Free Christmas Alpha by Carole Mortimer

 
      Finn scowled darkly. “I stopped, didn’t I?”
      “Eventually, yes. But most men wouldn’t have done that.”
      “Are you complaining?”
      “I’m questioning why, if you feel like...that,” she nodded in the direction of his groin. “You set out to annoy me earlier by being deliberately crude.”
      “Maybe I’m just into self-denial?”
      “And maybe I’ll threaten to cook you breakfast tomorrow morning if you don’t stop lying to me.”
      There was absolutely no way Finn could stop himself from grinning at that comment; the pizza tonight really had been pretty awful. “Anything but that!”  
      “Well?”
      Finn sighed his frustration; this woman really was the most stubborn, pig-headed—
      But, damn it, if Moira really had followed that parcel here, then Eva deserved to know the truth. Remembering what Moira had done to the woman in the restaurant just because she was with him, Eva could be in as much, if not more, danger than he was.
      His hands clenched into fists at the idea of Moira being anywhere near Eva.
      He gave a shake of his head. “The parcel you delivered earlier today was from Jack, my agent.”
      She nodded. “I told you it said Jack Miller on the return address label.”
      “Because he’s been forwarding my mail on to me here for the past four months.” Finn nodded.
      “Go on,” Eva invited softly.
      He couldn’t look at her any longer. “I was involved with someone a while back.”
      “How long ago is a ‘while back’?”
      “Six months.” He grimaced. “She was not the sort of woman you would ever take home to meet your family, especially not my family. We saw each other on Friday and Saturday evenings—nights, for about six weeks,” he admitted uncomfortably.
      “And?”
      “And from Sunday to Thursday she spent the night with her much older and married lover. He worked in the city during the week, kept an apartment there, and went home to his wife in Cornwall on weekends. I had no idea.” Finn gave a disgusted shake of his head.
      “But you found out,” Eva guessed.
      “Oh big time,” he confirmed, his voice hard. “I turned up as usual one Friday night and he was there—his wife had gone away for the weekend to visit her sick mother in Aberdeen. They suggested, as I was there, that we have a threesome.” His top lip turned back with distaste. “I declined. Which was when I found out that Moira had been secretly recording the two of us together for weeks, and that the two of them would...watch it, when they were… Apparently it excited both of them.“ Finn stood up again, feeling the same nausea as he had that night when he had learned he had basically been used as the star in a porn movie for Moira and her aged lover to enjoy.
      “The mistress...” Eva realized.
      “The mistress,” he echoed bleakly. “I demanded and destroyed every one of those damned discs with me on them before walking out. I just wanted to forget every moment I had ever spent in that apartment. Moira had other ideas. She—” He breathed shakily. “Apparently she decided that she preferred me to her married lover. She came to my apartment building the next day, I refused to see her. She began to telephone me, day and night, so I changed my number. She began following me whenever I went out. I… I took another woman out to dinner for the first time four months ago, and Moira followed us to the restaurant and made a scene.”
      “What sort of scene?”
      Finn couldn’t even look at her as he related what had happened in the restaurant that evening.
      Eva looked suitably disgusted. “Couldn’t you both have pressed charges?”
      “Yes, we could have pressed charges!” His eyes blazed a deep and angry blue. “The woman, an actress, didn’t want the publicity. If I had pressed charges then she would have been brought into it whether she wanted to or not.” He gave a shake of his head. “I decided that the best