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‘I hadn’t realised you travelled with them,’ frowned Ethan.
‘Wasn’t it rather dangerous, taking a baby into emergency situations?’
‘Mum and Dad didn’t start doing emergency relief until I got to school age and came back to live with my grandparents. Up until then they took postings with long-term aid programmes, which were usually in stable areas, relatively speaking.’
‘Relative to what?’ demanded Ethan.
‘Well, where they are now, I suppose. I mean, I saw a lot of hardship and ugly sights, but I was a kid so I never thought too deeply about what it all meant. I was more worried about having to eat some of the food!’ Emily’s joking reference glossed lightly over the years of gastrointestinal upsets she had endured in areas where clean water and hygienic living conditions had been in extremely short supply. Only Ethan seemed to acknowledge the false cheer in her voice with a sharp look.
‘It must have been a fascinating experience, all that travel and adventure. And yet you never wanted to follow your parents into aid work?’ asked Carly, and the edge of criticism in her voice made Emily suddenly remember that this woman had been told she was a gold-digger.
‘I think I got all the travel and adventure out of my system early on,’ she said. ‘It takes a special kind of person to choose to live the way that my parents do—’
‘You mean, as altruists?’
‘I think she means as adrenalin junkies,’ said Ethan drily, once more confounding Emily with his intuition.
‘But very altruistic adrenalin junkies,’ she pointed out with a smile.
Carly clearly didn’t appreciate their humour. ‘I think people like that are wonderful!’
‘Yes, they are. Just very hard to live up to.’
She was accorded a condescending look. ‘I’m sure you do your best.’
‘I’m reliably informed that doing my best isn’t good enough.’
‘How cruel.’
‘Yes, wasn’t it?’ said Emily, with a smug look at Ethan. ‘Anyway, I much prefer staying in one place these days.’
‘I take it you mean Peter’s,’ commented Ethan.
‘Hey, what’s happening about that, anyway?’ said Dylan. ‘Have you heard anything from your insurance company?’
Emily sighed. ‘Now they’re admitting it was fireworks—some sort of rocket breaking the studio window. The only question is whether it was deliberate or accidental. We had had several incidents of hooligans firing them off from cars around the neighbourhood at Guy Fawkes—’
‘So you’ll get your payout soon,’ said Dylan.
‘I hope so,’ said Emily, doubt sounding in her voice. There was still the business of the indemnity value to work out. ‘The good news is that my house won’t have to be entirely demolished, just parts of it. The rest can be rebuilt, once it’s been strengthened.’
‘Why don’t you let me sort it out for you?’ said Ethan abruptly as they all rose to leave. ‘I’m used to dealing with insurance hassles in the building industry. I’ll give that bloke Tremaine a call and see what I can find out.’ His voice suggested it was already a foregone conclusion.
‘Good idea. Sic Ethan onto ’em,’ advised Dylan. ‘He’ll sink his teeth into them for you and shake something loose. He’s a real bulldog when it comes to getting answers.’
Didn’t she know it!
‘No, really I—’
‘Oh, come on, Emily, let him do it—you don’t keep a dog and bark yourself!’ Dylan gave a theatrical little howl that earned him a sharp nudge from Carly.
‘Dogs seem to be the theme of the night,’ murmured Emily, giving Ethan a sidelong glance. ‘I didn’t know I kept one.’
‘Woof, woof,’ he said, his deep, resonating voice startling the maî
tre d’ as he handed back his platinum credit card.
Maybe the two brothers weren’t so different from each other after all, thought Emily, exchanging a surprisingly friendly roll of the eyes with Carly.
