The One That Got Away by Kelly Hunter

said with a smile she didn’t trust at all. ‘I could.’
And handed her back the towel and stalked from the bathroom and then from her
room without another word.
    * * *
    ‘So what happened between you and Logan?’
asked Max for the umpteenth time as Evie plucked a midnight-blue gown from a
clothing rack and flattened it against her body.
    ‘We talked,’ she said calmly. ‘Too formal?’
    ‘No,’ said Max. ‘Does he still want you to go live in
Antarctica?’
    ‘Probably,’ said Evie, and withdrew a sleek little black dress
from the rack. ‘But he knows he can’t make me, so he’s just going to have to
learn to live with disappointment. Too severe?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Evie draped it across her arm of potential dresses anyway.
Little black dresses could be deceptive. A deceptively demure
black-and-caramel-coloured dress caught her eye next. Demure could be deceptive
too. ‘What about this one?’
    ‘Evie, just pick one,’ said Max.
    ‘Or I could take an early flight home and forget about your
mother’s cocktail party altogether,’ said Evie. ‘As long as we’re talking
contingency plans, I’m liking that one a lot.’
    ‘No,’ said Max steadily. ‘We ride this one out together. Kill
the speculation stone dead now.’
    ‘Maybe you can tell them I’m gay,’ murmured Evie.
    ‘They wouldn’t believe me. Not if Logan’s anywhere in the
room.’
    ‘Okay, then. You can be gay.’ Evie eyed a plum-coloured gown
with a plunging neckline and a thigh-high side split speculatively. ‘What about
this one?’
    ‘Evie, just pick one.’ And then Max
looked at the dress. ‘But not that one.’
    Evie slid it back on the rack. ‘I vote we tell your mother’s
friends that we’re celebrating the success of our business partnership and
hopefully the beginning of bigger and better things for MEP. We smile and shake
our heads and say we’re sorry people got the wrong idea but we’re not engaged
and not about to be. We keep it simple. Deny everything.’
    ‘You really think that’s going to fly?’
    ‘Put it this way,’ she said. ‘You got a better idea?’
    * * *
    The cocktail party was every bit as awkward as
Evie thought it would be. Elegant, wealthy people, all set to welcome Evie into
their lives at Caroline’s behest, and politely puzzled when it became clear that
they didn’t have to.
    Civilised. It was all so very civilised, but no midnight-blue
cocktail gown in the world could shield her from Logan’s powerful presence as
she stood by Max’s side and talked business goals and achievements with
strangers.
    Logan didn’t approach her. He stuck to his side of the room and
Evie stuck to hers. She didn’t watch him out of the corner of her eye. Instead
she stuck to finding him in reflections in mirrors, of which there were plenty.
In the shine of tall silver vases. How could one man assault her senses the way
he did, just by being in a room? One man, dressed in black tie, just like every
other man in the room.
    ‘Evie, stop fidgeting,’ said Max.
    ‘I’m not fidgeting.’
    She was fidgeting, so with a
smothered curse she stopped.
    ‘And swearing,’ murmured Max, highly amused. ‘You could stop
that too.’
    ‘I’m not—damn!’ Evie swore rather than add chronic lying to her
list of sins too. ‘How much longer do we have to stay here?’
    ‘Until the bitter end,’ said Max cheerfully. ‘I’m guessing
around midnight.’
    She’d been sticking to mineral water until now. Maybe it was
time she swapped over to something with a little more kick. Then again, the
argument against alcohol was a strong one. She’d already been quite uninhibited
enough today.
    ‘You could marry someone else,’ she told Max during a moment
they had to themselves—just business partners sharing a quiet moment out on the
patio, drinks in hand and smiles at the ready. ‘A childhood friend. Someone who
knows this life and how to live it. Someone who’d be happy to accommodate you
for two years and then move