The idea of this scenario replacing the fictitious love affair she had believed, made Evie flash Connie with a remorseless grimace. The truth of it was there in his eyes and the line of his mouth.
“Well, I’m bloody well damned if I had and damned if I tell ya that I didnae!” he indignantly boomed, in his own defence, “What sorta’ man would I be if I brought intoxicated girl’s home and slept with ‘em, eh? Of course, I didnae.”
Still, Evie thought past his remarks, why go on and on and on with it? Why had he perpetuated the lie? Especially after they had come to realize the nature of their working relationship. Surely it would have been easier to forget the whole thing then, when he had not wanted Mara to find out, and walk away from it all—he was her boss! It was the perfect excuse! Why lie to her with that bold-faced denial.
There was that word again. Denial. The answer to all her rambling hurt-filled questions.
“We have a long and convoluted history.” Ian gruffly asserted, “But now…we are together, and I’m not giving him up. I wouldn’t for Mara, and I sure as hell won’t for you.”
Evie felt spurned by the harshness of his proclamation, so bold and unrelenting. Even though it enflamed her already agonizing hurt, she knew that it was better this way. The truth was out. Ian and Connie were a couple…lovers. She was no longer required.
Ian was in, and Evie was out.
“Well, that’s just great,” Evie felt herself say, before even realizing she had formulated the words. Her mouth was running away with itself.
Evie felt that nasty pin-prick at the corner of her eyes again, making her cheeks bunch and her nose crinkle. There was no way she was going to let them see her cry. Not now! Not after she had gotten this far without turning into a pathetic tear-stained mess. Embarrassed, hurt, and breathtakingly infuriated, she spat back vehemently at the best-mate bed-mate, “You can have him.”
This time she didn’t run.
Evie’s legs were no longer tense with adrenaline. They were leaden, joints stiff and threatening to cease. Somehow, she pushed past the agonizing pressure in her chest and held her head high as she marched away from the pair.
The corridor was shorter than she had remembered, and it let out into the bustling banquet room before Evie was prepared for it.
The launch was well on its way now. Gentle music was playing, entertaining the guests that milled and mingled with their cocktails in hand, viewing the promotional material Becca and Serena had on display. A large group was clustered to her right near the bar, and although she couldn’t see the redheaded actor, it was not hard to assume that he was the reason for the flock. The teeth that showed through all the smiles around her seemed to glow under the ambient lighting.
As Evie turned her head, she saw a giant poster suspended at the back of the stage. A larger than life portrait, showcasing her favorite frame combo, with the Thistle logo emblazoned across the bottom. The blue eyes, lighter than most, were undeniably crystalline behind the crisp yellow of the semi-rimless frame front. They captured her, refusing to let her go. The naivety of that girl in the poster appeared exceedingly stupid, and Evie hated herself for it.
Glaring up at herself looking so confident, so at ease, so terribly fooled, she cursed.
If Connie had quit her, then she would quit Connie. The face of Thistle was on her way out!
Evie turned, her gaze picking out her escape route, as she rushed to make her exit from the suffocating event. She was nearly out of the open double doors that lead to the lobby of the grand hotel when a body shifted determinedly into her path.
“Where’s Connie?” Mara brusquely hissed. Her dark eyes were narrowed, and her hands were planted on the curve of her hips, making her frustration plain.
Aggravated by the distraction from her own need and pain, Evie huffed a growl and tried to side-step the optometrist. Mara predicted her maneuver and stepped with her. She nabbed Evie by the arms and stopped her.
“Did you find him? Where is he?”
The dispensing optician heard the sharp gasp of realization.
The optometrist leaned in towards her ear and in a hushed voice, urgently insisted, “What happened?”
Evie could sense the other woman’s understanding of the situation. She was instantaneously consumed by loathing to receive pity, embarrassed and vexed to have anyone else share in the knowledge of her painful mistake. Reacting instead of thinking, Evie lashed out.
“Let me go.”
Mara’s voice became more insistent, thickening with concern. “Where are you going?”
With the heat of her anger and humiliation flaming up her neck, Evie turned her face up to her boss. Curtly, she informed the other woman of what she probably had already surmised, “You were right. About everything.”
“Oh, Evangeline,” Mara sighed, her sympathy so palpable, even her eyes softened a degree, cutting Evie to the quick.
“I’m leaving.” It was impatient and caustic, as she broke free of her boss’s hands and rushed out of the suffocating room.
At this point, her body had transitioned smoothly from rage-escape to auto-pilot. Evie carved a path without concern for who got in her way. Like a vehicle without its brakes, she mowed through the crowd of people making their way inside for the big launch, knocking elbows and stepping on a few toes, even knocking one poor woman right out of her stiletto’s. None of it registered.
Then she was running through the rain, rushing a cabbie that had just let out her fare. She was in the middle of barking her address when her body was forcefully halted half-way into the backseat.
Reeling from the emotional overload and with her nervous system on high-alert from her interrupted flight-mode, her body reacted on impulse. Her palms found enough purchase against the man’s chest to heave herself away. The grip was torn loose, and Evie spared no time slamming the door shut.
To her shock, a blond head thrust through the open window of the vehicle’s door, a hand grabbing at her wrist, as both Evie and the cabbie squawked in protest.
“Just stop, dammit!” Andy hollered.
The girl stopped. Eyes wide and chest heaving—even the bewildered cabbie behind the wheel froze. Andy caught his breath before repeating the order. “Just…stop, okay?”
His green eyes, which had been slanted with frustration and agitation, softened as Evie’s senses returned. She could see that underneath his annoyance, he looked scared and sympathetic. Evie didn’t want anyone’s sympathy—least of all Andy’s! Everyone would think she was an idiot for being duped by Connie. She couldn’t handle seeing it on him too!
“Just leave me alone!”
“No, Evie, wait…!”
He lodged his elbows against the window frame to prevent her from pushing him away. They were slapping and fighting for control, when the cabbie’s concerned voice threateningly cut-in, “Oy! Leave off, ya bloody wanker!”
“Fifty quid for five minutes. I just need to—oof!”
Andy was cut short when Evie’s elbow collided with his mouth, making both yelp. The cabbie remained quiet as the redhead inspected her funny bone and Andy pressed a tentative finger to his split lip. There was red when he pulled it away. The sight of it made Evie finally stop fighting.
Evie crossed her arms over her chest. She looked away only because she couldn’t stand to see what she had done. The sight of it let loose the tears that she had been holding back. The droplets silently rolled down her cheeks, leaving warm salty trails that she quickly swiped away.
Andy's tongue darted out to gently massage the cut before he begged her, “What is going on? Where are you going? The launch is about to begin. I need you in there.”
“I don’t care,”
“Well, I do.”
When she didn’t answer him, he prodded, “What happened?”
“Three guesses.” Evie haughtily offered him, sarcastically adding, “And the first two don’t count.”
“You’re missing your favourite episode of Stargate?”
; A half-hearted attempted to make light of the situation, as he hung through the open window of the cab. Evie was offended by his poorly timed comic-relief.
“It turn’s out he’s an amazing actor!”
Andy looked confused. “Who? Blake?”
“Connie!” Evie exploded, all her magma-hot anger and rage pouring out in one caustic rupture, as she rambled, “You said, ‘he’s either in love with me, or it’s one amazing act’ and, guess what?”
“Oooohhhh,” he wheezed. Then he clucked his tongue against his cheek and shrugged, offering, “Are you sure you’re not overreacting? Maybe it was just an accident…”
Evie flashed him a malevolent look. The repetition of that lame excuse made her rage flare. “I caught him playing tonsil-hockey with his best friend and, trust me, there was nothing accidental about it!”
“Whaaaaaat?” Andy balked, in a wheezy drawn-out tone, utterly flabbergasted, “Seriously?”
Evie pursed her lips and nodded.
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“That short little angry-looking fellow?” the Aussie summarized, still incredulous, “I mean, Ian is alright, I suppose, but…the two of them? Like with tongue and the whole bit—cause tonsil-hockey gives a certain visual that I’m not sure I’ll ever get rid of.”
“I’m not exaggerating,” she emphasized, as she rolled her eyes and her fingers played windshield wipers underneath, “They were making out in the frame room.”
As she sniffed back a few more of the trailing tears that persisted in their path down her cheeks, Andy shrugged his shoulders. “Well, so what?”
Her friend offered this as though it was as simple as dealing with a co-worker who ate the last chocolate scone. With a certain amount of sarcasm that Evie did not feel she deserved, he asked her, “You’re just going to run away again?”
The comment was more like a back-hand, and it left the redhead winded. She tried to scrabble together a response to his uncouth assumption, but her brain failed her. She was left looking like a fish out of water, cheeks puffy, and lips blubbering. He didn’t leave her flounder long, supplying a ready-made answer.
“Where are you going to run to this time?” he prompted, his nonchalance a grating annoyance, as he made light of her previous break-up and her response to this crisis with one powerfully pithy remark.
“Well, I can’t stay!” she belatedly countered, tossing her arms up in the air in her frustration, “I want to retain some shred of my dignity.”
“If you want to save your dignity,” he shot back, pointing at her and then the ground, “you need to stay.”
Evie couldn’t believe what she was hearing!
Andy was her best friend, and yet he wanted her to stay? To have to go through the torture of facing all those people in the banquet hall, smiling away as the bloody face of the frame launch, as though she didn’t have a knife poking out from between her shoulder blades? How was she supposed to even manage that! Connie had not just lied to her, he had hidden behind her, used her…for months! Everything had been a façade, a fantasy, a show—all of it had meant nothing.
Cold hands shocked her back from her internal rant, as Andy snapped up her hands into his. Her gaze flicked to his face, and she was confronted with his gentle smile and those fathomless green speckled eyes, soft with concern—behind Connie’s perfectly designed frame. Those eyes held her—scooped her up into a figurative embrace that threatened to never let her go. “You’ve worked harder than anyone,” he said, “You deserve the credit.”
Evie shook her head, unwilling to agree with her friend. “No,” she repeated, nearly frantic and blubbering again, “I can’t! I can’t go back in there. I just can’t!”
“If you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for me.”
Evie’s head jerked up. Her eyes met those of her friend. She was confused and quite frankly, slightly hurt. This wasn’t about him. Dammit, it was about her! “What?! Why?”
Andy’s brows came down over his eyes, peevish, as he defended, “I came halfway around the world and have invested, dare I say, a lot of capital in this venture. I have a lot to lose if you go AWOL on me now.”
“You did that all on your own!” she waspishly spat, wrenching her hands out of his, “I didn’t ask you to do that!”
“No, you didn’t. You’ve never asked me to do anything for you,” Andy volleyed back, his hackles raised, “except help you pick out your clothes for dates and watch you pretend-not-to-cry when those losers break your heart.”
Evie’s mouth fell open, utterly gobsmacked.
“Looky ‘ere, mate,” the woman behind the wheel piped in, her eyes on them both in the reflection of the rear-view mirror, as she protested, “this is a cab, not a therapy session—,”
The eyes in the mirror went white, silenced by the shrill and unanimous outcry from her passengers, demanding that she butt out. The woman may have argued further, had bills not been tossed at her from the Aussie’s wallet.
“I didn’t force you to do any of that either!” Evie barked back at her friend. Her voice cracked with the sheer force of the fierce rage that roiled within her chest, the emotional volcano sparking with the threat of another eruption.
“But I did it anyway,” he shouted back at her, his teeth snapping as the words left his mouth, his own magma just as hot and furious as her own.
Seeing the rage mirrored on his ordinarily jovial countenance gave the redhead reason for pause. It wasn’t enough to allow her thoughts to slow or her reasonability to return, but it was just enough to allow her the time to slow her breathing and give him the leeway to continue.
“I did it for you,” her surfer said, the words soft in tone, even if the inflection was still razor-sharp. His eyes dropped away a moment, as he swallowed. She could see the deep dip of his Adam's apple before he looked at her askance and begrudgingly admitted, “because I love you…”
Evie’s breath grew thorns and caught in her throat.
“…and I want you to be happy.”
Andy moistened his lips again, and began a brief summarization, explaining exactly why he had come to Scotland in the first place.
“Look, Evie, I have spent the last decade of my life wading through false-intentioned relationships from friends and wanna-be lovers, all after me for my money. You have been the only semblance of normal I have known. I came not caring if you were in love with the guy who’s business deal I was going to back.” His said in earnest, these admissions peeling away the surf-slacker façade that he had used to convince himself he was whimsical and care-free.
Evie was sure that he meant to make things easier for her. Was almost sure that he intended to calm her, when in fact he was amping up the tension between them.
“I came because all I could think about since you left Canada, was missing out on being the one who got to make you happy.”
It wasn’t the rom-com admission that she had anticipated. It was as awkward as it was real. The truth, out in the open, his heart bared finally to its fullest before her.
Evie didn’t want any of it.
It was too much, heaped on top of too much. Evie knew that she couldn’t deal with this in her current state. How was she supposed to respond without causing unintentional harm?
“Obviously, that’s neither here nor there for the moment,” Andy suddenly rambled, with a shaky smile that left the girl feeling slightly more at ease.
Still looking ridiculous, positioned slightly above her, hanging half-way through the open back window of a cab, Andy bypassed this proclamation of sincerest infatuation, by taking hold of her shoulders with his chilly fingers. In his normal congenial tone, he playfully proposed, “Let’s put a pin in it,” complete with the sound-effect, “boop!”.
Evie felt the smile stretch across her face before the little burble of a chuckle escaped her. His smile widened, obviously encouraged by her response, and was quick to continue with his proposal.
“Right now, what’s important is that y
ou get the credit you deserve and that I finish well with this business launch. After all, you can’t deny that I have a lot at stake, and I need you to stick this through—as terrible as you might feel after witnessing those two playing tonsil-hockey.”
Evie laughed again, even though she felt that she was getting the short end of the stick in this deal. She would have to head back into that bloody hotel and pretend to be okay in front of hundreds of people! Not to mention that coward, Connie, and his boy-toy Ian. Evie damned them for looking so terribly good together.
“So, what do I get out of it?” Evie demanded.
“An all-expense-paid trip to Australia?” Andy offered up, “Take some time to enjoy the sun and think everything over. Stay as long as you like—no expectations! I’ll put you up in the coach house. You can have all the space you need.”
Evie pursed her lips, ruminating. This was certainly better than what she had intended. Running back home meant that she would have to inevitably admit to her family that the whole Scotland thing had been a terrible mistake.
Evie took his hand, and they shook on it.
“Now,” Andy said, his shoulders giving a little shudder that broke into a shiver, “can we go back inside so I can get out of this sopping wet suit?”
20
The eggs on the plate were taking the brunt of her nerves, as Evie absently poked at them with the prongs of her fork. The sunny-side-up yolks were no longer looking so bright, having been broken and mutilated. Her stomach churned, warning her that it was probably not in her best interest to attempt a full Scottish breakfast in her state.
Evie knew she was acting like her old predictable self again, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t help but feel uneasy about her hasty decision. She felt like she was jumping from one sinking ship straight onto another.
As her stomach churned, rolling over like a lazy washing machine set to a monotonous delicate cycle, Evie sipped at a glass of water. Andy was up from the table, on his phone, busily chatting business lingo. She sat mucking with the breakfast he had bought her, while his eggs benedict congealed.
Seeing Colour Page 32
