‘Would you mind dropping Josie off at school on your way back to your office, Eve?’
Startled by the request, she nodded. ‘Fine.’
The older woman grabbed Josie’s hand. ‘Come along, Josephina. You need to get into your uniform. We must not keep Miss Curtis waiting.’
‘Sorry about the interruption, you two.’ Clare smiled as her daughter left the room with her grandmother. ‘Sex in the afternoon is just so beautifully decadent and naughty, I always think.’
‘You’re embarrassing Eve,’ Draco chided.
‘Really!’ Her astonishment seemed genuine. ‘Sorry, Draco, it’s just when you strolled in here looking all…’ She gave a reminiscent little sigh. ‘I remember that look.’
Eve felt a sharp stab of something too near jealousy for comfort. She closed her eyes and thought, I have to get out of here. She’d heard of amicable divorces but this was ridiculous!
Veronica Morelli reappeared with a neatly uniformed Josie at her side. ‘She couldn’t find anything and I’m not surprised. Why you insist on living in this cramped doll’s house I will never understand.’
Eve’s jaw dropped. If Draco’s mother thought this was cramped what was she used to? It must be a castle at least.
‘Very nice to meet you both,’ Eve lied as she left.
* * *
In the taxi Josie was talkative. ‘You have no idea how glad I am that you’re with Dad.’
‘I’m not—’ Eve encountered the teenager’s questioning look and closed her mouth. You couldn’t tell your lover’s teenage daughter that you were just having casual sex with her father, rather than a meaningful relationship.
As she recalled Draco’s comment about his daughter trying to find him a wife a worried frown pleated her brow. She didn’t want to encourage the girl’s fantasy but brutal honesty was obviously not an option. ‘I’m glad you’re glad.’
‘And you’re nothing like Dad’s usual type…’
Tell me something I didn’t already know, Eve thought, an image of his incredibly gorgeous ex-wife drifting into her mind. There had to have been a lot of Clare clones since, and then me.
‘I’m not supposed to know he has a type, which is kind of unrealistic but because he never brings them home he thinks I don’t know.’
That got Eve’s attention. ‘He never brings them home?’ She told herself firmly that she was not going to read anything significant into that.
‘You think he does when I’m not there, like Lily’s dad?’ Josie shook her head vigorously. ‘Lily said she could always tell when her dad’s girlfriend had been in their flat as she could smell her and things got left behind and moved—and she was right as they got married last month.’
Did Draco’s bed smell of her?
‘I’m sure it’s very hard when a parent decides to remarry.’
‘Gosh, no, I’d love it, and Gran would too. She’s always nagging him about it, but she doesn’t think anyone’s good enough for him and Mu— Clare is really bitchy about the ones he dates sometimes. But you’re different and if you did marry Dad or even if you were his girlfriend, they wouldn’t be able to send me to live with Mum and her fiancé, cos you’d definitely be a stable female influence in my life, wouldn’t you?’