(2012) Evie Undercover (16 page)

‘With luck, he can sort it out for tomorrow,
’ she said, taking the phone from him. ‘T
hen there won’t be any need for hi
m to come up to the house today.
’

He looked at her in surprise. ‘Why wouldn’t you want to see Eduardo this afternoon? You and he seemed as thick as thieves last night. Or have I missed something?’

‘Yes and no.’

‘I see. No, actually I don’t see. Not that this entirely surprises me, having spent some time with you this week.’ He leaned back on his elbows and
star
ed at her in amusement. ‘I’m sure
that
your answer makes perfectly good sense, but as I can’t precisely see how it does, pray do enlighten me.’

She tucked her legs under
neath
her and turned slightly towards him. ‘It’s quite simple really
. O
f course I like him
–
h
e’s drop-dead gorgeous, easy to talk to and very romantic.’

‘I take it that’s the
“
yes
”
bit, then. So where does the
“
no
”
bit come in?’

‘The
“
no
”
bit is that I don’t want to leap on
top of
him, tear off his clothes and have my evil way with him,’ she giggled.

‘I wasn’t really asking you that.’

‘Yes, you were.’

He laughed. ‘OK. Maybe I was, although I shouldn’t have been. But why don’t you want to rip
off
his clothes if he’s everything you’ve said he is? Is it because you’ve got a Mr Right waiting for you back at home?’

‘It’s because when I look at Eduardo, nothing happens. No stars
,
no flashing lights
,
no tingling
,
nothing. It’s a shame, but there it is. And now it’s my turn
: y
ou’ve asked me
a question
, so it’s
only fair
that I
ask you something
. Or at least it’s fair for as long as we’re Tom and Evie. When you’re back to being
Mr
Hadleigh again, you’ll be the boss and fairness won’t come into it.’

‘What a highly gratifying way in which to view our employer/employee
relationship, Evie,’ he said dry
ly. ‘Fair enough
–
or not so fair as the case may be
–
I’ll answer the question that you’ve put
,
but first would you like some wine?’

‘No, thanks,
I’m fine. What question? I didn’t know I’d asked one yet.’

‘You were asking me if we were ever going to
return to being
Mr
Hadleigh and Miss Shaw to each other again.’

‘No, I wasn’t
,
but since you think I was, I’ll have it as my question. So, will I have to
start
call
ing
you
Mr
Hadleigh
again
when we’re
back
in England?’

‘I don’t know. Will you?’

‘You’ve answered my question with another question. I don’t think even lawyers are allowed to get away with that, are they? You have to answer properly when somebody asks you something. That’s the law.’

‘Ah, but y
ou can do anything you like when you know the law.’

‘You can’t break the law just because you know the law. That would be wrong.’

‘It’s true that you shouldn’t, honest Evie
,
but if you do break the law and you know the law, you have a better chance of getting away with it.’

The muscles in his jaw tightened imperceptibly.

What
!
Could he be about to spill all?

She stretched her legs out, her heart racing, and turned to him.

Chapter Eleven

So near and yet so far!

Go carefully, she told herself. Don’t scare him off.
He’d picked up on what she’
d said about lawyers
and had moved
them
further
along
that line of conversation,
but getting the
lowdown
about
him and Zizi was still a
long way off.

‘But there
’s more than one lawyer
in prison,
’ she pursued,
squashing the thought that
low
was
a pretty good
word for
what she was trying to do
. She
forc
ed
a light bounce
in
to her voice.
‘
T
hat proves that k
nowing the law isn’t everything.
’

‘Y
ou don’t know how many lawyers have got away with breaking the law
, though
. Also, not everyone who breaks the law ends up being sent to prison
. T
he naughty
person
might just get his knuckles rapped.’

He shifted into a differ
ent position on the grass. S
he
surreptitiously
stared at him
from beneath
lowered eyelashes
. S
he could smell
a
story in the air. She drew her breath in, slowly, deeply.

‘You seem to know a lot about the secret
lives of lawyers, Tom.’ W
as
that
a bit too close to the
mark
?
she wondered. S
he softened her word
s with a light-hearted laugh. ‘W
hat about you? Have you ever done anything you shouldn’t have done and got away with it?’

Blimey, his body language!
He’d gone as stiff as a board.

‘You’ve still got a question from me to answer,’ he said after a short pause. ‘I wanted your take on whether we’ll st
ill be
Evie and Tom when we get back to England. I think we’ll return to that question.’

Her heart pounded in excitement. She thought fast. More wine
might
do the trick. She gulped her water at speed and held the plastic glass out to Tom.

‘I promise to answer that, but I’d like
some of that wine first, please,
if
your
offer
’s still open. A glass of w
ine and
a
lazy afternoon belong together
like
a lock
and
a key
. Oh, dear
,
we’re back to prisons again.’ She laughed gaily a
s she
watched him pour her some wine and then put the bottle back on the rug. ‘Aren’t you going to join me
? I
t
do
es
n’t
feel right to
drink
alone
.
’

‘I see
.
It’s goodbye, moral
Evie, and hello, wicked Evie
, is it?
A
nd wicked Evie’
s trying to lead me astray. Bu
t
…’ He gave an exaggerated sigh,
‘…
I can’t let you drink alone, even if I
do
suspect that this is a trick to stop us from going to Montefalco to see its famous murals.’ He finished his water and filled his gla
ss with wine. ‘Now,’ he went on,
‘I’ll have an answer to my question.’

‘Well,’ she said slowly. ‘I guess it all depends upon whether or not we’re becoming friends
–
proper friends
, that is
,
not just people who have to get on because they’ve been forced to spend time together.’

‘So
,
are we becoming proper friends?’

She thought for a moment. ‘
I think so. Or put another way,
I can’t think of anything we’ve done that makes us improper friends.’

‘Then that rather means we’ll still be Evie and Tom in London
,
does it not?’

‘I suppose. But it’s your call.’

‘Here’s to Tom and Evie, no matter where they are.’ He raised his glass to her and took a drink.

‘Now that I’ve answered your question, proper
-
friend Tom, it’s over to you to answer mine, which was, have you ever been a naughty boy and done something you shouldn’t have done, but got away with it?’

‘That’s not very likely, is it?’ he said slowly, staring motionless at the wine in his glass. ‘I’m a libel lawyer. I deal with people’s reputations. The essence of libel is that one person can’t destroy the good name of another if that other person has already destroyed his good name himself. My role in court is to see that any unjustifiable damage to my client’s good name is punished. What kind of lawyer would I be – libel or otherwise
–
if I came to court with dirty hands myself?’

‘So your answer is no?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘On
some
level, everyone’s done one or two things in their life that they shouldn’t have done. I bet you nicked sweets from Woolworth’s when you were little. Be honest now
–
you did, didn’t you?’

‘You’ve done it again! It’s my turn to question you, but you’ve turned it into a question for me to answer. You’re so slippery.’
She forced a laugh.

‘If ever there was a case of the pretty little pot calling the kettle black, that’s it
.
And you’ve cunningly avoided answering what I
first
asked you.’

‘Huh?’ She wrinkled her brow and stared at him. ‘I don’t think much cunning was involved
.
I can’t even remember what
the question was
now.’

‘I asked you if you’d found your
Mr
Right yet
.
’

‘
So you did.
No, I haven’t.’

‘How come? Without the brogues and those huge glasses, you’re quite
easy
on the eye. I would have thought you’d have been snapped up by now.’

‘I don’t want to be snapped up, as you put it, by any old person. It’s got to be by the right person, and I haven’t met that right person yet. When I do, I’ll know it. And if I don’t meet them, then I won’t get married. And what about you? Is there a significant other in your life?’

‘Yes, my work. And talking about work, we’d better make that call to Eduardo now and ask him to fix up a meeting with the man he’s found.
You could also suggest
after breakfast tomorrow, before we set off for Perugia. That
would
be better than having to clock-watch at the end of the day.’

‘Will do,’ she said, and she picked up the phone.

A few hours later,
Tom stood under the pergola outside the kitchen and
watched
Eduardo and Evie stroll around the
outside of the
pool.

So much for Montefalco, he thought. By the time that Eduardo
had
cleared off
, it would be too late for them to go that far, and
anyway,
he wasn’t in the mood any longer. They
might as well
go
straight
back to
Il Poggio
f
or dinner.

He stepped
out
from under the pergola and w
alked
a little way
across
the grass so that he had a better view of what they were doing as they
walked down to the grove of olive trees
.

Whatever Evie may have said about not being interested in Eduardo in the way that he’d feared she was
–
well, not feared, that was a bit strong – not in the way that he’d
thought
, looking at them both together,
i
t was hard to believe. They were obviously getting on brilliantly and were doing very nicely without him.

Admittedly, he could have walked round the garden with them, but he hadn’t wanted to. He couldn’t join in the conversation – no matter however good the interpreter, everything had to be relayed through another person and that was a distancing thing – and also he’d wanted to observe them when they were both together
. Not for any particular reason,
just out of interest.