‘How could you, Michael? How could you be so cruel? How could you...?’ she choked again as she raised her hands to bury her face in them, the scalding-hot tears falling between her fingers.
‘Damn it, Eva...!’
Eva had no fight left inside her to be able to pull away a second time as Michael drew her firmly into his arms, her salty tears instantly dampening the pristine whiteness of his silk shirt as one of his hands cupped the back of her head and held her gently to his chest.
She knew none of this could be easy for Michael—any easier than it had all been for her when she first learnt of Rachel’s pregnancy and illness—and she empathised with the shock he must have felt when she had turned up at the gallery with the twins.
Yes, Eva could sympathise, but this—this was uncalled for. Cruel, as she had already said, when Eva ached inside, longed for nothing more than to be able to continue with her career, and to exhibit more of her photographs.
The very carrot Michael was now dangling so temptingly in front of her nose...
But she would never, could never take that carrot, when the price might endanger the twins’ future!
Michael was at a complete loss to know what to do with the silently sobbing Eva as he continued to hold her in his arms.
Not sure whether he felt angry or hurt at Eva’s accusation of ‘I didn’t think even you would ever be so deliberately cruel...’
Even him?
What did that mean? That Eva believed him to be cold and hard obviously, but that she also hadn’t believed that coldness and hardness to be deep enough, ingrained enough, for him to treat her cruelly?
Bad enough in itself, but Michael had no idea what cruelty Eva was referring to.
He had thought she would be pleased with his proposition.
What the hell sort of cruelty could there possibly be in his having invited her to exhibit her latest photographs in one of the Archangel galleries—?
Michael tensed as the answer hit him squarely between the eyes. ‘Eva, do you think my offer of the exhibition is another way of me paying you off...?’ he grated slowly. ‘As in, your silence about Rafe in exchange for exhibiting your photographs at Archangel?’
‘What else could it be?’ She sniffled miserably as she attempted to mop up some of the tears dampening Michael’s chest.
What else indeed...?
Michael now knew exactly what emotion he was feeling! ‘You know, Eva,’ he bit out with steely calm, ‘I knew, from the moment I met you, that you could be impetuous and outspoken, but I hadn’t realised until now that you could also be so damned insulting as to accuse me of blackmailing you into silence!’
‘You don’t like the accusation any more than I did...’
No, he didn’t. Because he had believed, after last night, that Eva was learning to trust him. As much as he now trusted her...?
Whatever he had believed he had been wrong, damn it!
He reached up to grasp her arms and hold her away from him as he looked down at her with glittering black eyes. ‘Look at me, Eva,’ he instructed harshly as she continued to look down at that damp patch on his shirt. ‘I said, look at me, damn it!’ he repeated hardly.
She raised wet dark lashes to look up at him with eyes of a deep and bruised purple, her face deathly pale. ‘I never—I didn’t use the word blackmail...’
‘You didn’t need to!’ A nerve pulsed in Michael’s tightly clenched jaw. ‘It was right there alongside your other accusations...coldness and cruelty.’ He released her arms to walk across to stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the Champs élysées, not seeing any of the grandness of the wide avenue. ‘I thought you had come to know me better than that, Eva. Believed we had reached an understanding— Oh, to hell with what I believed; why should you be any different from every other bloody woman?’ he added bleakly. ‘I think you should leave now, before one or both of us says something else we’re going to regret.’
Eva stared across at Michael, the rigidity of his stance unmistakeable: tensed shoulders, back stiff and straight, hands thrust into the pockets of his tailored trousers, feet slightly parted.
He looked...chillingly unapproachable. Because of the things she had said? Because she had assumed that his offer was an attempt on his part to blackmail her into silence—?
When she put it as bluntly as that it did sound pretty awful, Eva realised with a pained wince. Especially when she now realised Michael hadn’t actually said that...
What had he said, exactly?
That he wanted to offer her, as E J Foster, the opportunity to exhibit her Tibetan photographs at the Archangel gallery of her choice.
There had been no mention in that offer of anything to do with the twins, or Rafe, or anything else to do with that situation, only that it was a business proposition.
Did that mean Michael really had just been offering her the chance to exhibit her photographs with no strings or conditions attached?
Eva moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue before speaking again, her voice gruff from the tears she had shed. ‘If I was mistaken—’
‘Oh, you were!’ he assured grimly.
Eva wasn’t in the least encouraged by the coldness of Michael’s voice or the way he kept his back turned towards her as he continued to look out onto the busy Champs élysées. ‘Then I apologise,’ she finished lamely.
‘Big of you!’ Michael did turn around now, his expression as coldly scathing as his tone as those black eyes raked over her with merciless intensity. ‘I don’t believe I can talk about this any more just now, Eva,’ he finally bit out with cold dismissal.
‘You have another appointment...?’
‘No, I just can’t—I think it best if we don’t discuss this any further right now,’ he answered uncompromisingly.
Eva winced as she heard the cold implacability in Michael’s tone.
He really was icily, chillingly, furious. Rightly so, if her accusation really had been so far off the mark! ‘Then later? At ho—er—at your apartment?’ She grimaced, her cheeks blazing hotly at the slip of having almost called Michael’s apartment ‘home’.
Its luxurious impersonality barely rendered it as being Michael’s Parisian home, let alone her own!
His mouth twisted derisively as he obviously realised the reason for her embarrassed blush. ‘Yes, perhaps we’ll talk about this again later at the apartment.’
Eva frowned. ‘Perhaps...?’
He drew in a deep and even breath, as if fighting to maintain control of his temper. ‘At this point in time I’m not sure there’s anything left for us to discuss.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s always a chance I might feel differently about it later on today.’
And that, Eva acknowledged heavily, was the end of the subject for now, as far as Michael was concerned. And, if his offer really had just been the business proposition he’d said it was, then she couldn’t exactly blame him for feeling that way!
She had, Eva realised, with a few choice words and her accusing tears, succeeded in totally destroying the shaky truce that had slowly been growing between the two of them, but had already been so severely tested by the intimacies they had shared the night before.
‘I’ll go now,’ she said abruptly. ‘I— What time should I expect you back for dinner?’
Michael’s mouth twisted with derision as he realised Eva had carefully avoided referring to his apartment as ‘home’ a second time.
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ he dismissed flatly, not sure it was a good idea for him to join Eva at the apartment for dinner this evening at all.
Hadn’t he decided earlier that having Eva and the twins at the apartment was becoming just a little too cosy, too domesticated for comfort? His comfort?
A cosiness and domesticity Michael realised he was in no mood for this evening, after Eva’s distrust of him. ‘I could be late, so just order something in for yourself,’ he added coolly as he resumed his seat behind his desk. ‘Could you please send Marie in on your way out...?’ he added distractedly as he pulled the proofs for the next Parisian Archangel catalogue towards him and began to read through them.
Eva took one last lingering look at Michael, as he bent over some papers lying on the top of his desk, before leaving, knowing herself well and truly dismissed...
* * *
The digital clock on Eva’s bedside table read eleven fifty-one in the darkness of the bedroom when she heard Michael use his key to enter the otherwise silent apartment. Listening intently, she heard him drop his key into the glass bowl on the table in the hallway alongside the spare key he had given her some days ago, followed by the soft thud of his briefcase as he placed it beneath that table, before moving quietly to the kitchen.
And Eva was aware of him making every single one of those soft movements—because she had left her bedroom door slightly open for just that purpose when she crawled miserably into bed a couple of hours ago!
After what had been a long and awful afternoon and evening as far as Eva was concerned. The twins, having predictably picked up on her tension when she had returned downstairs to collect them from Pierre, had then proceeded to be cranky and fretful all afternoon. And they hadn’t improved when they all returned to the apartment, throwing food at each other when Eva fed them their tea, and splashing water over each other when she bathed them.
Eva had given a sigh of relief when it came time to put them in their separate cots for the night!
Only to then find she had the rest of the long and lonely evening stretching out in front of her...
Michael hadn’t returned by nine o’clock, and Eva had felt too despondent to order any food in for her own dinner, deciding to settle for making some toast instead, and ending up feeling quite sorry for herself as she sat down alone in the quiet of the kitchen to eat it.
She had never been a particularly social person, had shared accommodation at university, but had preferred the privacy of her own space after she moved to London. The twins had shattered that privacy three months ago, of course, but even so Eva had never felt lonely, just exhausted, once she had put the babies to bed for the night.
She had been very aware of feeling lonely this evening...
Because, in just a very short space of time, Eva knew she had become accustomed to spending her evenings with Michael. Had come to appreciate, to enjoy, their quiet dinners together, their conversation, and even their silences had seemed companionable rather than awkward.
This evening there had just been a yawning great hole of loneliness where Michael should have been.
Leaving Eva with hours and hours to wonder where he was and what he was doing...
She very much doubted he had been at a business meeting all these hours, so he had probably spent the evening socially. With another woman.
Another woman...?
That would seem to imply that Eva thought of herself as being a woman Michael was involved with. Which she didn’t—did she...?
Of course she didn’t! That would just be asking for trouble.
She’d never thought to ask, and Michael hadn’t volunteered the information either, as to whether or not he had a woman currently in his life.
But of course there would be!
How could Eva have been stupid enough not to have realised that earlier? Michael was a darkly gorgeous and complex man, and an experienced and exquisite lover, added to which he was seriously wealthy, and Eva had no doubt there was sure to be some other woman currently appreciating all three of those highly attractive qualities.
Had that other woman been appreciating those qualities this evening?
It really was none of her business, Eva accepted heavily. Just because Michael had made love to her last night didn’t give her any right to feel hurt, or jealous, because he was spending the evening with another woman.
Except Eva knew that she did...
She felt incredibly hurt just thinking about it. And she felt jealous because—because Eva had realised, as she sat alone in Michael’s apartment this evening, waiting for him to come home, that she had been falling in love with him!
He was totally the wrong man, and it was totally the wrong time for her to fall in love with anyone, and yet Eva knew that was exactly what she had done. She was in love with Michael D’Angelo, the very last man who would ever allow himself to fall in love with her, the woman accusing his brother of fathering her niece and nephew.
And quite how she was going to continue staying on at this apartment with Michael, until Rafe returned from his honeymoon, knowing that she was in love with him, Eva had absolutely no idea. She—
‘Eva...?’
Every part of Eva froze as she realised that, while she had been lying here agonising over the fact that she had fallen in love with Michael—a man she could never have, and who would never allow himself to feel the same way about her—he had obviously left the kitchen and walked down the hallway, seen her bedroom door was slightly ajar, and decided to see if she was still awake.
‘It’s no use pretending to be asleep, Eva, because I could actually feel your recriminating thoughts pounding at me just now through the bedroom wall.’
‘Recriminating?’ Eva repeated challengingly as she gave up all pretence of being asleep. She sat up abruptly in the bed, uncaring that she was only wearing a soft white cotton camisole top and loose boxers, as she frowned across at Michael’s silhouette in her now fully open bedroom doorway. ‘I don’t have the right to feel that way,’ she continued sharply, ‘when I’m so obviously an unwanted guest in your apartment!’
‘I think what happened between us last night totally disproves part of that statement,’ Michael came back wearily, at the same time as he ran a distracted hand through his thick hair, his head pounding painfully with the headache he’d suffered for the past two hours.
A headache certainly not helped by the sight of Eva wearing a barely there top, her hair a glossy ebony tangle about her bare shoulders, as the blood pounded hotly through his veins in response to her.
‘You—’
‘Have you eaten?’
‘I— No, not really.’ Eva was taken aback by the abrupt change of subject. ‘Just a piece of toast,’ she added softly.
Michael nodded abruptly. ‘I’m about to go back to the kitchen and make myself an omelette, if you would care to join me?’
‘You haven’t eaten this evening either?’
‘No,’ he sighed.
‘I assumed you would have been out for dinner...?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve been working in my office all evening.’
Eva fought to hold back the elation she felt at hearing this. ‘I thought you couldn’t cook.’
‘An omelette isn’t cooking,’ he assured dryly. ‘And I didn’t say I couldn’t cook, only that I don’t.’
‘Semantics.’ Eva nodded ruefully, feeling more light-hearted than she had all evening. Because she now knew that Michael hadn’t been out with another woman this evening, after all...
‘Yes or no to the omelette, Eva?’ Michael was hoping that food might help relieve some of his pounding headache. Although, with Eva looking so sexily tousled, he doubted it very much as his shaft now pounded, thickened and hardened, to the same rhythm of that pulsing headache...!
‘Yes.’ She threw back the bedclothes with the obvious intention of getting out of bed.
Giving Michael a clear view of the silky bare legs she swung to the carpeted floor before she stood up to pick up her robe from the chair, that short walk revealing that she wore a loose pair of black boxers to sleep in along with that barely there white top.
Michael turned away abruptly as his hardened shaft pulsed eagerly in response. ‘I’ll see you in the kitchen in a few minutes.’
‘I’m just—’
Michael didn’t linger in the doorway to hear what else Eva was going to say as he turned sharply on his heel and returned to the kitchen, just that brief glimpse of her in that sexy top and boxers enough to set his blood pounding even harder. He moved grim-faced about the kitchen collecting up the ingredients for their omelettes.
‘Did you have an enjoyable evening working?’ Eva prompted huskily as she quietly entered the kitchen to stand near the door watching as Michael whisked the eggs in a bowl.
‘No.’ He kept his back towards her. ‘You?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? Were the twins difficult?’ Michael didn’t need to glance away from tipping the egg mixture into the pan to be achingly aware of Eva’s every move as she crossed the kitchen to sit down on one of the chairs about the table in the centre of the room.
He could smell her, that perfume that was uniquely Eva: a mixture of citrus and hot earthy woman.
‘A little. But that wasn’t it. I—I’ve been...unhappy, about the way we parted earlier,’ she admitted huskily.
Michael continued to keep his back to her as he closed his eyes, counting slowly to ten as he willed himself not to respond to that admission. If their argument this afternoon, the things Eva had said to him, had shown him nothing else, then it had convinced Michael that it was in the best interest of both of them if he avoided Eva’s company in future.
And so he had stayed away from the apartment this evening, filling those hours with work, uninterested in eating dinner as he kept himself busy, and resulting in his now having this blinding headache.
He faltered slightly as he carried the first laden plate over to the table as he saw Eva looked more luscious than ever. ‘Eat,’ he instructed tersely as he placed the plate of hot food on the table in front of her, before turning sharply away to return to the hob to cook his own omelette.
‘Mmm, this is really good,’ she murmured appreciatively seconds later.
Michael made a gruff noise of acknowledgement, having no appetite for his own omelette now but tipping it out of the pan and onto the plate anyway before walking over to sit opposite Eva at the wooden table.
If anything Eva felt more miserable now than she had earlier this evening.
She had felt briefly happy at knowing he had spent the evening at his office rather than going out, but that had now been replaced by the fact that at least before she had only been able to guess at the anger Michael felt towards her. Being here with him now, able to see and feel that displeasure firsthand, was unbearable!
So much so that Eva could only push the rest of her omelette uninterestedly about her plate, Michael appearing to do the same with his as the minutes slowly passed with the marked ticking of the kitchen clock. They brooded in silence, Eva because she simply couldn’t think of anything to say, and Michael because he obviously just didn’t have anything he wanted to say to her...
Eva lowered her lashes and looked down at the table as she heard Michael’s chair scrape on the tiled floor, so miserable now she was totally unable to prevent the tears from falling softly down her cheeks; damn it, she had cried more in the last few days than she had for months!
‘Eva...?’ Michael’s legs appeared beside her first, and then his chest and face as he came down onto his haunches to look up at her bowed head. ‘Why are you crying...?’ he prompted softly as one of his hands moved up and his fingertips gently smoothed those tears from her cheeks.
‘This time?’ Eva asked.
He gave a rueful smile. ‘My offer of an exhibition of your work at one of the Archangel galleries still stands, Eva.’
Her gaze flicked up to his in surprise. ‘It does?’
Michael nodded. ‘No conditions. Absolutely no strings attached,’ he added grimly.
Eva ran her tongue over her lips. ‘I— That’s very generous of you after the things I said to you earlier.’
‘You think?’ He arched dark and mocking brows. ‘I’m sure my brothers would both assure you that I’m just using good business sense by securing the next E J Foster photographic exhibition for our galleries.’
Eva’s heart plummeted. Because she had wanted, hoped, that Michael having repeated his earlier offer meant he had forgiven her for the things she had said. ‘I see.’
‘Somehow I doubt that.’ Michael’s dark gaze roamed freely over her make-up-free face as he gently smoothed the hair back from her temple. ‘I’ve been fighting coming home and doing this all evening, Eva,’ he groaned huskily, ‘but now that I’m here with you again, I can’t fight it any longer!’
She swallowed. ‘This...?’
‘This!’ One of his hands captured both of hers before he straightened abruptly, taking Eva with him. ‘I want to make love to you,’ he grated huskily. ‘Do you want me in the same way?’
The best thing to do, the sensible thing to do, would be for Eva to say no, to just walk away and go back to her bedroom and close the door behind her; she had absolutely no doubt that Michael would accept the closing of that door as her final answer.
That was the sensible thing to do.
‘Yes.’ Eva didn’t even attempt to qualify that one-word answer by adding anything else.
She did want Michael. Madly. Passionately.
And if tonight was all she was going to have of him then she was going to take it!