One Night with Morelli(17)

                Marriage might not be something she personally aspired to, but if you were going to take vows—and she knew at least two of the women outside her cubicle door were wearing wedding bands—you stayed faithful to those vows.

                If not, then what was the point?

                She wasn’t surprised, given he moved in the same circles as her new stepfather, that this—what had they called him? Morelli—had money, but, unlike the trio who were discussing him as though he were a piece of prime juicy steak they contemplated eating, Eve was not impressed.

                You could recognise the quality of good tailoring without admiring the person who wore it! Her birth father had money and status and he was a total sleaze. Eve admired talent and intelligence, and there had certainly been intelligence in the dark-eyed stare that had followed her all day, but it had been the sexual challenge in them that had made her stomach muscles quiver.

                ‘A definite plus,’ someone admitted. Maybe Emma? Eve speculated. ‘But I wouldn’t throw him out of bed if he was broke. Imagine him stripped and ready for action…’

                During the general laughter and crude comments that followed Eve found herself responding with a mixture of indignation and distaste… It wasn’t so much that someone had hijacked her secret fantasy, although that was bad enough, it was that she’d been forced to admit she’d had one, that she had pictured a total stranger naked and sprawled on a bed that bore more than a passing resemblance to her own!

                So you wondered what he looked like naked, Eve, big deal, she told herself. Did you think you were the only woman whose creative juices were switched on by his sexual charge?

                ‘He’s been staring at me all day, can’t take his eyes off me. Have you noticed?’ Louise boasted.

                Eve’s nostrils flared as she hung onto her temper. So he’d been eyeing up all the women—what a sleaze! It was just as well she hadn’t felt special…well, not much. She could genuinely say she hadn’t wanted his attention, but it was one thing not to want it and another to know he pulled the same tired trick with every woman in the room!

                ‘You mean he came on to you? When?’

                ‘I wrote my number on his hand.’

                ‘No…how much have you had to drink? What if your Rob had seen?’

                ‘What did he say?’

                ‘He just looked at me and I went shivery! He’s got the most incredible eyes… Then he said…’

                ‘What? What did he say, Louise?’

                The dramatic pause had not just her friends, but Eve in her hiding place, on tenterhooks.

                ‘I could tell by the way he’s been looking at me that he wants me. You always can…’

                ‘Yes, but what did he say?’

                ‘He said he had an excellent memory and if he wanted to remember a number he would, and then…’

                ‘What? What did he do then?’

                ‘Then he wiped it off!’

                Louise had clearly decided this was encouraging. Her cronies, a lot less under her thumb than in the old days, were less sure. The subsequent squabble continued until they found a subject that they all agreed on—they were united in their contempt of the wedding.