‘I know the owner.’
She had suspected it must be something like that. ‘The one who owns the entire chain?’
He nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘They’re everywhere now but when I was in Paris last year it had just opened, and the place was heaving.’
She broke off as the manager approached.
‘Sir…’ he tipped his head to include Eve ‘…miss, I hope the meal was satisfactory?’
‘It was delicious,’ she said.
‘We’re happy customers,’ Draco added.
There was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but the manager’s manner when he spoke to Draco and Draco’s manner when he replied…and then it came to her.
She waited until the older man had gone before testing her theory.
‘Are you the owner?’
He didn’t even blink. ‘For the past two years.’
Her dark brows knitted as she straightened her cutlery, once, twice and then once more. She was bewildered by her inability to hold eye contact with him without feeling shivery and self-conscious.
‘It didn’t occur to you to mention it?’
‘No.’ Elbows set on the table, he leaned forward. ‘So are you going home?’
‘Home?’
‘For your birthday.’
Eve retreated behind her wine glass. ‘I have no home.’
‘Boo-hoo! Wow, you really do have a chip on your shoulder, don’t you?’
She responded to the callous charge angrily. ‘I lived at Brent Manor for t-ten years but it was never my home, we were just the help.’
‘Yet being the help, as you put it, did not prevent you and Hannah becoming friends and now your mother is the mistress of the house.’
Eve was not about to satisfy his curiosity, but he was not the first to remark on the unlikely upstairs, downstairs friendship. Hannah Latimer with money, charm and princess looks, who went to a prestigious private school and the painfully shy cook’s daughter who went to school in the local town.
For Eve it had been hate at first sight and she had gone out of her way to avoid the daughter of the house with her golden hair and her permanent smile. She’d had numerous hiding places on the estate and when she’d found Hannah in one of those she’d initially been furious—until she’d seen the tears.
The girls had discovered they had something in common a long time before they’d found out their parents were having an affair. They’d both hated school and had both been bullied, although for different reasons.
‘People find the entire rags to riches story fascinating…not literally rags, I know that, but don’t be surprised if you find details of your mother’s life popping up in gossip columns. We all have skeletons,’ Draco warned.
She stiffened, horror seeping into her at the thought of her parentage becoming public knowledge, and retorted defensively, ‘What are you implying?’