Page 86 of Love and Loathing

Liv came back and held out a coffee. When he made no move to take it, she put it on the coffee table, then sat back down on the sofa, putting the phone back in her bag. Hiding the evidence. As if it was so easy to move on.

“George will come after you for breaking the gagging clauseandfor releasing confidential information.”

She looked at him when he didn’t reply.

“You don’t want to mess with his lawyers, Aub. They’d give my guys a run for their money.”

He walked to the window. Leant there looking at the rain streaking the glass. The sky and the world were grey. Evie would be out there in the cold and the mud. In the garden he’d bought her. A wrench of pain swept through him, so sharp it left him shattered, his lungs ragged, heart torn. But he made no move, just watched the rain tumble down the glass.

“You can make it all go away,” Liv said.

“How?” He glanced at her.

She patted her bag. “You have what you need to prove it wasn’t you. This is enough evidence to put Evie in the frame.”

“No.”

“No?”

That was all the reply he could give. A fierce, intractableno.

Liv smiled, coaxing. “George isn’t going to sue his own daughter, Aub. She won’t come to any harm, I’m sure.”

Aubrey was very far from sure about that. Evie had hurt BlacktonGold, and George would find a way to punish her for it, public or not. And it was illegal, what she had done. If word got out…

“No,” he said again.

“This can save you!” Liv exclaimed. “You can’t want to protect her after what she’s done to you. She used you, Aubrey. Lied to you. Manipulated you. And now she’s thrown you to the dogs, ruined your career. This case could bankrupt you. How can you possibly still care a shred for the girl?”

“Because I love her.”

Again: the only reply he could give. The simple truth.

Liv’s face hardened, angry red flooding her cheeks. “Then you’re an idiot. But I won’t let you ruin yourself for her. I’ll take the evidence to George myself.”

Aubrey took a quick step towards her. “You will not.”

Liv stood, pulling her bag onto her shoulder, all her cool composure gone. “I will. I’ll save you. And you’ll see which one of us you should have chosen.”

“You will not,” Aubrey repeated, voice low and hard. “Because you know as well as I do that your supposed evidence is inadmissible. Illegally obtained. You have no police warrant to access Evie’s emails. HallardPuck might act like they’re above the law, but they are not, and neither are you. If you so much as breathe a word about Evie’s involvement in this, I will come after you with every dirty secret I know from the sixteen years I’vespent regretting the day we ever met. Now get out of my damn house.”

THIRTY-SIX

Evie huddled under thesmall porch to Aubrey’s building, arms folded, shivering despite the heat of her race across the city. Her phone was in her hand, a dozen unanswered calls. She’d left several voicemails, all equally incoherent, and now had no idea what to do.

He couldn’t be here. No matter what had happened, Aubrey wasn’t the sort of man to hide in his flat, pretending not to hear the doorbell. He would face anything, however unpleasant. But where had he gone? What had Liv told him…?

Another wave of nausea went through her. She felt ill, truly ill, physically sick with all the emotions that flooded her. Taking a breath to steady herself, she dialled a different number.

“Hi, Evie.”

“Roscoe! I…”

“Hey, hey, steady up. What’s wrong?”

“Aubrey…”

“Oh. You heard the news.”

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