by Liz Harris
Chapter Twenty
The calm before the storm
Evie opened her eyes. They felt heavy and sore. Her head hurt and her mouth felt dry. She ran her tongue around her lips. Why on earth had she drunk as much as she had last night? She gave a low groan, reached across for the plastic bottle of water that she dimly remembered putting on her bedside table, and pulled it to her.
Tipping the bottle up, she drank to the last drop and let it fall to the floor. Then she curled up on her side. She’d never in her life felt so awful, so seedy. Why, oh why, had she and Gabriela put it away like they had last night?
At the thought of Gabriela, a wave of guilt swept through her – she’d said a lot more about Tom last night than she’d meant to, a lot more than she should have done. For someone who’d resolved never to tell a soul what he’d told her in Italy, she’d fallen badly at the first hurdle.
If only she hadn’t been so panicked about her editor.
Thank goodness it was only Gabriela she’d told, she thought with relief. Gabriela wasn’t likely to tell anyone else – she didn’t know anyone in England to tell, for a start. But it was a lesson on how easy it was to let things slip out when you didn’t intend them to, and she’d be on her guard at all times in the future to make sure that she never did such a thing again. She never again wanted to wake up feeling as guilty as she felt now. Guilt and a hangover did not make a good start to the day. Especially not to the day on which she was going on the long-anticipated date with Tom.
She turned over on to her other side, relishing the cool of the pillow and the sheet, and she closed her eyes. She’d feel better after more sleep, she was sure. She had to. She must look her very best for Tom. Her eyes closed and her breathing got heavier.
I shall see Tom soon, she thought, and she smiled as she drifted into sleep.
‘You look stunning, Evie.’ Tom gazed at her over the slender-stemmed pink rose in the centre of the table. ‘Absolutely lovely.’
‘Wow, I think you’d better change the subject, Tom. I’m not used to getting compliments from you, and they’re making me suspicious. Either you want me to feed your hungry male ego so you’re making me have to compliment you in return, or your body’s been taken over by an alien force. I kind of hope it’s not the alien takeover – that would be a real waste of a pretty good body.’
He grinned. ‘You see, I got my compliment in the end – my male ego is satisfied. Unfortunately, though, my hunger isn’t. I was too busy to stop and eat today, and I’m starving.’ He picked up his menu and ran his eyes down it. ‘I think I’ll have the goat’s cheese salad, followed by the grilled fillet of beef with celeriac. And what about you? Have you decided yet?’
She closed her menu and put it back on the table. ‘I’ll have the same as you, please.’
He smiled at her. ‘I see that we still want the same things. That’s good, very good.’ He placed his menu on hers, leaned across the table and moved the vase to one side. ‘And that’s even better. I’ve missed you, Evie,’ he said, his face suddenly serious. ‘I’ve missed you every single day.’
‘And I’ve missed you, too. I’ve had masses of things to do since we got back, but it’s still felt as if there’s been a huge hole in my life. Things aren’t as much fun when you’re not around.’
A wave of anxiety swept over her. Did she sound too keen?
Tom had started the ball rolling with what he’d said to her, but perhaps she should have been more laid-back. Glamour Puss always said to play it cool if you wanted to keep them interested, which she did, yet she’d sounded as if she was gagging to leap on top of him. True, she wouldn’t need much persuading, if any – he looked dead sexy in that pale grey shirt – but maybe she shouldn’t have been quite so obvious. She bit her lip nervously.
Tom took her hand. A shiver of pleasure ran down her spine. ‘I feel exactly the same,’ he said quietly.
Relief.
So much for Glamour Puss – they obviously hadn’t a clue what they were talking about. Being honest about her feelings was clearly the way to go. Memo to self: bin all of her copies of Glamour Puss. Well, perhaps not bin them – that was a bit drastic – but not take everything they said for gospel.
‘Would you care for bread?’
They glanced up and saw a waiter standing by the table, holding a basket of bread. Tom released her hand and the waiter served, then Tom gave him their orders and chose a bottle of red wine from the wine list. The waiter left and he sat back and looked across the table at her, a warm smile on his face.
‘So tell me, what have you been doing this week? I’m curious to hear how you and Gabriela got on. And did it go all right, working for me part of the week and being with Gabriela the rest of the time? You certainly seem to have coped with everything I left you to do. Or to put it another way, I didn’t find any anguished messages of despair when I got home, and I took this to be a good sign.’
‘It was fine, thanks. Leaving a recording each day of what I had to do was a cool idea.’
He laughed. ‘A second compliment, no less. I can see that I’m on a roll here. But whilst I hate to put the brakes on it, I think I’d better own up – after all, honesty’s always the best policy, is it not?’
She picked up the piece of bread closest to her and bit into it. A lump of the bread stuck in her throat. Struggling to swallow it, she nodded furiously.
‘It was the temps who suggested I use the digital dictation that you find in most offices these days. I took their advice and it’s worked really well.’ He reached across the table and took her hand again. Blue eyes looked deep into hers, and her toes curled. ‘But telling you what to do in person would have been so much nicer than talking into a machine.’
She swallowed again and the bread finally slid down. ‘And I would have liked you being there in person, telling me what to do.’ Her voice cracked and she coughed to clear her throat.
He leaned closer. ‘You see, Evie, that’s another thing we feel the same way about. Although to be honest, I’m not sure how much telling there’d have been. I suspect that showing you the way I felt about you might have jumped to the top of the agenda.’
A wave of emotion welled up inside her and she could have burst into tears. She tried to laugh. ‘I see we’re back to lists again. We never seem to get far from them, do we?’
‘It seems that we don’t,’ he said. Their eyes met, and he gave her a lazy smile.
The waiter returned to the table with their starters, and Tom straightened up as the waiter poured a little wine into his glass, stood back and waited while he tasted it.
‘That’s fine, Pierre.’
‘Will there be anything else, Mr Hadleigh?’ the waiter asked as he filled their glasses with wine.
‘I don’t think so. Thank you.’
The waiter moved away.
‘Do you come here often? They all seem to know you.’
‘Yes, quite a bit. I like the place very much. The food and service are excellent, and it has a friendly atmosphere – at least, I think it has; I hope you agree – and it’s a bonus that I can walk here so I don’t have to worry about parking. Or about drinking, for that matter. Obviously tonight’s different – I’ve got the car because I collected you.’
‘You’re right, it’s really nice here,’ she said, picking up her fork and starting on the salad. ‘It’s certainly a whole lot different from Wagamama, which is where we took Gabriela last night. I’m afraid we had a bit too much too drink, so I’ll be going carefully tonight. Well, I had a bit too much to drink. From what I can remember, Gabriela held her drink better.’
Her heart gave a sudden thump of guilt. She’d had more than just a bit too much to drink the night before – she’d had way too much. If only she’d had the same degree of self-control as Gabriela. For a start, she would never have opened up to her about Tom in the way that she had. It was something private about Tom that should have stayed private. Damn the drink.
The sound of Tom’s laugh
ter brought her back to the present with a jolt.
‘You took her to Wagamama! That’s priceless. I must confess I can’t see Gabriela in such a place. Nor having more than an elegant glass of wine. What on earth did she make of it?’
‘She said all the right things, like it was great fun and different, that they ought to have Wagamamas in Italy, and so on, but what she really thought of it, I wouldn’t like to say. She’s much too polite and self-controlled to say if she didn’t like it, but I’d be very surprised if it heads her list of things to do again. Oops, another list.’
‘Who’s the ‘we’ who took her there?’
‘Rachel and Jess came, too. Gabriela seemed to get on really well with them, and they’re both dying to meet Eduardo. I’m not sure how keen she is on that idea, though. I saw the expression on her face when they were joking about it.’
‘I presume that Rachel and Jess own the heads that were hanging out of the window when I got to your house earlier on.’
She giggled. ‘Bang on. They were desperate to get a glimpse of you, which is why I dashed out of the house before you’d even switched the engine off. I was saving you from their scrutiny, and them from falling out of the window.’
‘Admirable, indeed! But back to Gabriela, how did it go this week? Did you get on all right?’
‘To my amazement, we got on really well.’ She swept her hair back from her face. ‘We did lots of different things, far more than I thought we’d do.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, for example, we went round London on one of those open-topped buses. I’ve never done that before – you don’t when you live in a place – but it was really interesting. The weather was fantastic, which helped. And we hit the shops – that goes without saying. Gabriela bought a few things, mainly clothes as she’s not yet decided what she wants to do to her flat. I didn’t get anything, but it was fun watching her shop. She certainly knows what she wants and she’s determined to get it.’
‘Did you go to her flat? It’s in Holland Park, isn’t it? I’ve got her address somewhere.’
‘I think it is. I haven’t got her actual address, though. No, I didn’t go there. There just wasn’t time and we weren’t really in that part of London. The closest we got to her flat was probably when we were in Harrods.’
‘I see what you mean. That’s still quite a hike from Holland Park.’
‘From what she’s said, it sounds very nice. I expect I’ll see it before too long. The more you get to know her, the more you realise that she’s quite lonely, which explains why she’s going out of her way to make friends with Rachel, Jess and me, even though we don’t really have anything much in common with her. Apparently, she doesn’t have any close friends in Italy. She sort of explained it away, but we all think it’s a bit strange. There’s probably something she’s not told us, but that’s up to her.’
‘Everyone needs good friends so she was lucky to meet the three of you. I’m glad you’ve been able to take her under your wing this week. If you speak to her again before I do, you can remind her that I’ll call her once the case is over. I’ll take her to dinner or something.’
A vision of Gabriela, clad in something stunning, smiling across a candlelit table at Tom, sprang to her mind, and a wave of emotion rose up in her. She struggled to push it back. Of course he had to see Gabriela in England. He’d said he’d take her to dinner and he’d obviously honour that promise. She wasn’t jealous. Not really.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell her.’ She forced herself to smile.
‘And you must come along, too. Your presence will help to lighten the conversation,’ he added with a teasing smile.
She beamed at him. ‘I’ll let that pass, but only because the salad was so good. And also because it’s your turn to go under the spotlight now. Has your week gone well? Your working days have certainly been long enough.’
‘That’s par for the course with these big cases, I’m afraid. And if you think that I work long hours, you should see the length of the day that the junior barristers sometimes have to work. They often don’t pick up a brief until the evening before they have to argue the case. It’s not unknown for barristers to work through the night and then go straight into court.’
‘God, how gruesome!’ She moved back a little to let the waiter remove her plate. ‘What about the libel case you’re working on now – is it going well?’
‘I think so. All one can do at this stage is prepare as well as is humanly possible, and that’s what I’ve been doing. I’m trying to cover every conceivable angle – I don’t like surprises in court.’
‘Not surprises in court, maybe, but some surprises can be fun – like surprise presents. My parents used to ask me every year what I wanted for Christmas and my birthday, and I had to come up with something or they’d get me a boring, sensible present, such as something for school or gloves. I always hated knowing what I was going to get before I got it. I’d have loved them to have chosen something for me that they thought I’d like.’
‘Even if you didn’t like it?’
‘Yup, even if I didn’t like it. It’s the thought that counts, after all.’
Oh, no! She shouldn’t have said that – she didn’t want to think like that.
Suppose Tom was in the same mindset and focused on her original intention, not on the fact that she’d changed her mind. She’d been so walking on air since Gabriela’s reassurance that she hadn’t for a minute considered that possibility. Oh, if only her throwaway comment hadn’t put that thought into her mind!
The waiter approached with two plates of food.
‘I think that’s our beef coming,’ she heard Tom say, his voice coming from far away.
She stared down at the plate that the waiter had put in front of her, and all she could see were the words Pure Dirt, written large in lurid red. Her stomach lurched.
Get a grip, she told herself. Bloody well, get a grip. If she couldn’t control her thoughts, she’d end up blurting out the truth just to feel better. She absolutely didn’t want to do that, but she could see it happening so easily. She was going to watch what she drank and she was going to make sure that she kept to herself all the things she wasn’t ready to say.
For a start, she must stop second-guessing what Tom would say when he knew the truth. It was pointless – she hadn’t really got a clue how he’d respond. Secondly, she must dig deep into her psyche and find the enterprising Evie of Italy – the Evie who’d jumped on top of her bed in a nightdress and begged her boss to get into that bed. That Evie would be able to cope brilliantly with the present situation and with everything that the coming week was going to throw at her.
She took a deep breath, and picked up her knife and fork. ‘So where were we?’ she asked with a bright smile.
‘We were just about to return to the agency, I believe, or rather you were. In a week’s time, I think you said.’
‘Don’t remind me.’ She wagged her finger at him admonishingly.
‘All right, I won’t. But they’re lucky to have you, and I bet they know it. You’re the sharpest temp I’ve ever had. I just hope that Zizi can find something you’d like better.’
‘By “ever had” …?’
He laughed. ‘That I’ve ever had working for me, pedantic Evie.’
She beamed at him and took a bite of her food. ‘Wow! On a different subject, this mousse is yummy.’
Tom paused in the middle of cutting a piece of meat and glanced across at her plate. ‘You mean the celeriac? Yes, it’s delicious. Celeriac’s lovely in soup, too.’
‘To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever had it before. I was thinking it was celery, but it’s obviously not. That’s me being an airhead again.’ She shook her head, and cut into her beef.
‘I’m not so sure about that airhead thing. Not at all. I suspect that there’s more to you than meets the eye.’ Her heart switched into treble speed. Where was he going with this? She started to eat more quickly.
‘I t
hink you’re a very bright cookie,’ he went on when he’d finished what he was eating, ‘although for some reason you don’t like to show it. But whatever the reason, you’re a cookie that I’ll miss having around the house. And don’t ask me if I’m talking about ginger nuts,’ he added with a laugh.
Relief flooded through her. Thank you, guardian angel! They’d moved away from a potential minefield and were back on safe ground.
‘But we haven’t been at the house at the same time at all this week, have we?’ she said lightly. ‘So me not being there in the future won’t be that different for you, will it?’
‘Oh, yes, it will. In a way, you were there when I got home Monday and Tuesday night, with your presence all around me: your scent was in the air; the cushion you leaned against was crumpled into your shape; the sheet of paper you doodled on was lying on top of the desk; the little heart you drew at the end of your every message spoke to me. Yes, you were there with me, Evie, even though I had to close my eyes to see you.’
‘Oh, Tom,’ she said softly.
‘And it was a bloody marvellous feeling to come home to you, even if it wasn’t the physical you. It was so good that it made me wonder what it would be like to come home to the actual you.’
Their eyes met, and held.
‘Would you like me to remove your plates, Mr Hadleigh?’
‘What!’ he exclaimed with a start. He stared down at their empty plates. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, I think so, we both seem to have finished. Thank you.’
When the plates had been cleared away, the waiter returned to their table. ‘Would either of you care to see the dessert menu?’
‘Would you like some dessert? They do a wonderful chocolate pudding that would be right up your street.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want another thing, thank you,’ she replied. Her eyes ran lightly across Tom’s face. ‘I might think of something later, though.’
As they made their way from the restaurant back to the car, strolling up a narrow cobbled lane lined on either side with black bollards, Tom slid his arm around Evie’s shoulders. He heard her sigh happily, and he smiled to himself as he felt her nestle more deeply into the crook of his arm.