a rope in a tug of war. And as Maddie collected her bag, he remained rooted to the spot as though he wanted to add something.
‘I wonder if my wish will come true,’ said Jem, scurrying over when she realised Maddie was leaving.
‘What wish?’ Evan successfully won the tug of war battle when Ava dropped his arm in lieu of following this more interesting development.
‘What wish, Grandma Jem?’ asked Ava.
‘The wish I made when I blew out the candles on my sensible cake.’ She winked at Maddie.
‘Tell me what you wished for.’ Ava grabbed Jem’s arm this time but didn’t attack it with anywhere near the severity that she had with Evan’s. Lucky, as Maddie suspected Jem would be the one to come off worse.
Jem smoothed down the child’s bunches and stooped to whisper something in her ear.
‘Uncle Evan? Are you going to make Maddie your girlfriend?’
Evan and Maddie stood aghast, but Jem sniggered. ‘Come on, you two. You’re both single, you’re both around the same age. Make an old girl happy. I don’t have time to beat around the bush at my ripe old age and I want to see my grandson happy. I hope to see you again, Maddie.’ And with that, she took Ava’s hand to the dance floor and left Evan and Maddie to deal with the words that still hung in the air.
Maddie felt her cheeks burn. It was impossible to look up at Evan.
‘Well, that was embarrassing,’ he said.
They stood side by side watching Ava and Jem dance; it was far easier than looking at each other.
‘Embarrassing? I don’t think anything can trump unveiling a huge penis cake at a one-hundredth birthday party.’
His laugh warmed her right through. ‘True. So, what do you think?’
‘What do I think of what?’
‘Jem’s wish. Do we make it come true? Can I ask you out?’
She pretended to be engrossed in watching some of the more senior guests getting their knees up the best they could to ‘Party Rock’. She opened her mouth to answer his question but nothing came out, so instead she tried to flick off the party streamers caught up on one of her ballet flats.
Evan bent down and pulled the yellow and pink strands away from her foot, and when his hand grazed the skin on her ankle, she felt excitement ripple through her body. She so desperately wanted to 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