But there was still danger in the air. And the massage table looked a lot more comfortable from above. If Eva pressed this…
Eva, still crawling out, sighed. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘And I’m getting married,’ she added.
‘I’m aware of that,’ Eva said.
‘To a man.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Please stop saying that.’
‘I am, though. I’m losing it. That’s the only explanation. I shouldn’t have…’
‘I shouldn’t have either,’ Eva agreed sadly. ‘It’s so… unprofessional.’
That word pissed on what was left of the bonfire. Because it put them squarely in their roles. The bride and the wedding planner. The woman who was getting married and the woman who was making that happen. That’s who they were. That’s all they could be. Two-second lip presses aside.
It was fine. It was going to be fine. Temporary insanity, that was all it was. You could murder someone and use that as a defence. And if it was a strong enough excuse for stealing a life, then it was more than strong enough for stealing a kiss.
‘I think I need to go back.’
‘Yeah,’ Eva agreed.
Maddy went to the door and put her hand on it.
There’s still time. You don’t have to open this door. You could even lock it. The table…
But she didn’t heed that voice any longer. It was quieter now and would soon shut up. Because she was Maddy. And she was getting married to Adam. It was decided.
She opened the door and walked out without looking back.
Twenty-Eight
It became clear to Eva that sleep was off the menu somewhere around two in the morning.
Hannah was snoring like a beast nearby. Someone should have told her by now that it might be time to investigate whether she needed a CPAP machine, but that was the responsibility of her husband. Not some random wedding planner who’d been stuffed into a hotel room with her for a hen weekend. If she suddenly stopped, Eva would check her breathing, but that was all she owed Hannah. Aside from possibly a slap.
This isyourfault, you bloody control freak.
Only Eva was a control freak, too. And she’d lost control tonight.
She turned onto her side, closed her eyes, and opened them again almost immediately. It was ridiculous. She had slept through worse. Longer days, more stressful ones, entireweddings held together with practically nothing but her will. She was good at shutting things off when she needed to.
But her brain refused to cooperate. It kept circling back to that moment.
The way Maddy had looked at her under the table. The touch of her hand on Eva’s wrist.
And then the kiss.
Eva exhaled slowly and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, as though she could physically stop the memory from replaying. It hadn’t even been much. Barely anything, objectively speaking.
But Eva’s body had not registered it asbarely anything. Her lips still felt it, like a lingering imprint that refused to fade.
Her brain, on the other hand, was trying very hard to categorise it neatly: a lapse in judgement in a highly charged situation.
