‘He’s working really hard. Too hard some days, but I appreciate it. I believe in him, I really do. I’m going to let him use the address as his own once the renovations are finished, see if we can get him some work.’
‘That’s good.’ Evie nodded.
‘So are you ever going to admit it?’ he asked.
‘Admit what?’
‘That you were wrong about me?’ He didn’t sound as confident as the words implied he should.
She smiled. ‘Jack, there’s something else I need to tell you.’
‘There’s more?’ He pulled a face of disbelief.
Evie didn’t want to look at him, but she made herself. It was nothing but the truth from now on. ‘I’d met Braydon once before, before that day at the hospital.’
Bewildered, he said, ‘I know, he was at the house the night my father went mental and threw you off the property.’
‘No, before that.’
‘When?’
‘It was about four weeks before that night. I was sleeping rough in the doorway of a house not far from your father’s place. I’d found a house with a basement entrance that was pretty concealed. It was out of the wind, out of the cold, had a small overhead shelter if I huddled in close to the step. Anyway, one night, I came back there after I’d had a good meal at the hostel and I settled in for the duration, at least until the sun came up the next morning and the streets got busier again.
‘I woke up to someone pushing my leg with their foot. This big brown shoe was pushing at my leg beneath the blanket, and I looked up to find a man in a suit looking down at me.’
‘Braydon?’
‘At first I thought it was the owner come home and ready to have me arrested, so I stood up, apologised, I was ready to move on. But he was kind to me, talking softly, understanding almost.’
From the look on Jack’s face, he’d already worked out where this was going.
‘He asked my name, asked if I’d eaten. He was perfectly nice. Until I tried to move on. That was when I realised he was interested in more than being friendly.’
‘Oh God, did he …’
Evie held up her hands. ‘I can fend for myself quite well. I listened to him go on about money he’d pay if I went home with him, how we could make this a regular thing, how I’d be off the streets in no time with the money he could give me. He kept running his fingers through my hair, lifting it to his face. That was when I tried to walk away. His grip tightened, but he didn’t have a chance to do anything because I kneed him so hard, exactly where it hurts, and he could barely stand, let alone get me.
‘I never went back to that doorway again, let me tell you. I found somewhere else, a few streets away, and that was when Nicole found me.’
Jack shook his head, his hands steepled in front of him, with his elbows rested on his knees. He closed his eyes and leant against his hands. ‘That bastard.’
‘I don’t think he appreciated the rejection.’
‘Braydon never did do well with the word “no”.’
They sat contemplating this new snippet of information, nothing compared to the drama of tonight but enough to have shaped Evie’s life and opinion of men, especially the rich, until this moment. Until Jack had proven they weren’t all the same.
Jack turned and put his hand back on hers. ‘Evie, there’s something I want to ask you.’
‘Go on.’
‘Would you have dinner with me one night?’
She grinned. ‘Are you asking me on a date, Jackson Churchill?’
‘I think I might be.’
‘On one condition,’ she said.
