FOUR
Mid-morning on Thursday and Aubrey was wrestling with a particularly complicated bit of legalese when there was a knock on the door and Evelyn Blackton walked into his office.
He looked up from his screen, frowning, saying nothing as she came to stand before his desk. Part of him noted that she was dressed even more nicely than the other night, in a black linen summer dress that stopped several inches above her knee. It was plain, simple, almost boxy, but luckily for her she had legs for miles and would have looked good dressed in anything.
“Your father’s office is the big one at the end,” he said with a mild gesture back towards the door.
“I know,” she said. “…Actually, I didn’t know. I’ve not been here before.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“Well, there's a basin of holy water in the foyer. You can purge yourself on the way out.”
He returned his attention to his screen, though he knew full well it would be at least fifteen minutes before he could decipher where the hell he’d got up to.
“I came to give you this back,” said Evie.
He looked up, noticing for the first time the jacket she was holding. “Thank you.” He nodded to a chair in the corner. “Put it there.”
She did. Then, annoyingly, she came back to his desk.
“Yes?” he asked.
“I heard about the event tomorrow night. The Actuaris Awards. And that Roscoe couldn’t go with you. So I… I’d like to offer myself. To go with you. Instead of him.”
For a fleeting moment, Aubrey wondered if he’d gone insane. He kept his eyes carefully fixed on his screen while he tentatively probed his faculties. Name, age, address. What year is it? Who is Prime Minister?
Everything apparently in order, he raised his eyes to Evie’s face, saw the scarlet flush on her cheeks, and wondered if it was perhaps her who had gone insane.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“You don’t want to go alone because Liv, your ex, will be there. So take me instead.”
He stared at her, fairly sure he was now as scarlet as she was. If this wasn’t insanity, it must be a nightmare. How the hell did Evelyn Blackton know his private business? And why on earth was she here in his office, throwing it in his face?
He glanced past her to the open door. They were vultures in this place, sharks scenting blood. He got up, Evie flinching back as he strode around his desk and shut the door. He turned back to her.
“I don’t for a moment believe Roscoe told you any of this. So how do you know?”
By rights, she should have been cowering, pale, trembling. He knew what kind of expression he had on his face. But, of course, she was a bloody Blackton, and that family didn’t know the meaning of the word cower. She just stood there, met his eyes, her own softening in sympathy.
He went back to his desk. Took a steadying breath, outwardly calm while alarm bells clanged in his head, a vital wall breached.
“Aubrey… I want to help you. It can be my way of apologising for being so awful the other night. I’ll dress up, try to make myself presentable. We could flirt, make her jealous—”
He held up a hand, trying to stem the horror. “Stop. For the love of God.”
“I’d be more use than Roscoe.” She smiled, apparently seductively. Aubrey wanted to die. “Think about it.”
“Absolutely not. No. Not a chance in hell.”
Aubrey’s adamant and whole-hearted refusal of Evie’s offer was one of many reasons he found himself frozen and speechless outside the entrance to the event’s hotel approximately thirty hours later as the woman herself glided up to him in floor-length blue satin, scarlet lips spread in a wide smile.
The other, and even more dismaying reason, was the news he’d just heard as he waited on the carpeted pavement outside wishing he still smoked. Liv was here with Domnall. As in: with Domnall. As in: his prized client was now fucking the love of his life.
It was all a bit much, to be honest. Was this a detail his brothers had kept from him over roast lamb last Sunday when they carefully, delicately, informed him Liv was back? Aubrey stood dazed, that bell clanging in his brain once more as Evie slid a slender hand around his elbow and breathed in his ear, all perfume and soft hair brushing his jaw, “I couldn’t let you face this alone.”
He needed a drink. And a shallow grave. For himself, for Evie, or for Domnall, he wasn’t sure. He’d quite happily murder the lot of them.
Evie tugged on his arm, and he walked woodenly to the hotel door, handed his invitation to be checked, confirmed that, yes, Evie was his plus one, and then they were inside the gorgeous entrance.
“It’s not that bad, is it?” Evie said. “I thought I scrubbed up quite well.”
He glanced down, saw her hand sweep preeningly down the tiny satin-clad stomach, the slim satin-clad thigh, as though brushing off imaginary dust. He saw it but didn’t really notice it. Everything seemed very far away. The only thing that mattered was spotting Liv before she saw him. Making sure his face was composed, that he betrayed nothing…but fuck … He was far from composed.
If he’d known… If he’d had time to prepare himself… Domnall and Liv. Liv and Domnall. They’d met in New York, he supposed. Domnall had been out there a month or two ago, expanding his empire Stateside, consulting with his US legal team. That must be why she was back in London. She’d followed him here. Liv and Domnall. He was going to be sick.
“Fuck,” he muttered, catching a glimpse of bright auburn hair through the crowd and nearly jumping out of his skin. It wasn’t her. Too tall. Not her.
“Are you OK?” Evie asked.
He ignored her, barely hearing. “Let’s get to the bar.”
That would be better. He could watch the room from there, with the bar at his back. A drink in his hand—a drink inside him to settle the nerves, give him courage for the inevitable meeting. Because it was inevitable now. His mission was to woo Domnall. His job depended on it. There’d be no avoiding Liv if she was here with him.
He pressed into the glitzy, stupid crowd, forging a path. Evie’s hand dropped from his elbow to clasp his hand instead, and she followed close in his wake—as though he was a raft in this churning sea of morons and not about to go under. But she was clearly a person who always made ridiculous choices.
The mahogany bar gleamed, the brass rail shone, light glittered over the massed ranks of spirits. He ordered his drink, wishing the bartender would hurry the hell up, and turned to watch the crowd, hip pressed against the bar as though he was balancing on a rocking boat.
“Martini,” Evie said to the bartender. “Extremely dirty.”
He glanced at her, and she grinned, red lips curving. It was the nineteen-twenties flapper tonight, from the heavily outlined eyes, so deeply blue, to the perfect painted mouth.
“I can’t believe you ordered an Old Fashioned,” she said.
“Why?”
“It’s just so on-brand. With the three-piece.” She waved a hand to his suit. “And the personality.”
“Then I dread to think what ordering your Martini ‘extremely dirty’ says about you.”
Her smile curved still deeper, in a quite preposterously filthy way. “Something good, I hope.”
“Oh?” asked Aubrey, feigning innocence. The bartender finally presented his drink, and he wrapped his hand gratefully around the thick glass. “I was thinking more about the other kind of dirt. Not too fond of the soap, are you, you hippy types?”
Evie flushed, smile replaced by a scowl.
He sipped his drink. “If you’re trying to seduce me, I should warn you you’re wasting your time. You’re far too young, you’re my friend’s little sister, and you’re not remotely my type.”
“I’m not trying to seduce you!”
“Then why the hell are you here, Evie?”
The sharpness of his tone drew a couple of glances from people nearby. He fought his irritation down, but given there was only panic and despair to take its place, the effort didn’t do much to help his equanimity.
“I told you why,” Evie said, flustered, but still managing to flash a polite smile of thanks to the bartender as he slid her drink towards her. She lifted it from the napkin and took a healthy sip as Aubrey stared, waiting for whatever absurdity she was going to offer.
She put the glass down, lipstick mark a perfect outline on the rim. “I’m here for you,” she said. “You don’t want to do this alone, do you? Roscoe couldn’t make it. And you’re my brother’s friend. I suppose I felt some sort of…responsibility to you, on Roscoe’s behalf.”
“That’s just as stupid as the first time you said it.”
Her colour deepened, anger as much as anything. The elegant line of her jaw tensed as she literally bit back her first response. “Well,” she said after a moment. “I’m here now. So you may as well put up with it.”
Aubrey breathed an unamused laugh. He should have known he wouldn’t get rid of her easily. She was a Blackton. Long experience had taught him they weren’t the repressible type.
“Use me,” she said now, already proving his conclusion. She looked at him, the blush gone from her skin, bright determination in her eyes. Her posture followed suit: she straightened from where she had been leaning on the bar, shoulders going back, only one elbow resting elegantly on the polished mahogany as she drew a little closer, half-turned towards him, and half-facing the room. Her Martini glass was in her other hand, and she gestured to the crowd with it. “She’s out there somewhere. It’s only a matter of time before she spots you. Or maybe she already has. Maybe she’s watching you right now.”
Aubrey almost turned, startled, but before he could look away from Evie’s performance, she leant close to him, mouth inches from his own and murmured, “Right now, what you need to do is imagine bending me over this bar and fucking me until I can’t walk straight.”
He stared at her, speechless, momentarily—unavoidably—imagining exactly that, heat sweeping him.
“That’s it,” Evie murmured, smiling slowly as she began to draw away. “That’s exactly how you want to be looking at me when she spots you.”
“Like what?” Aubrey asked, needing to clear his throat, head swimming at the sudden, unexpected diversion of blood elsewhere.
“Like I’m the only woman in the room.”
He opened his mouth to protest that, but she stopped him with a hand on his cheek and a whisper in his ear.
“She’s coming. Ten metres away. Don’t look.”