“It’s the pregnant women. I think they suck up all the oxygen. Think of something. Get us out of here. I can’t think. My brain won’t work right.”

“Stand with me.” He hooked a hand under her arm, pulled her up.

“Mavis, Eve and I want to take you and Leonardo out for a bite. We can do better than the offerings here.”

Eve could hear the strain in his voice, but imagined anyone who didn’t know him as well as she would only hear that easy, fluid stream of Irish. There was a lot of chatter going on and women were making a bee-line for the food or the bathrooms. Rather than thinking about what was being said or done, Eve focused on Roarke’s face. If it couldn’t distract a woman, she was too far gone to worry about it. He might have been a little pale, but the white skin only intensified the wild blue of his eyes. His hair was a black silk frame around a face designed to raise a woman’s heart rate. And that mouth of his. Even in her current state it was tempting to just lean in a little and take a good bite of it. And the body only added to the fantasy: tall, leanly muscled, and slickly presented in one of his perfectly tailored business suits. Roarke wasn’t just one of the richest men in the known universe, he also looked the part. And at the moment, because he was taking her arm and leading her out of that nightmare, he was her ultimate hero. She grabbed her coat on the fly.

“We’re sprung?”

“They wanted to see if a friend of theirs could join us.” He still had Eve’s hand, and was rapidly walking toward the exit. “I told them we’d get the car, bring it around to the front. Save them steps.”

“You’re brilliant. Freaking white knight. If I ever recover from this trauma, I’ll screw your brains out.”

“I hope, eventually, my brain cells regenerate enough to make that possible. My God, Eve. My God.”

“Total tandem here. Did you see how it sort of slithered out when – ”