Chapter Seventeen
Evie
Jack was almost a foot taller than her and strong too, so when he held the photographs in his hands high in the air, Evie tried in vain to snatch them back.
‘What the hell is this?’ Jack demanded.
The look of disgust on his face right now was exactly what Evie had wanted to avoid, from anyone. From Nicole mainly, from her boss, Bonnie, and from anyone else who knew her. Her uncle wasn’t going away. He was lurking in the shadows ready to ruin her life.
‘Give them to me!’ she yelled as passers-by paused momentarily at their altercation, but not enough to stop and take an interest. New York was like that. People were too afraid to get involved in case they came off worst.
Jack had flicked through a couple of the photographs and she was mortified. All of them showed her in various states of undress, and in one of them she was completely nude.
‘So this is how you make your money, is it?’ he asked. ‘And I’m assuming Nicole doesn’t know anything about it.’
‘Please, don’t tell her. I’m begging you.’
‘Who was the man, Evie? Does he have something to do with this?’
The tears she’d cried when she’d opened that envelope, knowing how close her world had come to blowing apart, had dried up now and determination kicked in.
‘It’s none of your business. Now give … them … back.’
‘Who is he?’
‘I don’t owe you anything.’ She reached again for the envelope, but he was holding it way out of her reach. It was hopeless.
‘Nicole is important to me and I won’t have anything ruining her life.’
‘Ruining her life? You Churchills did that when you fired her! She may have walked away quietly and with dignity, but I saw how torn up she was. You’d been her life for years and she was devastated! How can you claim to be looking out for her? Where have you been for the last three years? I’ve been by her side. Where the hell were you?’
‘I was devastated too. She was a huge part of my life! Maybe you could take some of the blame for what happened. What, just because you didn’t have a place to live makes you completely innocent in all this?’
‘You self-centred son of a—’
He rested his fingers lightly on her lips in the same way he’d done at the hospital that day. ‘Don’t finish that sentence. I buried my mother twenty years ago, but the pain is still there.’
God, that made her feel terrible.
Jack lowered his arm and slotted the photos into an inside pocket in his coat, battling away her hands as she tried to grab them.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked him.
‘I should show these to Nicole.’
She shook her head, willing him not to. ‘You’ll ruin my life if you do.’
‘Then you need to tell me exactly what is going on.’
*
‘It’s cold in here,’ said Jack, jacket still on and hovering in the doorway as though he wasn’t sure whether it was safe to go in to her basement apartment.
‘I’m afraid the radiators aren’t much good.’ She crouched down and turned the dial up to full in the room that housed the living room and kitchenette in one. ‘It’ll get warmer soon. Can I get you a cup of coffee? Something stronger?’ She pulled out the bottle of gin she rarely touched save the odd occasion she and Lizzy had enjoyed a nightcap.
‘I’ll have a coffee, if it’s not too much trouble.’
‘No trouble.’ She filled the kettle and flicked the switch, cringing at how polite they were being now she’d agreed to tell him everything if he came back to her apartment with her and they didn’t discuss it on the street. ‘Do you take milk?’
