One Night With Her Ex: The One That Got Away / The Man From her Wayward Past / The Ex Who Hired Her. Kate Hardy
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wanted to know a little more about you, that’s all. Something little. Something …’
‘Normal?’ he offered.
It was as good a word as any. ‘I don’t know what to do. From the moment I first saw you again, I haven’t known what to do.’ Truth, and if it signified weakness on her part then so be it.
‘You need to call off this wedding, Evangeline.’
‘I know that, Logan.’ Evie glanced towards the shower. ‘Is that what the sex was all about? A demonstration of my weakness when it comes to your touch? Because if it was, it wasn’t necessary. I already knew.’
‘It wasn’t that.’ Logan turned away to pick up his soggy clothes and wrung them out. ‘It was need.’
And there was the appeal of this man and the danger in him. That stinging, searing, all-consuming need—and his fear of it.
‘What if we start again?’ she offered quietly. ‘I call off this wedding, MEP finds some other way to finance the civic centre bid and you and I, we start again. Clean slate. You might, for example, come to Sydney one weekend and ask me out on a date. We might see a movie or go for coffee in the park. You could bring me a bunch of black-eyed daisies or a paper parasol. I might feed you chocolate-cherry mud-cake with my fingers by way of thank you.’
Logan’s eyes had darkened again.
‘Easy as,’ she said lightly. ‘And your call.’ She wasn’t the one carrying a dead father and a battered mother around. ‘What kind of cocktail party does your mother throw? Fairly formal?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you planning to attend?’ she asked next.
‘Are you?’
Evie nodded. ‘Got to try and explain my engagement to Max away somehow.’
‘Just tell them my mother made a mistake. Tell them you’re celebrating a business milestone rather than a personal one.’
‘Yes. Something like that.’ She eyed him steadily. ‘We could use your help to sell it. You could aim for civilised.’
‘Yes,’ he said with a smile she didn’t trust at all. ‘I could.’ And handed her back the towel and stalked from the bathroom and then from her room without another word.
‘So what happened between you and Logan?’ asked Max for the umpteenth time as Evie plucked a midnight-blue gown from a clothing rack and flattened it against her body.
‘We talked,’ she said calmly. ‘Too formal?’
‘No,’ said Max. ‘Does he still want you to go live in Antarctica?’
‘Probably,’ said Evie, and withdrew a sleek little black dress from the rack. ‘But he knows he can’t make me, so he’s just going to have to learn to live with disappointment. Too severe?’
‘Yes.’
Evie draped it across her arm of potential dresses anyway. Little black dresses could be deceptive. A deceptively demure black-and-caramel-coloured dress caught her eye next. Demure could be deceptive too. ‘What about this one?’
‘Evie, just pick one,’ said Max.
‘Or I could take an early flight home and forget about your mother’s cocktail party altogether,’ said Evie. ‘As long as we’re talking contingency plans, I’m liking that one a lot.’
‘No,’ said Max steadily. ‘We ride this one out together. Kill the speculation stone dead now.’
‘Maybe you can tell them I’m gay,’ murmured Evie.
‘They wouldn’t believe me. Not if Logan’s anywhere in the room.’
‘Okay, then. You can be gay.’ Evie eyed a plum-coloured gown with a plunging neckline and a thigh-high side split speculatively. ‘What about this one?’
‘Evie, just pick one.’ And then Max looked at the dress. ‘But not that one.’
Evie slid it back on the rack. ‘I vote we tell your mother’s friends that we’re celebrating the success of our business partnership and hopefully the beginning of bigger and better things for MEP. We smile and shake our heads and say we’re sorry people got the wrong idea but we’re not engaged and not about to be. We keep it simple. Deny everything.’
‘You really think that’s going to fly?’
‘Put it this way,’ she said. ‘You got a better idea?’
The cocktail party was every bit as awkward as Evie thought it would be. Elegant, wealthy people, all set to welcome Evie into their lives at Caroline’s behest, and politely puzzled when it became clear that they didn’t have to.
Civilised. It was all so very civilised, but no midnight-blue cocktail gown in the world could shield her from Logan’s powerful presence as she stood by Max’s side and talked business goals and achievements with strangers.
Logan didn’t approach her. He stuck to his side of the room and Evie stuck to hers. She didn’t watch him out of the corner of her eye. Instead she stuck to finding him in reflections in mirrors, of which there were plenty. In the shine of tall silver vases. How could one man assault her senses the way he did, just by being in a room? One man, dressed in black tie, just like every other man in the room.
‘Evie, stop fidgeting,’ said Max.
‘I’m not fidgeting.’
She was fidgeting, so with a smothered curse she stopped.
‘And swearing,’ murmured Max, highly amused. ‘You could stop that too.’
‘I’m not—damn!’ Evie swore rather than add chronic lying to her list of sins too. ‘How much longer do we have to stay here?’
‘Until the bitter end,’ said Max cheerfully. ‘I’m guessing around midnight.’
She’d been sticking to mineral water until now. Maybe it was time she swapped over to something with a little more kick. Then again, the argument against alcohol was a strong one. She’d already been quite uninhibited enough today.
‘You could marry someone else,’ she told Max during a moment they had to themselves—just business partners sharing a quiet moment out on the patio, drinks in hand and smiles at the ready. ‘A childhood friend. Someone who knows this life and how to live it. Someone who’d be happy to accommodate you for two years and then move on.’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Max with a shudder. ‘I’m over marriage for the time being. I might try being in love with the person next time. Just a thought.’
‘How are we going to get the money for the civic centre bid?’
‘Overdraft for some of it,’ said Max. ‘I’ll put my place on the market.’
‘I’ll put mine on,’ Evie said with a sigh. ‘We’re still going to come up short.’
‘Business loan,’ said Max bleakly. ‘Here, before I forget.’ He fished in his pocket and pulled out something small and round and silver-coloured, those bits of it that weren’t a dazzling, glittering blue. It was a sapphire ring the size of Texas. Evie didn’t understand. ‘My mother wants you to have this as a memento of our engagement. Something about payment for your trouble.’ He held it out towards her.
‘No.’ Evie took a hasty step back. ‘Whatever your mother’s opinions are, just … no. I’m all for forgetting we were ever engaged.’
‘I told her you’d say that.’ Max reached for her right hand and slipped it swiftly on her middle finger. Not her ring finger, not even the proper hand. ‘She seems to think I owe you a ring. That we were engaged, however briefly, and that you deserve some kind of compensation. Wear it. Flog it. I don’t care. Just take it. I’m a man in search of family harmony