Free Enticing Eve: Scandalous Secrets, Book 2 by Tracy Goodwin Page B

betrayed his unease.  
    Colin was not the same man Eve once knew – that fact was clear whenever Eve dared to look deep enough.  
    What had happened to him to precipitate such a drastic change? If she hadn’t seen him earlier this afternoon with his niece, if Eve hadn’t shared their private moment before Victoria’s arrival, she wouldn’t have recognised even the slightest similarity between this man and the one she was well acquainted with years earlier.
    When Colin gazed into Eve’s eyes in the garden, when he caressed her cheek … he was the old Colin then. More intense perhaps, but the Colin she once loved nonetheless.  
    By the time the final course was served, Eve had no answers, just more questions swirling about her brain.  
    Why did this man always bring forth more questions than answers?
    “Darling,” her grandmother bent down and kissed her on the cheek. Eve realized she was again staring at Colin and tore her eyes away from his profile.
    “Shall we stay a little while longer?” Fiona suggested, her cheeks rosy and eyes alight with joy. “I’d love to spend more time with the twins. Perhaps read them a bedtime story.”
    The duke and duchess defied convention, especially when it came to their children. Unlike most nobles, they took a real parenting approach to raising Emma and Nicholas. Between the duke, duchess, and Victoria, the family spent more time with the twins than their nanny did. Colin playing with Emma today was further proof.
    Eve grinned, well aware that the Dowager Viscountess’s legendary bedtime stories were always animated and rarely accomplished the desired effect. More often than not they kept the children awake and clamoring for a second tale instead of lulling them to sleep.
    “The twins will love a bedtime story from you, Grandmamma – or two,” Eve noted that the meal had been lengthy for the sun was already setting.  
    “Would you like to visit Emma and Nicholas with me?” the elder woman asked, her silver ringlets glinting in the remaining daylight.
    Welcoming the distraction, Eve readily agreed. As she raced up the grand staircase, Eve realized just what a coward she was. True, she always welcomed the chance to play with the twins but tonight, that wasn’t her main motivation. Tonight she was fleeing from Colin.
    Why was she so afraid of being in close proximity to him? Was Eve fearful of what Colin might say or what she might do if she were alone with him again? Her guilty conscience gnawed at her, forcing her to concede that it was the latter, and the magnitude of her situation chilled Eve.  
    If Colin tried to kiss her as she suspected he might have done in the garden, Eve feared that she would have readily lost herself in his embrace.
    Was she still that naïve girl who wasted years pining for Colin MacAlistair? After all this time, was that silly creature still in her heart waiting for a chance to make a fool of herself yet again over the very man who had forsaken her?
    Eve feared the answer more than she could have ever imagined.

    * * *

    “I thought I might find you here,” Gwen’s cheerful voice sliced through the thick silence Colin had been enjoying as he watched the summer sun set above the gardens.  
    Gwen nudged his arm with her elbow as she sat beside him on the cool marble steps leading from the terrace to the gardens. “I see you survived your first family dinner in ages relatively unscathed.”
    “You call that inquisition a dinner?” Colin snorted. “I must commend you, though, on your seamless lie about our mother’s eye color. You know damned well her eyes were brown.”
    “I’m sorry about Fiona’s questions, Colin. She is a kind woman. Had she any idea—”  
    “I know,” he muttered, glancing over his shoulder before admitting “Her observation about my eyes made me realize that I inherited my illegitimate father’s eye color. It hadn’t occurred to me until this evening.”  
    Gwen didn’t respond with words. Instead,