Never Too Late (55 page)

looked like you were in dreamland.’

‘I’m fine,’ Evie gasped. She could hardly say she’d been

having the most deliciously erotic fantasy imaginable and

that Cara had jerked her back to reality. ‘I’m just tired,’ she fibbed. ‘I almost dozed off’

‘You’ll never guess who’s here,’ Cara said excitedly.

‘Max! He’s coming for the whole week after all.’

Talk of the devil, Evie thought, as the hero of her fantasy

appeared behind her sister, towering over Cara. He was

devilish, a demon who always knew when to turn up to do

the most damage to her vulnerable heart.

Evie briefly wondered if Max could tell what she’d been

thinking. It had been so intense, she felt as if her face must

betray her excitement somehow.

He smiled at her, a lazy, confident smile, as if he knew. He couldn’t. It’s just that he is so sure of himself, Evie thought crossly, so bloody sure.

‘Here,’ she said, thrusting the trolley at Cara but staring

up at Max defiantly. ‘You take care of this for a moment.

I’m going to phone Simon.’

With a toss of her ponytail, she whizzed around on her

new cork wedged-heel sandals and stormed off in the

direction of the phones.

Simon was gratifyingly pleased to hear from her.

‘Evie,’ he said, delighted at the sound of her voice. “I was

sure you wouldn’t ring me until tonight at the villa. Have

you checked in yet? There are terrible queues for those

charters.’

‘We’re checking in soon,’ she reassured him. ‘Cara’s

minding the luggage and, yes, the queue is a mile long.’

“I bet you didn’t leave until after nine this morning,’ he

said fussily. “I said you should leave earlier than nine

o’clock if you wanted to get decent seats.’

Don’t be such an old woman, she wanted to say. Instead,

she replied mildly that the flight wasn’t until half-twelve

and they had loads of time to spare.

‘I miss you already,’ he said gloomily. ‘I should have gone

with you but I’d never get the time off. We’re so busy right

now at work.’

‘I miss you too,’ Evie said automatically and not altogether

truthfully. Then she felt guilty. How could she not

miss her fiance? He’d generously told her to go off on a

week’s holiday without him, without once implying she

should be saving her days off for when they were married

so they could both jet off for a break. Simon was so good to

her, so kind.

‘I do love you,’ she said impulsively. ‘When I get home,

it’ll only be five weeks to the wedding. Isn’t it exciting?’

‘Yes, darling. Now don’t have too wild a hen night in

Spain,’ he warned jokily. ‘I don’t want you running off with

some handsome Spanish waiter!’

Evie joined in his laughter somewhat halfheartedly

Spanish waiters weren’t the problem, she thought wryly.

The danger was much closer to home. Poor, dear Simon

would never for a nanosecond even dream that she’d fancy

another man, which was why he’d made that crack about a

handsome Spaniard.

Hanging up, after blowing lots of kisses down the phone,

Evie went into the Ladies’ and rinsed her hot face with

cool water. Instinctively reaching into her handbag for her

make-up to doll herself up, she stopped dead.

What are you doing? Plastering yourself in make-up to

impress Max Stewart? she asked herself. A pale face with

two bright spots of colour in the centre of her cheeks

gazed wearily back at her from the mirror. A traitorous,

trollopy face, she told herself fiercely.

Poor Simon didn’t deserve a fiancee like her. He deserved

a virtuous loving woman and that’s what he was going to

get. Redoing her ponytail so that not one tendril of hair

escaped to soften the almost nun-like effect, Evie swept out

of the loo making more resolutions than a reformed alcoholic

after a binge. I won’t talk to Max, I won’t flirt with

Max. I’ll be cool and distant. And phone Simon every day.

Her resolve strengthened, she marched towards the

Malaga checkin desks. ‘Watch out, Mr Stewart,’ she murmured

under her breath.

Evie was behaving very oddly indeed, Cara decided, flopping

down on to a green chair beside Gate 26 and

scrabbling around in her rucksack for the issue of Company she’d bought earlier. Evie had started being strange around the time Max had appeared on the scene, practically

ignoring him in a manner that was verging on the rude.

Neither had she seemed very pleased to see Vida and

their father when they arrived, out of breath and laughing

after a scramble to get to the airport on time because

they’d overslept.

That’s the last time I leave you in charge of the alarm

clock,’ Vida had teased Andrew affectionately.

‘And whose fault is it that we were up so late?’ he

demanded archly.

They exchanged a private, utterly intimate glance and

then started laughing again. Their closeness and obvious

enjoyment of each other warmed Cara’s heart. It was

wonderful to see her father so in love and so happy.

Perhaps that was why Evie was snappier than a teething

puppy. But she hadn’t seemed that upset by the older

couple’s behaviour, Cara reflected. Apart from a tightlipped

comment that Vida could have told her Max was

coming ‘for the whole holiday’, Evie hadn’t appeared to

notice her father and his new bride behaving like a couple of

teenagers, always touching each other and exchanging long

looks. It was clearly Max who irritated her, although Cara

couldn’t imagine why. He was so nice and had told Cara he

wanted to sit beside her on the plane.

‘Evie has the seat beside mine but maybe you two

should swop so we can chat,’ he’d said.

Cara didn’t enlighten him with the news that Evie had

already swopped, muttering that she wanted to read her

book and didn’t want to have to make conversation on the

flight.

He and Rosie came into view; Max had obviously said

something funny because Rosie was giggling hysterically.

‘God, you’ll have to get Max to tell you this story,’ she

giggled, sliding into the seat beside Cara. ‘It’s all about this actress and the things she wanted on location. Imagine she

wanted two kilos of handmade chocolates, a crate of

bourbon, smoked salmon for her poodles, and Max found

her on her hands and knees measuring the length of her trailer with a ruler to see if it was bigger than everybody else’s!’ She broke into peals of laughter.

‘I can’t tell you top-secret stories if you blab them

immediately afterwards, you brat,’ he said in pretend

annoyance, sitting down on the other side of Cara and

stretching out his long legs. He grinned at Rosie and Cara,

white teeth lighting up his tanned, clever face.

God, he was gorgeous, Cara realised, suddenly struck by

the thought that Max was friendly, kind and available.

Gloriously available. And he liked her. He didn’t think she

was uptight, strange, and more neurotic than a roomful of

therapy junkies. He hadn’t told her she should have been a

celibate. Correction, ‘bloody celibate’.

The memory of that final, fierce row with Ewan flickered

in her head like a video she couldn’t stop playing.

‘I don’t know why you bothered going out with me in the

first place,’ he had said, forced out of his habitual cool. ‘It’s a game to you, Cara, a bloody game! I liked being with you, I

still like being with you and I don’t have a problem with

letting people know that. But you don’t want anyone to

know we’re going out. Nobody. I feel like you’re ashamed of

me or there’s some weird thing going on in that weird head

of yours and I can tell you, I’ve had enough of it. So goodbye.’

Goodbye, huh? After four months, a curt goodbye, was

it? Well, she’d show him. Cara fought back the lump that

swelled in her throat, threatening to make her gasp with

misery. She’d show that damned Ewan Walshe she was no

celibate.

Unbuttoning the top two buttons of her blue shirt so

that a faint glimpse of creamy collarbone was visible above

her white T-shirt, she leaned closer so that her shoulder

was touching Max’s.

‘Sorry,’ she said, not even vaguely meaning it. It was

going to be a good holiday, she was sure of it.

The crowd around the baggage carousel in Malaga airport

had practically disappeared, apart from a couple of elderly

lady travellers who were sorting out their cases slowly and

carefully, clutching tapestry vanity cases as if they contained the Hope diamond and a couple of Romanov tiaras.

Cara sat on her barrel bag and took occasional slurps from

her bottle of Coke. Rosie leaned against a pillar, eyeing up

and being eyed up by a young mahogany-tanned airport

security man. Vida and Andrew stood apart from the

family, talking quietly to each other, seemingly unconcerned

that the carousel had been rattling around for half

an hour and there was no sign of either their or Evie’s bags.

Tapping her foot in irritation, Evie watched as the

carousel trundled on and an unclaimed, burst-open suitcase

sailed past them for about the fiftieth time, the same pair

of orange knickers sticking out at exactly the same angle.

‘Maybe you should grab it, Mum,’ Rosie called from her

eyeing up position. ‘Hopefully not everything in there is

orange.’

Cara chuckled and Evie wondered which one of them

she’d kill first: her daughter or her sister. Nobody seemed

to care a damn that her luggage hadn’t arrived.

Vida and Andrew were too insulated by love to care that

they hadn’t an item of clothing between them. Rosie was

in exuberant form because this was her first grownup

holiday abroad and Cara was sleepily happy after four

hours sitting beside Max, slurping back red wine and

flirting with him over some lukewarm pasta and tunafish.

Across the aisle, Evie had pretended to be engrossed in

her Jilly Cooper novel but she’d barely managed to read a

couple of chapters what with listening to what the other

pair were saying. There had been far too much whispering

and laughing for her liking.

To her chagrin, Max had totally ignored her, apart from

silently letting her go past him when they disembarked, a

polite smile on his face. And now, to add insult to injury,

her luggage was lost in the airport twilight zone and

nobody gave a fiddler’s. Evie didn’t know whether to kick

something with rage or burst into tears.

“The good news is that they’ve found your suitcases,’ announced Max calmly, returning from his visit to the lost luggage department. ‘The bad news is that they won’t be

here until the next flight arrives at nine o’clock tomorrow

morning.’

‘What?’ squawked Evie.

‘Relax,’ he said calmly, ‘they’ll deliver everything to the

villa.’

‘Wonderful!’ shrieked Evie, knowing she sounded like a

fishwife and not caring.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Max repeated in the same placating tone.

How could he be so calm? she raged inwardly. Because it

wasn’t his entire case full of swimwear, shorts and Tshirts

that had gone AWOL. He wasn’t the one wearing casual

cream trousers that had got newsprint on them or a Tshirt

that smelled as if it had been worn by a rugby international

during a grudge match. How the hell was she going to go

out to dinner tonight without fresh clothes? What about

her toothbrush, knickers, moisturiser? She was about to

explain all this heatedly when Vida sashayed up, looking

remarkably unconcerned.

‘Well, honey, what’s the story?’ she asked her son in her

soft, American-accented voice. ‘Breakfast in Dublin, lunch

in Malaga, bags in Hong Kong?’

Mother and son laughed merrily. Evie ground her teeth.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ joked Max. ‘Seriously,

Mother, they’ll be here on the nine a.m. flight and they’ll

be delivered to the villa.’

Vida shrugged while Evie shook in outrage. How could

anyone joke at a time like this? Vida was so bloody

laid-back about the whole thing - didn’t she realise what

had happened?

‘Lucky I’ve got this.’ she said confidingly to Evie, indicating the small tote bag she carried. ‘I’ve got so used to

travelling and getting my luggage lost that I always bring a

small bag with a few things in it. You know, pants and a

change of clothes, toothbrush, that sort of thing. Your dad’s

got one too, so we can manage. I hate schlepping it around,

but hey, it’s useful. You can borrow from Cars, can’t you,

.vie:

This time, she really thought she would cry with frustration.

Yes, she could borrow Cara’s stuff but it wasn’t the

same. She wanted her own things, her own T-shirt, her own moisturiser, her own toothbrush, her own grapefruit shower gel she’d treated herself to. She almost sobbed as

she remembered the lovely fruity smell of it and how

pleased she’d felt when she packed it. Now it was all

ruined and nobody understood …

When Max slid his arm around her, she didn’t experience

that usual frisson of electricity: instead, his arm felt

comforting, loving, somehow right. As if its rightful place