be dead.’ He nodded. ‘Shows how little we knew, doesn’t it?’ His eyes met hers again. ‘Eve—’
‘Are we almost there yet?’ Tassie chipped in from the back of the car. ‘I’m starving.’
‘In other words, quit with the talking,’ Tom said ruefully, ‘and drive faster.’
‘Something like that.’ The little girl giggled and, as Tom grinned across at Eve, and her own lips curved in response, her heart contracted.
No, she told herself. No. The past is past, nobody can ever go back, and if you allow yourself to be sucked back into his world he’ll only hurt you again, and this time you might not survive.
‘What’s wrong?’ Tom asked, his green eyes suddenly puzzled, and Eve shook her head.
‘Just hungry, like Tassie.’
‘Eve—’
‘We’re here!’ Tassie interrupted with a shriek as the grey-stoned façade of The Smugglers’ Inn suddenly came into view. ‘And look at all the cars. I hope there’s room inside for us.’
And I hope it’s standing room only, Eve thought, so I can hide myself in the crush, but Tom must have read her mind because as she got out of the car he took her arm firmly in his.
‘Now we eat, and socialise, right?’ he declared.
‘You go ahead,’ Eve replied. ‘I just need…’
She waved vaguely in the direction of the door leading to the ladies’ cloakroom, but it didn’t do her any good.
‘We’ll wait for you, won’t we, Tassie?’ Tom said, and Tassie beamed, leaving Eve with nothing to do but obediently disappear into the ladies’ cloakroom.
At least it was empty, she thought with relief as she walked in. Company was the last thing she wanted right now, and quickly she washed her hands then pulled her hairbrush out of her handbag. Lord, but she looked awful. White face, panic-stricken brown eyes, her shoulder-length brown hair slightly windswept, and…
Forty-two, she thought bleakly as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. I look forty-two. OK, so that wasn’t old, but nothing could alter the fact that she was heavier than she’d been at twenty-two, that there were faint lines at the corner of her eyes, and her hair wouldn’t be brown if Vicki at the hairdresser’s didn’t tint it every six weeks.
Impatiently, she dragged her hairbrush through her hair. What did it matter if she didn’t look twenty-two any more?
Because I would like to have looked as I did when he last saw me, her heart sighed as her eyes met those in the mirror. Because it would have shown him what he lost when he walked away from me, and it was stupid to feel that way. Stupid.
‘Feeling any better now?’
Eve whirled round to see Kate Althorp standing behind her, and forced a smile.
‘Much,’ she lied, and Kate shot her a shrewd glance as she ran some water into a sink and began washing her hands.
‘It must have been quite a shock to see Tom again.’
‘A surprise,’ Eve said firmly. ‘It was a surprise, that’s all, seeing him back in Penhally.’
‘Yes, but you and he were quite close before he went to the States, weren’t you?’
Close. What an, oh, so very British, euphemistic way of saying ‘lovers’, Eve thought wryly, and of course Kate would remember she and Tom had spent that summer together. Kate was in her forties, too, and nothing stayed a secret for long in Penhally unless you really worked at it, and Tom hadn’t given a damn about what people thought.
‘Kate, I was twenty-two, he was twenty-four,’ Eve declared, injecting as much careless indifference into her voice as she could. ‘We shared a short summer romance, that’s all.’
‘Which wouldn’t make it any the less painful when it ended,’ Kate Althorp said gently.
The midwife saw too much—way too much—and Eve picked up her hairbrush again.
‘Water under the bridge years ago,’ she said. ‘We’ve both gone our separate ways since then, led very different lives.’
Or at least Tom had, Eve thought as Kate looked for a moment as though she’d like to say something, then dried her hands on a paper towel and left the cloakroom. Tom had gone off to the States, full of determination to succeed, and he had, whereas she…
She squeezed her eyes shut. He was not going to do this to her. She had spent all these years rebuilding her life into something to be proud of, something that mattered, and she was not going to let his presence tear it all down, make it seem worthless.
‘Enough, Eve,’ she said as she opened her eyes and gazed at her reflection again. ‘The past is past. Don’t resurrect it.’
Except it wasn’t that easy, she realised as she walked out of the cloakroom, and found Tom and Tassie waiting for her, grinning like a pair of conspirators.
‘Tassie was convinced you’d slipped down the toilet,’ Tom declared. ‘I told her we’d give you another five minutes, then I’d go over the top in my capacity as head of rescue operations at Deltaron.’
‘Promises, promises,’ Eve said lightly, and Tom’s grin widened.
‘You think I wouldn’t—or couldn’t?’ he replied.
‘I think we should eat,’ she said firmly, refusing to be drawn, but he knew what she was doing.
She could see it in the glint in his eyes. The familiar half daring, half challenging glint which had appeared in the past whenever he’d been about to do, or say, something completely outrageous, and a faint unease stirred in her. An unease which must have shown on her face because he smiled.
‘I’m a mature man now, Eve,’ he declared. ‘No fights, no arguments, I promise.’
And he was as good as his word.
For the next hour Tom charmed his way round the crowded room as only he could when he wanted to. Of course it helped that most of the people at the reception were newcomers to the village, but even when some of the older villagers cut him dead he didn’t rise to the bait. He simply moved away with a wry smile to gently reassure Lauren about his car, then make Chloe Mackinnon, the village’s other midwife, laugh as her fiancé, Dr Fawkner, stood by, watching protectively.
‘He’s changed, hasn’t he?’ Kate observed, nodding towards Tom who was now engaged in an animated discussion about fund-holding practices with Dr Lovak.
‘Tom always could string more than two words together, you know,’ Eve said more caustically than she’d intended, and Kate’s eyebrows rose.
‘I never thought he couldn’t,’ the midwife replied. ‘Just as you also know I never thought he got a fair deal in Penhally.’
‘Still won’t, judging by the reaction of some people,’ Eve said, nodding across to a small
