Evie's Bombshell - By Amy Andrews Page 0,37

out of the pub and were walking to his car, parked at the kerb outside. It was black and low with only two seats—the ultimate status symbol—and it surprised her. She’d never seen Finn’s car. He walked to work as everyone who lived at Kirribilli Views did, and like everyone else at his professional level and with his abrasive personality didn’t have a social life that really required one.

She supposed the women he’d dated probably thought it was hot and cool. Good-looking doctor—check! Racy car—check! But all she could think as the engine purred to life was, Where was he going to put the baby seat?

‘So what’s the big surprise?’ she asked as Finn negotiated the late-afternoon traffic.

‘Patience,’ he said, his eyes not leaving the road. ‘Patience.’

So they didn’t talk for the fifteen minutes it took to get where they were going. Evie looked around bewildered as they pulled up at a house in Lavender Bay, not far from the hospital or the harbour. In fact, as she climbed out of his car—something that would probably be impossible at nine months—she could see down to the harbour where the early evening light had laid its gentle fingers and across the other side to the tall distinctive towers of the SHH and further on to the large garish clown mouth of Luna Park and the famous bridge that spanned the harbour.

A breeze that smelled of salt and sand picked up her hair, blowing a strand across her face as she tracked the path of a yellow and green ferry. She pulled it away as she turned to face Finn, who was opening the low gate of the house where they were parked.

‘Okay, so … what are we doing here?’

‘All will be revealed shortly,’ he said as he gestured for her to follow him up the crumbling cement path.

Evie frowned. Whose place was this? Did he want her to meet someone? Someone who might help her understand him? A patient? A relative? Lydia? However she fitted into the puzzle that was Finn. His mother? His grandmother? Did he even have either of those? He never spoke of them.

It had to be someone he knew, though, because he had a key and as she watched him walk up the three stairs and traverse the old-fashioned balcony covered by a Seventies-style awning he didn’t even bother with knocking. Just slipped the key into the lock and pushed the door open.

He turned to her. ‘Come,’ he said as he stepped into the house.

Evie rolled her eyes. The man was clueless. Utterly clueless. But she followed him anyway because she was dying to know who lived in this gorgeous little cottage overlooking the harbour and what they had to do with Finn.

Maybe it was a clue to his life that he always kept hidden from her. From everyone.

She stepped inside, her heels clacking against smooth polished floorboards the colour of honey. The sound echoed around the empty house. The rooms, as she moved through, following Finn, were devoid of furniture, curtains or blinds and floor coverings. Soaring ceilings graced with decorative roses added to the cavernous echo.

He opened the back door and she followed him down the three stairs to the back entertaining area and then onto a small patch of grass, the back fence discreetly covered by a thick row of established shrubbery.

‘Well?’ he said, turning around with his arms splayed wide like a game-show host. ‘It’s beautiful, don’t you think?’

He was smiling at her, a rare smile that went all the way to his eyes, lighting them up like a New Year’s Eve laser display, and Evie’s foolish heart skipped a beat. ‘Yes,’ she said hesitantly, smiling back.

‘It’s yours,’ he said. ‘Ours. I bought it. As a wedding gift. The perfect place to raise our son.’

Evie stared at him for the longest time as everything around her seemed to slow right down to a snail’s pace. The flow of blood in her veins, the passage of air in her lungs, the distant blare of a ferry horn on the harbour. Then the slow death of her smile as realisation dawned.

‘Is this another way of suggesting we get married?’ she asked, her quiet voice sounding loud in the silence that seemed to have descended on the back yard.

Finn shook his head vigorously. ‘Absolutely not. It’s a proposal. I was wrong last time just … assuming. I should have asked you. I got the call this afternoon from the real estate agent that she was mine.’

Ours,