(2012) Evie Undercover (8 page)

‘
Bloody hell, what a view!’ she exclaimed.

‘
It is, isn’t it?
Will you t
ell Eduardo that I’m very pl
eased with everything he’s done?
’

She did, and
Eduardo bowed low in Tom’s direction.

‘Aha,’ Tom said,
mov
ing
closer to E
vie as Eduardo bent to examine the
white roses growing around one of the stone pillars. ‘You’re not the only one to get the continental treatment. It’s funny, though
–
I don’t remember Eduardo being quite so Italian before, but then I
guess
my translator wasn’t as eye-catching before.’

Eye-catching!

Eye-catching was good,
very good. He must be feeling even more relaxed with her than he’d been at breakfast to make a personal comment like that. Tongues loose
ned when people relaxed.
Thank God she’d had the nerve to ta
ke that gamble the night before. Who dares wins, and all that.

She watched Tom
as he
reach
ed
up and push
ed
a vine tendril away from one of
the
bunches of tiny green grapes hanging from the top of the
loggia
.
The sun
shone brightly
through
the gaps
between the
leaves
, bathing his face in dappled light. He really is
a knockout
, she thought, and her heart gave a sudden lurch.

His hand still on the tendril, he
turned slightly and
grinned down at her.

‘You could make wine
,’ she said
quickly
.
‘
Château
Hadleigh
has a good ring to it
.’

The corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled, she notic
ed.

She beamed back up at him. Y
es, she’d get her story
– she had to
–
but she’d
find a way of doing it that didn’t hurt him
.

‘Time’s moving on, Evie,
’
he said,
abandon
ing
his attemp
t at redirecting the vine
. ‘We’ll have to get going or the shops will have closed for
lunch. Can you ask Eduardo what we
’
re doing
about the furniture?’

After a short discussion with Eduardo, she turned back to Tom. ‘He’s got to get back to Todi now,
so
he suggests that we – you and me, that is – go and order the beds and bedside tables from a place just outside Massa Piccola this afternoon, and then come back here
,
decide what other furniture we need and measure up. He’ll collect us from
Il Poggio
tomorrow morning and take us to one of the furniture co-operatives in Città di Castello. He said you’ll get just about everything you want there.’

‘Does
he have
to come with us tomorrow?’

‘Oh, yes, definitely,’ she said.
Spending time with Eduardo was a
n absolute
must if she was going to make any headway with him.
‘
They know him there and he’ll
make sure
that you get a good price for what you want. A
nd
you said yourself
he’s artistic
,
so
it’s worth having his advice
.
H
e’s
sorry about having
to go now
, but
he’s leaving us the keys
. Is that OK?’

‘That sounds fine to me.’

She turned to Eduardo. ‘
Tutto va bene, Eduardo. Allora, ciao
.
’

Eduardo inclined his head towards Tom, then turned back to Evie and took her hand in his.

God, not more fucking gallantry, she thought. She was about to snatch her hand away when she suddenly stopped herself. What on earth was she thinking
of
?
Here was A Golden Opportunity to send a come-hither signal to Eduardo ahead of a day that
they were going to be spending with him
,
and she’d been about to blow it
.
Memo to self – keep
your
focus on the all important task at hand.

She forced herself to stand very still as he lightly ran the palm of his hand along the length of her fingers, then bent low over her hand and press
ed
his lips against her skin for the second time that morning. Straightening up, he gazed intensely into her face, his dark eyes smouldering into hers.

‘
A domani
, Eduardo
,’ she said. Not seductive enough
for someone trying to show they were gagging for their meeting the following day
, she decided. She lowered her voice until it seemed to come out of her sandals. ‘
A domani
.’ He bowed again at her.

She absolutely must not start laughing
.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Tom was leaning against one of the pillars, staring at them, his expression
thoughtful
. She wondered what he
was thinking about. No, she was
n’t – she was focusing on Eduardo. She smiled fixedly at the top of Eduardo’s glossy head, which was still bent low in a deep bow.

Eduardo
rose to his full height and caught the tail end of her smile. His eyes shone.
‘
Ciao per il momento
, Evie
.
Si, a domani
.’

Turning away from her
with
an expression of deep re
luctance
on his face, he gave a slight wave in Tom’s direction and made his way back to his convertible. She gaze
d
fixedly at
him until he’d got into his car, driven through the iron gates and turned left down the mountain road.
When
he was completely out of sight, she wandered over to the top of the grassy slope and stared ahead of her, her eyes on the view, but her mind elsewhere.

She hoped she hadn’t made a mistake in pressing for Eduar
do to come to Città with them. B
y doing that, she’d missed out on the chance to be alone with Tom all day. Having Eduardo when they went to the furniture co-operative was clearly the right thing to do
,
whatever her motives
,
but it wasn’t going to make for an easy day. If she was going to keep both men happy, she would need all of her wits about her.

But that was tomorrow. They still had the rest of
today
ahead of them, and it would be just her and Tom.
Just the two of them alone.
She turned round and went over to him.

‘What’s next?’ she asked brightly.

Chapter Six

Getting warmer
…

Evie and Eduardo. Tom lounged against one of the pillars and watched them together
,
Eduardo’s dark head bent over Evie’s hand as he took his never-ending leave of her, and
Evie
clearly loving every nauseous, sick-making minute of it.

H
e shouldn’t
really
be surprised that Eduardo was bowing and scraping in that ludicrous manner – she had a quirky sort of appeal: she wasn’t beautiful, but she had a lively face and her hair was a wonderful colour, even if it never st
ayed exactly where she put it – but p
ersonally, she wasn’t his
type
. S
he didn’t have the sleek, sophisticated look that he went for, but he could see that a lot
of
other men might
find her attractive, and Eduardo was obviously one of them – he
was acting like a rampant dog on
heat.

No, a
s far as he was concerned, h
e went out of the way to avoid
women like
Evie; h
e only dated
women
who were emotionally uninvolving. H
e had absolutely no intention of losing his senses over anyone, not now, and not for many years
to come, if at all.

Instinct developed over years of studying the people who’d come to court for one reason or another told him that girls like Evie could be a threat to his emotional stability. Girls like that, with an indefinable spark about them, could get under your skin before you knew it, and
the way to guard against that was to give
them wide berth. He had to do so for his own protection.

Time and time again, his barrister friends who
specialised
in divorce law would tell him about their clients, many of whom were women out to get what they could from husbands who were seen by their wives as the male equivalent of a milk cow. He’d listened ha
rd and learnt his lesson well. I
t was all too easy for a
naï
ve, gullible
man to succumb
in all innocence
to the wily charms of a manipulative woman, marry her
,
and then, in the blink of an eye, find himself forced to accept a divorce settlement that screwed every last penny out of him.

Well, he wasn’t naïve – far from it, thanks to his friends – and
he wasn’
t gullible. H
e
had
no intention of being cheated out of the fruits of years of hard work by
a woman’s all-consuming greed, and t
he best way to protect himself from such a fate – in fact, the only way
–
was to avoid dating any woman w
ho had
the potential to draw him in emotionally. Maybe one day he would see things differently, but
if so,
that day was still a long way off, and until that day came, if
ever
it
came, the Evies of this world were
strictly
a no-go area.

He
watched as she
smile
d
down at Eduardo, who
was bending so low that his nose was almost touch
ing the ground
.

It was true that she didn’t look grasping or devious – on the contrary, she seemed to be good fun and unusually open and honest
–
but then you wouldn’t expect a successful con man to look like a con man
. H
is defences were going to stay up.

Not that she seemed
the slightest bit
interested in making a breach in them – her interest clearly
lay
else
where.
That was pretty clear f
ro
m the way she
was
star
ing
after Eduardo as he walked towards his car.
He couldn’t see her eyes so he didn’t know
if she
was
gazing
at the retreating back with longing
, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she was
. Not that it mattered, anyway.

H
e’d seen Eduardo’s eyes
, though,
as he’d turned
away
from Evie
and
give
n
him that silly wave, and
what Eduardo
thought of
Evie
was pretty clear from the slobbery
expression
on his face
. I
t was almost enough to make you throw up
.
He’d never seen
him
look like that before.

Obviously that was a good thing as far as he was concerned
, he thought hastily
–
God forbid that he should ever be the object of his
geometra
’s soulful gaze
– but it strongly suggested that Eduardo
had
fallen for Evie in a big way from virtually the first moment that he saw her.

And t
here was
a degree of
evidence
to suggest
that Evie felt the same about Eduardo
. In addition to
the way she’d been gazing at him
, s
he’d been very quick – unnecessarily quick, he’d thought
at the time
–
to stress that Eduardo should come with them on the furniture expedition the following day, and that could only mean that she wanted to spend as much time with him as possible.