Free Pictures of You by Barbara Delinsky

step ahead of her.
    â€œNo, I won’t be sharing your bed this night, as much as I might wish it. You know, you do look beautiful.” His stance shifted suddenly as he straightened and approached her. “I think you must be fully recovered by now,” he smirked, reaching up to remove the eyeglasses which had served their purpose.
    So he had seen through her again, Eva knew. What power did he have over her, she wondered with increasing alarm, this roguish adventurer?
    His hand returned to finger the gentle curls that cascaded around her ear lobe. He now stood within inches of her, his eyes gazing down at her in gentle caress. Slowly and seductively his gaze slid from her rounded eyes across her cheekbone and around the sweep of her jaw to her moist lips. His eyes had made passionate love to her, and she gasped almost imperceptively at the excitement they evoked.
    Then, the hand that had teased her hair dropped abruptly to his side as he stepped back from her, the only evidence of any emotion the slight irregularity of his breathing. The trance was broken. Eva’s head jerked back as though suddenly released from a binding grip, though there had been none. Devastated by his rejection and frustrated by unfulfilled desires, Eva steeled herself against any words that might come.
    Taking a deep breath, a look of anger now in his eyes, he growled under his breath, low and husky, “The widow is a siren! A damned siren! I’m stuck with a bewitching siren!”
    Eva’s own anger and hurt could be controlled no longer. In an instant she swung her hand up to deliver a solid slap to his face. Its impact took him by surprise, but his reflexes were sharp enough to capture her wrist in its descent, and, jerking it behind her back, he joined
it with the other, thus pinioning her stiffened body against the lean, hard contours of his. Distraught as she was, Eva couldn’t miss the musky smell of him as he pressed her closer to him. Her head was tilted back to look at him as he growled slowly through gritted teeth.
    â€œYou are a nuisance and a temptation which I don’t need. I won’t have my expedition sabotaged by some sex-starved black widow. You can cast your web elsewhere. But, so help me, if you hurt anyone here, you’ll regret having ever come to Brazil. Do you understand?” He tightened his arms sharply, as though to force her compliance. “Do you understand? And don’t pull that pathetic teary-eyed routine on me again. I don’t make the same mistake twice.”
    The last he added at the appearance of tears brimming on Eva’s eyelids. As he thrust her away from him, she fought to restrain both the tears and the knot of nausea in the pit of her stomach, brought on by his sudden violence.
    But the instinct for survival was strong in Eva. She would not let herself be put down by this brute. Eyes sparkling now with anger and determination, she lashed back at him.
    â€œI have every right to be here! My place was duly reserved and my supplies paid for. I see no difference whether a woman fills it or a man, although you seem to be hung up on that issue. Furthermore, I have no designs on anyone here. I haven’t the emotional strength for that right now. But you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about. And what makes you think that you or someone else here has anything I want? I find you despicable!”
    Not quite sure how far to push her luck, Eva paused in time to notice a subtle softening of Roberto’s expression, and the return of a light to eyes that moments before had been fathomless black pits. His faint smile
held a touch of sadness, which tore at Eva’s heart in spite of what she had just said. In that instant she would have run to comfort him in her arms, as he had done earlier for her. The venom had evaporated as quickly as it had gathered, though for the life of her, Eva didn’t know how.
    Roberto’s voice retained a note of that sadness.