Chapter 20
OLIVER
A Little Bird Told Us ...
news that makes a Little Bird’s heart and wings flutter.
Evelyn Fairfax, our poor Pulse Tok bride and virtuous doggy doctor, is sitting in a swanky Kensington restaurant right now with none other than Fin DeWitt, the handsome darling of London’s gossip columns.
Get you some, girl! If a Little Bird needed a broad shoulder to lean on, party-boy Fin’s would be top of the list!
Check out the pics. She looks so happy!
#Finlyn
Don’t mind me. I’m just trying out a new ship
I slam my phone down, screen first, the grainy images of Fin and Eve lighting an inexplicable fire in my guts. Fucking ridiculous. My reaction is ridiculous! Four people dined at this table—I shouldn’t be angered by some strategically cropped bullshit of an image.
Yet I am. In fact, I’m seething.
“You okay there?”
I slide Fin a glare. “Perfectly.” Darling of the gossip columns. Broad-shouldered darling. What does that make me—chopped fucking liver?
“I like her.” Matt’s voice pulls me from my brooding.
It’s true that the meal, and the meeting, went better than I could’ve imagined, with my friends and my ... and Eve getting along like a house on fire.
A fast-burning, short-lived fire, scheduled to last what’s left of our three months. Not that she won’t leave her mark. I’m sure we’ll all find ourselves a little scorched. And Eve, by my use of her.
“I feel bad she didn’t order dessert before she left.”
My lips hitch. When the waiter arrived to take our order, Eve seemed to be staring at the menu as though committing it to memory. Or considering licking it. I’d declined pudding in favor of coffees, Fin and Matt opting to do the same. But still Eve’s head didn’t lift.
“Ohhh.” I don’t think she realized how porn-worthy her hum sounded. “Hmm, hmm, hmm.” She wiggled a little in her seat. It looked like anticipation. “ That’s it ,” she murmured to herself, unaware of the lull in the conversation. “That’s what I’m talking about. Every girl’s favorite c-word.”
Matt choked on a mouthful of his wine. Is she serious? his look seemed to ask. Fin’s glance was more in the vein of You lucky fucking dog .
“Cake!” she’d suddenly spluttered, noticing our silent exchange. “Oh, my God, you guys are such perverts!”
Guilty as charged. And I would be a lucky fucking dog if I hadn’t agreed to this arrangement without the benefit of sex. It was all I could think about as she closed the menu, insisting she’d changed her mind. That she was calling it a night.
We stood as she did, and then she slid her arms around my neck, bringing her body flush with mine.
“ I think I aced it ,” she whispered only for my ears.
She was right.
She even had my cock fooled.
We all watched her leave. Strange, but it felt almost unnatural not to leave with her, probably because we’d been doing the pretend-dating thing for a couple of weeks now. And that’s all it is—pretend, I remind myself. Eve is a lot of lovely things, but she is, ultimately, a means to an end.
“So, do we have to guess, or are you going to tell us what tonight was all about?” Fin asks lazily as he puts his glass to his mouth.
“About?” I bite the word out, not yet ready to forgive him his unwitting part in that stupid photo. Which makes me an even bigger idiot than him.
“About Eve.” He swallows his drink, then sets it down, his movements deliberate and slow. “How can I put this?” he begins, pressing a pondering hand to his chin. “Whatever that charade was about, I don’t believe it.”
“I’m flattered you’re so invested,” I reply, swirling the whisky in my glass, watching the light turn the liquid a fiery shade of amber. Broad-shouldered fuckwit, more like.
“Invested. That’s a very particular word.”
“Lads, come on,” Matt, the peacemaker, interjects. “Why does it have to mean anything beyond a pleasant meal with friends?”
“Because everything he does has an angle.” Fin points a finger gun my way. “Some kind of payoff. He hasn’t suddenly taken a shine to Eve in the natural way of things.”
“Natural?” I repeat coolly. Conversely, my blood boils.
“She’s not your type.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. People change. Fashions, weather, hairstyles.” My lips twitch as I think of Eve uttering those very words.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Fin exchanges a glance with Matt.
“I’m merely offering the notion that nothing in life is static.”
“Okay, Socrates.”
“I think that one was Buddha,” Matt puts in.
“Whatever. Eve is too good for him.”
It’s true. She’s far too lovely to be caught up in my plans. But there she remains, snared. I say none of that, of course. “I do wonder where this sudden display of impassioned offense springs from.”
“You don’t fuck with women who don’t know the game. Someone you meet in a coffee shop or who you bump into outside of the office. The one that takes your breath away, the one you can’t stop thinking about.”
“What bollocks are you talking about?” Matt looks at Fin as though he’s grown another head. “Sounds like you’ve been bingeing a load of sappy rom-coms.”
“The one you want so bad you pin her down by sliding a rock onto her finger,” Fin continues regardless. “Not like in the movies but in real life —other people’s lives. Don’t expect me to believe real is what just happened here.”
“I haven’t proposed, if that’s what you mean.” But it sparks an idea. Quite a cruel one at the culmination of my plans. I couldn’t. Could I?
“Stick to your models and socialites. They’re more your type.”
“I have a type? Thank you, Fin. I wasn’t aware.”
He leans back in his chair with a snort. “Yeah, you do.” He makes an expansive gesture. “We all do. Hot bodies. Cold hearts. Low expectations.”
“And I’m supposed to take romantic advice from a man who’s fucked half the world’s internet influencers?”
“That’s it!” With a snap of his fingers, Fin jolts straight in his seat. “The internet—I knew I recognized her.”
My shoulders tighten, and I clamp my jaw shut.
“That’s her, isn’t it? Atherton’s fucking fiancée!”
I slam my glass down. “He doesn’t have a fiancée.”
“Because you have her?”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Matt mutters, dropping his chin to his chest.
“You fucking dog. What’s your angle?”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Is this about Lucy?”
Every atom of my being revolts at the unexpected mention of her name. “You will never—” I halt. Breathe in. Start again. “It’s not as though I planned or schemed. I was in my car, minding my own business, when Eve climbed in, wearing her wedding dress. You tell me that’s not fate.”
“Fate.” Fin’s expression firms. “Try another f-word.”
“I will. Mind your own fucking business.”
“This is all of our business,” he says, making an expansive gesture. “Scheming is bad for business—bad for trust.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I showed you the Pulse Tok, and you barely flickered. All this time, you’ve had her.”
“Had?” I repeat dangerously low.
He narrows his gaze. “What are you up to?”
“You’ve met her,” I retort. “Does it look like I could persuade Eve to do anything she doesn’t want to?”
“I know you can turn on the charm like it’s nobody’s business when you want something, you ruthless fucker.”
“You’re confusing me with you.” If only charm had worked.
“But when charm doesn’t work, you turn dirty. Which is it? Northaby, or are you all about pissing off Atherton to avenge Lucy?”
“Does it matter? All you need to know is Eve and I are enjoying our time together while Atherton is, as usual, being a colossal prick. He has her belongings. She had nothing but the dress she was standing in.” And the delights it concealed. “She didn’t even have shoes.” I’ve no idea why her pink-painted toes in silk stockings should still seem erotic.
“But she’s living with you,” he states flatly.
“She’s staying in the hotel, yes.”
“In your suite?”
“That’s none of your business,” I say, straightening my cuffs.
“You’re not serious.” Matt’s mouth is an unimpressed flat line.
I flick my shoulder in answer.
“Does she know that?” This from Fin.
“I am not the devil you’d make me,” I begin, the words firing from my mouth like bullets.
“Oliver,” he says sadly, “I don’t make you anything. We all know there’s very little in the world you wouldn’t do for revenge.”