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It was stupid to feel so tense about confessing the truth to him. So I’d made a mistake in my handling of it. So what? Anyway, I didn’t have to say it was me, did I?
I swallowed. ‘He harassed a staff member. There was a fuss so Dad paid him to keep quiet and go away. It was a lot of money.’ Too much money. But Dad hadn’t wanted it to become public. He’d met Mark’s demands without protest and hadn’t said a word to me about it. But I knew he was angry at how I’d handled it. If I hadn’t gone and hurt Mark, it wouldn’t have been such an issue.
Mr Evans’s gaze had got very narrow, sapphire glinting from beneath his thick black lashes. ‘And Australis struggled after that?’
‘We couldn’t get another designer that good. I tried to fill in, but...’ I trailed off. No need to tell him that Dad had never been satisfied with my work after that, no matter how hard I’d tried.
A silence fell and it wasn’t a comfortable one, not with Mr Evans’s gaze on me, concentrated as an X-ray.
‘It was you,’ he said suddenly. ‘You were the person who got harassed.’
Of course he’d guess. He wasn’t a stupid man by any stretch.
Who cares that he knows? You shouldn’t. It was nothing, remember? Nothing at all.
I forced myself to look at him. Forced myself to smile. ‘Yeah, but it was no big deal.’
Mr Evans didn’t smile. He went very still instead, a feral light glowing in his eyes. ‘Did he hurt you?’
But I didn’t want to go into it. ‘It wasn’t a drama, honestly.’
‘Did. He. Hurt. You?’ Each word was bitten off, a rough thread of anger running through his voice.
I wanted to ask him why he cared so much, but I was afraid of the answer for some reason, so I didn’t. ‘Not physically.’
‘And your father paid him off? Why? He didn’t defend you? Get the police involved?’
‘No,’ I snapped, feeling defensive. ‘Dad didn’t want any fusses made. And I’d made it into this big deal already.’
Mr Evans’s expression settled into forbidding lines. ‘And how exactly did you make it a big deal?’
‘Mark grabbed me, so I... I kind of...kneed him in the balls.’
An electric-blue flame leapt in Mr Evans’s eyes and it looked suspiciously like approval. ‘Good,’ he said fiercely.
‘No, it wasn’t good.’ I tried to ignore the warmth that approval had ignited inside me. ‘I shouldn’t have done anything. I should have just...handled it. But Mark told everyone that I’d assaulted him and Dad didn’t want to deal with it. So he paid Mark to be quiet and leave.’
‘He shouldn’t have.’ Mr Evans leaned forward abruptly in his seat, his voice low and savage. ‘He should have hauled that motherfucker down to the station and booked him.’
I blinked at his vehemence and the ferocity in his gaze. ‘Well, he didn’t. Why does it matter to you, anyway?’
‘My mother was my father’s maid. He seduced her and she ended up living hand to mouth in a council estate with a child she got no support for.’ Bitterness edged each word. ‘I know what workplace harassment can do to a woman. And yes, I care about it.’
His ferocity was a physical force. A shock wave pushing against me. ‘Apart from anything else, I don’t like people taking advantage of others more vulnerable than they are.’ He put a hand on each of the armrests on either side of my seat, a wall of hot male anger. ‘In fact, you’re damn lucky I wasn’t anywhere around this Mark bastard when he grabbed you. Because if I had been, he wouldn’t have had any balls left for you to knee.’
He was threatening like this, his anger not directed at me but for me. A protective anger. An anger that Dad had never displayed, not once. No, his had always been at me. As if Mark grabbing me had been my fault.
I didn’t know why desire hit me so hard in that moment, a surge of it spiking in my blood. Because it shouldn’t have. I didn’t need a man gett
ing protective of me—hell, I’d kicked bloody Mark straight in the family jewels, hadn’t I? I could protect myself.
But some part of me liked that Mr Evans was angry on my behalf. I could imagine him at the Australis Christmas party, standing behind me, big and scarred and dangerous. Scowling that famous scowl. A wordless threat to anyone who thought touching me was a good idea.
And he wouldn’t have cared about making a fuss as Dad had.
No, he wouldn’t have cared about that one single iota.
He would have been on my side.
