The Love List by Eve Devon

Author:Eve Devon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007558469
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-09-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Oh please, please tell me those words didn’t actually leave my lips? Nora stood floundering in front of Tod Collingsworth, watching in horror as he turned beetroot-red. Oh, they had—they had left her lips. The room pressed in on her, the lights now too harsh and the music too invasive as she tried and failed miserably to form a sentence that could somehow take away from her unforgiveable rudeness.

Then, as if someone had called for help from an interpreter, Ethan appeared at her side. His face was a picture of calm concern and she wanted to throw back her head and howl at the unfairness of it all because why should it be him that understood.

Ethan nudged her elbow gently and when he got her attention, stared pointedly at her drink before raising his gaze back to hers. Belatedly she realised that he was silently telling her to sip from the glass and with a jerky movement she lifted the crystal to her lips and drank to try and ease the tightness in her throat.

Anger at her father dying on her, anger at her second-guessing herself buzzed through her nervous system and if she didn’t get a handle on it she was either going to combust or have no control over it oozing out through her pores and infecting innocent people. Like it had poor Mr Tod Collingsworth.

Scrabbling to shove the anger back into the black hole inside herself, she vaguely became aware that Ethan was introducing himself to her father’s old friend and chatting about Love Leisure. Very deliberately and very helpfully he was giving her time to pull herself together.

A confident and easy social grace emanated from him, but she forgot to be jealous of those qualities. Instead, as she allowed his deep voice to penetrate the choke-hold on her emotion, her brain started to clear so that when there was a natural lull in the conversation she found she was able to step forward, lay her hand softly on Tod Collingsworth’s sleeve and with her voice low and somewhat shaky say, ‘Mr Collingsworth, I would like to apologise. I didn’t intend to sound so flippant. I wouldn’t want you to think—’

‘Of course not,’ he rushed to say. ‘Please don’t think that I meant to imply—what I want to say is that you’re quite obviously steering KPC in the right direction. I happen to know your father was extremely proud of you. Your mother, too, of course. How is she, since—’ His face flushed as he realised he’d walked right over the same minefield he’d only minutes before stumbled upon.

‘She’s well, thank you,’ Nora hurried to answer, desperate to smooth the waters. ‘She’s actually visiting Jared in New York at the moment and helping him organise his wedding. And thank you for saying that about my father. It’s very kind of you to say so,’ she said as she bowed her head to accept the compliment with the question of whether her father really was proud of her ringing in her head.

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