Handle Me with Care Read Free Page A

say yes.
    ‘Evan, I …’
    He stood and held up his hands as though pre-empting her words. ‘No offence taken.’ His eyes held hers for a moment longer. ‘Enjoy the bachelorette party.’
    When other men asked her out, it was easy to turn them down, or she’d go out with them once and then never called them again. This was new to Maddie. This man she wanted to see again, and she scolded herself for not being able to think of anything to say.
    She left the function room for the second time that day. Baking cakes let her lose herself in a world she was in control of, a world in which the boundaries were only determined by her. But today she felt more out of control than she had felt in a long time. Evan had rattled her. Past casual flings had never made her nervous like this; they had never left her tongue-tied. And she hadn’t experienced such powerful chemistry with anyone since Riley.
    A little voice inside her head told Maddie it was time she let another man into her life, but it had spoken up too late and she had missed her chance.
    Some said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but Maddie wasn’t so sure. Perhaps not letting anyone else in was the right thing to do. That way she would never expose herself to the type of pain she had experienced before and hoped she never had to go through again.

Chapter Two
     
    When Evan woke the next morning with only the slightest headache from the party the day before, he was relieved to be in the familiar surroundings of his own apartment. Following Jem’s celebrations he had ended up in a bar with his brother-in-law, Ben, and he could remember a blonde – Sadie? – leaving him in no doubt that she wanted to spend the night with him. She was gorgeous, had a smoking hot body with legs that went on for miles, but it still hadn’t been enough for him. He couldn’t push Maddie out of his mind, and he began to wonder whether the desire to be with one special person was something that came with age. Maybe that was it; at the ripe old age of thirty-eight, perhaps he was finally heading towards maturity.
    The faultless autumn morning in Melbourne couldn’t be overlooked. He had time to head out for a run before he went over to Jem’s place to put up the painting he had bought her for her birthday.
    A light breeze caressed the back of his neck as he pounded the pavements from his apartment block just behind the Exhibition Centre down to Albert Park Lake.
    The sun, suspended between broken clouds, splintered the surface of the lake as he ran past the sailing club. He ran wide around a swan with her waddling cygnets, and then he fell back in step beside the shimmering section of the water’s edge again.  
    Running always gave Evan the space to think, and the only thing on his mind this morning was Maddie. Last night, she hadn’t blatantly turned him down; he hadn’t given her the chance to actually say the word no , but he suspected that was going to be her response. Perhaps that was the attraction. Perhaps if she’d said yes, he wouldn’t be so obsessed by her, by the thought of her bum in those figure-hugging jeans, the allure of her caramel-coloured hair tidied into a neat ponytail he wanted to release and run his fingers through.
    *
    When he arrived at Jem’s place, Evan pulled his toolbox from the boot of his swish black Audi TT and then pressed the remote on his key ring to lock it and set the alarm. Holly thought his car was unnecessarily flashy and that he would always love it more than any woman; sometimes he was inclined to agree with her.
    ‘Evan!’ Jem pulled open the door to her unit that sat a couple of streets back from the beach in the trendy suburb of Albert Park. She enveloped her grandson in as big a hug as she could manage, considering she only came up to his chest.
    ‘Before I set you to work, have a slice of cake.’ Jem disappeared along a narrow corridor until she reached the open-plan kitchen and lounge.