Kitabı oku: «One Night With Her Ex: The One That Got Away / The Man From her Wayward Past / The Ex Who Hired Her», sayfa 3

CHAPTER THREE

THE problem with the truth was that people so often hated hearing it. Logan was no exception. He didn’t want to admit the darker aspects of his nature. The possessiveness. The passion that coursed through him, unbridled and deep. He’d only ever lost himself in a woman once and that was with Angie. Never again.

Not once since then.

His mother knew how dark he ran on occasion. Mothers knew. Half-brothers who were eight years the younger did not always know such things, and the furtive glances Max kept giving him set Logan to seething.

‘Don’t judge until you’ve been there,’ he snapped.

‘No judgment here,’ said Max quickly. ‘None. Just trying to figure the best way forward.’

‘Get rid of her.’

‘He means the best way forward for everyone,’ his mother said pointedly.

His mother was not the weakest link at this table. Neither was Max.

Logan turned once more to Evangeline. ‘You really want to cross me?’

‘What I want is for MEP to land the civic project and for you to stop being such a dog in the manger,’ she said evenly. ‘You don’t want me, and that’s fine. I get it. I got it ten years ago when you walked away. So stay away. Stay out of my business and I’ll stay out of yours.’

‘You’re in my home.’

‘Actually,’ his mother said gently, and reached for her wine, ‘this is my home.’

‘Logan, you’ll be gone in a couple of days,’ said Max carefully. ‘Evie and I will be back in Sydney. Out of sight, out of mind.’

‘No,’ said Logan curtly. ‘She won’t be out of mind, she’ll be within reach, and if you think your sham of a marriage will keep me in check, think again.’

‘You still want her,’ said Max slowly.

Logan didn’t want to answer that question. For over ten years he’d avoided that particular question, contenting himself with less, always less. Touching no one too deeply and making damn sure no one tapped the darkness in him.

‘Yes,’ he admitted through clenched teeth, and pushed back from the table, intent on leaving before he made a bad situation worse. ‘It appears I do. Which is why if you have any care for her whatsoever you’ll get her the hell out of my way.’

Evie gave up all pretence of eating once Logan had stalked from the room. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Stop it, Evangeline,’ said Caroline Carmichael sharply. ‘When you’ve done wrong you can apologise. But I see no reason for you to apologise for the behaviour of my son.’

‘We can call off the wedding,’ said Evie. ‘I’m happy to call the wedding off. This isn’t going to work.’

‘No kidding,’ murmured Max.

‘There’ll be other civic centres,’ she said, and almost believed it. ‘Better ones.’

‘Evie, you know how often projects like this one come up,’ said Max tightly. ‘Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture here for you and me and MEP. I’ll talk to Logan again. He’ll come round, I know he will. Because that wasn’t my brother, just then. That’s not who he is. He’s just … jet-lagged or something.’

Evie said nothing. Caroline said nothing.

And Max drank deeply of his wine.

‘Are you strong enough to withstand my eldest son’s desire for you?’ Caroline asked her bluntly.

‘No.’

‘Are you still submissive?’

‘No.’ Evie smiled faintly. ‘I was very young. I found my strength.’

‘You might want to consider ramming that particular development down Logan’s throat,’ said Caroline.

‘I thought I just did.’

This time it was Caroline’s turn to offer up a faint smile. ‘Harder.’

Evie stood.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Max.

‘To abuse your brother’s throat.’

She found him in one of the bedrooms, slinging clothes into a suitcase with little care as to how they landed.

‘Get out,’ he said when he saw her in the doorway.

‘No.’ Evie made herself continue forward, shutting the door behind her, and moving forward again until she was well into the room, but not so close as to be within reach. ‘You’re being childish, Logan. You’re letting your fear of behaviours long gone colour your vision of the present. You need to learn how to deal with the person I am now. I need to learn how to deal with you.’

‘Childish?’ he said incredulously.

Was that really as far as he’d got with her words? ‘Don’t forget fearful.’

He pinned her with a fierce gaze.

‘Why else would you be running away?’ she pointed out as gently as she could.

And received silence in reply.

‘Do you feel guilty about some of the things we did together? Is that it? Because you shouldn’t. You had my consent.’

‘I know that, Angie.’

‘Is it because you exposed your deepest desires to me, and I just fed them to your family?’

‘Those desires started—and finished—with you. They don’t belong to me any more. And, yeah. You could have kept them to yourself.’

‘Maybe I thought your family needed a better explanation than the one they’d been served. I didn’t realise you were only interested in being truthful up to a point.’

‘You should have.’

She wanted to rattle him, Evie realised. Pick away at his anger and his armour and see what was underneath. ‘You can’t dominate me any more, Logan. You need to realise that.’

‘I don’t want to dominate you,’ he muttered. ‘I never wanted that.’ He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and looked away. ‘But it happened.’

‘I thought I was in love with you. Week one of an intensely sexual, sensual relationship,’ she argued. ‘So much to feel and to learn and, yes, my focus was on pleasing you. I like to think I’d have regained my equilibrium at some stage. That the relationship dynamic would have evened out in time. But I guess we’ll never know.’

‘I don’t want to dwell on the past, Angie. I just want you gone from my life now.’

‘Which is in itself an exercise in enforcing your will over mine.’ Evie moved forward until she was crowding his space; nothing weak about that move. ‘That seem right to you?’

‘You can’t marry him, Angie.’

‘You really think Max would still have me after the fuss you just made?’

‘He’s got fifty million reasons to ignore the fuss I just made,’ said Logan gruffly. ‘You don’t. You need to end this now.’

Logan’s hand went to the back of his neck. From there, it was only too easy for Evie to let her gaze run over the hard angle of his jaw, the stubble just starting to show, and from there to his lips. A woman could fixate on those lips.

‘Don’t,’ he warned huskily.

‘Don’t what?’ Wonder if she could coax them open? Wonder what it would take to make them say the name Evie instead of Angie? ‘Don’t tempt you? Don’t wonder what we might have had if you’d stuck around long enough to find out? Because I do wonder what we might have had together, Logan. I can’t help it. And I’m sure as hell wondering it now.’

‘Nothing good.’

‘You don’t know that. You barely know me. What if I am a match for you now? Ever thought of that?’

‘No.’

‘Maybe you should,’ she cautioned gently, and touched her fingers to his lips and he went still as a statue but he let her do it. ‘What if we could bring this passion between us under control?’

‘We’d get lost,’ he muttered as her fingertips strayed to his jaw. ‘I’d get lost and I can’t afford to, Angie. I can’t.’

‘What if I know the way?’

‘Do you?’ he asked, and then his hands were on her waist, dragging her towards him, and his lips crushed down on hers, desperate and tortured, no half-measures with this man and there never had been. It was all or nothing, and his kisses inflamed her as desperation turned into desire hot and sweet. And then he took his tongue to her mouth and lit an inferno.

A step backwards towards the bed for him as Evie set her palms to his chest and drank deeply of his passion and his pain. A step forward for her, and then they were falling, and he was beneath her, and his eyes were closed and his ravenous mouth never left her skin.

Her dress proved a poor barrier against Logan’s clever hands, the thin shoulder straps sliding down, and then he swept the bodice down to reveal the swell of small breasts and the tips of her nipples. He set his tongue to one, and then lips, and suckled hard and Evie gasped as he took her to the edge of pain, and he knew exactly where that edge began, damn him, and when to retreat and bring pleasure coursing in its wake.

Palms to his shoulders, with only the warm cotton of his shirt in the way and she wanted his clothes gone, and hers, but when she tried to undo his shirt buttons he wouldn’t let her, pushing her hands away with ruthless efficiency. ‘No,’ he muttered.

And then he slung his arms beneath her thighs and slid her up and over his chest and onto his mouth and licked his way past her panties and into her, and if she thought he’d been a skilled lover ten years ago it was nothing to the expertise he wielded now.

With tongue and with hands he opened her up and drew her out, until her gasps became pleas and her pleas turned into a breathless stream of nonsense as she rode him, no room for his pleasure now, it was all about Evie, and what this man had always been able to do to her in the bedroom, and that was make sensation the only thing that mattered and self-control nothing more than a wispy memory.

This wasn’t submission, she thought hazily, sliding her hands down to tangle in his hair, holding him exactly where she wanted him and it didn’t take long, not long at all, before Evie shot to orgasm, wave after wave of pleasure so fierce and fine that her body arched like a hunter’s bow.

He let her rest, momentarily. He let her catch one breath, maybe two, and then, just when recovery seemed possible, Logan clamped his mouth over her again and came at her sideways with his tongue and slung her skywards once more.

No control over her response whatsoever as she cried out her release and prayed she hadn’t been too loud, but it wasn’t submission. Evie clung to the faintest of hope that surrendering to pleasure wasn’t submission. It was just …

Sensitive now as she toppled forward, her forearms landing on the bed above him and her head resting on her arms. A tremor shook her, a juddering reminder of where she’d just been and what Logan had just done to get her there.

‘That wasn’t submission,’ she said breathlessly as she tried to think of a smooth move that would get her body back down level with his body.

There was none.

‘I was on top,’ she said as she crawled back down his body the clumsy way. ‘I am on top.’

Which sounded lame, even to her ears.

‘I could have done anything with you, Evie. Anything, and you’d have let me.’ He worked his mouth across her nipple again and had a little party there and all she could do was whimper and strain against him and hope to hell he got it into his head to party harder. ‘What is that if not submission?’ he muttered.

‘Participation,’ she said. ‘Participation resulting from stimulation. You need to work on your definitions.’

And she needed to work on him. Cautiously, Evie inched her way further down Logan’s big body until her face was level with his and her hair fell around their faces like a curtain.

He didn’t look rested or anywhere close to content. Evie closed her eyes and rested her forehead gently against his, breathing in the scent of him and the scent of her still on him. He tasted of her too, as she licked at his mouth, coaxing and cajoling until he did what she wanted, which was open for her with a groan, but when she went to undo his belt, he clamped her wrist and dragged her hand back up to his chest.

‘Don’t,’ he said against her lips and she pulled away, just a fraction.

‘Why not?’

‘No condoms.’

Which sounded a lot like an excuse. ‘Another way, then. Same way you did me.’

‘I want—’

Yes, he did want. She could feel him rigid beneath her, digging into her. ‘Hard,’ she murmured.

‘Yes. I want hard.’ As if the admission of specific needs and desires was something to be ashamed of. ‘And rough.’ He licked at her lips as if soothing away fresh wounds. ‘Too rough for your mouth. Don’t want to hurt you.’

‘Hands,’ she offered. ‘Yours and mine. Rough.’

He shuddered beneath her, but he still wouldn’t let her hand go any lower than his chest. ‘No.’ With their lips barely touching and a shield of black lashes concealing his eyes. ‘You need to leave, Angie. Now. I can’t do this.’

‘Why not?’ She could think of plenty of reasons. They were in his mother’s house. She was—supposedly—still engaged to his brother. Not that it had stopped him. And then there was this fear he had of dominating her, of hurting her, and that was the resistance he couldn’t get past. Same reason they’d parted all those years ago.

‘I don’t understand you.’ Evie backed off a little, pulled the straps of her dress back up her shoulders. ‘Condoms can be purchased. Needs can be satisfied without anyone getting hurt. And my doing as you ask and leaving your room is not submission. It’s listening and responding and it’s action born of concern. For you. For whatever’s going on in that hard head of yours.’ He wouldn’t meet her eyes, so she put a gentle forefinger to his chin, and leaned down and gently forced eye contact. Turmoil there, and plenty of it. Black eyes blown with darkness and desire. ‘You savour me with one breath and turn me away with the next. Want to tell me what that’s all about?’

‘I really don’t. Angie, please—’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Just go.’

Time to smooth down her dress with fumbling fingers and hope to hell no one saw her on the way to the guestroom. She didn’t understand this man who lay so unmoving on his bed, one arm behind his head, one hand hooked over his belt as he watched her through slitted eyes, his erection still straining against his trousers. Her gaze fastened on his lips next; he had such sexy, snarly lips.

‘Your mother said something about your father being a man of strong passions.’ Uncontrollable passions, maybe. Caroline had implied that Logan had similar issues. Mothers knew these things. ‘Are you close to him?’

‘My father’s dead,’ answered Logan flatly.

‘Oh,’ she said with a grimace. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ So many things about this man that she didn’t know.

‘No great loss. He died when I was ten.’ Logan closed his eyes and shut her out, put his forearm over his eyes for good measure. ‘My father was an abusive, controlling bastard. When my mother finally worked up the guts to leave him—and me—he blew his brains out.’

Evie stared at him in horrified silence. What did a person say to that? Where did a person even start? ‘Logan—’

‘Go,’ he muttered gruffly. ‘Please, Evangeline, just go.’

And this time Evie complied.

CHAPTER FOUR

LOGAN remembered to breathe again once Angie had gone and the door snicked shut behind her. He shouldn’t have told her. It wasn’t something he talked about. Not with his mother, not with the psychologists his mother had taken him to once she’d had him back in her care.

It was okay to be angry, several of them had told him gently. Maybe he could examine his anger; start with the little things, they’d coaxed, while his ten-year-old self had sat there and studied his ragged, chewed-off fingernails and told them he wasn’t angry, not him. Not with his father for topping himself, not with his mother for leaving them. She’d come back, hadn’t she? Once the old man was gone? She’d come back for her son who was volatile, and controlling and needy, just like his father, and she’d never once called him those things, just started praising all the other traits he possessed and sent him to shrinks to keep the crazy in check.

Why had he told Angie that? Why couldn’t he have left it at his father was dead?

She’d run now, if she had any sense. Away from this family. Away from him.

Evangeline Jones didn’t understand the stakes in this game, but Logan did. He knew how it went; the breaking of a woman’s will. Drip by tiny drip until it was all gone and she jumped at the sound of a footfall and flinched whenever someone moved too fast. He knew those games, knew every move.

Second hand.

Time to take himself in hand, thought Logan grimly as he sat up and ran his palms over his face. Do something about the want first. Take the edge off; the needy, greedy edge. Stay focused on the end game, which was staying strong and staying sane.

Hurting no one.

Hurting everyone.

Evie made it back to her room without encountering anyone. She made it to the en suite and stood there staring at the carnage Logan had wrought. Lips swollen from kisses that had gone too deep, complexion still rosy from the afterglow of good sex and her eyes dark with a mixture of shock and desire.

If a man tries to warn you over and over again that he’s damaged goods he probably is.

If he tells you that he has his reasons for not wanting too hard then he probably does.

If he tells you outright that he doesn’t want to hurt you, it’s because he knows that some day he will. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but he will, and he’s given you fair warning.

Evie turned her back on the face in the mirror and closed her eyes and tried not to remember the crazy things Logan made her feel. Time to forget the feelings and listen to what the man had to say and get out of his life as best she could. Tell Max she’d see him at work on Monday, make her apologies to Caroline Carmichael and leave.

She stripped off her dress and her underwear and tossed them over the edge of the bath. She headed for the shower and turned it on hot and hard and stood and let the water wash away the stench of cowardice that clung to her skin.

‘Walk away, Evie,’ she whispered, and set her palms to the wall in front of her and her face to the spray to wash away the sting of tears. ‘Run.’

And then the shower door behind her opened and Logan stepped in, fully dressed, and reached for her and she went to him without hesitation, wanting to comfort and be comforted, wanting his touch more than she wanted anything in this world. Riding that slippery slope of obsession and longing as the water poured down on them both and he pressed a condom packet into her hands and pushed her back against the wall and started kissing her.

Rough was the wrong word for what he wanted. Intense was a better word. All-consuming, as she helped him shed his clothes and laid hands to him, learning him all over again. Condom on and then Evie on as she put shoulders to the tiles and locked her legs around Logan’s waist and he was slow and forceful as he entered her, and the skin on his jaw tasted salty and a little bit rough, but his movements weren’t rough, not rough at all. His movements spoke of worship and wonder and a slamming, heartbreaking need as he claimed her body and offered up his own for her pleasure.

His touch was deft and agonisingly sensual as he cupped her and tilted her just so against him. Such tenuous control once passion came to play, and Evie was no help whatsoever, because wherever Logan led she went willingly.

He wanted her mindless to everything but his touch; and he succeeded.

He wanted her convulsing against him, with her mouth on his shoulder her only tether to this earth; and he succeeded.

She wanted him with her and this time he came when she did, eyes blazing, and his body straining, matching her gasp for gasp, with his mouth on hers, but only just, and his hand on the back of her neck as if he would never let her go.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered when his breath had slowed enough for speech. ‘Angie, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘For the mess I made of my time with you. For the mess I’m still making.’

‘Don’t be.’

She unlocked her legs from around him and set toes to the floor and he held the condom on and slipped out of her and turned away. No words of affection for her, no smile of reassurance, just a need he couldn’t voice and old fears made new again.

She stepped on his clothes on her way out of the shower. Looked at them and looked back at him. ‘Impulsive,’ she said with the tiniest of smiles.

‘Always.’ As he cut the water and she handed him a towel. ‘Around you.’

‘I try to control it,’ he said gruffly, a moment later. ‘I need to control it.’

‘Yes, I guess you do.’ An indirect reference to his past. The history that had shaped him. This had been controlled for Logan. He could get way more lost in desire than that. ‘Lots of baggage, Logan.’

‘More than you can handle?’

‘Are you asking me to have a relationship with you?’ Evie wiped her face down with the towel and started in on her dripping hair.

Logan said nothing, just slung the towel around his hips and stepped from the shower, avoiding the question, avoiding her eyes so Evie figured that for a no, and wasn’t surprised. He’d retreat now, he always did, and she should have felt used and confused, but she didn’t. Instead she felt sad as she let her gaze wash over his naked form. Sad for him. Sad for herself. But not abused.

She didn’t even know how he came to have a body like that. What sports he played, what he did to blow off steam. The list of things she didn’t know about this man seemed endless. And the list of things she did know about him was short and anything but sweet.

‘Do you play sports?’ she asked, and when he lifted his eyebrow at the inanity of the question she shrugged and tried not to be too distracted by the thin line of hair that ran south from his belly-button and disappeared beneath that low-slung towel.

‘I climb,’ he said. ‘Snow and water ski whenever I get the chance. Sail catamarans competitively.’

That’d do it.

‘Does this have anything to do with the amount of baggage I can carry round?’ he asked with the ghost of a smile.

‘No,’ she replied with a rueful smile. ‘I just wanted to know a little more about you, that’s all. Something little. Something …’

‘Normal?’ he offered.

It was as good a word as any. ‘I don’t know what to do. From the moment I first saw you again, I haven’t known what to do.’ Truth, and if it signified weakness on her part then so be it.

‘You need to call off this wedding, Evangeline.’

‘I know that, Logan.’ Evie glanced towards the shower. ‘Is that what the sex was all about? A demonstration of my weakness when it comes to your touch? Because if it was, it wasn’t necessary. I already knew.’

‘It wasn’t that.’ Logan turned away to pick up his soggy clothes and wrung them out. ‘It was need.’

And there was the appeal of this man and the danger in him. That stinging, searing, all-consuming need—and his fear of it.

‘What if we start again?’ she offered quietly. ‘I call off this wedding, MEP finds some other way to finance the civic centre bid and you and I, we start again. Clean slate. You might, for example, come to Sydney one weekend and ask me out on a date. We might see a movie or go for coffee in the park. You could bring me a bunch of black-eyed daisies or a paper parasol. I might feed you chocolate-cherry mud-cake with my fingers by way of thank you.’

Logan’s eyes had darkened again.

‘Easy as,’ she said lightly. ‘And your call.’ She wasn’t the one carrying a dead father and a battered mother around. ‘What kind of cocktail party does your mother throw? Fairly formal?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you planning to attend?’ she asked next.

‘Are you?’

Evie nodded. ‘Got to try and explain my engagement to Max away somehow.’

‘Just tell them my mother made a mistake. Tell them you’re celebrating a business milestone rather than a personal one.’

‘Yes. Something like that.’ She eyed him steadily. ‘We could use your help to sell it. You could aim for civilised.’

‘Yes,’ he said with a smile she didn’t trust at all. ‘I could.’ And handed her back the towel and stalked from the bathroom and then from her room without another word.

‘So what happened between you and Logan?’ asked Max for the umpteenth time as Evie plucked a midnight-blue gown from a clothing rack and flattened it against her body.

‘We talked,’ she said calmly. ‘Too formal?’

‘No,’ said Max. ‘Does he still want you to go live in Antarctica?’

‘Probably,’ said Evie, and withdrew a sleek little black dress from the rack. ‘But he knows he can’t make me, so he’s just going to have to learn to live with disappointment. Too severe?’

‘Yes.’

Evie draped it across her arm of potential dresses anyway. Little black dresses could be deceptive. A deceptively demure black-and-caramel-coloured dress caught her eye next. Demure could be deceptive too. ‘What about this one?’

‘Evie, just pick one,’ said Max.

‘Or I could take an early flight home and forget about your mother’s cocktail party altogether,’ said Evie. ‘As long as we’re talking contingency plans, I’m liking that one a lot.’

‘No,’ said Max steadily. ‘We ride this one out together. Kill the speculation stone dead now.’

‘Maybe you can tell them I’m gay,’ murmured Evie.

‘They wouldn’t believe me. Not if Logan’s anywhere in the room.’

‘Okay, then. You can be gay.’ Evie eyed a plum-coloured gown with a plunging neckline and a thigh-high side split speculatively. ‘What about this one?’

‘Evie, just pick one.’ And then Max looked at the dress. ‘But not that one.’

Evie slid it back on the rack. ‘I vote we tell your mother’s friends that we’re celebrating the success of our business partnership and hopefully the beginning of bigger and better things for MEP. We smile and shake our heads and say we’re sorry people got the wrong idea but we’re not engaged and not about to be. We keep it simple. Deny everything.’

‘You really think that’s going to fly?’

‘Put it this way,’ she said. ‘You got a better idea?’

The cocktail party was every bit as awkward as Evie thought it would be. Elegant, wealthy people, all set to welcome Evie into their lives at Caroline’s behest, and politely puzzled when it became clear that they didn’t have to.

Civilised. It was all so very civilised, but no midnight-blue cocktail gown in the world could shield her from Logan’s powerful presence as she stood by Max’s side and talked business goals and achievements with strangers.

Logan didn’t approach her. He stuck to his side of the room and Evie stuck to hers. She didn’t watch him out of the corner of her eye. Instead she stuck to finding him in reflections in mirrors, of which there were plenty. In the shine of tall silver vases. How could one man assault her senses the way he did, just by being in a room? One man, dressed in black tie, just like every other man in the room.

‘Evie, stop fidgeting,’ said Max.

‘I’m not fidgeting.’

She was fidgeting, so with a smothered curse she stopped.

‘And swearing,’ murmured Max, highly amused. ‘You could stop that too.’

‘I’m not—damn!’ Evie swore rather than add chronic lying to her list of sins too. ‘How much longer do we have to stay here?’

‘Until the bitter end,’ said Max cheerfully. ‘I’m guessing around midnight.’

She’d been sticking to mineral water until now. Maybe it was time she swapped over to something with a little more kick. Then again, the argument against alcohol was a strong one. She’d already been quite uninhibited enough today.

‘You could marry someone else,’ she told Max during a moment they had to themselves—just business partners sharing a quiet moment out on the patio, drinks in hand and smiles at the ready. ‘A childhood friend. Someone who knows this life and how to live it. Someone who’d be happy to accommodate you for two years and then move on.’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Max with a shudder. ‘I’m over marriage for the time being. I might try being in love with the person next time. Just a thought.’

‘How are we going to get the money for the civic centre bid?’

‘Overdraft for some of it,’ said Max. ‘I’ll put my place on the market.’

‘I’ll put mine on,’ Evie said with a sigh. ‘We’re still going to come up short.’

‘Business loan,’ said Max bleakly. ‘Here, before I forget.’ He fished in his pocket and pulled out something small and round and silver-coloured, those bits of it that weren’t a dazzling, glittering blue. It was a sapphire ring the size of Texas. Evie didn’t understand. ‘My mother wants you to have this as a memento of our engagement. Something about payment for your trouble.’ He held it out towards her.

‘No.’ Evie took a hasty step back. ‘Whatever your mother’s opinions are, just … no. I’m all for forgetting we were ever engaged.’

‘I told her you’d say that.’ Max reached for her right hand and slipped it swiftly on her middle finger. Not her ring finger, not even the proper hand. ‘She seems to think I owe you a ring. That we were engaged, however briefly, and that you deserve some kind of compensation. Wear it. Flog it. I don’t care. Just take it. I’m a man in search of family harmony and my mother wants you to have it.’

‘I don’t want it,’ muttered Evie, tugging the ring off just as swiftly as it had gone on. It was too bulky anyway. Too much the reminder of bad decisions too hastily made. ‘Please, Max. Just give it back to her. Tell her I don’t want it.’

But Max’s attention had drifted to a point just over her shoulder, his eyes narrowing fast, and Evie knew, even before she looked over her shoulder, that Logan was heading their way. ‘Take it,’ she said, trying to push the ring into Max’s hand, only he wasn’t having it, and then Logan was upon them and Max automatically moved to make room for him.

‘Change of heart?’ murmured Logan, looking at the ring, and shock flared deep in his eyes; right before those same eyes turned bitter and then carefully blank.

‘This isn’t what it looks like.’ Max’s words came low and fast. ‘It’s not an engagement ring. We’re not engaged. The wedding’s off and it’s staying off. You know that.’

‘Where’d you get the ring?’ asked Logan, and didn’t wait for Max’s answer. ‘She give it to you? Our mother? She tell you to give it to Evangeline?’