Free Crazy Nights (The Barrington Billionaires Book 3) by Danielle Stewart Page A

squirming uncomfortably.
    “Thanks,” she interjected, letting him off the hook. “I’m glad you changed your mind about coming.”
    He considered telling her how Mathew had framed it all up. This was just one more piece of a job being done. An obligation. But Emmitt was a smart man. If he had any intention at all of getting through this night with Evie still smiling, then the truth had no place between them. That was most people’s mistake, treating the truth like an absolute. Like you were obligated to provide it to someone. It was much more of a moving target in his opinion.
    “You look very handsome,” she said coyly as she allowed him to lead her to the street.
    “I’ve got a car service. No cabs tonight. That’s just when I’m on the job. Trying to blend in.” He gestured over to the sleek looking black limo with dark tinted windows and envisioned fucking her there. There wasn’t room in his mind right now for whether that was right or wrong.
    “I’m sorry about the Sophie thing,” Evie offered genuinely as they climbed into the limo and settled in next to each other, ignoring all the unused room.
    He knew the right thing to say here. Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry too. I
    overreacted. But if unspoken words could fill a space, in his lifetime Emmitt could have packed the Grand Canyon to the top. The amount of women he walked away from while they were mid-sentence was staggering. Disengaging was his specialty.
    He tilted his head and bit at the inside of his mouth. Some kind of throat clearing grunt was all he could muster. It was pathetic actually, the action of a child unwilling to admit wrongdoing. But he wasn’t wired the right way, and this is where it became most noticeable. Shockingly, the tiny noise, the nonsensical incomprehensible offering he gave her as a response still made Evie smile as though he’d just verbally smoothed the situation over with a goddamn soliloquy. That was enough for her.
    “Have you been to the symphony before?” Evie asked, taking a stray curl and pushing it behind her ear. “I know you told Sophie you had, but I wasn’t sure if that was just for show.” One of her dangling earrings swung back and forth, taunting him to pounce.
    “My mother dragged us there a lot when we were young. I hated it. Once I set off a cherry bomb in the bathroom. That was the last time she took me.”
    “Were you a handful?”
    “For a single mom, I guess. My dad took off and Mathew tried acting like the man of the house, but I was just pissed at the world. I put my mom through hell. It’s why I enlisted. I figured if I didn’t, and I kept going the way I was, it would kill her. She’s not well as it is.”
    “She’s not?” Evie asked, the slight lean forward and the look of worry in her eyes too much for him. The body language of someone who cared, someone who wanted to know him in a way he preferred not to be known by anyone.
    “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to look at you in that dress. Where did you find something like that on such short notice? It’s like it was made for you.”
    “It was. I stole it from the movie set,” Evie admitted, and her bashful fluttering eyes made him want to rip the straps from her dress and take her now. “It was meant for the big make-up scene, where the jerk in the movie finally sees the light and stops treating my character like dirt.” Whether she was trying to draw an intentional parallel to real life or not, it was there.
    Emmitt didn’t defend his behavior or plead his case to anyone. Being an asshole was perfectly fine by him. Or it had been. He had great control over his mind. He’d always been able to right himself. He’d seen his share of carnage and bullshit while deployed. It took a certain level of mental fortitude to be able to deal with it. For some reason the dialogue in his mind, the tape running on a loop, was hard to quiet right now. It kept telling him to kiss Evie. Kiss her not solely to sleep with