One Night With Morelli (6 page)

Eve felt something snap inside her. ‘You think you don’t like weddings, let me tell you,’ she huffed, ‘about my day!’ She reached inside the bodice of her dress and after a grunt produced a wad of tissues, which she waved at him. ‘Did you have to stuff your bra full of tissues to keep your dress up? Did you have to watch your mother, who is the best,
totally
best person you know, marry a man who is so far beneath her in every way?’ Eve’s voice dropped a husky octave but shook with the strength of the emotion that gripped her as she concluded, ‘And it wouldn’t even be happening now if the scumbag hadn’t got her pregnant!’

For about three seconds she felt the intense relief of getting it off her chest…and then she looked at the tissues in her hand and gulped quite literally. The wave of horror that followed made her want to vanish… What had she been thinking of, telling a total stranger such private things?

Her green eyes lifted to his face, her insides churning sickly. ‘If you tell anyone I’ll—’

‘Be forced to have me killed. Don’t worry—your secret is safe with me,’ Eve heard him drawl with teeth-clenching sarcasm.

‘The idea is growing on me,’ she declared grimly.

Forgetting the cold shoulder he had intended to present to her, he grinned. ‘I’m curious—have you got any more tissues down there or is what remains all you?’

She pressed her hand to the neckline of her strapless gown; without the extra padding to fill it he had a view all the way down to her waist and he was certainly looking.

‘You’re hateful!’ Eve looked at the wad of tissues and threw them at him.

Laughing, he reached out and caught them. ‘Seriously.’ Actually he had been
seriously
impressed by the view of her small but perfect breasts like plump little apples in their lacy covering. He could just imagine them filling his hand—only they wouldn’t because she was high maintenance. She was an innocent… Mmm,
how innocent, exactly
…?

He didn’t want to know. All right, maybe he did—virgins of her age were a bit like unicorns: the things of fables.

‘So what have you got against Charlie Latimer?’ The guy was successful, solvent and as far as he knew had no major vices like drink, drugs or gambling, yet her animosity had been toxic in its intensity.

‘So you don’t know he’s been having an affair with my mum for years? That makes you something of a rarity.’ Could you sound any more bitter, Eve?

‘I don’t listen to gossip, but I do know that relationships are complex and it’s hard to judge what makes one work from the outside.’

‘They didn’t have a
relationship
. She was his bit on the side. She doesn’t
have
to marry anyone, let alone him! I’d have looked after her. I
wanted
to look after her.’

‘You’re very possessive.’

‘Protective,’
she flashed back, angry at the inference and his sardonic expression.

‘Don’t you think that maybe your mother has earned the right to make her own decisions and her own mistakes…?’

She cast a simmering glance up at his lean face. ‘What business is it of yours anyway?’

‘None at all. I thought you wanted my input.’

‘Well, I don’t!’

‘I stand corrected.’

She pulled herself up to her full height and, bristling with dignity, looked pointedly at the route to the door he was blocking. ‘If you don’t mind…? And don’t worry.’ She flashed him a wide insincere smile, her eyes shooting daggers. ‘I will smile, but I’d prefer not to be seen coming out of the ladies’ room with you.’

‘It might make the world look at you in a different light.’

She narrowed her eyes and said with fierce distaste, ‘You mean people will see me as a tart.’

‘No, I mean they might think you actually have a life.’

She sucked in a breath of outrage. ‘I have a perfectly good life already and I don’t give a damn what people think.’

‘If that were true you wouldn’t give a damn what people think if we walk out that door together.’

Teeth clenched in sheer frustration, she glared up at him. He couldn’t have looked smugger if…if… No, he simply couldn’t have looked smugger. ‘Just wait here.’

‘Shall I count to a hundred?’

Responding to this with a disdainful sniff, she tossed her head and pushed through the doorway, pausing only to fling a ‘Thank you!’ over her shoulder.

He didn’t count to a hundred. Instead he thought about what had just happened. Running the scene through his head, little snippets of the conversation making him frown, others smile. It had clearly hurt her to say thank you, and Draco felt a faint twinge of guilt as he knew he didn’t deserve it. The only cry of help he’d responded to was his daughter’s. He’d only come in here for Josie, because he wanted her to think he was a good guy, but in truth he wasn’t. If he had seen an hysterical woman crying in the bathroom, his instinct would not have been to wade in and help, it would have been to walk in the opposite direction very fast.

He had his life streamlined so that he could focus on what was important—he did not get involved.

The women standing outside reading the ‘out of order’ sign that was pinned to the door looked at him wide-eyed when he emerged.

Ignoring their astonished stares, he unpinned the sign written in the pink lipstick his daughter was wearing and nodded.

‘Everything is back to normal.’

Which was a good thing. Eve Curtis had even more issues than he had imagined; the man who got her would need a medal and a degree in counselling.

CHAPTER FIVE

D
RACO
JOINED
HIS DAUGHTER
, who was sitting at an empty table beside the dance floor. ‘The notice on the door was a nice touch.’

‘Is everything all right, Dad?’

‘Fine.’ He reached out a hand to ruffle her hair but Josie got to her feet

‘She’s available; I checked.’

Draco looked down, not so very far now. Over the past ten months his daughter had grown ten inches and had gone from being a sweet, slightly chubby five-feet-one twelve-year-old to a slender, leggy thirteen-year-old; still sweet but to his parental eye worryingly mature, with the sort of coltish good looks that had already drawn two offers of modelling contracts.

Draco was just relieved he hadn’t had to come the heavy parent over the latter; Josie had plans for her future that did not include becoming the face of anything.

‘Who is available?’ He glanced down and noticed for the first time that his daughter was holding a cocktail. He winced and blamed Eve for taking his eye off the ball. Just what was the woman’s problem? He slung a quick glance across the room and sure enough she was still acting as if she were at a wake, not a wedding reception. God, no wonder she had been bullied; she was one of those people who simply couldn’t blend into the background, and didn’t try either. She stood out in a room of a hundred—or in this case nearer five.

He reached for the drink. ‘I don’t think so, angel.’

‘You know something, Dad, you have serious trust issues. It’s only a mocktail.’ She turned the stick in the glass of brightly coloured but non-alcoholic contents and offered with a grin, ‘Try if you don’t believe me.’

His expressive lips twisted into a moue of distaste. ‘I’ll pass.’

‘So about Eve, Dad.’

He shook his head wryly.
About Eve
—it was more a case of a detour around Eve. She was an emotional storm. He caught his daughter’s look and said defensively, ‘What about Eve?’

‘I said she’s available.’

His daughter was teasing, but under her smiles was she really…? He wasn’t entirely sure, but one thing he was sure of was that this was a conversation he did not want to have.

‘Is that boy a friend of yours?’ He angled a narrow look towards the young man who was making his tipsy way across the dance floor towards his daughter. Recognising the warning, the kid abruptly changed direction.

‘Good try, Dad.’

‘Try at what?’

‘At changing the subject.’

‘What subject would that be?’

Josie rolled her eyes before directing a finger across the room to where Eve was standing. ‘She’s all alone and you should go and talk to her. Or are you scared?’ his daughter, who thought she knew what buttons to press, speculated innocently. The hell of it was that five times out of ten she did and he could see those odds narrowing as she got older.

‘I know a lot of men are scared of rejection,’ she added.

Draco, who didn’t have much experience of rejection, looked amused; women’s magazines had a lot to answer for. ‘So how do you know that men are scared of rejection?’

‘Clare told me.’

His half-smile faded. ‘Since when do you call your mother Clare?’ he asked sternly.

‘She asked me to—she says now that I’m taller than her being called Mum makes her feel old.’ Seeing his expression, Josie touched her father’s arm. ‘She can’t help it, you know. Some people are just—’

‘Self-centred and selfish.’ Draco frowned, regretting the bitter words the moment they were uttered. After the divorce he had been determined not to bad-mouth his ex-wife to their daughter and always felt guilty as hell when he failed. He did not want to be the sort of parent who used their kid as a bargaining chip and asked them to take sides.

‘Relax, Dad, you’re not telling me anything that I didn’t work out for myself years ago. So are you scared…? You’ve been staring at her all day—yes, Dad, you have. She is
the
Eve in Eve’s Temptation. Brains and beauty. Oh, before you say it—’

‘What was I about to say?’

‘Beauty isn’t all about long legs and boobs, Father.’

Always good to know that your daughter thought you were shallow and sexist. ‘I am aware of that.’

‘And you obviously fancy her so don’t let me cramp your style. Go for it, Dad.’

‘Thank you very much.’

His daughter ignored the irony. ‘I think you need a challenge.’

‘Being your father makes every day a challenge.’

‘I’m a far better daughter than you deserve.’ She grinned and for a moment looked more like his little girl again. Draco pushed away the wave of nostalgia and reminded himself that nothing stayed the same.

‘I’m not going to contest that one.’ He touched her cheek. ‘How about you let me worry about my social life, kiddo?’

Her childish brow furrowed. ‘I just don’t want to see you lonely. I’m not going to be at home for ever, you know, and you’re not getting any younger.’

Feeling every day of his thirty-three years, Draco allowed his daughter to pull him onto the dance floor. Eve had already gone.

* * *

Having delivered the car and the keys to Draco, his driver squeezed his bulk into the passenger seat of the Mini beside his wife. Draco stepped smartly to one side as the Mini reversed, sending up a cloud of gravel, and shot off down the drive with a honk of the horn.

A smile played across the firm line of his lips as he watched the car vanish, narrowly avoiding a collision with one of the catering vans that were beginning to leave. On balance Draco was glad the husband and not the wife was his driver.

He strolled back towards the Elizabethan manor, which was impressively backlit now the light had faded by some state-of-the-art laser technology. Less high tech but equally attractive were the trees surrounding the house, which had been artistically sprinkled with white fairy lights for the occasion. There was no sign of Josie, who had said she’d be only five minutes when she had gone back to make up a doggie bag for her cousin, fifteen minutes ago.

Overhead a helicopter took off, and he sighed. It would have been easier to make the return journey by the same means of transport in which he had arrived, but the last time he had landed in the meadow at the timbered farmhouse where his ex-model sister lived the bucolic life of a hobby farmer with her banker husband, she had complained that her hens had stopped laying.

It did not seem very scientific, but then neither was naming a load of hens who all looked identical to him and assigning them individual personalities, so rather than risk getting in her bad books again, as she helped out a lot with Josie, having her to stay when he was out of town, he had decided to drop Josie off by car before driving back to London himself.

Philosophical about being kept waiting by his daughter, he had positioned himself beneath the illuminated canopy of a tall oak to wait for Josie just as a minibus filled with guests from the village set off, leaving behind three figures on the gravel.

‘Who is he calling drunk?’ the one who had written her number on his arm slurred, waving her fists at the bus.

Another sat down on the floor and took off her shoes. ‘My feet hurt. Louise, why did you have to swear at him?’

Moving back into the shadow, an expression of distaste twisting his lean, patrician features, Draco placed a supportive hand on his neck and rotated his head in an effort to relieve some of the stiffness afflicting his muscles.

The first exercise having failed, he was rolling his shoulders when a figure appeared in the illuminated doorway—not Josie, but one he recognised. It wasn’t hard as she was still wearing the full-length bridesmaid dress, but now it was topped by a lacy shrug that had little cap sleeves that covered her bare shoulders and was buttoned up to her throat, concealing everything else.

He watched as she glanced to right and left as though looking for someone and then began to walk towards him, only not him, she couldn’t see him, yet a man could be excused for thinking it was a sign.

A man could also be accused of spinning the situation because of the ache in his groin. He sighed and stepped deeper into the shadows. His trouble was he had gone too long without; there had only been the one night since ending things with Rachel.

There could have been more but he had not made the effort—not that there was much effort involved. He had the number on his phone of a young politician who was attractive, ambitious and discreet. She had a busy schedule, was opposed to cumbersome emotional baggage, and her Brussels base was an advantage, not a problem.

‘Here she comes. E-E-E-Evie.’ If the sniggered whisper was loud enough for him, the odds were that Evie had heard it too.

Draco slid the phone back into his pocket as he felt a sudden rush of anger. If he had paused to think, he would have been surprised by the white-hot intensity of it, but he didn’t pause. Instead he stepped out of the shadows where two strides brought him to Eve’s side. Without a word he grabbed her by the arm and jerked her towards him.

Soft and warm, she collided with him, her gentle curves fitting perfectly into the angles of his body.

She was too shocked to even cry out; her eyes flew wide, her pupils dilating dramatically as she looked up into the face of the man who held her. She let out a tiny fluttery sigh, stiffening as almost casually he slid his free hand around her waist, his fingers spreading across her ribcage from her waist to just beneath her breast, possessively, as if he had the right.

‘What are you doing?’ The question proved her brain was working… The rest of her body she wrote off, as it was clearly reacting independently. The heat that made her skin burn was seeping into her blood, so that she felt light-headed, and the sensual fog in her brain made it hard to think—so she just stopped trying.

Why bother when it was a fight she was going to lose? Because she really wanted to taste him, and it was all she could think about.

He bent in closer, brushing her cheek with his lips, holding her eyes all the time. His stare was hypnotic; she couldn’t have broken eye contact even if she’d wanted to and there was a big…no, a massive question mark over that.

‘I’m going to kiss you—are you all right with that?’

No
…one word, how hard was that? That’s all you have to say, she told herself firmly.

‘Someone will see,’ she whispered instead.

‘They’re meant to, so shut up,
cara
, and don’t have another panic attack.’

The comment roused Eve to lethargic indignation. ‘I don’t have panic attacks. Let me go!’ It was weak and way overdue, but at least she’d made a protest—she could tell herself later
I tried to stop him.

Man up, Eve, take responsibility—you want this.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Draco?’ Saying his name had been a mistake as suddenly everything seemed intimate, more personal.

‘Relax and don’t hit me; we have an audience. I am once and for all going to lay to rest any doubts about your sexuality.’ He touched the side of her jaw. ‘Don’t look.’

She lifted her gaze to his, and the dark passion-glazed look in her eyes sent a surge of power through his veins.

‘Look where?’ She could no longer pretend she wanted to look at anything but him.

Her voice had dropped a sexy octave, the sound possessing a tactile quality that made him hungry to feel her small hands on his skin…exploring…

‘Do you have doubts about my s-sexuality?’

‘Not a one,’ he said against her lips. ‘I hate the idea of you stuttering for anyone else.’

Her stutter was the bane of her existence and he was acting as though it were a gift! ‘You don’t have to do this.’ But of course if he didn’t she might die, although to the women watching them she knew it already looked as though they were kissing. ‘I really don’t care what they think.’ But it might be nice to wipe the smiles off their smug faces.

‘Actually I
do
have to do this,’ he muttered raggedly.

They were both breathing so fast she could not separate the sounds or even the heartbeats. She gave a little nod, her breathless moan of anticipation barely audible.

‘I have wanted to kiss you since this morning when you threw your bra at me.’

His eyelashes cast shadows along the crest of his cheekbones and through her half-closed eyes they looked like solid blocks of colour. ‘That feels like years ago…’ The words were soft sibilant sighs, hardly audible above her tortured shallow breaths. ‘Well…?’

‘Well what?’

‘Are you going to find out…how it feels to—?’

The rest of her words were lost in the warmth of his mouth. He explored her mouth, his tongue probing and his lips moving against hers with sensuous expertise. The pressure of the kiss bent her backwards against his supporting arm and she straightened up again as his head lifted like a sapling when the wind died.

He was still close and breathing hard; they both were. Through the mesh of her lashes she could see the fine texture of his olive-toned skin, the darkened stubble thicker now on the surface of his jaw and lower face, the gold tips on the end of his thick jet-black eyelashes. A shiver of sensation rippled through her body, then another and another…

‘So was that your good deed for the day?’ she murmured.

Draco, who had really fought his baser instincts to keep the kiss under control, just nodded. It had been a mistake to kiss her; all it had done was make him realise what he was missing and that he wanted her more than ever.

‘Yeah, and now that our first kiss is out of the way…’ He leaned in again, the gleam in his dark eyes warning her of his intent.

This time the kiss was very different. With considerably less finesse, less control, the wildness scared Eve on one level and on another excited her unbearably. She wanted everything he was doing and more. The knowledge shocked even as it made her arch into him.

She could feel his arousal rock hard against her belly as he moulded her against him, sealing their bodies at hip level. Then while he continued to plunder her mouth with a raw hunger of bruising intensity Draco’s big hands moved over her body.

She could feel the heat of his hand through the silk of her dress as it moved up and down her thigh. While his other kneaded and moulded the aching peak of one small breast.