Their eyes met and clung, and her voice was thick with the same emotions that shone in her eyes as Eve shook her head.
‘I’m fine; it’s just…I…’
‘I know,’ he acknowledged.
Coffee finished, the bill paid, Mark suggested he walk her back to her flat rather than call a cab. As it was a beautiful clear evening and she wasn’t ready for it to end yet, Eve agreed.
Outside the pavement was wet but it had stopped raining and the night sky was bright and clear, or at least as bright and clear as it ever got in the City.
Eve walked straight into a puddle, splashing her new shoes and tights.
‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ they both said in unison and then laughed.
‘One of my favourite films,’ Eve said.
‘A classic,’ Mark agreed. ‘So you’re not sorry you came?’
Eve had admitted to him how nearly she hadn’t, how even at the last minute she had almost choked. She still hadn’t got over the shock of being contacted by a half-brother who hadn’t known she existed until he had been going through his dead father’s things and who now wanted to meet her.
‘I’m glad we met. I don’t know why I always assumed you knew about me…probably because I knew about you, even though I’m not meant to,’ she said.
‘I was scared stiff,’ her half-brother admitted with a laugh.
‘You were?’
‘Amy encouraged me; she said it was the right thing to do and then when I saw you at the charity thing the other week—well, Amy made me come over.’
Eve smiled. Mark had brought his wife into the conversation constantly; he clearly adored her, which was wonderful for him. The relationship she had always envied him with his…their father had been pretty awful, apparently. Lord Charlford had bullied his son and heir, taking every opportunity to belittle him. It was his wife who had given Mark his confidence back and given him the strength to escape his father’s toxic influence.
‘Tell me to mind my own business, Eve—Amy always says I’m too pushy!—but do you…have anyone in your life? The man I saw you with…Morelli, perhaps?’
They had reached her building and Eve paused and turned around to face her half-brother. ‘There is someone,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m not sure—’
‘If he’s the one?’
‘We’ve only been together a couple of months but…oh, yes, he’s the one for me. I’m just not sure…’ Eve’s voice terminated on a tearful wobble and she was horrified to feel her eyes fill as she gulped past an emotional constriction the size of a boulder in her aching throat ‘…if I’m the one for him. He’s…’ She stopped and shook her head, the lamp light picking out the tear that escaped and slid down her cheek.
Since he’d left for New York after that night almost three weeks ago now, she hadn’t heard a word from Draco other than a pretty terse text when he had landed. She had told herself she hadn’t expected more, but of course in reality she had.
She’d had a lot of time on her hands to think about her expectations regarding Draco and recognise how unrealistic they were. She had finally admitted to herself that she wanted all the things that she had once scorned. She wanted to love a man to distraction and she wanted to be loved the same way, and it very much looked as though she was not going to get either of those things, as Draco couldn’t give her what she needed.