My general manager didn’t question her authoritative tone.
“Are you a medic?” asked the worried woman I suspected was Gerald’s wife.
“I’m a qualified first aider,” Evan replied.
How did I not know this? Surely that was something I should know about her, especially as her employer. My entire staff should know who the first aiders in the building were.
The wife looked near tears. “Will my husband be okay?”
“He’s doing fine,” Evan evaded, patting Gerald’s arm. “The ambulance will be here soon.”
“Is he having a heart attack?” The wife began to cry.
Gerald shot her a concerned, pained look.
Evan rubbed her hand down Gerald’s arm to soothe him. “I don’t know for sure. But some aspirin should help until the paramedics get here.”
For a few more minutes, Evan spoke quietly and calmly to the man, and he stared into her eyes, seeming to relax. Not long later, George appeared, breathless and sweating with the goods in hand.
I watched on from the side as Evan helped Gerald take the aspirin with some water. She did it with that same mature calm and the small, reassuring smile she’d worn since we’d arrived on the scene.
Minutes later, the paramedics made their way through the department to Gerald. I was completely focused on Evan, who quickly and efficiently relayed the man’s symptoms to the paramedics and told them she’d given him aspirin.
“Are you a doctor?” one paramedic asked in a tone I didn’t like.
I stepped forward. “She’s one of my first aiders.”
The paramedic nodded. “Fine, fine, good. Can you make sure everyone’s out of the way, sir?”
Evan and I did just that, cutting a path through the store for the paramedics to maneuver with no fuss. Customers watched as we passed, the store brought to a standstill in some departments because of it. It barely registered with me.
I was completely and fully aware of the small, incredibly capable woman at my side.
Once the ambulance departed, I turned to Evan, staring into her gorgeous dark eyes and said gruffly, “You were wonderful.”
She beamed, her smile causing this ache in my chest I didn’t understand. “Thanks. Happy to help him. He should be okay.”
“You were so calm and in control.”
It was bloody impressive.
George appeared, and then Alan and the young boy who’d come running to alert us to the situation. They surrounded Evan, marveling at her handling of the situation and congratulating her.
The overwhelming urge to snatch her up from the lot came over me.
“Haven’t you ever been infatuated with a woman?” Her question from weeks ago came back to me.
My answer then was no.
But it had changed.
Evan with her sunny disposition, her kindness, her surprising maturity, the ease with which I could talk to her, had become an obsession. I wanted to possess every inch of her, like a fucking territorial caveman, and I’d never felt that way about a woman.
It had taken me twenty years to find a woman who filled my thoughts and drove me to distraction.
And it would have to be my best friend’s little sister.
It wasn’t the forbidden thing that got me hot.
She did.
It was the forbidden thing that made it hurt.
Because I couldn’t have her.
Chapter Four
REID
Early December
It was very difficult to avoid a personal assistant.
Something about their entire job revolving around personally assisting, I suppose.
There was no getting away from Evan at work, as much as I tried.
The woman was driving me to madness.
Was this love? This insanity?
Searching for the sound of her voice, the tinkle of her laughter, the smell of her perfume.
This knot in my gut and the absentmindedness that seemed more appropriate for a teenager than a full-grown man.
I’d taken to sending Evan home earlier than usual. It had been a bad habit of mine to let her work almost as late as I did, but I’d insisted she leave at the end of her workday. She’d tried to resist, but my snapped demand that she do as she was told halted any further arguing. In fact, she’d started to treat me with a cool distance that was driving me up the wall.
I should be grateful for it.
Yet every time she smiled at another staff member or laughed on the phone with someone, it made me miss the ease between us all the more.
It was for the best, I kept telling myself.
My eyes flicked to the wall clock, and I wasn’t surprised to discover it was past eleven o’clock. I’d been working later once Evan left the office because it was the only time I could fully concentrate.
Damn the woman.
My phone buzzed on my desk, Patrick’s name on the screen.
Guilt suffused me.
I’d been avoiding Pat, too, ever since I realized how I felt about Evan.
However, knowing he wouldn’t be calling at this late hour without a reason, I answered, hitting the speaker button.
“Reid, can you do me a favor, mate?” Pat asked without preamble.
“Of course.”
“Evan is on a Christmas night out with the girls. Her friend Cass got blootered. Bad breakup or something. The rest of the girls have buggered off and left Evan to deal with it alone. She phoned me just before her phone died. The taxi drivers won’t take Cass while she’s that smashed. I’m in Aberdeen for work, so I can’t get to her. She’s on George IV Bridge near Frankenstein’s. Will you go get them, mate, and take them back to Evan’s?”
Shit.
“Of course,” I repeated as I stood. “I’m still at the office so I won’t be long.”
“Great, thanks. Also, get a fucking life and stop burning the midnight oil.” Pat hung up.
Worry quickly propelled me out of Shaw’s. I hated the thought of Evan stranded on a busy thoroughfare where drunk bastards might try to take advantage of her while she was looking after a friend. But there was a part of me dreading seeing her again.
I’d parked two streets back from the store on George Street. The icy December wind bit at my nose and cheeks as I hurried toward the vehicle past crowds of revelers enjoying Friday-night barhopping. Some, like Evan, might even be on their Christmas night out with friends or work colleagues. Every weekend running up to Christmas would see the city filled with women wearing short dresses and high heels, some carrying their coats because alcohol made them feel impervious to the winter chill.
Right now, Evan was one of those women out in the windy city, probably inappropriately dressed for the weather. It surprised me for more than one reason to get the call from Pat. Evan didn’t seem like much of a party animal. She preferred quiet nights out in cocktail bars or at the theatre or restaurants.
My kind of woman.
I’d never been the clubbing type.
Mum said I was born eighty years old.
Too old for Evan.
But are you really? She’s mature for her age, that devil on my shoulder insisted.
“Fuck,” I muttered, growing impatient as I sat at traffic lights on Princes Street. Princes Street Gardens were brightly lit, most of the trees covered in fairy lights, the Ferris wheel colorful in the night sky.