(2012) Evie Undercover (25 page)

Jess beamed at her. ‘At least you’re thinking like a human being now, not like
a muck
raker. Isn’t she, Rach?’

Rachel nodded.

‘If I told the editor that I hadn’t been able to find out anything, or if I just quit the magazine, he’d be so bloody mad at me for wasting a once in a lifetime chance to wreck the life of someone he really hates, that he might be vindictive enough to tell Tom the truth about me. I’d never put it past him. You can’t predict how a scumbag like that will react.’

‘Would it really matter that much if he told him?’ Rachel asked.

‘It
would if he told Tom before I
told him
. He’d put me in the worst possible light, and i
t would instantly kill off any chance of there being a Tom and me
– Tom would never believe that I’d intended to confess all
to him
. I don’t know for sure if
the pig would
do that, but I’m not taking any chances.’

‘I suppose that makes sense, when you think about it,’ Jess said.

‘It really does. By stalling him like I did, I’ve got him off my back for a bit, and I’ve given myself time to see if Tom and I click in England like we did in Italy. I’ll have some idea of that when w
e’ve been out on Saturday.
Saturday evening is mega important to me.’

‘Suppose you don’t click?’ Jess asked. ‘What then?’

‘Then nothing. I’ll never tell anyone what Tom told me – that stays with me whatever happens or doesn’t happen. There wouldn’t be any need to tell Tom about
Pure Dirt
, though, as it wo
uld
n’t matter. Tom w
ould go his way and I’d
go mine. I’
d
temp until I get another job.’

‘And if you do click?’

‘I’ll tell Tom at the end of next week, probably on the Friday or Saturday. Instead of giving the ed
itor a story on the Friday, I’ll
tell him to get st
uffed. If I don’t see Tom that
night
, I’ll tell him on the Saturday.
The
editor would
n’t be able to
contact
him
till the following week, and
by
then he’d be too late
.’

‘
It’s brill that
yo
u’ve
seen the light
, Evie.
Rachel and I knew
you would
.’

‘You could have fooled me! You were really shitty to me before I went away.’

Jess shrugged dismissively. ‘That’s water under the proverbial. So how about we celebrate the return of the Evie we know and love with another bottle of wine? Yeah, I know
–
any excuse. And we’ll get some more nachos. This time we’ll go the whole hog and have the works – nachos, sour cream, guacamole, salsa and jalapeno peppers. Not to mention lashings of melted cheese on top.’

Chapter Seventeen

Come in
to my parlour …

It had been a highly satisfactory first full day in London, Gabriela purred inwardly
.
Her coffee cup in her hand, s
he strolled over to the large front window
of her first floor apartment in the Holland Park house leased by the Italian design company she worked for
, and
gazed out
. Highly satisfactory.

It had been just the sort of day that she’d had in mind when she’d brought forward the date of her flight to London, thereby giving herself the chance of having two or three days alone with Evie before she started on the project that she’d been sent to England to oversee. These were days in which they would begin to get to know each other, to bond closely and to see each other as friends. A
nd this was what was happening.

She gave a thin smile of satisfaction.

T
he i
nventi
on of
Alessandro had been inspired.
And h
ow easily she’d been able
to make Evie believe that she
, Gabriela di Montefiore, had
fallen in love with a man of no
status
. As if
she, with
her
superior
background and education
,
would
find herself enamoured of a man the English would term a loser. She gave a short laugh of derision
,
raised the small white china espresso cup to her lips
and moved over to the window.

Sipping her coffee as she stared out at the leafy garden in the centre of the square, her dark eyes gradually narrowed their focus to a man and woman who were lying in the middle of the grass
,
clearly hoping to catch the last rays of the late afternoon
s
un. T
he man had undone his shirt and opened it wide
in order
to let the sun hit the bare skin of his grotesque belly, and the woman had rolled her denim skirt up to the top of her wide thighs
and lay with them splayed apart.

An expression of distaste flickered across Gabriela’s face and she turned away from the window.

She’d never understand the obsession of the English with getting their skin as
brown and leathery as possible.
They had no sense of what was beautiful, and they seemed completely unable to appreciate the elegance and the refinement of pale skin. Instead of rejoicing in the natural pallor of the English skin, they removed their clothes at the first hint of sunshine and put themselves where everyone could see their ugliness and watch the sweat pouring off their obscene bodies.

Shuddering at the image that filled her mind, she went out of the sitting room, across the hall and into the narrow kitchen. There she carefully put her cup and saucer into the dishwasher, straightened the brushed stainless steel toaster that stood on the granite worktop so that it was in line with the
rim of the
white
cupboard
, returned the coffee beans to the wall cupboard and went back
to
the sitting room again.

Pausing in the middle of the room, she stood for a few moments looking around her, thinking about possible ways of dressing the room so as to give it the appropriate aesthetic appeal for somewhere that was to be her home for several months, somewhere that would, in effect, be an extension of herself and a reflection of her values. Then she moved to the long glass coffee table in front of the black leather sofa and bent over the table to the large pile of magazines
that
she’d bought when
she was
out with Evie.

Early in the day, s
he’d
mentioned to Evie that she’d like to
buy
a magazine or two.
To her surprise,
Evie had stiffened. She
d
i
d
n’t even know if Evie was aware of it, but t
here was
a definite
charge in the air, a
nd
it was noticeable that
s
he’d had to remind
her
several
times
in the day about the magazines.

I
n the end,
Evie
had selected
some
magazines
about
fashion, design and houses, but she’d pressed her to include the most popular of the celebrity magazines. These were not really seen in Italy where people’s privacy was something to be respected, she’d added, and she was curious to
discover
if the
y
we
re as unpleasant as she’
d heard.

After a quick flick through the
heap of
magazines
on the table
, she selected three
and
sank gracefully to the sofa. She smoothed her trousers over her knees, pulled the
first of the
magazine
s
to her and opened
it. Her mobile phone sounded. She d
ropp
ed
the magazine
s on
to the floor
, hurriedly took the phone from her bag, glanced at the contact name and gave a slight exclamation of disappointment.

‘
Pronto, Eduardo
,’ she said into the phone, and leaned back
,
wait
ing
for him to draw a breath between the questions he was excitedly plying her with, one after the other.

Her apartment seemed to be well-located, she was eventually able to tell him. It was in a lovely large house, which had rooms with very high ceilings. He would adore the ornate carvings on the cornices and ceiling roses. Yes, she was quite certain that both the apartment and its location would suit her well.

And yes, she had seen Evie. I
n fact, they had just spent a very pleasant day together and were fast becoming good friends; she would be seeing her again the following day. And no, she hadn’t forgotten that he wanted her to try to encourage Evie to think seriously about his offer of a job. She obviously hadn’t had time to bring
up
the subject yet, and nor would it have been appropriate, but she would definitely approach
it
when the time was right.

Poor Eduardo, she thought, as she ended the call with an assurance that she’d speak to
him again before the weekend. S
he could hear the emotion in his voice at the mere mention of Evie.

She slipped her phone back into her bag. What a relief it had been that Evie hadn’t been interested in Eduardo. For Eduardo, with his breeding, talent and good looks, to have allied himself with someone as paltry as Evie would have been completely out of the question, and the whole situation, had Evie felt differently about Eduardo, could have led to unpleasant dissension within the family.

Evie most assuredly did not have the style, education and background that were the prerequisites for anyone being admitted into the Montefiori family. Admittedly a sense of style could possibly have been taught to her – she was reasonably attractive and could have been shown how to carry off the right sort of clothes – but breeding was something that you either had or did not have, and Evie most definitely did not have it.

But i
t was, of course, too soon for Eduardo to be thinking about the realities and practicalities of the situation. He still imagined himself to be in love and was languishing in the knowledge that
her
interest lay elsewhere, but when his misery had passed
–
and pass it would
–
he, too, wo
uld see that such a union w
ould never have been
suitable
and he would find a girl from among the best families in Tuscany and Umbria.

Now that Evie was back in England out of his sight, Eduardo would more swiftly come to his senses. She, Gabriela, would ensure that Eduardo’s healing process continued uninterrupted
.
Evie was never to be
encouraged
to consider for so much as one moment taking up the offer of a job made to her by her besotted brother.

She leaned back against the sofa and stared at the wall on the other side of the room. But it was more than just the Evie and Eduardo abomination that had brought her prematurely to England
:
it was also the situation between Evie and Tom.

After the night the four of them had had dinner together
in Casigliano,
high on the hillside, she had gone back with Eduardo to his house in Todi and he had told her that he feared t
hat Evie had eyes only for Tom.

A shiver ran through her as she remembered how she’d felt at that moment.

To remove Evie from his thoughts, she’d encouraged him to keep on thinking this way, telling him that it was more than likely that
someone like
Evie would try her luck with such a rich, successful man in the week that they’d been thrown together. She had honestly believed that this might be so. She didn’t tell Eduardo, however, that she was confident that it would never be any more than a passing fling on Tom’s side, if, indeed, he had succumbed to Evie’s advances.

Evie was no more suitable to be the wife of a
rich, successful lawyer like Tom, an intelligent, educated man, who had two homes
,
possibly more
, with
his main home being in one of the most desirable and exclusive parts of London, than
she
was for Eduardo. A man in Tom’s position could do so much better for himself, and he would be well aware of that.

Tom would be looking for an educated woman, well
bred, with a natural elegance and flair, who knew how to dress and to move in the best of social circles; a woman capable of being a skilled hostess in his home and of presiding over elegant dinner parties thrown for friends and colleagues; a woman who was of the same intellectual level as he was. She knew exactly the sort of person that Tom needed.