One Night with Morelli(35)

                Eve bit her quivering lip, then, losing her fight, broke into peals of laughter.

                She had a great laugh, when she wasn’t feeling bitter and twisted and sexually frustrated. He couldn’t believe now that he had actually almost convinced himself she was a virgin. He realised that Eve Curtis could be fun outside bed, not that his interest in her extended beyond the bedroom, he told himself.

                Wiping her eyes, she turned to him. ‘So the next time I find myself losing an argument I should make up a statistic.’

                ‘You have to keep an element of realism and you have to believe what you say.’

                ‘You mean,’ she cut back slickly, ‘you have to be a good liar.’

                ‘That goes without saying…’

                ‘Like you.’

                ‘I could say I’m always honest but I might be lying.’ Eve recognised the crossroads they were approaching; it was the one where she always nursed a secret fear of taking the wrong turning and ending up in Wales.

                She told him the area she lived in, fully anticipating he would ask for updates, but he didn’t. Draco was obviously one of those people with a built-in sat nav. He was one street away from the building where Eve lived before he asked for further directions.

                ‘It’s the next turn…you just went past it. Our street lights are part of the council cuts,’ she said by way of apology as he backed up.

                She unfastened her seat belt, unable to conceal her palpable relief that her journey was at an end, though now it was she was able to concede she might have been overreacting. Alpha males were really not her thing; their earlier kiss was not her thing; nothing that had happened today was her thing.

                Tomorrow happily was another day, a new start, a clean slate. Running out of clichés, she turned to Draco.

                ‘Well, thank you.’ Just to keep things unambiguous, she added, ‘For the lift.’ The kiss was something she would not forgive, but she had every intention of forgetting it or at least mentally filing it under of no importance.

                ‘I’ll see you in.’

                She struggled to sound amused by the offer and reached for the door handle. ‘That really won’t be necessary. I can look after myself…see, I have my key…’ Her hand came up empty from the pocket in her handbag where she always kept her key ring. ‘It has to be in here somewhere…’

                Several minutes later the contents of her bag had been removed twice and replaced and it became clear that her keys might well be somewhere but they were definitely not in her bag.

                ‘You lost your keys…it happens.’

                His soothing words did not soothe.

                ‘Not to me! I always… I had them when I was opening the car bonnet…’ She summoned a mental image of the keys on their Tempting Eve logo fob. She covered her face with her hands and groaned. ‘Oh, God, I left them in the ignition!’

                ‘It’s only keys.’

                Her hands fell and she slung him a look. ‘You’re not the one locked out.’

                ‘You have some spares, a neighbour with a key…?’

                ‘Yes, but…’ She shook her head. ‘They have a baby and James works nights.’ She shook her head positively. ‘I can’t knock up Sue and the baby at this time of night.’ The last time she had seen her neighbour she had been shocked by her appearance.