One Night with Morelli(24)

                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!’