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We’re at the Stone Creek Inn, a gorgeous French restaurant near the beach. I’ve enjoyed the food and ambiance but hated every moment of being with him.
This dateisagaincourtesy of my father. And I think my mother, too.
They haven’t gotten the message yet that I have no interest in Evan, but even if they did it wouldn’t make any difference. Dad likes him, and that’s enough.
Evan has taken that as an invitation to keep touching my thigh under the table. Every. Chance. He. Gets.
I shuffled my knees away from his ten minutes ago but all he did was move his chair closer to me so our knees could touch.
I know what he’s after tonight. The asshole has dropped several hints about getting into my panties, but he can keep dreaming. There’s no way I’m letting him touch me.
Now he’s leaning way too close again, talking shit about some of the players on the team, especially Luc.
I can’t stand it, and every time he mentions Luc’s name I feel more disheartened. Apart from at the games last week, I haven’t seen him at all to talk to. All I do is watch him, and I catch him watching me, too. That’s it. And it feels awful.
As the days have gone by, I keep expecting to either see him with some other girl or read about it in the papers. I heard he signed his autograph for over five hundred fans last week. A ton of them were women. I saw a line of them when I was on my way out one night.
On top of that, Harvey hasn’t heard back from the owners of the Vanderville Manor. It’s been a week since he contacted them so I’m starting to lose hope.
I’d gotten so excited at the potential of doing the story that I did some digging around on the net to get to grips with the history of the manor and its secrets.
That necklace was the most prominent, but it wasn’t the discovery of the necklace that piqued my interest. It was the story behind it.
The word on the street now is that one of the servants might have stolen it and hid it at the manor. Since I read about a servant going missing around the same time as the necklace, I’d already jumped to conclusions that it was he who stole the necklace. I would have loved to delve deeper into what happened but now it looks like I’m going to have to lay the idea to rest.
“You never gave me the rundown of why you’re on a sabbatical, sweetheart,” Evan states, cutting into my thoughts.
Even though I wasn’t having the best of thoughts, I would have preferred the distraction over having to listen to him.
I pull my shawl closer when his eyes drop to my breasts. “I just needed a break.”
“A break from what, darling? I heard about your accident, but it seemed strange that you’d be taking a break now when it happened months ago.”
The comment and question annoy me. The accident is something I don’t want to talk about with him. I hardly talk about it with people I know well.
I don’t want to have to explain to someone who doesn’t understand me that I worked to try and forget what happened, and in the end all I did was crash and burn, leaving nothing but the embers of my efforts.
“It just happened that way,” I decide to say.
“I see. Sorry you had to go through that. And for your loss.” He brushes his shoulder against mine.
“Thank you.”
“I have just the thing for you.” He perks up and raises his index finger as if he’s just gotten the most brilliant idea in the world.
“What’s that?”
“Yacht party,” he declares, using the spirited voice of a frat boy. “I’m planning one for next month. You’re going with me. I can’t wait to see that body of yours in a bikini.”
Wow, how do we go from my grief to talking about a yacht party? Evan couldn’t even pretend to care for one more minute.
I want to inform him that I’m not going and the only way he’ll see me in a bikini is by accident, but I hold back.Again.
I’ve had to do that so much over the last few weeks I’m sure that by the end of this journey my spine will have dissolved and I’ll have turned into a doormat with arms and legs.
Evan launches into details about the party and I feel so trapped I want to tear my skin off.
I’m a grown woman, for God’s sake. I should have the fucking backbone to tell my father he can’t set me up with assholes, but I let myself be forced into this submission.
