Best of Temptation Bundle Page 10

  “Good.” Eva glanced toward the closed office door, taking little notice of Jimmy’s puzzled expression. “I thought I’d just go in and work on some of the accounts I brought with me. Do you mind?”

  “Naw, go on ahead.”

  Eva did, stopping to skim an order on the clipboard hanging on the wall near the glass door. She quietly went into the office and flicked on the light.

  “Nothing ever changes,” she murmured.

  She put her laptop down on a metal desk, then cleared a pile of receipts, work orders and a few uncashed checks off a ledger. She shook her head at her father’s nearly illegible scrawls that stopped at a date weeks ago.

  Eva swept her hair back from her face, then sank into the cracked leather chair she remembered from childhood. She put the receipts back down, then reached for her laptop and opened it up. She considered herself a good accountant, but not even she would attempt to make any sense out of her father’s mess. Besides, she would need a lot longer than a couple of hours to do it.

  Slipping the Honeycutt diskettes out of her dress pocket, she slid one into the disk drive and accessed the directory. Without delay, the file names popped up. She frowned, leaned closer and adjusted the brightness on the LCD screen. Most of the files bore sequential numbers…all except one. She selected the file then accessed the menu to open it.

  The screen went instantly dark and a loud noise issued from the laptop’s tiny speaker. She jumped, afraid she had crashed the drive. Reaching to reboot the system, she stopped when yellow graphic stars arced across the screen and a tinny, haunted type of music started playing.

  That’s odd.

  Triumph of the Gladiators printed across the screen.

  It’s a game.

  Eva accessed the menu system again and scanned the other files on the diskette, finding them all plainly related to the Honeycutt account. That’s strange. Why would Oliver put a personal game on a working disk? She smiled, recalling that Oliver had always done curious little things like that.

  Lifting her damp hair from her neck with one hand, she popped the diskette from the drive and slipped in the next one. She found the files she needed, tucked her hair into a loose twist, then got down to work.

  A while later, her back started aching from spending so much time in the same position. She got up and stretched listlessly. Through the door window she saw Jimmy was readying the machine that would divide the oysters into netted bags that held fifty pounds each and tag them. Eva turned back toward the desk, catching a glimpse of a picture frame peeking out from a pile of papers. She carefully slipped it out. Her heart gave a tender squeeze as she noticed it was a copy of her high-school graduation photo.

  There was a tap at the door, then Jimmy opened it. “Eva, they’re back.”

  Her misgivings—lost in the concentration of her chosen chore—returned. Especially because she knew Jimmy meant his words as a warning. Tolly Mavros didn’t think his business was the place for any woman. Not even his daughter. Especially his daughter. No matter that she was a CPA and could help him with the mess he had created.

  She slid her diskettes into her dress pocket, shut off her laptop and the light, then slipped through the door.

  Out of the confines of the office, Eva heard the steady put-put of the boat engine on the river. She emerged from the warehouse and shaded her eyes from the powerful, hazy midday sun. In the cool dimness of the office, she hadn’t noticed how hot and humid it had become. Now it hit her like a wet, sultry wave. She glanced at where her damp dress clung to her rear and legs from where she’d been sitting. Peeling the material away from her slick skin, she watched the boat pull up, Eva II stenciled in black across the bow, her father expertly maneuvering it through the dark green water into the slip. His flat, short-billed black cap prevented her from seeing much of his face as he concentrated on where he was going.

  She sought Adam on the deck of the boat. He was nowhere to be found. Remembering Jimmy’s earlier comment, she idly wondered if her father had left him on a mud lump.

  Then she spotted him and the heat of the day was nothing compared to the heat that seared through her body.

  Adam’s sculpted, glistening upper torso was stripped bare, his brown polyester slacks riding low on his slim hips, giving her a tantalizing peek at the dark blond hair that trailed a line below his navel, then disappeared into his sweat-soaked pants. His feet were bare, and he’d rolled up the legs of his slacks to midcalf. Eva’s mouth watered as she watched the muscles of his back work as he secured the back of the boat while her father saw to the front.

  She swallowed hard. If Adam Gardner had intended to act like a nerd for her father’s benefit, he had failed miserably.

  Then he turned around. Even from that distance she could see his glasses were smudged and dirty, his face covered with soot from God only knew where. When he saw her standing with her arms crossed over her stomach, he started waving to her as if he were an overgrown kid returning from his first camping trip.

  The grin that eased across her tense face was caused by relief and gratitude. There was no way her father could have taken to him.

  Adam Gardner might be just the type of man the female Mavroses approved of, but Tolly would expect something far different than what Adam offered. There were to be no wimpy sons-in-law for this man. His definition of a true man would run somewhere along the lines of a gruff, foulmouthed oysterman like himself. Someone who would stand up for himself, stand up to him, take a stance that showed he had an ounce of passion in him.

  Eva rested a hand against her damp neck, heated memories of the previous evening surging back to her. Oh, Adam had passion all right. Just not the type her father could appreciate.

  “Hi, Eva,” Adam called to her, stepping off the boat onto the wooden dock.

  “Hi, Adam,” she called back softly.

  A warm gulf breeze carried her father’s murmured Greek curses to her ears and Eva wanted to smile. Urged on by more than gratitude, she strolled to the dock and to Adam’s side, slipping her arm around his waist. A jolt of awareness spread over her from head to foot as her skin met his hot, hard body. She tried to pull away, but Adam’s strong arm around her shoulders didn’t allow her to.

  She quietly cleared her throat. “Did you have fun?”

  He grinned down at her, his gaze roving over her face. “Let’s say this morning was very…enlightening.”

  Warmth pulsed through her and she pressed her lips to his neck, ceasing the instant she did so.

  The movement came so naturally, so easily, she questioned her own sanity. He finally released his hold on her. She gently pulled away, licking the salty taste of him from her lips, her senses overwhelmed with emotions as foreign to her as the spark of spontaneity that had moved her to kiss him in the first place.

  “Hi, Papa,” she said as her father moved toward the dock side of the boat.

  He murmured a greeting she couldn’t quite make out, then asked what she was doing out there.

  “Waiting for you and Adam, of course,” she said, giving herself points for not asking him where he expected her to be. She didn’t need to ask. She already knew. In Tolly’s eyes, Eva’s place was back at the house, helping her mother prepare the afternoon meal.

  Her father hmmphed his response, and every remarkable, wonderful emotion within Eva wilted.

  She told herself she was being childish. That her need for her father’s affection was something that she should have gotten over years ago…back when she finally figured out she might never get it. Still, she wished just once he would express himself in a way that didn’t make her feel she was one huge disappointment. While a competent cook, she shied away from it, mainly because it was expected of her. She had, however, always yearned to go oystering. It had long proven a sore spot that while her name might be on the boat, she wasn’t welcome on it.

  “The morning’s not done yet, Adam,” her father said, rocking a pulley toward him.

  “Yes, right, of course.”

>   Looking all the world like a man ready to please, Adam reboarded the boat and awkwardly offered his help. The relief Eva felt earlier melted into something else entirely. It took her a second to realize it was envy. Not of her father’s brusque treatment of Adam. But that Tolly Mavros would even take the time to tell him how to do something the right way. It’s something he’d never done with her.

  Eva slowly walked back along the dock. For the first time, she noticed her brother, Pete, leaning against the warehouse. Given the sober expression on his face, she wasn’t the only one who felt left out. Which was odd, because she had always been envious of Pete’s relationship with her father. She didn’t like to admit that she’d ever been jealous of her brother. In some ways he’d had it harder than she had, having to be at Papa’s beck and call since he was old enough to walk. When he had matured, he had developed his own dreams, his own interests. Discovered he had a passion for building boats rather than using them to fish. But Tolly Mavros wouldn’t hear of Pete veering away from family tradition. Every Mavros male had been a fisherman and his son would continue the legacy. End of discussion.

  Pete glanced at Eva. Their gazes locked for a long moment. She started in his direction, to tell him she knew what he was feeling, that she’d felt the same way when Papa had lavished all his attention on him. But he turned from her and drifted into the warehouse where he would presumably help with the bagging.

  ADAM GLANCED at Eva where she stood off to the side of the hulking warehouse. The hem of her flowered dress skimmed the middle of her toned, tanned thighs. Her hair was a dark, wild mass that somehow made her eyes look bigger, making her whole presence that much more distracting.

  Back there, when Tolly was bringing the boat in, he had spotted Eva, and a soft humming had drifted through his body. A humming whose origin came not from the vibration of the boat engine, but instead as a reaction to the captivating woman waiting for him. In that one moment, it was easy to imagine her one of Odysseus’s sirens and that it was her silent, haunted song that hummed through him. That it was for her song alone that he was returning to shore.

  Now Adam dragged the back of his hand across his wet forehead and followed Pete’s lead by spreading the oysters out on the table. He needed to get out of there, out of Louisiana and back to some semblance of reality, quick. He fully intended to make Eva stick to her promise that they’d stay for only one day.

  The woman offered a fathomless wealth of contradictions. Hell, his own emotions were a bit on the contradictory side when it came to Eva Mavros Burgess. After she’d shared her condition the night before, the last thing he should be thinking about was how sexy she looked, and how hard it had been to lie next to her all night and not follow through with what had started with that kiss. But when she had slipped her slender arm around his waist on the dock, then pressed her mouth against his neck, he had battled against the need to claim those provocative lips in a kiss that would surpass a friendly greeting. What stopped him was the shadow in Eva’s eyes when she spoke to her father.

  Looking at the older man now, Adam decided that Tolly Mavros had to be one of the most direct people he had ever met. When he’d awakened to a rough squeeze on the shoulder early that morning, he had started, thinking it was Eva, having changed her mind about his sleeping in the bed. Instead, he’d made out the outline of Tolly’s uniquely carved face inches away from his and couldn’t for the life of him think what Eva’s father wanted. He didn’t find out until after hastily dressing and meeting him in the hall where Tolly had said they were going oystering.

  Oystering, for God’s sake.

  Until that point, the only things Adam knew about oysters were that they were supposed to be an aphrodisiac, they were expensive and you didn’t prepare them at home unless you knew where they came from. Of course, he had never stopped to think about how they were actually dredged up. But Tolly apparently had been dead set on showing him. Something that caught Adam off guard because aside from commenting on his hair, Eva’s father hadn’t spoken a word to him.

  And two hours into the already sweltering day, when the sun had finally started to rise over the river and countless bayous like a fiery orange, Adam had been convinced Tolly might never utter another word to him again.

  The first half of the trip was spent in silence—aside from terse orders from his temporary father-in-law. Awkward silences that stopped being so awkward when Adam figured out Tolly wasn’t much of a talker. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested. He just honestly didn’t have anything to say. Adam mopped the sweat from his forehead again. But when Tolly Mavros did have something to say, he could be as jovial as a comic, or as tenacious as a pit bull with a rabbit clenched in his jaws. It depended on what his mind was on.

  Of course, Adam hadn’t forgotten Eva’s request from the night before: he was to do everything he could to make her father not like him. And he had. From jamming the controls for the dredger so it got stuck in the upright position, to “accidentally” dumping a couple dozen or so oysters back into the water. He had gone out of his way to come off, if not as a complete imbecile, then as a top contender. He’d earned more than a few tirades of guttural words he hadn’t understood. But there had been one word he did understand. It came after he had maneuvered the dredger and dumped its contents directly in the spot Eva’s father had indicated. Tolly had slapped him on the back hard enough to dislodge half a digested steak then heartily said, “Bravo.”

  Adam rubbed the back of his neck, wishing he hadn’t purposely smudged his fake glasses, then went back to helping bag the last of the oysters. It was funny, but that one word coming from Tolly Mavros had made him grin.

  Finally, Tolly announced the morning’s work done and Adam stepped up next to where Eva watched nearby. She looked more fresh and appealing than any one woman had the right to look. And made Adam feel that much grimier. Lord, but he felt as if he’d just returned from a month-long tour of hard labor.

  “Here, let me clean those for you,” she said, reaching up to take the glasses from his face.

  Adam caught her wrist before she could slip them all the way off, feeling the leap of her pulse beneath his thumb, then slid that same thumb up and down the underside of her wrist.

  “Thanks, but I can get them,” he said, his exhaustion chased away by a rush of desire for the woman in front of him. A woman as earthy as the rich soil that banked the bayous, and more alluring than an enchantress in an erotic novel. A woman he needed to stay well away from.

  The expression on her face mirrored the one she wore after talking to Tolly. Disappointment. It bothered Adam more than he cared to admit. So much so, he released her hand then took off his glasses himself, offering them to her. Surely, he could let her clean his glasses without succumbing to the overwhelming urge to take her to bed.

  “Be careful,” he said, dropping his gaze when she looked at him closely…too closely. “They scratch easy.”

  He caught her brief smile. “I’ll be careful.”

  She walked toward the back of the warehouse. He watched her go, glad for once that he didn’t have to do it through the thick lenses. God, but that woman had a walk on her. And the way her summery dress drifted around her thighs made him want to groan.

  He had to get out of there.

  “Come.” Tolly hit him on the back so hard he nearly choked. “We wash up outside. You’re hungry, no?”

  “Yes,” Adam said, allowing the shorter, stockier man to lead him out of the dim warehouse. “Hungry.”

  He didn’t think Tolly would be happy to learn what exactly he was hungry for. Especially since he wasn’t the man Tolly thought him to be.

  “NO, MAMA, we have to go,” Eva said across the dinner table. She gently waved her grandmother away from where she tried to hand her a slice of fresh bread. “It’s a long drive, and we both have to be back at work Tuesday morning.”

  “But that’s ridiculous. We haven’t seen you for over a year, Eva. And we’ve only just met Adam. Certainly, you can stay at
least through tomorrow and spend Labor Day with us.” Katina reached out to place her hand on Adam’s arm where he sat next to her. “Tell her, Adam. Tell my stubborn daughter that you must stay.”

  Eva’s gaze shifted to Adam’s face. She hoped that Adam would back her up this time. She really needed him to.

  Eva’s brother, Pete, dropped his fork to his plate. “Leave them be, Mama. If Eva says they have to go, then they have to go. God, does everything have to be a battle around here?”

  An uncomfortable silence punctuated by the whirl of the ceiling fan followed Pete’s statement. Eva watched her brother in quiet sympathy. He feels threatened by Adam’s presence, she realized. Did he think his position as the only son was in jeopardy now that another man had shown up? Or was he thinking about all he, himself, had given up without a fight?

  This made Eva feel even guiltier about her deception. Bill would have never made Pete feel insecure, because Bill would never have come down here.

  She dropped her gaze, wishing the heat didn’t make her feel so listless.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Mavros,” Adam said quietly. “But Eva’s right.” He met her gaze meaningfully. “We really do have to get back.”

  Those at the table remained silent. Eva tamped down a comment about how none of her objections were taken seriously, while Adam said one sentence and it was accepted as a fact.

  Sluggishly stabbing a piece of fried zucchini, she sensed her father’s gaze on her.

  “Your mother is right. You should stay,” he said. Then more quietly, he added, “I’d like you to stay.”

  Eva shifted her gaze to his face, but he had gone back to eating. She wondered if she had heard his last comment at all.

  The tension at the table for the remainder of the midday meal settled into Eva’s stomach like a tight knot. She was relieved when she could finally excuse herself, the key to the guest bedroom tucked safely in her dress pocket. Earlier, during a rare moment alone, she’d sneaked into the pantry and went through a metal box that held copies of all the house’s keys. She intended to make up the guest bedroom for Adam and let him lie down there while she rested in her old room before making the drive to Jersey.