Grabbing Gabe’s face, she pulled him down and laid her lips on his.
Yum. They were just as succulent as she imagined.
Gabe groaned out her name against her lips.
“Damn it, Evie. I need to get you tucked up in bed.”
“Mmm… now that sounds like my kind of proposition,” she purred, angling her lips towards his once again.
He turned his head.
“Evie… that’s not what I meant. This isn’t right. We can’t…”
His hands were so gentle it took Evie a while for her alcohol-fueled brain to realize he was pushing her away. But when it did, when his words hit, it was like she’d been doused in cold water.
The fog she’d been swimming in evaporated, and all that was left was humiliation.
She’d just thrown herself at a man, and he’d rejected her, too.
Fuck her life!
Chapter
Ten
EVIE
“Go away!” Evie mumbled into her phone the following morning.
“Good afternoon to you too,” came Posy’s cheerful voice. “I think perhaps you overdid it last night.”
Evie sprang up in bed and immediately regretted it. “Urgh. Owww…”
She stilled in order to ease her stomach, which was preparing to revolt, and pressed a hand to her aching head.
“What do you mean afternoon? It can’t be afternoon. I have to be at the bakery.”
“Don’t worry, Aunty Posy made sure Jane opened up for you. Since it’s Saturday and you prepared everything last night, she just assumed you were already at the festival, and I didn’t disabuse her of that notion.”
“My stall…”
“Is all taken care of. Gabriel is minding it for you, and I have donned my own Santa’s helper costume - I am not being an elf! - ready to cover you at the grotto. You owe me!” Posy reminded her.
Evie groaned again. The mention of Gabe had all her embarrassment from the night before crashing back over her like a debilitating wave.
“I’m never drinking again,” she grumbled as she gingerly collapsed back onto her mattress and tried to gauge just how bad her stomach was.
“That’s what everyone says. It’s never true.” Posy was far too chipper.
“Posy, I think my stomach is going to revolt, and I don’t want to scar you by keeping you on call while I redecorate the porcelain, so I’m hanging up now, but thank you.”
“Ewww!” Posy’s grimace was audible as Evie ended the call and stumbled to the bathroom.
Thirty minutes later, minus the contents of her stomach and with paracetamol taking the edge off her headache, Evie sat at her parents’ dining table, grateful they weren’t home, and nursed a soothing cup of chamomile tea.
Damn, but her life was a shambles. She’d never be able to show her face around town again.
It was bad enough that her husband had left her and their son for his job, and potentially another woman, forcing her to move back in with her parents at the ripe old age of almost thirty. But to compound it all, she had to go and kiss Shepherd, who ghosted her, then started a pissing contest with Asher when she’d gone on her first real date since she’d met Adrian. And asshole Asher, as Evie had now dubbed him, had thought she had a thing with Shepherd and was leading them both on.
