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‘Tell me about your family, again,’ she said.
‘Mother. Older brother. Assorted relatives. You’ll be meeting them soon enough.’
She’d be meeting his mother this weekend; it was all arranged. Max showed her the photo he’d just taken. ‘What do you reckon? Tell her now?’
‘Yes.’ They’d had this discussion before. ‘Now would be good.’
Max returned his attention to the phone, texting some kind of message to go with the photo. ‘Done,’ he muttered. ‘Now I feel woozy.’
‘Probably hunger,’ said Evie.
‘Don’t you feel woozy?’
‘Not yet. For that to happen there would need to be champagne.’
So when they got to the restaurant and ordered the seafood platter for lunch, Max also ordered champagne, and they toasted the business, the civic centre project and finally themselves.
‘How come it doesn’t bother you?’ asked Max, when the food was gone and the first bottle of champagne had been replaced by another. ‘Marrying for mercenary reasons?’
‘With my family history?’ she said. ‘It’s perfectly normal.’ Her father was on his fifth wife in as many decades; her mother was on her third husband. She could count the love matches on one finger.
‘Haven’t you ever been in love?’ he asked.
‘Have you?’ Evie countered.
‘Not yet,’ said Max as he signed for the meal, and his answer fitted him well enough. Max went through girlfriends aplenty. Most of them were lovely. None of them lasted longer than a couple of months.
‘I was in love once,’ said Evie as she stood and came to the rapid realisation that she wasn’t wholly sober any more. ‘Best week of my life.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Tall, dark and perfect. He ruined me for all other men.’
‘Bastard.’
‘That too,’ said Evie with a wistful sigh. ‘I was very young. He was very experienced. Worst week of my life.’
‘You said best.’
‘It was both,’ she said with solemn gravity, and then went and spoiled it with a sloppy sucker’s grin. ‘Let’s just call it memorable. Did I mention that he ruined me for all other men?’
‘Yes.’ Max put his hand to her elbow to steady her and steered her towards the stairs and guided her down them, one by one, until they stood on the pavement outside. ‘You’re tipsy.’
‘You’re right.’
‘How about we find a taxi and get you home? I promise to see you inside, pour you a glass of water, find your aspirin and then find my way home. Don’t say I’m not a good fiancé.’
‘Vitamin B,’ said Evie. ‘Find that too.’
Max’s phone beeped and he looked at it and grinned. ‘Logan wants to know if you’re pregnant.’
‘Who’s Logan?’ Even the name was enough to cut through her foggy senses and give her pause. The devil’s name had been Logan too. Logan Black.
‘Logan’s my brother. He’s got a very weird sense of humour.’
‘I hate him already.’
‘I’ll tell him no,’ said Max cheerfully.
Minutes later, Max’s phone beeped again. ‘He says congratulations.’
It couldn’t be her. Logan looked at the image on his phone again, at the photo Max had just sent through. Max looked happy, his wide grin and the smile in his eyes telegraphing a pleasurable moment in time. But it was the face of the bride-to-be that held and kept Logan’s attention. The glossy fall of raven-black hair and the almond-shaped eyes—the tilt of them and the burnt-butter colour. She reminded him of another woman … a woman he’d worked hellishly hard to forget.
It wasn’t the same woman, of course. Max’s fiancée was far more angular of face and her eyes weren’t quite the right shade of brown. Her mouth was more sculpted, less vulnerable … but they were of a type. A little bit fey. A whole lot of beautiful.
Entirely capable of stealing a man’s mind.
Logan hadn’t even known that Max was in a serious relationship, though, with the way Max’s trust was set up and Max’s recent desire to get his hands on it, he should have suspected that matrimony would be his younger half-brother’s next move.
Evie, Max had called her. Pretty name.
The woman he’d known had been called Angie.
Evie. Angie. Evangeline? What were the odds?
Logan studied the photo again, wishing the background weren’t so bright and their faces weren’t quite so shadowed. The woman he’d known as Angie had spent the best part of a week with him. In bed, on their way to bed, in the shower after getting out of bed … She’d been young. Curious. Frighteningly uninhibited. There’d been role play. Bondage play. Too much play, and he’d instigated most of it. Crazy days and sweat-slicked nights and the stripping back of his self-control until there’d been barely enough left to walk away.
At a dead run.
He’d been twenty-five at the time, he was thirty-six now and he doubted he’d fare any better with Angie now than he had all those years ago.
He squinted. Looked at the photo again. Could it be Angie? They were very long odds. He’d never kept in contact with her; had no idea where she was in the world or what she was doing now.
No, he decided for the second time in as many minutes. It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her.
‘She pregnant?’ he texted his brother.
‘Hell, no,’ came Max’s all-caps reply, and Logan grinned and sent through his all-caps congratulations. And then deleted the picture so that he wouldn’t keep staring at it and wondering what Angie—his Angie—would look like now.
Evangeline Jones felt decidedly nervous as Max helped her out of the taxi and followed her up the garden path to his mother’s front door. It was one thing to agree to a marriage of convenience. It was another thing altogether to play the love-smitten fiancée in front of Max’s family.
‘Whose idea was this?’ she muttered to Max as she stared at the elegant two-storey Victorian in front of them. ‘And why did I ever imagine it was a good one?’
‘Relax,’ said Max. ‘Even if my mother doesn’t believe we’re marrying for love, she won’t mention it.’
‘Maybe not to you,’ said Evie, and then the door opened, and an elegantly dressed woman opened her arms and Max stepped into them.
Max’s mother was everything a wealthy Toorak widow should be. Coiffed to perfection, her grey-blonde hair was swept up in an elegant roll and her make-up made her look ten years younger than she was. Her perfume was subtle, her jewellery exquisite. Her hands were warm and dry and her kisses were airy as she greeted Evie and then retreated a step to study her like a specimen under glass.
‘Welcome to the family, Evangeline,’ said Caroline, and there was no censure in that controlled and cultured voice. ‘Max has spoken of you often over the years, though I don’t believe we’ve ever met.’
‘Different cities,’ said Evie awkwardly. ‘Please, call me Evie. Max has mentioned you too.’
‘All good, I hope.’
‘Always,’ said Evie and Max together.
Points for harmony.
In truth, in the six years she’d known him, Max had barely mentioned his mother other than to say she’d never been the maternal type and that she set exceptionally high standards for everything; be it a manicure or the behaviour of her husbands or her sons.
‘No engagement ring?’ queried Caroline with the lift of an elegant eyebrow.
‘Ah, no,’ said Evie. ‘Not yet. There was so much choice I, ah … couldn’t decide.’
‘Indeed,’ said Caroline, before turning to Max. ‘I can, of course, make an appointment for you with my jeweller this afternoon. I’m sure he’ll have something more than suitable. That way Evie will have a ring on her finger when she attends the cocktail party I’m hosting for the pair of you tonight.’
‘You didn’t have to fuss,’ said Max as he set their overnight cases just inside the door beside a wide staircase.
‘Introducing my soon-to-be daughter-in-law to family and friends is not fuss,’ said Max’s mother reprovingly. ‘It’s expected, and so is a ring. Your brother’s here, by the way.’
‘You summoned him home as well?’
‘He came of his own accord,’ she said dryly. ‘No one makes your brother do anything.’
‘He’s my role model,’ whispered Max as they followed the doyenne of the house down the hall.
‘I need a cocktail dress,’ Evie whispered back.
‘Get it when I go ring hunting. What kind of stone do you want?’
‘Diamond.’
‘Colour?’
‘White.’
‘An excellent choice,’ said Caroline from up ahead and Max grinned ruefully.
‘Ears like a bat,’ he said in his normal deep baritone.
‘Whisper like a foghorn,’ his mother cut back, and surprised Evie by following up with a deliciously warm chuckle.
The house was a beauty. Twenty-foot ceilings and a modern renovation that complemented the building’s Victorian bones. The wood glowed with beeswax shine and the air carried the scent of old-English roses. ‘Did you do the renovation?’ asked Evie and her dutiful fiancé nodded.
‘My first project after graduating.’
‘Nice work,’ she said as Caroline ushered them into a large sitting room that fed seamlessly through to a wide, paved garden patio. The table there was set for four. Perfumed roses filled several large vases, their colours haphazard enough to make Evie smile.
‘I had a very demanding client who knew exactly what she wanted,’ said Max. ‘My ego took such a beating. These days I only wish all our clients could be that specific.’
‘Max tells me you’re a civil engineer,’ said Caroline. ‘Do you enjoy your work?’
‘I love it,’ said Evie.
‘And this new project you’re quoting on? You’re as enthusiastic about it as Max?’
‘You mean the civic centre? Yes. It’s the perfect stepping stone for us.’ Us being the business. ‘The right opportunity at exactly the right time.’
‘So I hear,’ said Caroline, with an enigmatic glance for her son. ‘I hope it’s worth it. Let me just go and tell Amelia we’re ready for lunch,’ she said smoothly, and swanned out of the room before anyone could reply.
‘She’s not buying it,’ said Evie. ‘The whirlwind engagement.’
‘Not so,’ said Max. ‘She’s undecided. Different beast altogether.’
‘You don’t take after her in looks.’
‘No,’ said Max. ‘I take after my father.’
‘You mean tall, dark, handsome and rich?’ Evie teased.
‘He’s not rich,’ said a deep voice from behind them. ‘Yet.’
That voice. Such a deep, raspy baritone. Max had a deep voice too, but it wasn’t like this one.
‘Logan,’ said Max turning around, and Evie forced herself to relax. Max had a brother called Logan; Evie knew this already. It was just a name—nothing to worry about. Plenty of Logans in this world.
And then Evie turned towards the sound of that voice too and the world as she lived in it ceased to exist, because she knew this man, this Logan who was Max’s brother.
And he knew her.
‘Evie, this is my brother,’ said Max as he headed towards the older man. ‘Logan, meet Evie.’
Manners made Evie walk puppet-like to Max’s side and wait while the two men embraced. Masochism made her lift her chin and hold out her hand for Logan to shake once they were finished with the brotherly affection. He looked older. Harder. The lines on his face were more deeply etched and his bleak, black gaze was as hard as agate. But it was him.
Logan ignored her outstretched hand and shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets instead. The movement made her memory kick. Same movement. Another time and place.
‘Pretty name,’ he rumbled as Evie let her arm fall to her side.
He’d known her as Angie—a name she’d once gone by. A name she’d worked hard to forget, because Angie had been needy and greedy and far too malleable beneath Logan Black’s all-consuming touch.
‘It’s short for Evangeline,’ she murmured, and met his gaze and wished she hadn’t, for a fine fury had set up shop beneath his barely pleasant façade. So he’d been duped by a name. Well, so had she. She’d been expecting Logan Carmichael, brother to Max Carmichael.
Not Logan Black.
Logan’s gaze flicked down over her pretty little designer dress, all the way to her pink-painted toenails peeking out from strappy summer sandals. ‘Welcome to the family, Evangeline.’
Max wasn’t stupid. He could sense the discord and he slid his arm around Evie’s waist and encouraged her to tuck into his side, which she did, every bit the small, sinking ship, finding harbour.
