FIVE
Evie’s hand shook as she took another sip of her drink. Luckily, Aubrey was too distracted to notice, staring at her, rigid with shock.
Jesus, what a performance. She’d cringe at it later tonight, lying awake and mortified on Zig and Fi’s sofa bed. But it had to be done. Any sacrifice for the cause.
Right now, though, she had to keep going. She was committed, the plan in motion. And maybe a part of her was invested, too, or desperately curious at least to see what happened when Aubrey met Liv. Which was about to happen any second now…
She’d studied the woman as part of her preparation for tonight, found photos of her online. And she was approaching now, together with Domnall White, so Evie would have guessed who she was anyway, their relationship an open rumour. Poor Aubrey, she thought fleetingly. But mostly: Really? Her?
Evie wasn’t the type to judge other women, but she couldn’t help but be surprised at who had captured Aubrey’s blackened heart. About his age, Liv was short, curvy, pretty, but entirely unremarkable—unless you were a casting director hoping to find someone to play the role of Primary School Teacher in Village School . Liv had wavy auburn hair, sweet, round-apple cheeks, and looked as though bluebirds would start singing wherever she went.
But she was a corporate tax lawyer. And presumably evil. It was no doubt what Aubrey liked about her.
“Aubrey!” Liv exclaimed as she came within hailing distance, though her eyes, for a sharp, astute moment, stayed on Evie. Making the woman jealous wasn’t really part of the plan, but Evie still felt a little victorious.
With one last look like that of a drowning man, Aubrey plastered a smile on his face and turned towards Liv’s voice.
“Liv. Hello.” He nodded. “Domnall.”
This was her real target, Evie reminded herself, shifting her focus from the reunited lovers to the big, pompous-looking man at Liv’s elbow. His face, familiar to her from years of news, set off a Pavlovian flare of anger. She stared at him, then realised she was glaring and tried to fix a more politely neutral expression to her face.
“Glad you could make it,” Domnall said affably to Aubrey.
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Liv was just telling me you two go way back.”
“Yes,” Aubrey said.
“Met doing our law degrees,” Liv broke in with a wide smile. “Didn’t we, Aubs? Couple of fresh-faced eighteen-year-olds. Goodness. How time flies!”
Aubrey smiled fixedly, rather in the manner of a robot with a software malfunction, the next instruction failing to load. Good lord, just who was this woman, to break Aubrey Ford with a few words?
Wishing she had that power herself, she nonetheless reached out and squeezed Aubrey’s arm. It seemed to jolt him back into some sort of functionality, because he turned to Domnall and said in a fairly normal voice, “How was Porto Cervo? Good sailing?”
Liv’s eyes flickered to Evie’s hand on Aubrey’s sleeve as Domnall frowned. “Bloody terrible, to be honest. Engine problems with the yacht. You hire all these people, and no one knows what they’re doing. Foreign crew. All incompetent.”
“Don’t forget the chef,” said Liv, which, Evie thought, was a nice way of making it clear to all that she had been there with Domnall. Sunbathing and bikinis and sweaty sex with Domnall’s groaning bulk heaving over her. No doubt Aubrey was subject to the same unsavoury impressions. The dire look buried in his eyes certainly seemed to say so.
“The chef!” Domnall groaned. “The chef got food poisoning. And if your chef gives himself food poisoning, it says about all you need to know of the man’s skills. Fired him on the spot while he was still green and wilting. Gave up on the whole trip in the end.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Aubrey said.
“And now we’re here, wasting our time on this trumpery nonsense,” Domnall complained, looking around the room with a lamenting eye. “I loathe these events. Having to clap for every middle manager getting rewarded just for doing his job. I spend the whole time thinking how it’d improve my bottom line if I could get rid of half the people here. Look at them all!”
He gestured to his employees as though to a herd of rats. With some amusement, Evie noted the rather glassy smile Liv was maintaining. Maybe cautioning the man not to publicly insult his own staff was a routine part of their pillow talk. Why on earth was she with the man? The money. It had to be.
“They’re like locusts,” Domnall continued. “Thousands of ‘em. And have you seen this new bill to increase the minimum wage? Do they think we’re a bottomless pit? If they keep increasing it, we won’t be able to pay anyone at all. Wouldn’t they rather have some wage than no wage? Greedy idiots.”
“Maybe you could afford it if you sold your super yacht?” Evie suggested sweetly.
Domnall stared at her, Aubrey stiffening at her side. But the man just laughed, apparently deciding she must be joking. “Oh, come now, darling. You wouldn’t deny a man his little pleasures, would you? I work hard, I play hard.”
And lech hard, Evie added mentally, not missing the way his gaze briefly stroked down her body. Fortunately, she was spared from having to reply by a waiter across the room beckoning none-too-subtly for her attention. Her stomach twisted. Time for phase two of the plan.
Letting go of Aubrey’s arm, she excused herself, pleading a call of nature, and ignoring the warning look he gave her. If he was upset about the yacht comment, he was going to be appalled by what came next.
At least they were too absorbed in their awkward trio of evil to watch her cross the room. The waiter, a young guy, pale and clammy with nerves, gestured jerkily for her to follow him. She did, keeping a few metres back, until he ducked through a Staff Only door, and, with a glance over her shoulder, Evie ducked through after.
“Do you have it?”
He nodded, seeming too nervous to speak, and hastily trotted further down the corridor. The kitchens were nearby, she could hear the clash of pans and smell the food cooking.
“Here,” he said at last, stopping at a service trolley and passing her a napkin-covered bundle. Her stomach twisted again as she took it, visions of what she was about to do making her heart thump and her head spin.
The waiter met her eye. She’d met him briefly that morning, while they all went through the plan: Zig, Fi, half a dozen people from FTP. Theo, the waiter, was one of them. Twenty years old. A gifted ecology student, his mum a minor politician. He had a lot to lose. So did Evie.
“I’ll be filming,” he said. “The others in the crowd will too. But we need the industry press to get images. You need to make a scene just before it happens, get their cameras on you.”
She nodded, knowing all this. They’d been over it a dozen times.
Theo met her eyes. “For The Planet,” he said. His nerves seemed to have faded now he’d handed over the smuggled-in item.
Evie nodded, feeling stupid as she replied, “For The Planet.” Theo didn’t salute, which was just as well, as it might have tipped her over into hysterics.
Then she was heading back, abandoning her plan to hide the bundle in her clutch bag. It was far too big. She’d just have to hope Aubrey was still too Liv-dazed to pay her any notice.
She ducked back through the door to the venue, nerves mounting again as she squeezed into the crowd. At least Aubrey was easy to spot, half a head taller than everyone around him.
He gave her a quick glance as she rejoined his side. He was still talking to Domnall and Liv. Good. But she had to act soon, before they left to do the host-thing, circulate, be seen and heard.
But she needed to be heard, too. She needed to be seen. All the defenceless things on planet earth, they needed to be seen and heard and oh God, she was shaking, the droning voices all around a deafening hum, the air tight in her lungs. Her hand shook, she nearly dropped the bundle, napkins sliding in her sweaty grasp.
“Domnall,” she said loudly, interrupting the man. Or trying to. He droned on. And only Aubrey paused. Only Aubrey turned to look, frowning at her expression, eyes widening as they dropped to what she held—
Shit. It was now or never. No time to make a scene, only time to act. She lifted her hand—and had it wrenched back, twisted painfully behind her, her vision suddenly swamped by Aubrey’s body, all her senses a confusion. His waistcoat against her, his neck and jaw, and his solid weight pressing her backwards.
“She’s going to be sick,” he said, crowding her away, gripping her arm, her waist. Forcing her back, and back, through the crowd, his fingers brutal on her wrist.
“No!” she gasped, struggling ineffectually, but she was clamped against Aubrey’s side, being frogmarched from the room, out through the foyer, forced bodily through the door to the darkened street outside.
He didn’t stop, ignored all her protests, the efforts she made to free herself, the choked tears and the heat of her mortification and fear… He ignored it all, dragged her away from the lights and waiting cars and ushers at the front of the hotel to a quiet side street, a service entrance, she didn’t know, couldn’t see much through the rage of tears blurring her eyes.
Finally: “What the fuck were you thinking?”
He let her go forcefully, almost threw him from her. She stumbled a step, and the large, catering-sized bottle of tomato ketchup fell to the floor, napkins scattering in the breeze. He stared at it, then flung his gaze back at her.
“Are you fucking insane, Evie?” he shouted. “Assaulting Domnall White!”
She wiped her eyes fiercely, heedless of her makeup. “It wouldn’t have hurt him! It’s to get him in the news!” She was shaking. Spitting angry. Trembling and sick, and how she hated being looked at like this, utter contempt on Aubrey’s face. “It was to drag all his crimes back into the light!”
“And you into jail? With a criminal record? And my fucking career! Did you think about that, when you decided to use me as your unwitting accomplice?”
“They wouldn’t care about you!”
“Do you think your father would see it that way? I’d be out, Evie! Jesus fucking Christ.” He dragged his hands through his hair, then shook his head and looked at her, cold and hard. “That was all bullshit, was it? Pretending to be there for my sake because your brother couldn’t? You used my history with Liv against me, and you have the gall to accuse me of being immoral?”
“The ends justified the means.”
He gave her a long look, the disdain in his eyes its own punishment for that reply. But even though she wanted to sit down and cry, she lifted her chin, defiant, and he looked away, a muscle in his jaw clenching. Probably from fighting the urge to throttle her.
“You need arresting,” he said at last. “If you weren’t Roscoe’s sister, I’d hand you over to security myself.” He shook his head in disgust, then got his phone out, tapping on the screen.
“What are you doing? If you’re calling Roscoe…”
He gave a dark laugh. “I’d be better off calling the vet and getting you a rabies shot. No, I’m calling you a taxi, Evelyn. Because you need to go home, have a long, cold shower, and work out how you’re going to spend the rest of your life making sure I never set eyes on you again.”