Evie's Bombshell - By Amy Andrews Page 0,33

Evie would be difficult.

In fact, if anything, he’d counted on those feelings she always wore on her sleeve to work in his favour.

‘Not when there’s a perfectly good alternative,’ she continued. ‘I’m happy … really, really happy … that you want to be involved, Finn. But we’re going to have to work out a way to co-parent separately because I’m not marrying a man who doesn’t love me.’

Her words were quiet but the delivery was deadly and Finn knew that she meant every single one. ‘Contrary to what you might think, growing up without two parents kind of sucks, Evie. Trust me on that.’

Evie shivered at the bitterness in his words. ‘Is that what happened to you?’ she murmured. Had Ethan been right about Finn’s emotional issues extending further back than Isaac’s death?

She watched his face slowly shut down, his eyes become chilly. ‘We’re not talking about me.’

Evie snorted. ‘You tell me to trust you, demand that I marry you, but you clam up when I try to get close? Well trust me, Finn, growing up with two parents who hate each other kind of sucks too.’

‘At least you had a stable home life,’ he snapped.

So he hadn’t? ‘It wasn’t stable,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘My father just had enough money to buy the illusion of stability. Ultimately my mother was a drunk who came and went in our lives while my father put nannies in the house and mistresses in his bed.’

Finn’s mouth twisted. ‘Poor little rich girl.’ So Evie’s life hadn’t been perfect—it had still been a thousand per cent better than his had ever been.

Evie shook her head. He really could be an insensitive jerk when he put his mind to it. ‘I won’t be with a man who doesn’t love me.’

She reiterated each word very carefully.

‘You seemed to be with Stuart long enough,’ Finn jibed, ‘and Blind Freddie could have seen he didn’t love you.’

Evie gasped at his cruel taunt, the humiliation from that time revisiting with a vengeance. ‘At least he’d pretended to care. I doubt you’re even capable of that!’

‘You want me to pretend? You want me to lie to you? Okay, fine, Evie I love you. Let’s get married.’

She stood, ridiculously close to tears and tired of his haranguing. If he thought this was the way to win her over, he was crazy. ‘Go to hell, Finn,’ she snapped, and stormed out of the room.

Finn’s brain was racing as he took the fire stairs up to his penthouse apartment half an hour later. The lifts were being temperamental again and, frankly, after missing his daily ocean swims he could do with the exercise and the extended thinking time. He was breathing hard by the time he got to the fifth floor and stopped by the landing window to catch his breath and absently admire a large slice of the harbour.

Kirribilli Views apartments had certainly been blessed by the location gods.

The door opened and he turned to find Ava Carmichael entering the fire escape. She looked momentarily surprised and then grinned at him. ‘We really must stop meeting like this.’

Finn grunted, remembering their last meeting in this stairwell when he’d come upon Ava crying over her broken marriage. Actually, they’d been through a lot together, with him helping her the day she’d miscarried in the lift and then she and Gladys finding him collapsed from a major infection after his first operation.

Not that they’d ever talked about those things. Ava was like that. For a therapist, she was very non-intrusive. Mostly anyway. There had been an occasion or two where she’d spoken her mind but even then she’d given it to him straight. Hadn’t couched anything in vague psychological terms.

He liked that about her.

It was good to know that things had improved for both of them since. He had fully recovered from his injury and she and James had reconciled, having had their first baby just before his second operation and his desertion to Beach Haven.

‘It’s not too late,’ Finn said, forcing himself to keep things light. ‘We can still make out in the stairwell and no one would know.’

Ava laughed at the rumour she’d threatened to start to blackmail him into seeing her the day after he’d scared the daylights out of all of them with his infection. He’d been in an absolutely foul mood but she’d served him up some home truths anyway.

Not that he’d taken them on board.

He was a stubborn, stubborn man. But she had a soft spot for