He cradled her elbow and led her away from the building, out of the way of another couple on their way in, a man on his way out. ‘Then at least let me buy you coffee.’ He saw the look on her face. ‘Or you can buy me one. There’s a café right across the street.’
‘Fine.’ And she stalked over the street without waiting for him.
They ordered two coffees and Jack brought them to the table. ‘So go on then, what’s given you a face like thunder, like you want to kill me?’ He grinned, warily. ‘I kind of thought we might be friends after last night.’
‘Not after what you and your father have done, no.’
He slurped his coffee, wincing at the heat from it. ‘And what are we supposed to have done?’
‘The shelter.’ Her voice went up at the end. Was he deliberately playing dumb?
‘What about the shelter?’
‘You’re taking it from under us, putting new premises there.’
He spluttered now, sending the top of his coffee splashing onto the table. Evie handed him a bunch of napkins, but she didn’t wipe it for him. Let him clean up his own mess.
‘Don’t tell me you had no idea,’ she bit.
‘I didn’t. I honestly didn’t know my father had the shelter earmarked.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think he knows it’s where Nicole volunteers. He’s been off the ball lately, since his health scare, so he’s not investigated things to the nth degree, and this perfectly illustrates my point.’ He mopped up the last of the spill and sat back in his chair, uninterested in the coffee. ‘If he knew Nicole was involved, I don’t think he’d go near the place.’
‘I want to believe you, Jack.’ Evie had thought last night she’d found a friend, but now Jack seemed like one of those people who reeled you in, managed to gain your trust and then hit you the second your back was turned.
‘But you don’t.’
‘We live in different worlds, you and I.’
‘See, that doesn’t help, because we both live in the same one … Manhattan.’ He smiled hopefully as he looked back at her.
Evie wished his dark brown hair didn’t look so good she wanted to run her fingers through it, and that his toffee-coloured eyes would shift their focus to something or someone else.
‘I’m in a world where friendship and trust trumps all else,’ she said, ‘whereas you’re in a world where the mighty dollar is the be all and end all. I think you try to have genuine friendships, I saw that last night, but at the end of the day Jack Churchill does what he wants as long as he makes a profit. I thought more of you, Jack. I thought you were strong, stood up for what you believed in the way you stood up for Nicole when you thought I was trying to take advantage of her. But you’ll never be any different to your father.’
Her chair scraped back as she got up to leave, but Jack’s hand shot out and covered hers. She looked down at it.
‘Evie …’ His voice was soft, but she didn’t want to look at him.
Tears sprang to her eyes, her hand still beneath his. ‘The lease is up and we have no money to renew it anyway, so I guess you’ve won the battle.’ She tried to move, but his hand gripped hers again and pulled her back.
Jack stood up and abandoned his coffee. ‘I didn’t know anything about this, I swear. And furthermore, I kept my promise last night and I’ve told nobody what you told me. I’ve kept the secret and I’ll continue to do so. How can you not trust me?’
She looked at the ground.
‘Come on.’ He tipped his head to the door. ‘Follow me, I want to show you something. Give me one chance to prove myself to you, that’s all I ask.’
*
Evie sat in the passenger seat in Jack’s fancy car that wasn’t only clean but smelled so fresh it was as though it had just been driven off a factory forecourt. It smelt like the Mercedes her father had bought brand new, ebony black, slick as the life he’d led for a while.
The car weaved through the streets, the traffic, the smog of Manhattan until they reached wider roads, and buildings faded away to be replaced by greenery speckled white by the snow, by trees, by the feeling of space. Every now and then Jack moved his head to check his rear-view mirror or his wing mirror. Evie had agreed to give him a chance, but she still had no idea where they were going. All she knew was that they’d started to follow the signs to New Haven.
‘I love it out here.’ Jack indicated to overtake a lorry and then pulled back into the lane again.
‘Do you come here often?’ As soon as she’d said it she giggled. ‘Sorry, that sounded like a bad chat-up line.’
He grinned as he turned off the main road and followed a street with a canopy of trees above them, lacking the spring splendour they would surely have in a few months. They came to a quieter area with maple trees lining the streets.
‘You know, I always wanted to own a maple tree farm,’ Evie said, gazing out the window. ‘I blame my Mum. She would make pancakes every weekend and I’d always eat mine with lashings of maple syrup. We did a class project on it once, at school, learning about how it’s made.’
