Eva would have loved to consult with her mother on this thorny problem, or at least get her hands on the Matchmaker’s Manual. Her mother would know exactly how to handle Wendi Davidow. In fact, she would have loved to talk to her mother about what had happened to her last night with Adam Prinsky’s emissary, whatever his real name was. Eva usually had great instincts about love. She didn’t need a computer to tell her if something was right. She just knew. However, when it came to her own personal feelings, her instincts were failing her.
She knew she had never felt this way about anyone before. It was interfering with her work. She’d lost her appetite. She couldn’t concentrate. Every time she closed her eyes it was the emissary’s face she imagined. She wanted to taste him again, to touch him, to talk to him. She ached for him. She was inexperienced in the ways of love. Was it really love she was feeling? Or was she coming down with something?
Cupid barked and jumped into her lap.
“Okay, Cupid, what should we do about this bothersome man?”
Cupid licked her face and settled in for a nap.
“No, we can’t sleep, we’ll only dream of him,” Eva lamented. “Is he dreaming of me, do you suppose? He’s probably dreaming up more ways to reject my candidates.”
Eva reviewed Adam Prinsky’s file. There was not a single thing wrong with any of the women she had presented to the emissary. She was sure of it. For some reason the man was just being unreasonable. He was playing with her mind. But was he playing with her heart? She was determined to put an end to this game and to her agony.
“It stops now.”
Chapter Sixteen
“I have exhausted my resources, and frankly, Mr. Emissary, you are exhausting my patience. If you can’t find a match with any of the girls I’ve shown you so far, then I’d say it was a hopeless case. I’m not one to throw in the towel, but in your case, I may have to make an exception.”
Sometimes the man could be wonderful; sometimes he was impossible. How could you love someone on one hand and be so frustrated with him on the other?
“Are you giving up on me, Eva? If you do, you’ll be admitting failure. That doesn’t sound like you at all.”
“You’re not easy to please, and that’s putting it mildly,” Eva replied. “Was your father as difficult a man as you?”
“I am nothing like my father,” he bristled. “He was the Devil.”
“Your father was the Devil?” Eva shrank back.
“No, my father was a devil. He had ties to the underworld, in a manner of speaking. He was hell to work for, I can tell you that. And hell to live with. Just ask my mother.” It was time to come clean—past time to be completely honest with Eva.
****
“Your mother?”
“Yes. They were hardly the perfect couple. It was a match made in hell, and arranged by your mother. I was just a kid, and even then I knew they couldn’t stand each other.”
“But my mother would never do that. She arranges love matches, liaisons, marriages. Tell me about your mother,” Eva coaxed. “What was she like?”
“According to my father, she was a ‘stone-cold heartless bitch.’ ”
Eva just stared at him in disbelief.
Now he was exposing his dark side, a side she hadn’t seen before. Would that change her feelings toward him? Could anything possibly?
“According to your father? Couldn’t you decide for yourself?”
“I don’t remember her much. He banished her when I was ten. He never mentioned her name after that.”
“Banished her?”
“My father was a very powerful man.”
“But she was your mother, his wife. Maybe the fault lay with your father.”
“Hardly. When my mother came to the marriage, there was one tiny thing she had overlooked telling her husband. She was already pregnant with another man’s child. That child was me. She did tell him later, much later, just to spite him. He threw her out, but he kept me, because by then I guess he loved me, in his own way. The way someone would love a possession. Or maybe he simply wanted a companion for his real son. My younger brother was truly theirs. It was different for him. He was always sure of their love.”
“Were you lonely as a child?” she asked, taking his hands in hers.
****
She was so tender and compassionate, he thought. But was she forgiving? Would she forgive him when he finally told her what he had come to tell her?
“Painfully,” he admitted. “But that’s all behind me. I try not to dwell on the past.”
“But it’s a part of who you are,” Eva reasoned. “You should try to examine your feelings.”
“Feelings? They weren’t a factor in my house. But as I mentioned before, I had every advantage money could buy.”
“Except love?”
He didn’t answer her. How could he? Until he met Eva, he hadn’t known what real love was. He had looked for love in every relationship he had ever pursued. But he realized now that he had never experienced a true connection with any woman until Eva. He didn’t want to lose that. He didn’t want to lose her. He had been content enough, or so he thought, before Eva. He didn’t think he could go back to the man he was before—constricted, bitter, cynical. When he was around Eva, his heart turned to her like a sunflower, and he liked that feeling.
But he had waited long enough to break her heart. Had he given her enough time to get to know him, to care for him as much as he had come to care for her? Would she trust him enough to turn to him when her world fell apart? Or would she hate him forever for keeping the truth from her? Even if he had done it with her best interests in mind?
He tightened his hands in hers.
“My brother,” he began, “is the boy you met that day when you saw the count. And you are the girl he fell in love with.”
It took Eva a while to process it. “The boy is your brother? Where is he? What happened to him? Did my mother make the match? Is he married, then?”
It ripped him apart like a knife, that her ready concern for his brother hadn’t dimmed after all this time.
“I will get to that. What I’m trying to tell you, what I’ve been meaning to tell you all along, is that my father…”
Her mind was quick enough to make the leap.
“So your father—your father is the count?” she asked in disbelief. “You are also the count’s son?”
“Not in the strict literal sense. Not by blood. I was a mere mortal, whereas you…you are a goddess, in every sense of the word.”
“A goddess?”
“A minor goddess of the Venus variety. As was your mother and her mother and her mother before her. Didn’t you ever wonder why you could never live far from the sea, why you never seemed to age? Why your memory spans centuries?”
“I never questioned it before you came. I’m a descendant of Venus?”
“Through the back door, on your great, great, great, great grandmother’s side.”
“And how do you know all this about me, when I don’t know any of this about myself?” she asked warily.
“From the time I spent with your mother, after the…after.” He couldn’t go on. He needn’t have worried. Predictably, she steered the conversation back to his brother.
“So the boy I kissed was your brother?”
“Stepbrother, yes. And after he met you, he couldn’t stop pining for you. It was quite pitiful, really. He was handsome, like my father, but weak. He wasted his life. Your mother sent girl after girl to him—an heiress, a countess, even a princess—beautiful girls, but he rejected them all.”
“You think loving someone shows weakness?” Eva posed.
“He had just met you, for heaven’s sake. He hardly knew you.”
“Nor I him. And yet I felt the same way.”
“Let me finish my story,” he said impatiently, not seeing the parallel or recognizing that he had fallen for Eva in a flash, in much the same way she had fallen for his brother.
“Finally, my
father could stand no more of it, and he dragged my brother back to see your mother. I went along for the ride. I remember him shouting as he stormed into her home.”
“You’ve failed miserably, Esmerelda. You can’t even make a proper match for my son, anymore than you could for me. He won’t have anyone but your daughter. He’s heartbroken. That’s the hell of it. Now where is she? Pack her things. I’m taking her with us. That seals the bargain. You’ve made your match. Your precious reputation is preserved.”
“Your manners are impeccable, as usual. You’ve battered my door almost off its hinges. Don’t you believe in knocking?”
“Is that all you have to say to me, after all these years?”
“I see you’re still taking what you want, when you want it, without regard to the feelings of others.”
“Stop wasting my time, woman. Bring the girl out.”
“My daughter is gone. I sent her away to where you’ll never find her.”
“Tell me where she is, and we’ll get her back. Otherwise, there’ll be no living with this boy.”
“Even if I did tell you where she was, which I won’t, they can never be together.”
“Explain yourself.”
“I think you’d better send your boys out. We need to talk.”
The emissary got a faraway look in his eyes as he recounted the story. “My brother looked stricken at the thought he might never see his beloved Eva again. Then my father ordered us outside.”
“Leave us alone, but don’t stray too far. This won’t take but a minute.”
“We went out, but instead of continuing to the water’s edge, we rounded the corner, peered into the tiny house, and listened by the open window. We heard your mother talking.”
“He really is a beautiful boy. He reminds me of someone I once loved, and now I understand all over again why I fell in love with you all those years ago. And why, although it irks me to admit it, I’m still in love with you even now.”
“The count paced the floor and muttered. He was too big for the house. He had to hunch over so his head wouldn’t hit the ceiling.”
“It’s been years since I’ve seen you, and dammit, you haven’t aged a bit. You’re more beautiful than ever. One look and I’m in love all over again.”
“My father looked at your mother with longing, and that’s when my brother and I realized he still desired her,” said the emissary. “But instead, he spoke gruffly to disguise his feelings and grabbed your mother by the shoulders to shake her, when it was obvious all he wanted to do was kiss the breath out of her.”
“Speak, woman. Why can’t he have her?”
“Your mother spoke so softly we almost didn’t hear her.”
“There’s no easy way to put this. She’s yours.”
“What do you mean, she’s mine?”
“Exactly what I said, Adam. Eva is your daughter.”
“How can that be?”
“Is your memory so short? When we were together, when you took me that first time, made love to me and made me love you in return, you stole my innocence.”
“And you stole my heart. You still have it.”
“When I realized I was pregnant, I came to tell you, and before I had a chance to talk, you rejected me. You said I wasn’t good enough. I was good enough for you to want me in your bed but not as your wife.”
“My father’s face registered shock,” the emissary explained.
“Silly traditions. I see that now. You were carrying my child? You should have told me.”
“Would it have made a difference?”
“Of course.”
“When I sent you another woman, it almost broke my heart.”
“When she looked away, my father turned her gently toward him. I could tell he was thinking back to the last time he had seen Eva in that house. I could almost feel his heart shift.”
“My god, all those years, and she was mine. She’s extraordinary. And so beautiful, just like her mother.”
“Then he placed a tender kiss on Esmerelda’s lips and embraced her. And she responded, tears rolling down her face.”
“I miss her, so much, Adam. And I’ve missed you. When you left, you left an empty place in my heart.”
“There now, don’t cry, my love. We’re together now. That’s all that matters. How could I have been so stupid? I love you, Esmie. I never stopped. I want to see her again, our Eva, now, as soon as possible. We’ll go right away. We have so much time to make up for.”
“And they just stood there holding each other and crying. My father trying to absorb all the pain and the loneliness he had suffered during those lost years, your mother just glad to be near enough to touch him again.”
“Suddenly a heart-rending cry pierced the silence,” continued the emissary. “My brother had been in shock for most of the conversation, and when the truth finally dawned on him, he screamed and ran toward the cliff at the edge of the sea.
“The count and the matchmaker pulled apart and the realization hit them both at the same time that his children had been listening at the window.”
“Go after your son!”
“Your mother didn’t need to urge the count to go. He was already halfway out the door.”
“Come back, come back, we’ll talk about it!”
“The count called to my brother and tried to catch him.”
“She’s my sister. I’ll never have her. I don’t want to live without her.”
“My brother came dangerously close to the edge of the cliff.”
“We’ll find you another girl.”
“The count yelled and ran faster, faster, until he fairly flew to his son’s side.”
“I don’t want another girl.”
The memory gripped the emissary by the gut, but he had no choice except to finish the story.
“I tried to stop him, Eva,” he explained. “I pulled on my brother’s cape, but it tore away in my hand. It was too late. He had already reached the cliff and flung himself over.
“My father flew over the edge to try to stop him, but he missed, just by inches, and his son fell out of his grasp to his death, death by his own hands, and washed away into the sea. He would have remained immortal but for the fact that he had taken his own life. He alone controlled his destiny.”
Eva’s eyes welled with tears, and she cried softly for the boy…the brother…she had lost.
“Eva, I sometimes wonder if I did everything I could to stop him. I was jealous of my brother, of my father’s love for him. Of his love for you. Perhaps I…”
“No, don’t talk like that,” Eva said softly, wiping her tears. “Second guessing yourself is not going to bring him back.”
“The count was inconsolable. Your mother tried. I tried. Everything. He stayed there with her. We both did, for weeks. To help him heal. At first he was so bitter, but your mother’s love changed him. It was almost embarrassing to see his pain and to see them together. I was actually a bit jealous of their love—of the truth and the intensity of it.”
“My mother and the count, they are truly happy, then?”
“It was the love the poets write about,” he assured her.
Eva’s breath caught in her throat, and her hand flew to her heart.
“He dispatched me home to put his affairs in order and change his will. He wanted to leave everything to your mother and you, and to me, of course. I’ve often wondered if he had a premonition of things to come.”
Eva was puzzled.
“They prepared to go,” the emissary continued, not satisfying the curiosity he saw in her eyes, wanting to wait just a moment longer before he dealt her the final blow.
“They were coming for you, Eva, when—”
“When what?” she urged.
“When disaster struck. When lightning struck their dark chariot as it was flying through the heavens. My father was powerful, and he had a lot of powerful enemies. It was retribution for his past sins.”
“And my mother?” Eva gasped.
“She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong man. They both disappeared in a flash and were never seen again. She’s gone, Eva. I’m sorry.”
Eva just stared at him, her eyes blank and unfocused. She was in shock, he thought. Then she screamed. And choked back the tears.
“I can’t believe my mother is really gone.” In that instant, she did reach for him, and he held her closely, so tightly she could hardly breathe. Then the tears came, and they stayed locked in their embrace for what seemed like an eternity.
“Did they truly die?” Eva asked, her eyes filling again.
He rubbed her back, smoothed her hair, tried to take away the pain, then tried to give her hope.
“That’s hard to tell. I know she was happier than she’d ever been. And so was he. They were both immortal. You remember the story of Persephone; how Hades carried her to his underworld kingdom and she was allowed to spend two-thirds of each year with her mother and the remaining third with Hades?”
“Do you truly believe that?” Eva sniffled. “That we will see them again?”
“I do,” he said. “Perhaps by our wedding they will resurface in time to join us.”
“Our wedding?”
“At the moment your mother was struck, her spark passed to you, and now”—the emissary cleared his throat and swallowed hard—“it’s time for you to pass along your spark. That’s why I’m here,” he said wiping away her tears.
“I don’t understand. I thought you were here to make a match for Adam Prinsky.”
Someday My Prints Will Come Page 8