Best of Temptation Bundle Page 18

  Eva dropped her gaze to her lap. “No, Papa, he’s not.”

  For long moments no one said anything. Eva couldn’t bring herself to care about anything but the fact that Adam would be leaving now. He would disappear from her life as quickly as he had entered it.

  Is that what he had intended all along? Eva didn’t believe it. Not after what they shared together last night, not after he’d said he loved her.

  And she knew he did. As surely as she knew the deep pain at the thought of losing him grew out of her love for him, too.

  “Your Bill…is he dead?” her grandmother asked.

  That brought a watery smile to Eva’s face. She reached out and patted her grandmother’s pale hand. “No, Yaya, Bill is still alive. We’re just…divorced.”

  Her father hmmphed and leaned back in his chair. But instead of avoiding his gaze, Eva looked directly at him.

  “And the baby? It is his…Bill’s?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “My pregnancy is the reason Bill asked for a divorce. You see, we agreed when we married that we wouldn’t have children.”

  “Not have—”

  Eva’s mother entered the room carrying a tray of toast. “Tolly, stop it right now. Let the child speak, for God’s sake.”

  Eva cleared her tight throat. “When Mama called to tell me you were ill—” her mother shrugged innocently when her father glared at her “—I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you I was divorced from a man you hadn’t even met. I knew it hurt you all that I married away from home and without your blessing. And, well, since I didn’t know how ill you were, I didn’t want to lay that in your lap as well.”

  “And Adam?” her grandmother asked. “You are…involved with him?”

  “No.” Eva’s cheeks burned with the lie, but she couldn’t bear to share with them how…close she and Adam had become over the past few days. And anyway, before she brought him to Louisiana, they had been little more than associates.

  Her father sat forward. “For three nights you sleep with him in the same room in my house, you call him husband, and yet you say you’re not involved with him?” He paused. “Okay, two nights. One night he slept on the porch.”

  Eva smiled sadly. “We’re not involved in the way I suspect you hope we are.” She wrapped her cold fingers around her cup. “I am not going to marry Adam, Papa.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “He is a good man. He would be a good protector, a good father to your son.”

  “Or daughter,” her mother said.

  Eva tightly closed her eyes. “I’m not going to marry Adam,” she said more loudly. “So just drop it, okay?”

  “Drop it? What is this, drop it?” Tolly said.

  Her mother quickly explained the meaning of the words in Greek, then her father nodded and went silent.

  “Do you love him, ayapee mou?” Her grandmother broke the silence. All gazes shifted to Eva’s face.

  She briefly closed her eyes. “Yes, I do.”

  Her father slapped his hand on the table. “And he loves you, so it’s settled. You’ll be married tomorrow by Pappa Kostas in Morgan City.”

  Eva put her teacup on the table with a dull thud. “Papa, this is not the Middle Ages. And this is not Greece where you can just order me around as if I’m a mindless child whose only duty is to obey you. I don’t need to be married to have a baby.” She pleaded for him to understand, but suddenly recognized that it was enough for her to say the words. “Why can’t you just accept my decision? Respect me as I do you?”

  “Respect? This is what you call respect?”

  Eva started to rise from the table. “You’re determined to chase me away again, aren’t you? If I can’t abide by your rules, then you’d just as soon I wasn’t in your sight, isn’t that right? Let me go back to New Jersey and live my life in some sort of archaic exile to return only for vacations where you can remind me all over again why I’m undeserving of your love.”

  She drew herself up. “Well, I’m telling you right now. I’ve decided I’m not going anywhere. Even though Adam won’t be a part of my life…our lives, he’s made me realize some very important things. And one of them is that I love my family and I want to be near them. Near Mama, Yaya, Pete, and yes, even you, Papa. No matter how difficult you make it.” She smoothed her hands over her slightly rounded stomach through her nightgown. “I’m going to be staying on in Belle Rivage to raise my child.”

  The room was awkwardly silent after her small speech. But Eva felt better than she had in a long, long time, despite the sadness clinging to her like the humid air. Her grandmother was smiling, but her mother watched her father’s angry face, her own full of hope that he would say something to make everything right. Deep down, Eva wished for the same. But she finally realized that even if her father said nothing, it wouldn’t matter. She was who she was, and he was the same.

  “Good,” he said gruffly moments later.

  “Good?” Eva’s chest tightened.

  He waved his hand as if shooing her away. “Yes, good. I never liked that you left here, Eva. And I’m sorry you felt I’m the one who forced you away.”

  Through her tears, her father was a gruff, lovable blur.

  “But you should still marry Adam.”

  Eva’s throat was thick with emotion. “I can’t, Papa. He’s not the father of this child. I can’t ask him to take on the responsibility. No matter what may have happened between us this past weekend.” She started from the room. “I won’t.”

  With her words she left out one important truth. Adam hadn’t offered to take on the responsibility of her…or her baby.

  ADAM HAD NO IDEA leaving Eva would be so difficult. In the past four days he’d seen her transform from the ice queen he had once thought her, into a dedicated daughter in a tight-knit Greek-American family. And finally into a sensual, loving woman who could make everything in the world all right with just one of her heartwarming smiles, one passionate touch.

  As Adam packed his things, he found it odd that nowhere in his thoughts of her was the image of Eva wearing that string bikini. No. Now looming far sexier in his mind was Eva and her floral dresses, her olive green eyes full of passion as she looked at him while they made love.

  Damn, he’d gotten himself in deep this time. But would the feelings burgeoning in his chest for Eva Mavros Burgess last after a week away from her? A bothersome voice shouted yes, they would. But things had happened too quickly for him to trust that voice. To trust himself not to hurt Eva, her family and her child if he woke up one day and realized his love for her was little more than an overdose of lust, or an almost obsessive thirst for the forbidden.

  Anyway, he had to leave. He was scheduled on the next flight out to Jersey to pull in Norman Sheffert and Alice Turley for questioning. Combined with Pinney’s forthcoming confession he had no doubt everything would be sewn up by the day’s end.

  Would he come back?

  He knew the answer even before he thought it. No. It wouldn’t be fair to her or her family to drag out the inevitable. And the inevitable was that he didn’t belong here.

  Besides, he thought as he closed his duffel bag, she hadn’t asked him to stay. Chances were, she didn’t think they had what it took to make it beyond tomorrow any more than he did. As accountants, both of them knew half of new business ventures failed within the first year. Even with the best of guidance and everything on their side when they started out. It wasn’t any different in marriage, if the current divorce rates were anything to go by. He’d never done anything impulsive in his life. And he’d hazard a guess that Eva hadn’t either. But their making love fell solidly in the impulse category. They had come together knowing full well there would be no promises when the sun rose.

  He glanced up and through the window, finding the hot September sun doing exactly that. And he was completely convinced he was doing the right thing. Well, almost convinced. Okay, he had a strong feeling his walking away was right.

  Damn, why couldn’t h
e be sure?

  At any rate, his future was already decided. An hour earlier, he’d called Deputy Chief John Weckworth to fill him in on the peculiar circumstances surrounding the case and to have him put a tail on Sheffert and his secretary. At the end of their conversation, Weckworth had told him of another assignment. Adam had taken it. After he wrapped this case up, he was going to close up his apartment in New Jersey, then catch a flight to Little Rock, Arkansas, where his next case waited.

  “Adam?”

  Every muscle in his body tensed at the sound of Eva’s voice from the open door. Picking up his briefcase and duffel, he turned toward her.

  She released her bottom lip where she had caught it between her teeth. Adam wanted to groan. The urge to pull her to him and kiss away her pain—and his own—was overwhelming. But her stance well across the room clearly stated that such a move would be unwise.

  “Are you ready?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  She gestured toward the hall with those wonderfully long, slender hands. “I already told my parents you wouldn’t be saying goodbye. I, uh, thought it would be better for them that way.” She scanned his face. “And you.”

  He nodded, a part of him regretting that he wouldn’t be offering any explanation to her family, telling them how much he had enjoyed the past few days with them, but he knew it was for the best. No sense acting as if they might see each other again. Because they wouldn’t.

  “Come on. I’ll walk you out.”

  Being so close to Eva, and not being able to touch her, to tell her how very much last night meant to him, or to promise her everything if she’d only let him stay was the most difficult thing Adam had ever done. He followed her down the hall, then the stairs. He ordered himself not to watch the way her dress swung around her legs, or eye the enticing curve of her neck as they stepped out onto the porch. But he did both, needing to capture at least that image of her before he left.

  She turned to him, her dark eyebrows drawn together. “How are you going to get back to Jersey?”

  “Are you offering to drive me?” he asked, smiling, and wishing he hadn’t said anything when a ray of hope flashed in her eyes. He forced himself to look away. “I’ll be flying from New Orleans.”

  “But I thought…oh.” Her hand shook as she tucked her hair behind her ear. “Your not being able to fly was just part of the assignment.”

  “Yes.”

  She gave him a small smile.

  He eyed her drawn face, wishing for all the world that he didn’t have to hurt her. That he didn’t have to hurt himself. But knowing it was better now than later. “And you? When will you be going back?”

  “I won’t,” she said softly. “At least not to stay. Of course, I’ll have to sell my house and settle everything in New Jersey first, but I’m going to come back here.” She gestured toward the house. “A lot of what you said to me on the boat the other night made sense. I’ve decided I’ve done enough running and that I should just stick things out here. For my sake—” she ran her fingers down her abdomen “—and for my baby’s.”

  He nodded. “Good.”

  She stared at him in a way that made him feel uneasy. “That’s exactly what my father said.”

  “A smart man, your father.”

  Her answering laugh was a little stronger than her previous one. “You would say that.”

  They shared a moment jam-packed with awkwardness and tension. Caught up in the emotion of the moment, swept away by passion, neither of them quite knew what to say now.

  A car pulled up into the circular driveway and parked behind Eva’s Mercedes.

  She flicked it a quick glance. “Well, I guess I should say goodbye and let you get on your way. You have work to do.” She lifted her eyes to him, peering at him from beneath the thick fringe of her dark lashes. Adam felt like groaning all over again. “Goodbye, Adam,” she whispered.

  Hesitantly stepping toward him, she dropped her gaze, intent on kissing him on the cheek. But Adam wasn’t having any of that. Dropping his bags, he cradled her face in his hands and met her lips head-on.

  Her eyes blinked up to gaze into his as he slanted his mouth against hers, prying her lips apart to dip his tongue inside for one last, torturous taste of her mouth, her essence, the very things that made Eva so special. Instead of pulling away, she plunged her tongue against his, forcing it back into his mouth, her eyes fluttering closed as she pressed her hand to the back of his neck, pulling him closer, tempting him with the feel of her luscious body against his.

  Then it was over and she stepped back, her cheeks flushed, her eyes overly bright, her fingers lightly touching her lips.

  “Goodbye, Eva.”

  She nodded. He turned to walk down the steps and out of her life.

  EVA MOVED to the top of the steps, wanting to call out to Adam, to beg him to come back, but she could do nothing more than hold back her tears as the car drove out of sight. Slowly, she sat down on the top step, smoothing her dress over her knees and giving vent to the sobs clogging her throat.

  He was gone. Although Adam Grayson had only graced her life for such a short time—first as the endearing, sexy geek Adam Gardner with the taped-together glasses, then as the megawatt charmer who touched her in all the right places, including her heart—Eva felt nothing would ever be the same again.

  Behind her the hinges on the screen door squeaked. Eva quickly swiped at her tears and lifted her chin, thinking her mother had followed her out. She flattened her hands on the porch and sat forward, waiting for the questions that would inevitably follow Adam’s departure. Instead, she was met with silence. Shifting her glance to the spot next to her, she found that her father was slowly sitting down.

  “Adam, he’s going to arrest this other man, your boss, no?”

  She nodded numbly. “Yes.”

  Left unsaid was the question of his possible return.

  A fresh bout of tears blurred her vision. She sat stiffly, waiting for her father to say he told her so, or tell her it wasn’t too late to go after Adam. But he did neither. He merely sat there with her, staring in the direction Adam’s car had gone. Then he reached out and covered her hand with his big, callused one. Showing her, in the only way he knew how, that he was there for her. And always would be.

  “Tomorrow we go out on the boat,” he said quietly.

  Eva instinctively leaned into him and wept.

  12

  FOUR MONTHS LATER, Adam stared out the window of a downtown Chicago skyscraper, watching the blinding white snowflakes snake around the building and drift to the ground far below. Upon leaving Louisiana and wrapping up the Sheffert case like a Christmas gift, he’d closed his apartment in Edison, New Jersey, and gone on to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he completed his next assignment. After that, he had asked that he not be given any undercover work for a while. Weckworth had honored his request and sent him out on two intense open criminal audits, as part of a team Weckworth labeled his Forensic Accounting Combat Unit. They were the elite of the elite, taking apart the books of megamillion-dollar companies and following long, tedious trails that left other accountants cold.

  Lord, but that’s exactly how Adam felt. Cold. Not even Weckworth’s offer last week of an assignment in Hawaii had done anything to warm him.

  What did offer a new dimension to his life was that he’d called the foster parents he’d left behind so long ago, inspired mostly by the look at his life Eva had made him take that night on her father’s boat. And the need to right the wrongs of his past. Wrongs made blamelessly, but made nonetheless.

  It had surprised him that Carol Richmond had immediately recognized his voice, though ten years had passed since he’d last spoken to her. And the memory of her and Dan’s warm reaction to him when he’d visited them in Luckey, Ohio, for Thanksgiving, touched him still. What had begun as an overnight visit stretched into three days during which he’d caught up on all the happenings since he’d joined the FBI. Not the least of which was
that he had six nieces and nephews. Six nieces and nephews. He hadn’t even been aware that others had thought of him as a brother. Now he was an uncle.

  What he wouldn’t have given to be able to tell them another addition to the untraditional family was on the way.

  He owed Eva for providing the thread that had mended that gaping hole in his life. And he might have offered to honor that debt. If only another, greater, aching hole hadn’t stopped him.

  Last month he’d called the accounting firm renamed Logan and Brace after Sheffert’s indictment and asked for Eva, only to be told she had resigned. He knew she would be moving back to Louisiana. He just hadn’t realized it would be so quickly. And until he knew exactly what he wanted, he didn’t dare contact her at her family’s house. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.

  What he would have said had she been in New Jersey, he didn’t know. He still wasn’t sure what had happened between them in Louisiana. What he did know was that by now she would be heavy with the child she would bear in a couple of months. And that he missed her. Missed sharing what was a first in her life.

  More than likely, he would have asked to see her. To see with his own eyes that she was okay. To examine the emotions untouched since he’d left her behind in Belle Rivage to see if they indeed had stood the test of time.

  Only he already knew that they had. Not a morning went by that he didn’t wake up, yearning to reach out and touch her. Not a meal was served that he didn’t remember the sight of her sitting across from him, staring in horror at whatever her grandmother had put on her plate. And not a river, lake or even a rain puddle failed to remind him of the night on the boat when he’d stoked the passion within her, then completely unleashed it so they came together in a way that filled his nights with dreams, his heart with yearning.

  “Grayson, you coming to lunch or not?” fellow agent O’Brien asked him from the door.

  Adam slowly turned, wondering if Eva missed him half as much as he missed her. Wondering if he’d ever be able to repair the hole that gaped even wider with each moment that passed.