A line formed between Eve’s eyebrows. “You don’t have to sit with me.” Eve took another sip of her drink, this one bigger. “I’m okay being alone.”
Good, well, I’ll see you later then. And by later, I mean never, because awkward conversations are rarely funfor either party.
Livvy cast a longing glance at the exit, but since the dude who’d been bothering Eve was still in the bar, she stayed put. “I’d like some company. Looks like Sadia’s got a bachelorette party in, so she’ll be busy for a while, and I don’t know anyone else here.”
“Sadia?”
Eve wouldn’t have hung around Sadia and Paul as much as she had around Livvy and Nicholas. “She was married to my brother. Paul,” Livvy specified, feeling guilty at how she rushed to make it clear she wasn’t talking about Jackson. She knew Jackson was innocent of arson, but she doubted Eve had been raised to believe that.
“Paul, yes.” Her gaze skipped over the table, then away, over to the bar. “I remember her. She looks unhappy to see me.”
“Don’t mind her. She’s protective of me.”
Eve blinked and refocused on Livvy. “Does she thinkyouneed protection fromme?”
Livvy shrugged. Eve gave a decidedly uncharacteristic snort. “Right. Okay.”
“You don’t think I need protection from you?”
Eve’s smile was grim. She ran her gaze over Livvy. “You don’t look scared.”
“It’s because I’m good at hiding my fear. I’m shaking inside.”
She was being utterly honest, but from the way Eve’s lips twisted, she knew the younger woman didn’t understand that.
Livvy tapped her fingers on the side of her still-full glass. She’d always been shitty at waiting for the other shoe to drop. Livvy ran her hand through her hair, gathering it up in a ponytail before letting it fall back down. “What are you really doing here, Eve?”
“I told you, I come here often.”
“We both know that’s a lie.”
Eve fiddled with the stem of her glass. “Yes,” she said softly. “It’s a lie. I followed you here.”
“Uh. Excuse me?” That, she had not expected.
Eve’s throat worked. “I came to your house,” she confessed. “I mean, your mom’s house. Tonight. I was sitting in my car, working up my nerve to knock.”
Oh, yeesh. She couldn’t predict what her mother’s reaction would have been to opening the door and finding the spitting image of the woman who had died with Robert, but she couldn’t imagine it would be pretty. Since Tani had methodically sequestered herself from her old life and only left the house when Paul or Sadia took her somewhere, Livvy figured the odds were low she’d even seen Eve in the past decade. “Why did you do that?”
“I wanted to talk to you. See you. I saw you leave, and at the time... it seemed like a good idea to, um...”
“Stalk me?” At the very least, Eve was a better lurker than her brother. Not by much, in her weird getup, but it had taken Livvy a while to notice her.
“I wasn’t stalking you,” she added quickly. “I was...”
“You were... what?”
Eve shifted in her seat, picked up her glass, and drained it, her throat working. She set it down with a clink. Her words, when she spoke, were precise. Tiny, perfect bombs. “I wanted to see the woman whose father murdered my mother.”
Livvy sat back in her seat, the words digging into her flesh and burying in her heart. She almost leanedover to check the floor. Surely blood had formed a puddle under her chair. “Wow,” she managed.
You don’t want to be seen with the daughter of the man who was responsible for your mother’s death.
Similar to what she’d hurled at Nicholas, but not the same.
Eve’s face was so serene, almost peaceful, Livvy could almost doubt that the vicious words had come from her mouth. But they had.
Not timid at all.
