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‘I’m holding a soirée in Munich in a few months’ time. I’ll send an invitation to you and your lovely fiancée.’
Gage glanced at Eve but didn’t wait for her affirmation. ‘It would be our pleasure.’
Or a descent into hell if they couldn’t burn through this consuming attraction between them. But none of that mattered right now. He’d do almost anything to get this deal across the line. Eve didn’t look happy with Greta’s suggestion. The too-wide smile that didn’t reach her tight eyes was a giveaway, to him at least. Good, this wasn’t about her entertainment but about paying him back for the years he’d spent trying to undo his youthful foolishness.
Though why did it feel all so petty?
‘Your approach to me was interesting,’ Greta went on. ‘I don’t work with just anybody and I am gratified to see the rumours aren’t true.’
‘What rumours?’ Eve asked. Gage tensed, all of him on high alert. She might not have spread them herself, but she would sure as hell have known what her daddy was whispering about him.
‘You know, cher.’ He turned to her. He’d look her in the face when he confronted her. The whole charade they were playing was about this. Redeeming his image so he could take his rightful place at every table without snide whispers. ‘The story that says you didn’t want to elope with me. That you weren’t a willing participant.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’ The words were adamant but all colour drained from her face. She gripped her napkin tightly in her hands. So tightly her knuckles paled.
‘Of course it is,’ Greta said. ‘People saw a romantic story and took joy in making something unpleasant of it. Schadenfreude. But I can see it isn’t true. I only wish you as long and as happy a marriage as my husband and I had.’
Eve turned to Greta, gave her a tight smile.
‘Thank you. We can only hope to be as lucky.’ She dropped her napkin on the table and stood. Grabbed her clutch bag. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I need the restroom.’
Then she left the table as if the hounds of hell were chasing her. Gage watched her go, watched the brisk walk, the way her hips swayed, moulded by the soft blue fabric of her dress as she was pointed in the right direction by the helpful waiter.
‘Perhaps that conversation was indelicate of me. Eve’s a charming woman and it must be distressing.’
‘She sometimes forgets how cruel people can be. She’s a sensitive soul, my fiancée.’ He hesitated for a moment. It was the truth. How could he have forgotten that? She’d always seen the best in things and people, even when life had thrown up the worst.
But she’d looked shocked, truly shocked by the revelation, and his brain wouldn’t let him process it. His life had been lived under the assumption she’d been complicit in all the attempts to ruin his reputation. He didn’t know how to think any other way. It was his frame of reference for all his thoughts and beliefs about their relationship.
‘I hope I haven’t upset her.’
Eve’s horrified tone, the blood draining from her face, all the colour gone. He couldn’t stop thinking that this had been a complete surprise to her. What if it was? What if she’d had no idea at all, exiled as she’d been over here in France? He couldn’t process any of it, it was as though his whole life had been upended. ‘Perhaps I’ll go and check...’
‘You should. I’ll sit here and continue to sample this delightful wine. We have much to discuss over the coming months, Gage,’ Greta said enigmatically.
But somehow he couldn’t see it as a triumph as he stood and left the table.
All he could think of was Eve, and how shattered she’d appeared.
CHAPTER SEVEN
EVE STOOD AT the basin, staring into the mirror. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her pounding heart, to ease the twist of pain. She’d never heard the rumours. How could anyone claim such an awful thing, that she hadn’t gone willingly with Gage? She’d so badly wanted to be Gage’s wife that nothing else had mattered, not even her family. She’d have travelled to the ends of the earth for him. And people were saying that he’d effectively kidnapped her?
But that wasn’t the worst of it. It had been the look on his face as they’d been discussing it. Anger and certainty, as if he was convinced she had known. She lifted a trembling hand and brushed at the smudges under her eyes that no amount of concealer could hide. It had been impossible to sleep over the past few months with worry about the business, her family and then being around Gage. Some days she barely functioned, and yet she needed to go back out there. Perform. Play a part when all she wanted to do was curl up into a tiny ball and weep.
She turned on the cold tap and ran her wrists under the bracing water. Closed her eyes and tried to steady her throbbing heart. Stop the tears falling. She’d done it once. Survived the worst. All alone, thousands of miles from home, in a small church with a tiny white coffin and only a priest to see her tears. She’d woven that pain into the tapestry of her life and moved forward. What was one more time?
‘Let’s do this,’ she said to her reflection, gritting her teeth and straightening her spine. She wrenched open the bathroom door, head down, and smacked straight into a wall of hard muscle and chest. Hands clasped her arms to steady her. She didn’t need to be afraid of who it was. She knew. That heat, the smell of the man that made her crave to nestle her head against all that strength and soak it into herself for a while.
Gage.
But if she did, she might never let him go and she would always have to leave. Still, she couldn’t muster the will to fight him. Not right now. She leaned back and met his gaze. A slight crease in his forehead was the only sign of all the questions she could never answer written there. Something soft and unreadable in his eyes. It undid her. As if looking back at her was the twenty-three-year-old young man she’d loved and left. The billionaire businessman was gone.
‘Are you okay?’
No one had ever asked that in all these years. The doctors had talked about scientific probabilities. Nurses had patted her arm and said she was young; she’d have another baby. The priest had talked about God’s will. No one had asked about her. Of course she’d hidden it from her family, not wanting her father to rage at the knowledge that a Caron had touched his daughter. Not wanting any of them to express relief that her baby had been lost, because that would have broken her completely.
Not even her mom or sister had asked how she was coping with losing Gage. It was as if, for them, that part of her life had ceased to exist. When for her there had been no relief, only bottomless grief.
