When Clara O'Dea follows up, it's to invite her to a small pub where they take a corner table.
She starts by apologizing. "I didn't mean to lose my temper at you, back at the office. It's hardly as though the person at the front desk is responsible for having a psychopath for a boss."
Evie shrugs it off. "Consider yourself more than forgiven if you can tell me something that might make for a good story."
Clara's mouth settles into a grim line. "I don't know if you can call the destruction of my life's work a good story, but I guess it depends on who's doing the telling." She takes a long swig of her drink. "It's a short story, anyway."
She's not wrong. In essence, Clara was the founder of a non-profit called Whitechapel Children, a group dedicated to helping orphaned children from war-torn areas successfully apply for refugee status in the UK.
"He promised desperately necessary injections of money," she says bitterly, as Evie jots down notes. "But as soon as that shit was on the board, things began to turn upside down. I found out that some of the children's documentation was being forged, that my people on location were offering to make an application for anyone with enough money. Including children of suspected war criminals. We had gotten fairly big by then and I wasn't personally overseeing things any more, we had lots of solicitors on retainer and the board was gaining more and more control. People slowly stopped telling me things or talking to me. And then, one day, I get to work and discover that the board has unanimously voted that I should step down as head of the organization."
She shoots a dark look at Evie and stabs the air with her finger. "These were good people, not the kind that would just roll over for greed. I think he's been threatening them, but whenever I try and follow up, I just get stonewalled. And then I get a phone call from someone called Maxwell Roth, who tells me to stop looking into things or something dangerous is going to happen to me."
Evie looks up and raises her eyebrows Clara just chuckles darkly. "Fucker. I've been in war-zones, like this is going to stop me."
Really, Topping, Evie thinks, dutifully scratching all of this out in her shorthand. I'm starting to think Insider Trading might be the very least of the problems going on here.
The party at the office is just as awkward as she feared. But, thankfully, with Henry at her side and a full glass of wine, she has every expectation that it should go by quickly. They're able to mostly ignore the rest of the room, drifting along, listening to other conversations.
It's how she catches the words 'Eden Security' being said by a woman with a pile of red hair on her head. Evie almost thinks that she must have misheard when it's followed by 'that Frye boy'.
Her fingers tighten like a vice around Henry's arm, and she steers them towards that side of the room. Starrick is talking to a woman, and when she turns slightly, Evie recognizes the face that smiles out from the homepage of Attaway Transport. They're talking to a thin man, tall and hawkish, who is hunched over his drink.
"I kissed him the other day, you know," Attaway says, voice amused.
Evie curses inwardly and Henry shoots her a sympathetic look. He's sat across her for enough after-work drinks to know the catalogue of worries that she carries around about her brother.
Starrick splutters out an indignant "I beg your pardon," while hawk-man looks delighted.
"Poor thing was happy like a puppy," she purrs, and Evie feels her hackles raise.
Starrick huffs, clearly irritated. "I'll never understand your reasoning, Pearl."
"I did it just to vex you both." She traces a finger down the hawkish man's cheek. "I know you've been circling his employees, Roth darling. I recognized your Lewis at the conference. What are you playing at?"
Roth chuckles. "None of your business, my dear."
Evie's pulse is pounding in her ears. Roth. This has to be the same person that Clara had spoken about, it was too strange for it to be a coincidence.
"Well if he survives the coup, send him my way, would you? I'm sure I can find a use for him."
Roth just laughs, and Evie is desperate to learn more when someone from accounting sidles up to ask about Starrick's recent trip to Greece. The conversation then drifts to morning traffic, leaving Evie with grinding teeth and several new things added to the list of problems that she's going to need to deal with later.
They wait for a good two hours to make sure that everyone is deep in their cups before they sneak into the hallway through a side door.
Thorne was busy falling over herself after a few glasses of sherry, and it made it easy for Evie to grab Starrick's office key from her pocket. She pulls Henry in and quickly shuts the door behind her, leaving the key in the door- with any luck, it will look like Thorne herself left it there by mistake.
They push into Starrick's inner office and Evie immediately begins to poke around.
Henry keeps glancing at the door. "What are we looking for?"
"I'm not entirely sure," Evie says, opening one of the desk drawers at random and beginning to flip through the documents. "Patterns, really. Anything to do with Attaway transport."
There it is again, mentions of Attaway, this time accompanied with Roth and Alhambra Security. Evie frowns when she spots paperwork that looks to be government issue, maybe some kind of contract. There are words like transport negotiations and international expansion, and she quickly takes out her mobile and snaps a photo so that she can take a better look later.
She's about to ask if Henry has found anything when there's the distinct sound of a door opening and footsteps in the next room.
"Shit," she hisses, quickly shutting the drawer and taking the two long strides across the room to Henry. He manages one adorable look of utter confusion before she frantically presses her lips to his, tangling her hands into his long hair. She expects him to stiffen, maybe to push her away; she's keeping half an eye on the door so she can stop him from sputtering before anyone suspects that this is more than a drunken couple looking for a private corner to shag.
What she doesn't expect is for him to nearly knock her over in his enthusiasm to kiss her back. She staggers half a step backwards until she's pinned up against the cabinets, nearly squeaking as he slips his tongue between her lips. He tastes like sharp red wine and something sweet that she can't name, and his hair is beautifully soft under her fingers. His hands slide lower and she feels a pooling heat in her stomach, a twitch of electricity in her toes. He smells awfully nice, like some sort of cologne, and maybe if she just pushed herself a little bit closer-
"You kids having fun?"
Oh, of course, she thinks in an awkward muddle, the opening door. That was why she'd kissed him. The other person. Yes. They break awkwardly apart and she sees Maxwell Roth standing in the frame, his eyebrows pointedly raised.
Evie coughs and steps away from Henry, who is frozen on the spot. Trying to subtly push the hem of her skirt down, she sneaks a glance up at him; he looks like someone has announced an early Christmas and then knocked him on the back of the head. He's clearly not going to be any help.
She swallows and tries a nervous smile. "The, uh, the door was open-"
Roth's smiling as well, but nothing about it is friendly. It's predatory and feral, and it makes her skin crawl. "So sorry, but you'll have to take it elsewhere." He gestures outwards.
Wanting to put as much distance between her and Roth as possible, Evie grabs Henry's hand and drags him into the hallway. Head spinning with Starrick Finance and Attaway and Whitechapel Children and Alhambra Security, she suddenly can't stand the idea of forcing small-talk with these people for even another minute. Instead she pulls Henry along until they're out of the office entirely, heading for the exit. When they get to the lifts, they're forced to wait as the numbers on the screen steadily tick upwards. The uncomfortable silence swells between them.
"Well," she starts hesitantly, reaching out and fixing his tie. "So much for that plan. Sorry, by the way, for springing that on you."
The tips of his ears are still red. "Please, uh- please don't apologize. There is nothing to… That, uh…" He trails off and starts examining his shoes with an intense stare. "What happens now?"
The lift finally arrives and she punches the button for the ground floor and takes a deep breath. "Well, the gentlemanly thing would be to see me home safely."
He clears his throat. "I would like that. I would like that very much."
They barely make it through the door of her flat before she's trying to take his trousers off.
She knows that Jacob has a night shift, thank God, so that's one less thing to worry about. Maybe she should send him a warning text or something- but then Henry is pulling her top off over her head and she's stumblingly guiding him to her bedroom, and she's finished with thinking about anything but the way that his arms are just as defined as she'd always suspected they were under his professional starched shirts. God, how long has she been thinking about this?
Henry is working kisses down her neck and chest as they stagger into her room and she kicks the door shut and somehow shucks her shoes off, moaning as he rucks her skirt up around her waist. She can feel him straining against his pants now, pressing against her hip, his breathing turning ragged as she wriggles out of her bra.
"Evie," he breathes out, and something in her brain dimly registers that it's the first time that he's called her by her first name. For years, she's been asking him to move past the formal "Miss Frye," but he always smiled politely and insisted. The change spreads a happy and tingly feeling throughout her brain, and she's seized by the intense urge to make him say it over and over.
His hands are hesitating at the hem of her knickers and she manages a strangled "please," which turns out to be all of the encouragement he needs. She's already wet enough that he slides one finger in easily, and then another, and with his lips hot on her neck and his fingers curving it's delicious and overdue and perfect and yet somehow not enough all at once.
She stills for a moment and feels a blush creep up on her face. "Do you- uh, do you have a condom?"
For one moment she thinks that he's going to say he doesn't, which means entertaining the horrifying possibility of having to ask Jacob if he keeps any around the house. Not having sex would actually be preferable, now that she's thinking about it, even if she has been waiting for this for far too long and there's a possibility that it won't happen again. But instead Henry is nodding and reaching for the wallet tossed aside on the floor, and she sends a quiet thank you up to any guardian angel that she might have watching over her.
He comes back up and kisses her while she helps him roll it on- if shaking her fluttering hands at him and moaning for him to hurry up can be counted as helping- before she drags him backwards onto her bed. Pulling him in for another kiss and wrapping her legs around his waist, she rides another rush of desire and longing as he pushes into her and lets out the groan of a long-parched man finally reaching water.
A distant part of her brain can tell that she's babbling. It's embarrassingly incoherent, mostly saying his name over and over along with a long strings of profanities. But her fingers are curling in the sheets, and it's been a while since she's done this and even longer since she's done it with someone who feels so good, and all she wants is for him to keep going, to give more, harder, faster.
He's so close to hitting that delicious and electric spot inside her and she shifts a little, trying to lift herself up higher; he notices (because of course he does, that distant part of her brain notes approvingly) and shifts his hips a little lower until she's keening, the sensation almost too overwhelming. He dips a hand slowly between her legs, a little uncertain, but when she's this turned on it turns out that she doesn't need a lot of help. In what might have been forever but feels like no time at all, the orgasm hits her like a firework, curling her toes, sliding through her spine like a raging current that sweeps up everything in its wake.
It apparently sweeps up Henry as well, because his movements become uneven and his fingers tighten on her arms. She holds him through it as he moans, shuddering, and pulls him down for a long kiss before she lets him roll off her.
She lies there for a moment, whole body aching pleasantly, before she realizes with a tinge of embarrassment that her skirt is still rucked up around her waist. Henry has flung an arm over her stomach and is face down next to her, giving her a nice view of a muscled bum. He must work out, she thinks, with a twitch of a smile. Or maybe it's all that cycling.
"So, uh…" she gives him a poke in the shoulder. "Was that all right, then?"
"Miss Fr- Evie," he mumbles into the mattress, "I have daydreamed about that for years."