One Night With Morelli (5 page)

‘You mean he came on to you? When?’

‘I wrote my number on his hand.’

‘
No
…how much have you had to drink? What if your Rob had seen?’

‘What did he say?’

‘He just looked at me and I went shivery! He’s got the most incredible eyes… Then he said…’

‘
What?
What did he say, Louise?’

The dramatic pause had not just her friends, but Eve in her hiding place, on tenterhooks.

‘I could tell by the way he’s been looking at me that he wants me. You always can…’

‘Yes, but what did he
say
?’

‘He said he had an excellent memory and if he wanted to remember a number he would, and then…’

‘What? What did he do then?’

‘Then he wiped it off!’

Louise had clearly decided this was encouraging. Her cronies, a lot less under her thumb than in the old days, were less sure. The subsequent squabble continued until they found a subject that they all agreed on—they were united in their contempt of the wedding.

‘I think in this day and age when people are losing their jobs and everything this sort of lavish display is totally insensitive.’

So why did you come?
mouthed Eve from her hiding place. Someone seemed to hear her silent question.

‘Yeah, but the champagne is good.’

‘She’s only the cook.’

‘But good-looking. I wouldn’t mind looking half as good as E-E-Eve’s mum when I’m her age.’

‘You’ve got to hand it to E-E-Eve’s mum—she got her man in the end. My mum says they’ve been at it for years.’

With a militant light in her eyes, Eve reached for the door handle. No one, but
no one
, was about to bad-mouth her mother when she was around and get away with it.

‘What about E-E-Evie? What does she think she looks like?’

Eve’s hand fell away as she listened to the cruel malicious laughter. It brought the memories flooding back and for a moment she was the misfit stigmatised as a swot and taunted for her stutter.

‘And that hair!’

‘And the eyebrows, and she’s still flat as a pancake, talk about molehills… Do you think she still stutters?’

‘I don’t know. The snooty cow walked straight past me and acted like I wasn’t there. Well, whatever money she is supposed to have made I think that it’s exaggerated as she hasn’t spent any on make-up. I was right all along—she’s definitely a lesbian.’

‘You only have to look at her.’

‘Definitely.’

‘To think we got detention for saying it at school! The girl has no sense of humour.’ There was the sound of rustling and another blast of hairspray before someone said, ‘That’s my mascara.’ The sound of the door opening and then, ‘She was always full of herself, looking down her nose at us, the little swot.’

Old insults and she’d heard them all before.

The door to the ladies’ room closed with a dull clunk and the room fell silent, but Eve stayed inside the cubicle giving them another few minutes just to be on the safe side and let the tears dry.

She lifted a hand to her damp face… How crazy was that? She had sworn that they would not make her cry again, that the bullies who had made her life a misery had long ago lost their power to hurt her.

So why are you hiding in the loo, Eve?

Because she had nothing to prove.

‘I’m not hiding.’ She was about to slide the latch when a soft reply made her jump.

‘I know but it’s all right—they’ve gone.’

The kind voice didn’t belong to any of the three faces from the past.

The only person in the otherwise empty ladies’ room was a young girl. Even in her flat ballet pumps she was several inches taller than Eve and slender. The encouraging smile she gave when Eve stepped out lit a face that had perfect features.

Eve could feel the girl’s warm brown eyes as she walked across to the washbasin. ‘Are you all right?’

Eve smiled at the girl’s mirror reflection and turned the tap, allowing the warm water to flow over her hands.

‘Fine, thanks,’ she lied, mortified to hear the wobble in her voice. This was crazy; she was a hard-headed businesswoman, so why was she fighting the sudden and utterly uncharacteristic urge to unburden herself?

The girl continued to look troubled. ‘Are you sure?’

What a nice girl. She reminded Eve a little of Hannah at the same age. Not in colouring, as the teenager had raven-black hair, golden-tinged skin and liquid brown eyes, but in the confidence and innate grace that would set her apart from her contemporaries. Eve nodded and the girl walked towards the door.

Her hand was on the handle when she stopped and turned back, her expression earnest. ‘My dad,’ she began hesitantly. ‘Well, he says you shouldn’t let them get to you, or at least not let them
see
they get to you. It’s the pack instinct—bullies react to the scent of fear, but underneath they’re insecure and cowards.’

‘Sounds like you have a good dad.’

‘I do.’ A grin flashed that made her look much younger all of a sudden. ‘But he’s not perfect.’ The grin appeared again. ‘Though he thinks he is.’

The girl’s grin was contagious.

‘Do you mind me asking…? Are you…?’

For the first time that day Eve felt the urge to laugh. She swallowed the tickle of hysteria in her throat, horrified to feel tears pricking her eyelids. ‘A lesbian?’ Eve finished for her.

‘It’s fine if you are,’ the girl said.

The kid was so sweet, so kind, the contrast with the women’s malice so profound that Eve felt the tears press hotly against her eyelids. She blinked hard and stretched a hand to lean heavily on the wall.

The mental exercise she’d employed to lock her emotions in a neat box required energy, and Eve’s reserves were severely depleted. If she could have played the scene again she wouldn’t have hidden but old habits once learnt were damned hard to break.

‘No, I’m not.’ The sob when it came emerged from somewhere deep inside her. Eve did not immediately associate it with herself, then another came and another…as all the emotions she had kept under tight control that day suddenly shook loose.

‘Stay there. I’ll get someone.’

‘I’m f-fine…’ Eve hiccoughed but the girl had vanished.

CHAPTER FOUR

E
VE
DIDN
’
T
REALLY
expect the girl to return at all but she did, and with the last person in the world she would have expected to see in a ladies’ room.

Draco Morelli was the wise father— Oh, my God!

Eve backed away waving a warding hand as she fought to swallow a gulping sob. ‘Go away!’

Draco made a swift assessment. ‘Keep an eye on the door, Josie, and don’t let anyone come in.’

‘Okay.’ She caught her father’s hands and leaned forward to squint at his wrists. ‘Did that woman really write her number on your arm? Don’t look like that; Year Ten have pictures of you up in their common room. I’ve grown used to having a
hottie
as a father. Oh, and by the way, she’s not a lesbian,’ the girl threw over her shoulder as she whisked out of the room.

Draco didn’t even blink. ‘Always good to know.’ He turned back to the weeping woman, who had backed into a corner, her face tear-streaked and her eyes red and puffy.

Marriage had given Draco a deep distrust of female tears. Clare had been able to turn them on and off like a tap and she had perfected the art so that they never smudged her make-up or gave her a blotchy nose. Her weeping was aesthetically perfect.

Comparing Clare’s artistic weeping with the sobs that intermittently shook this woman’s whole body despite her obvious efforts to control them was like comparing a spring shower with a monsoon. The emotions were genuine, he was conscious of that, along with a twisting of something close to sympathy in his chest, though if he’d been asked to put a name to it he’d have called it indigestion.

Draco had no desire to know the source of this emotional outpouring; he just wanted her to stop crying. In not one of the fantasies he had indulged in to get him through this long and interminably boring day had he pictured her like this.

He had imagined her many other ways, including wearing the striking lingerie, which a few casual enquiries had confirmed she actually designed, and also clad in nothing but an expression of passionate surrender.

His glance drifted over her face, heart-shaped, firm-chinned, her abundant warm-coloured hair springing from a high forehead. He liked his women well groomed and set the bar high, so it was surprising that, even now she was blotchy and tear-sodden, he still found much to please him about her.

He pondered the reason behind his fascination, and decided that the stubborn definition of her soft chin gave her face character and the generous defined line of her arched brows framed eyes that, when not bloodshot, were an almost unique shade of deep green. And of course the mouth that was fuelling his lust-filled fantasies… His wandering gaze stilled on the lush curves and he berated himself mentally after his first thought was about parting those soft pink lips and exploring their moist interior. At his side his long fingers flexed as he pictured himself tenderly brushing aside the curls that clustered around her face.

‘I’m fine.’ If being totally mortified counted as fine, she thought.

It was some comfort to Draco that she appeared to be gaining a semblance of control.

Maybe you should follow her example, suggested the sardonic voice in his head.

Hard to argue with when he was conscious of the heat pooling in his groin.

She struggled to pull in a deep breath as he continued to stare, making her skin prickle with heat. ‘Will you go away?’ She injected as much coldness into her voice as was possible while fighting another sob.

More accustomed to having women deliver responses designed to please rather than repel him, Draco took a few seconds to formulate a dignified response.

‘I would like nothing better.’ It ought to be true, but actually there were several things he would have preferred to do, though none of them was an option while his daughter was outside the door. ‘Look, you don’t want me here and I don’t want to be here—’

‘Then go away,’ she hurled, wiping her face on her forearm and wishing the floor would open up and swallow her when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror behind him. Mortifying enough to make a spectacle of herself but to do it with this man as a witness made it a million times worse.

‘My preferred option also,’ he bit back, losing his patience. The woman might have a supremely sexy mouth but there were limits to what he was prepared to tolerate to look at it. ‘My daughter came to me for help, and Josie retains a childlike belief in my ability to achieve the impossible. I struggle to keep the illusion alive.’

Dry-eyed now, she tilted her chin. ‘Odd, she looked like a bright girl.’

She had anticipated an angry response so the appreciative humour that deepened the lines radiating from his spectacular eyes threw her off balance.

‘That’s better,’ he approved. ‘So what’s the story?’

‘What story?’ She walked past him to the basin and turned on the water. ‘Shouldn’t you be going? Someone might come in and, as you see, I’m fine now.’

‘Don’t worry—Josie will give us some privacy.’

Privacy with this man was the last thing that Eve wanted! The thought sent a fresh flurry of prickles down her spine. ‘So what do you expect her to do if someone wants to come in?’

He gave an indifferent shrug. ‘She’s a very resourceful girl.’

Eve stared at him in the mirror and shook her head. She could hear the pride in his voice; indifference was obviously the last thing he felt when it came to his daughter.

‘And you’re a really weird sort of father, not that I know anything about fathers.’ Wishing the admission unsaid, she bent her head and splashed water on her blotchy face.

When she lifted her head again he was standing right there beside her, close enough for her to be conscious of the warmth of his hard, lean body, with one of the neatly folded individual hand towels that were stacked beside the linen basket in his hand.

She stared at it as though she’d never seen a towel before while the water from her hands dripped on the floor. She wasn’t conscious of lifting her gaze, but as her eyes drifted slowly over the hard angles of his face she was suddenly aware of the increased volume of a low static hum in her ears.

This close she could appreciate just how evenly textured his golden-toned skin was, shadowed now by a light dusting of dark stubble that almost hid the scar next to his mouth.

She felt a sudden and almost uncontrollable urge to lift her hand and touch the place where she knew it was and trace the line…

‘So, you don’t have a dad, then?’

Like a sleepwalker coming to, she started, her raised hand moving jerkily and snatching the towel from him without a word. Under cover of a glare, she fought a debilitating wave of trembling weakness.

‘What, is this research for your next book?’ she snapped.

‘Well, they do say everyone has one in them, but actually you just interest me.’

His comment whipped away her protective camouflage. Feeling horribly exposed and yet, more worryingly, excited, she dabbed her face with the towel. ‘I’m not at all interesting, Mr Morelli.’

His sable brows lifted. ‘You know my name.’

‘It came up in the conversation.’

‘Ah, yes, the conversation,’ he mused slowly. ‘So those charming friends of yours, what did they say that upset you so much?’

‘Not friends,’ she flashed, then, seeing his expression, she lowered her eyes and added more moderately, ‘We went to school together, the little village school, and then—’

‘Here, you missed a bit…’ He took a corner of the towel she still held and, leaning in to her, dabbed a spot beside her mouth. Then he dabbed it again…and again…

Eve, who had been standing like a small statue, her eyes trained straight ahead, while admiring his very nice ears, heard a whimper escape her lips and hastily turned it into a cough.

‘Secondary school,’ she finished faintly.

‘That cough sounds bad.’ Draco was happy to go along with the pretence for now, but was curious why it apparently bothered her so much that there was such a dramatic level of sexual chemistry between them. Unless… A furrow indented his brow as he realised that just because she had no partner here did not necessarily mean there wasn’t one somewhere in the background.

The possibility she was unavailable dragged the corners of his mouth downwards in a brooding, dissatisfied curve.

Her eyes slid away from his. ‘A tickle in my throat.’ It sounded less inflammatory than ‘a starburst in my belly’.

‘Relax,’ he ordered.

Eve bit back a laugh.

‘You might as well tell me what they said, you know, because otherwise Josie will, and if my daughter has been traumatised I’d like to know up front.’

‘Traumatised!’
She was shocked by the suggestion and then it dawned on her that his interest arose from parental anxiety and not, as she had thought… Well, what did you think, Evie—that he found you fascinating? That he wanted to know what made you tick or just that he wanted to get in your pants?

In your dreams. She sighed and then thought wryly that was probably the only way he’d ever appear in her bed! It was ridiculous to try and pretend that this man hadn’t awoken some dormant responses in her or that he wasn’t the domineering, controlling type that she was never going to get involved with. He might make an appearance in her fantasies but in real life—no way! He might make a lousy lover but at least he seemed to be a good and concerned father.

‘Your daugh… Josie wasn’t involved… I wasn’t involved in what just happened in here.’ Eve was horrified that he seemed to suspect that his daughter had witnessed some sort of slanging match. Or maybe even a brawl. ‘Really,’ she assured him earnestly. ‘They didn’t even know I was here and I didn’t know your daughter was here either. It was just a case of eavesdroppers hearing bad things about themselves… We didn’t get on at school either.’

‘They look a lot older than you…’

He caught her look and added, ‘Josie pointed them out when she was dragging me in here. Why would their jealousy of you make you cry?’

God, why didn’t Josie come and drag him out again—right now? Eve glanced at the doorway, willing the girl to appear, but it remained empty. She sighed again. The quickest way to get him out of here seemed to be to satisfy his curiosity and go three seconds without breaking down like some sort of neurotic basket case.

‘That had nothing to do with them. It was just a combination of champagne, jet lag and…’ She stopped, an arrested expression appearing on her face as she belatedly processed his comment. ‘They aren’t
jealous
.’ Spiteful and insensitive, granted… ‘Why would you think they were jealous of me?’

He looked amused by the question. ‘Let me see. You are a success and you are beautiful and they are…’ His lips twisted into a grimace of contempt as he recalled the blonde with the unlikely orange tan who had thrust her chest in his face and written her number on his hand, embarrassing all those who had witnessed the action.

Draco had not been embarrassed but he had been offended and annoyed.

‘Not.’

He thought she was beautiful?

‘And you did not drink any champagne.’

Her accusing green stare settled on his face; it was nice just for once to be the one on the offensive. ‘How do you know?’

‘I’m an observant man.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You were watching me!’ she flung, quivering with a combination of outrage and excitement that tied her stomach in knots and brought a flush to her pale skin.

‘And you knew I was.’ His retort was unanswerable for someone who was not a good liar. ‘It is the game men and women play,
cara
,’ he drawled.

Eve felt as if she had just stepped out of the training pool into the deep end. She struggled to fight her way through the panic that was closing in on her and remain calm and in control. ‘I’m not playing games.’

He looked at her for a long moment, acknowledging a flicker of uncertainty as the extraordinary possibility that she was telling the truth occurred to him. She could not be
that
inexperienced, surely? But looking deep into those big emerald eyes, he saw she wasn’t trying to hide anything—or perhaps she didn’t know how…?

A word popped into his head:
innocence
.

He straightened up, pulling away from her in more than the physical sense. He had thought they were on the same page but he had been wrong; he had seen that sultry mouth but not the emotional baggage that came with it. It was a good thing he had discovered his error now, before things had gone too far, he told himself.

She was high maintenance, and he was a bastard who had no intention of changing. Always better in his experience to call a spade a spade.

‘Will you do something for me?’ he asked.

He was not about to make an indecent proposal with his daughter just outside the door but even so her heartbeat kicked into a higher gear. ‘That depends.’

‘Smile and try not to look so tragic.’

She stiffened, her spine snapping to attention. ‘Pardon me?’

‘I’d like to stay a hero for as long as I can in my daughter’s eyes, so I’d be grateful if you could suck it up and look like I waved my magic wand and made everything better. It’s not as if you’re the only one who doesn’t like weddings. I suspect with me it’s that they remind me too much of my own,’ he admitted with a frankness she was beginning to find disturbing.

It was a day he was able to think about with a degree of objectivity now, but for a long time it hadn’t been that way. Now he was able to admit that he had known halfway through exchanging his vows that he was making the biggest mistake of his life, and it was doubtful it would even have got that far if his parents hadn’t been so against it, and delivered an ultimatum.

He had been twenty and had thought he knew everything. Their parental disapproval had been like a red rag to a bull, and what better way to display his maturity than to get married against their wishes and show them how wrong they were?

‘Suck it up?’ she repeated in a low, dangerous voice. ‘Suck it up? What the hell do you think I’ve been doing all d-d-day? As for your marriage, I…I…spare me the details.’ She glared at him, daring him to comment on her stutter. These days it rarely surfaced but she was always conscious that it could at any moment—and it was his fault that it just had.