For a moment, Evie thought he might refuse. He stared up at her, as if unsure how she’d arrived, wet as a freaking drowned rat, inside his bar. If he kicked her out, that would be the icing on her humiliation cake. She was cold and miserable, marooned with hardly any money, alone for Christmas, and now the person most likely to rub it all in her face was witnessing her low point.
Lifting her chin, she eyed him expectantly. She’d never let on how much it cost her to ring his doorbell. Not even if she lived to be a hundred years old. “Well?”
He strode up the stairs to her side, making the stairwell oddly claustrophobic, shoved the door open, and waved her in. “Go right ahead. Make yourself at home.”
She could hear the irony in his voice, but frankly, she was so relieved to be out of the rain she didn’t care. The door opened onto a long hallway. If she remembered correctly, the upstairs area had been a hotel before Davy purchased the bar, and it had retained that layout, with a number of rooms coming off a central corridor.
“Fourth room on the right is the spare bedroom,” he told her. “Drop your suitcase in there and have a shower. There’s a towel on the bed. The bathroom is directly opposite. I assume you have some dry clothes.”
“As long as the water didn’t get into my suitcase.” Which it could well have done, while she was busy with her head stuck up her ass. When would she learn that biting off her nose to spite her face got her nowhere? Her pride be damned. It was more important to be warm and dry.
“And whose fault would it be if it did?” he demanded.
“Yeah, yeah.” Rolling her eyes, she left him standing in the hallway, went to the room he’d indicated and laid her case on the floor. A double bed occupied the center of the space, with a standing wardrobe at its foot and a small cabinet beside the pillow. Other than that, the room was empty.
She unzipped her suitcase and touched the top layer of clothing. Slightly damp but not bad, all things considered. She hung the damp items on hangers in the wardrobe, gathered her toiletries, and crossed the hallway to the bathroom, which was a repurposed guest room, easily as large as the room she’d come from. A bathtub took up half of one wall, large enough for Davy’s rangy frame, and the floor and walls were tiled, with a shower head in the corner opposite the bath.
She vacillated between the bath and the shower, but when an image of Davy lying naked beneath a layer of bubbles flashed through her mind, she opted for the shower. The last thing she needed was to get hot and flustered over a man she’d loved and left.
As quick as humanly possible, she peeled off her soggy clothes and got under a scalding hot jet of water, sighing happily as her skin prickled and started to warm. She soaped, shampooed, rinsed, and just stood beneath the spray for several minutes. By the time she shut the water off, she felt a thousand percent better than she had going in. She dried herself, wrapped a towel around her hair and another around her body, then wrung out her wet clothing and tucked them beneath her arm. When she opened the door, steam billowed out into the hall. She stepped onto fluffy carpet, luxuriating in the softness of it against her bare feet, and looked up.
Then she froze. So did Davy, who’d emerged from the spare bedroom, where she’d left her things.
“Erm,” he said, then swallowed, the cords of his throat working. His eyes widened as they traveled from her bare shoulders to her concealed breasts and down her exposed legs. She pulled the towel tighter around her chest. She wasn’t what one would call shy about her body, but she felt vulnerable enough without being actually naked in front of him.
“Yes?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I, erm.” His eyes darted back to her face, his cheeks taking on a sunburned hue. “I left a clotheshorse in your room, in case you need it.”
“Thanks.” She waited for him to move, since he was standing between her and her belongings, but his feet seemed to be fastened to the floor. “Do you mind?”
“Oh, sorry.” He shuffled away, head down, the blush spreading down the back of his neck. Despite her best intentions, Evie found his embarrassment endearing. It wasn’t often that a capable, talkative man like him was at a loss for words, and she was flattered that he found her attractive. Part of her wondered if he’d still react that way to her body if she’d stayed with him after high school, as he’d wanted, or would the novelty have worn off?
No, don’t go down that road.
Hurrying into the bedroom, she closed the door with a soft click and leaned against it. You made your decision, she reminded herself. You don’t get to have second thoughts now.
Evie could admit her weaknesses. She was flighty, scattered and temperamental, but she’d always been smart. Too smart to be dwelling on “what ifs” and the mossy green of Davy O’Connor’s eyes. She dressed, then withdrew a small fleece blanket from the bottom of her suitcase. From within the folded blanket she extracted a photo frame, then wiped the glass and placed it on the bedside cabinet. She studied the photograph, which showed a petite Maori woman with straight bangs and a short ponytail, her arm around Evie, both of them grinning. Evie and Kahurangi didn’t look much alike, except in stature, but their souls had been the same. They’d never had much, but Kahurangi had done her best and often sacrificed her own wants for her daughter. She’d been all the whanau, or family, Evie had. Now, she was alone.
“E aroha no ahau ki a koe, e Mama,” Evie murmured. I love you, Mum.
Next to the photograph, she placed her scuffed hardcover edition of The Little Match Girl. She’d read it tomorrow. Finally, she lay down, palms resting on her stomach, and closed her eyes. Almost immediately, unwelcome doubts crept up on her, weighing heavily on her chest, making it difficult to breathe.
Sitting up, she rubbed circles over her heart and focused on the photograph of her mother. Kahurangi had never battled with restlessness the way Evie did, or with knowing where she belonged. She’d been happy here in Itirangi, and she hadn’t understood Evie’s desire to travel and educate herself about the world. Evie had thought her shortsighted, but now she questioned that. She’d been to half a dozen countries, worked dozens of different jobs, and she’d delighted in her lifestyle for a while, but it no longer held joy. Maybe Kahurangi had known more than her willful daughter thought.
“Oh, Mama,” she sighed. “What am I going to do?”
Davy had expected Evelyn to join him in the living area once she’d dressed, but half an hour passed with no sign of her. Was she hiding? It hardly seemed like her usual modus operandi—which as far as he could tell was to flaunt herself in front of him at every opportunity and show him what he’d missed out on—but he didn’t question her absence too much. Having some distance from her was a relief after how he’d reacted earlier. He’d never stopped being attracted to Evelyn—any man with a pulse would appreciate the way she looked—but he’d rather she didn’t know how she affected him. Not after all this time.
Affixing a wreath to the wall, he eyed his laptop, which waited on the dining table. Sighing, he rubbed his temples, then took a seat in front it, staring at the rows and columns. Numbers and words shifted beneath his gaze, rearranging themselves into gibberish. He gritted his teeth and used his palm to cover all of the columns but one to reduce the distractions. He’d been battling to make sense of the damn spreadsheet all day and was getting nowhere. Dyslexia was a bitch.
Scrolling through the numbers one by one, he tallied them on a calculator. Then two of the rows appeared to swap places and he lost track of where he was. Swearing wholeheartedly, he cleared the calculator and started again. This time, he made it to the end of the column, but even while his mind cheered at the success, his heart sank at the thought of how long it would take to get everything up to date. He had a long way to go.
He grabbed a pen and paper to record the final number, but as he did his attention wavered and the words and numbers became indecipherable again.
“Bollocks!” he growled, hurling the notepad across the room. It dislodged the wreath he’d just hung, which hit the floor with a thud. He hauled in several deep breaths, trying to calm himself. The more stressed he became, the worse his dyslexia got.
“Are you okay?” Evelyn asked, hovering in the doorway. “I heard a bang.”
“That was me,” he drawled. “Because a grown man is entitled to a temper tantrum sometimes.”
To his surprise, she crossed to his side and looked over his shoulder. “What’s got you so wound up?” She scanned the screen. “The books for the bar?”
He desperately wanted to slam the laptop shut and chase her away. It was bad enough that he was failing to take care of his business’s finances, but to have her witness his shortcoming—well, it wouldn’t do.
“Yeah,” he muttered, twisting to face her, hoping to draw her attention away from the messy spreadsheet. “I thought you were gonna hide all night.”
Annoyance flickered through her eyes as his verbal jab struck true. “I wasn’t hiding. I was trying not to intrude. But you’re hiding something. Tell me what the problem is. It might shock you, but I’m a pretty competent bookkeeper.”
He stared, wide-eyed. He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t that he’d ever thought Evelyn was stupid, but in high school you’d be far more likely to have encountered her at a rave than a library. His thoughts must have shown on his face, because she huffed.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not dumb.”
“Didn’t say you were, darlin’,” he replied, knowing the endearment would piss her off. “Go ahead, then. Take a look.” It couldn’t hurt to have a second set of eyes check his figures. He slid the laptop in front of her, and she sat.
“These are a mess,” she murmured, scrolling down the page while he watched, enthralled. Not only did she seem to understand the blasted numbers and words, but with a few clicks, she transported the data into a tidy table that most people would have found easy to interpret. She’d been right, she was completely competent, a fact that served to remind him of his own incompetency.
A tangled mash of guilt and shame churned in his gut. Guilt that he’d misjudged her, and shame that his brain was so broken he’d studied the numbers for hours and been unable to do what she had in a matter of minutes.
Finally, she paused, placing her hands one on top of the other and meeting his gaze. “Who taught you to bookkeep?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Nobody. I muddled my way through it.”
“Oh.” She winced. “Sorry if I was blunt.”
“That’s okay.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I know they’re not great.” That tended to happen when a person couldn’t tell an “A” from an “N” or a “5” from a “6”. He sighed. “I have an audit soon, and they’re going to have a field day when they see these.”
Her eyes twinkled, and her lips quirked up at the corners. “I see an opportunity here. You let me stay the night, and in return, I’ll tidy up your books.”
He hesitated, not sure she realized exactly how much work would be involved, and she mistook his hesitation for reluctance.
“I’ll keep out of your way,” she assured him. “I’m sure you have family plans for Christmas that don’t involve me.”
“I do have plans,” he admitted. His family weren’t the kind of people to be bothered by having extra guests, but he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about her being near them. It struck a little close to home when he’d once dreamed of her joining their ranks. But he’d also never find someone else willing to bail him out without charging thousands of dollars. “But yeah, you’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Great.” She grinned. “Then we’ll be even.” She paused, then added, “Perhaps I shouldn’t admit it, but I’m looking forward to digging into these. I love a good challenge, and it’s a well-timed distraction.”
He felt compelled to defend his poor bookkeeping skills, but without admitting his condition, he really couldn’t, and he didn’t want gorgeous Evelyn to know his secret. “I hope you enjoy it, then.”
Her gaze softened. “Thanks, Davy. For letting me stay here, and for not calling the girls. I just don’t think I can handle being around them right now.”
More than anything, he wanted to know why that was, but she didn’t volunteer the information and he didn’t ask. Evelyn wasn’t his business anymore. She’d made that perfectly clear when she’d stuck a knife in his heart and driven away without a care for the shambles of a man she’d left behind.