When Honey Got Married by Kimberly Lang, Ally Blake, Kelly Hunter, Anna Cleary Page B

Eve hauled Minna away from the mocking beast and hustled her onto the veranda and the official receiving line at the entrance to the Magnolia Room.
    “Now be careful who you kiss,” Minna warned grimly out of the side of her mouth. “A snake is still a snake, even in a tiara. And here comes one now.”
    “Auntie. Please.”
    As if Eve didn’t have enough horror on her hands.
    Sensing Rainer Delacroix’s intrusive gaze scorching through the back of her dress, she only just restrained herself from glancing at him again over her shoulder.
    That he was even aware of her name was astounding. He was older than the set she’d gone to school with. Harder, more experienced than the boys she knew. What if he spread it about that she was suffering from unrequited love?
    He might. There was something ruthless about him.
    Eve’s insides churned. At least if she and Brent had had an affair, there’d be some credit in it for her. But the way things were… She’d be a laughing stock.
    With those few minor flirtations in her past, not to mention her grossly exaggerated reputation for the careless breakage of hearts, the town gossips would love it. How her enemies would gloat.
    People would say she’d tried to snatch Brent from Honey and failed . The rejected woman.
    Worse still, would be what Brent would think. He’d be imagining she’d blabbed something about him. Some mean-spirited complaint, when he’d only ever been kind to her. In those two years she’d worked as his trusted research assistant at Delacroix Developments, she and Brent had clicked in so many ways. It had meant so much to her, those hours they’d spent talking about the things that really mattered. Like preserving the bayou ecology. Rescuing endangered species.
    In a sad irony, it was the skills she’d acquired in Brent’s employ that had helped her to land her plum job with the geographic magazine. After she’d made the decision to tear herself away from him and flee to New York.
    After all he’d done for her, she couldn’t bear for Brent to feel the tiniest prickle of guilt on her account.
    Eve was pierced by a shard of pure panic. Rainer might be capable of anything. What did she know about him, really?
    On his rare visits to his farm at Bellefleur he never bothered with socializing, as far as she knew. A guy who made his living as some kind of hotshot professional troubleshooter was hardly likely to take an interest in the Bellefleur Theatrical Society.
    Not that the women of Bellefleur hadn’t noticed him . There’d been reports a while back, of one of the Dixon women pursuing him madly to no avail, jumping off a bridge, then, after she was rescued, shaving her head and retreating to a Buddhist nunnery.
    Eve had seen him once in New York with a woman, some high-powered judge he was said to be involved with, but as far as she knew, the times he visited Bellefleur he arrived as a lone gun, cool, sexy, and maddeningly inaccessible to the kind of woman who lusted after icy mocking eyes and a ripped set of muscles.
    Eve never lusted. Flirting was more her style. Though she might surrender her body once in a while to some lust-crazed dude for pity’s sake, out of sheer politeness, it had come as a complete shock to her to discover she could actually fall hard. And for a guy with mild blue eyes who cared about the environment.
    Who was about to marry someone else.
    She sneaked a glance about, and saw Rainer being lionized by a bunch of ladies from the church charity. She guessed the best thing would be to avoid him. Give him a chance to forget what he’d overheard. With so many folk swarming up the stairs in their pearls and satins for this “informal little get-together,” that wasn’t likely to be too hard. Seemed like most of Bellefleur had been invited.
    Most likely, Rainer had forgotten her already.
    She was starting to breathe more easily when all at once, Rainer looked over, caught her eye, and winked.
    Eve blanched. Why ? What did he mean