‘What about your mother?’
‘She died when I was four.’ Emma said, and there was nothing in her voice that requested sympathy—she merely stated the facts. ‘My brothers are all considerably older than me…’ She gave a thin smile at the memory of her childhood. ‘And my father, well, a good-looking widower attracts a lot of admirers—all wanting to change him, all assuming he’s just waiting for the next Mrs. Stephenson to come along—and he played them all well.’
‘Luca’s a nice man,’ Evelyn said, just a touch pink at her own indiscretion in discussing her boss so personally. ‘Beneath it all, when he’s not being horrible, he’s a really nice man. Take this assistant PA role that’s currently being advertised—that’s so I can cut back on my travel and late work nights…he’s great really.’
‘So long as you don’t love him,’ Emma said. ‘So long as you have absolutely no intention or hope that one day you might change him…’
‘You really do get it.’ Evelyn blinked in wonder.
‘I really do.’ Locating her bag, Emma plonked it on her shoulder. ‘I’d best get going.’
‘And I’d better ring Paul.’
And it had been no contest—not for a second had she considered accepting Luca’s extravagant offer, but sitting in her pyjamas, eating her TV dinner and watching the credits on her favourite show roll, the house was too big and too lonely for one.
Lonely…
She had never admitted it, not even to herself.
Oh, she had friends and a job and was kept busy—but sometimes, sometimes she wished she wasn’t so wise, so cynical, so mistrusting where men were concerned.
She reached for a magazine, skipped straight to the problem page and read about other people’s lives, other people’s problems, and for the millionth time in her life she missed her mum. Missed the chats that would surely have happened about boys and men. Everyone else seemed to find it so easy—her friends fell in and out of love, skipped from relationship to relationship, and some were even getting married, or moving in with their boyfriends.
Yet Emma felt as if she’d been left at the starting post.
Too embarrassed by her brothers’ teasing, too scared of getting hurt, she’d hid her first innocent crushes, had said no to dates in her teenage years, envying how others found this dating game so easy and just dived in and said yes.
Dear Barbara, she penned the letter in her head.
I’m an attractive twenty-four-year-old, I have friends, a job, a busy life and I’m still a virgin.
Oh, and I just said no to a night in Paris with the sexiest man on earth.
She’d make letter of the week!
And though it was great to have come home to no messages from her father’s nursing home or new bills in the mail, all she felt was deflated. She flicked off the TV, and for just a second she faltered.
A tiny, wobbly second, where she wished she were stupid, wished for that impulse gene where men were concerned that had been so sorely denied her.
Wished she’d just said yes to Luca’s dazzling offer.
* * *
Luca flicked through the channels on the television.
Not that he was watching it. It was on all day for background noise for the dog, Pepper—not that the animal appreciated it.
The night stretched on endlessly and he stood there, rueing the fact that he had been yawning and bored at eleven p.m. in Paris, but thanks to the time difference was wide awake and thoroughly restless at five minutes to midnight in London.
He should be exhausted, he had been up since five—but his head was clicking like an abacus. Hemming’s, a large shopping chain, had called him in way too late to stop them from going under.
Except he could see a way to save them.
He grabbed a beer from the fridge and tried not to think about it, tried to wind down—just fed up with all the travel, with the demands. Why did everyone want an in-person—why couldn’t they just settle for a face-to-face on a screen in the meeting room?
Hell, an email would usually suffice.
Sex would be nice.