by Roxy Harte
I can tell myself a million lies—that my line of work makes it dangerous to be so involved with Garrett and Sophia, that they need time to be a couple, that I don’t love them. Lies are my specialty, but when lying to myself…it just doesn’t work because, really, they are all that matter to me now and that thought hurts too much, knowing all I’ve lost. I don’t want to lose them too, and when my fears ride high, I’d rather run from them, hoping that if I’m the one who runs I won’t hurt as badly as I would if they left me first.
Accelerating down a long stretch of asphalt, no answers are clear. Why am I here? Am I only hiding from Sophia and Garrett?
No, I’m here for my brother. Am I? After all of these years, I’m only now concerned if he lives or dies?
It is a partial truth, not an all-out lie.
And Eva?
What in the hell is Eva, if not a convenient distraction from the life I’ve only just begun to share with Sophia and Garrett? A memory, a dream, a ghost? I can only wonder at why I refuse to commit fully to them and what makes me tarry here. I think I loved her once, though it was so long ago, I wonder if I fabricated the love to keep me distant from Latisha. And now I fall back on old habits, keeping my heart distant from Sophia and Garrett. Intelligence tells me to run from Paris as fast as I can, but as I drive up the dark alley that leads to the warehouse, I laugh out loud, wondering why I’m torturing myself.
I’m a sadist, not a masochist.
“The moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.”
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Chapter Thirteen
Eva
December 29
The Welsh countryside is lovely in the winter, peaceful… Yeah, that was the lure, the promise. Ducking deeper into my parka, I count three precipitants falling from the sky simultaneously—rain, sleet and snow. Only the Welsh countryside could be so hospitable.
Only crazed Welshmen could find pleasure in playing soccer in such weather.
I shiver. Liam looks perfectly comfortable in his long-sleeved, cotton-knit shirt and nylon shorts. A quick look at his dripping hair, reddened cheeks and thighs, one would think he was out enjoying a warm summer day. The red knees above his kneesocks could almost be called cute.
I ask myself again if this trip could possibly be worth it.
Will my plan work?
The welcome I received from his family was most unwelcoming and boded ill from the moment my plane touched down. I scope out the other spectators, Liam’s parents and very irritated younger sister. Their disposition hasn’t improved. Conclusion. They aren’t impressed with their first impression of Liam’s fiancée. Unfortunately I am in this game up to my frozen eyeballs.
I did my part by covering all the erotic bites and bruises beneath a wool turtleneck. I hope to get Liam away from the family long enough to explain before he actually sees the bruises up close and personal. Or I could just insist on undressing in the dark for the next two weeks. Lousy plan. Maybe he’ll be understanding or won’t ask questions, or I could blame an assignment. I’ve been bitten on assignment before.
Chewing my bottom lip, I watch the game, cataloguing bruises for the umpteenth time, thinking perhaps I am making it out to be worse than it is. I decide no, if I’ve succeeded in winning his heart for real, he isn’t going to be very understanding about the teeth marks encircling my breast, or my shoulder, or my inner thigh.
At a small break in the game, I join Liam as he chugs water from a clear plastic bottle.
“Do you still want to marry me?” I ask.
He chokes, coughing and sputtering on water I assume went down the wrong pipe.
He looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind, and it is an absolutely correct assessment, I have lost my mind. The new plan is getting him to commit to this wedding, dashing off to the airport with the announcement of so much to do to get ready and hope the bruises are less post-“I do” than now.
His brothers’ heckling from the playing field distracts him.
“We’ll talk after dinner, Eva,” he promises, then, plastering his Agency-issue smile across his face, he runs out to meet his brothers.
For a moment I am sad, not because he didn’t commit to the wedding, because honestly, I’m not committed to a marriage at all, it’s merely a necessary evil to endure to reach the conclusion I desire. But sad, because even here, playing with his brothers, he has to reach inside for the Agency-issue smile. I recognize it easily, I wear it so often myself.
I wonder if I would know a true smile as effortlessly. A smile that arcs between heart and eyes to reveal genuine happiness. Does such a smile even really exist, or is the desire to see such a smile merely a delusion of my mind?
* * * * *
I lie alone in Liam’s childhood bed, surrounded by high school soccer trophies and college memorabilia, waiting for him to come upstairs. He still sits at the dinner table, or at least he was when I left him, his mother putting away clean dishes, his father asleep in a recliner and his brothers and sister in a puppy pile on the floor before the television, volume low to allow Father to sleep. Completely grown, ranging in age from early twenties to almost forty, I imagine they have created this pile many times in their lifetimes and can almost imagine the sister as a toddler, sprawling, thumb in mouth, against the chest of the oldest teenage brother.
I offered to go to a hotel but Liam wouldn’t hear of it.
I am back to plan A, feigning sleep when he returns. Still clothed neck to toes, I hope he opts not to awaken me and I can pretend until morning to sleep. Worst-case scenario, if he does awaken me, I will insist he turn out the lights.
“Strip!” he commands as he barrels through the door.
So much for plan A. I can tell by the look on his face he knows something is amiss. However, unless he has superhuman sight, he couldn’t know about the bruises. Slamming the door, he strides forward, face blazing as only an angry redhead’s face can blaze. His thigh muscles bunch inside his tight jeans and even his shoulders loom wider with his bristling rage.
Trapped between my ribs and the mattress, I feel the comforting weight of my weapon.
Close enough to the edge of the bed to poke an accusing finger forward, he dips it beneath the edge of my turtleneck and reveals a purple bruise. “Mum razzed me about this mark for the last hour. She thinks it’s hilarious! I don’t. And you know why I don’t think it’s hilarious, don’t you, Eva?”
I close my eyes against the glare of outrage in his.
“Because it’s not your mark,” I whisper.
Pulling me from the bed by the edge of my turtleneck, he strips me, and not in a good way. He savagely removes the shoulder holster, tossing it and the gun to the bed, jerking my shirt over my head and tossing it to the floor before yanking my jeans off my hips, only to leave them pooled at my ankles.
“My God, Eva! Who?”
Standing before him naked, bruised and bitten, I refuse to answer the supposed easy question. It is easier to remain silent than to admit I don’t know.
Shaking his head, he is bewildered, no longer angry. “I think the question is, Eva, after your night of wild debauchery, do you still want to marry me?”
I tear my gaze away from his injured one. I have made him love me, or at least as close as either of us can ever get to love, knowing we can never trust the other fully. What is it about the light-blue eyes and pale-golden eyelashes of a redhead that makes them appear so vulnerable? Always. Vulnerable.
I make myself answer, “There is nothing I want more than to marry you.”
“Does this end when I marry you?” Liam flicks the large black bruise under my left nipple, demanding, “It took this to make you decide you want me? Thanks, Eva. Bloody hell! Do you know what I’m feeling? Do you think I’m so naïve as to not know that it took really nasty nipple clamps to do that to you? And Christ Almighty, the bruises around your neck! I’ve seen corpses in better condition than you.”
Me too.
“And you did this for fun. Bloody hell.”
He paces, his vulnerable blue eyes managing to be glaring, accusing and condemning all in one glance. I stand naked and unmoving, the pool of denim around my ankles making it impossible to go to him gracefully, and since I refuse to pull my pants up or even to step out of the tangle, I am stuck, watching him look at me.
“I can’t do this to you, Eva. If this is what it takes for you to feel satisfied, I can’t do this.” He holds his hands out, gesturing at my bruises. “Did he make you feel loved, humiliated? What, Eva, what did he make you feel?”
“I don’t know,” I lie. Cherished.
Why can’t I just get the dream out of my head?
Luka’s dead, Luka’s dead, Luka’s dead.
“What did you want to feel?” he screams. This time I know the entire house heard. I imagine his mother looking up from her evening crossword by the crackling fireplace, his father jumping awake, his siblings’ snickers. I imagine his horrible little sister with her ear pressed against the wall, hearing every word.
Grabbing my chin, he forces my eyes to meet his, whispering, “What did you want to feel—to have someone do this to you?”
“I don’t know.” I catch the sob high in my throat, my voice cracks a little.
“You do, Eva,” he whispers. “Just tell me.”
“Anything!” I admit, suddenly easily, my voice jagged and raw. “I wanted to feel anything besides the emptiness I carry inside myself always.”
“Then feel me, Eva!” He rushes toward me, grabbing my hair and spinning me so I fall face-first into the mattress with my ankles tangled and his fist wrapped in my hair. It is a painful struggle, one I am not a hundred percent committed to. I want him to be able to make me feel. I want anyone who is living to be able to chase away the demon lover who does make me feel, even knowing that no dream lover left me bruised. I cannot think of that.
I focus on the pain of my hair being pulled, my hips being roughly raised and that first thrust of his cock. He grabs my chin and wrenches me to face him, closing his mouth over mine, kissing savagely, screaming into the cavern of my mouth, “Feel me, Eva!”
He thrusts with anger, forcing himself to be rough, rougher than he has ever been with me, and he doesn’t come close to the intensity I shared with Luka. Thrusting hard, plunging deep, cursing me, he spends quickly, seeming disgusted with himself, disgusted with me. He rolls into himself as far from me as he can, not bothering to cover his sobs.
I sink to my knees, my head resting on the cool fabric of the pale-blue duvet cover, the childhood print, patterned in shades of reds, browns and greens, of pistol-waving cowboys chasing arrow-aiming Indians mocking my line of sight. I turn my head to face a cowboy tied to a wooded stake with wide loops of rope and I snicker at the absurdity of my situation.
Should I stay or should I go, now? The line made famous in a British pop tune floats through my brain, repeating. Lyrics and melody gain strength until I am certain of my insanity, and still I observe the patterned sheets, cheek pressed to the coolness of the fabric, song in my head.
Feeling Liam’s cum dripping slowly down the inside of my thigh is what finally spurs me to untangle from my jeans, the slippery reminder of what just transpired too much to bear as I face a lifetime of needing more than Liam can ever give me. Knowing I can never explain to him that yes, he makes me come, I enjoy him, and yes, sometimes I want the more I remember from my dreams, and the even more condemning yes, that sometimes I need that more so much that I seek out the ones who can provide it at places like Whips.
Cleaning myself with my discarded turtleneck, I sit on the edge of the bed. Liam sits up, looks over his shoulder at me, standing with the announcement, “I’ll be in the guest room,” before storming out.
* * * * *
I awaken to a rattle from downstairs, realizing it is most likely Liam’s mother, and the lure of brewing coffee presents a hard temptation to resist. However, humiliation is a bitter pill, and after my argument with Liam last night, facing his parents and siblings is the last thing I want to do. I can wait.
Unfortunately, they aren’t as patient. A resounding knock brings me to my feet.
I close my eyes before opening the door. Do I hope for Liam to be standing on the other side or one of his parents? I open the door to neither of my choices. His sister informs me that there is a taxi outside for me.
The taxi driver hands me a note left by Liam.
Opening it, I see it is one of the invitations to our wedding. I hadn’t realized that there would be very formal, very elegant invitations sent out, but I suppose that is the normal way of things. Scrawled across the printer’s type, in Liam’s bold hand, is the message. Be on time.
* * * * *
December 31
Abbey of Saint-Savin sur Gartempe, France
The flower girl fell. My cynical mind quips that’s a bad omen if ever there was one, and if I were wedding for solely romantic reasons with the amount of doubt I have fluttering in my guts, it would be enough to call the whole thing off. As it is, I’m scared shitless. That’s a hard thing to admit. I don’t scare, it’s what makes me so good at my job. Well, that, and having absolutely nothing to lose. If I live, I live, and if I die, no great loss. Who would think putting on a white dress and saying a few words before dancing the night away at some fancy hotel’s banquet hall would be so terrifying?
One minute she was waltzing slowly down the aisle as delicately as any four-year-old girl could waltz—adding into that thought that she had been coaxed since birth for such dramatic moments as this, weddings, baby beauty pageants and nappy commercials—and the next, toppling head over heels in a tumble of pink organza, satin and netting. Bubble gum and roses, those are absolutely the only things that should be that disgusting color of pink, not a dress. It isn’t just pink, but pink that makes a mockery of the layers and layers of organza and satin. No, not a pastel, we couldn’t be so lucky as that, nor even a deep, rosy pink, but a vibrant, living breathing color that is at distinct odds with the child’s mass of copper curls.
Liam’s mother pronounces it the perfect dress, and perhaps it was, until the netting beneath wrapped around the flower girl’s ankle and sent her sprawling.
Closing my eyes, I mutter a quick prayer to the God I refuse to believe in. “Please, if I can’t die this very moment, let this child’s ankle be broken so that this wedding can be postponed. Indefinitely. Amen.”
Deities chastise me from the fresco. Wasn’t I just praying to the same nonexistent God three days ago that this wedding must happen?
Yes, yes, I begged. I even got puffy eyed and snot-nosed over the whole fiasco when I thought it wasn’t going to happen. Three days ago I wanted to be married—immediately—it should have been immediate. Three days was too long to postpone. We should have just eloped.
A moment later finds me surrendering to my conscience, guiltily. “Forgive me for that last mean-spirited prayer. I truly meant Ali no harm. I was desperate…I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Her ankle isn’t broken.
The wedding can continue.
After her dramatic wailing ends and her tears are wiped away, the pianist resumes, not from the beginning, but from where she left off. I give the five-year-old son of the best man a small push, sending him to follow in the flower girl’s wake, bearing rings on a white satin pillow.
Facing the groom from the opposite end of the million-footstep aisle, I can’t feel my legs. We haven’t spoken since the night of our argument. Was it only three days ago?
A week ago, I would have sworn he loved me. Now I don’t have a clue. He’s here. It’s enough. If nothing else, it proves what a dedicated agent he is, going to harsh personal lengths to protect his country and the world. Regrettably, there is so much more at stake.
Liam winks at me as I cross beneath the sanctuary’s threshold. He really is a handsome man. The ancient drape of his kilt in his clan’s red and black p
laid brings to mind just how deep his loyalty, his level of commitment, runs. If Scotland would declare civil war tomorrow to regain its independence, he would join solely based on the fact that both of his grandfathers were full-blooded Scots. When he weds, it will truly be for a lifetime. He is wedding today.
I feel faint.
I blame it on the too-tightly-laced corset. Though I could blame it on my fifty-thousand-dollar designer satin and lace, overlaid with a creation of Australian crystals and tiny seed pearls that form a floral design, wedding dress. Because I am not the kind of girl who faints—or the kind of girl who wears a dress…ever. I am the kind of girl who never leaves home without her 9mm, except today.
Today, I chose a classic Derringer. Strapped to my thigh, where the baby-blue garter belt, guaranteed to bring our marriage good luck, is supposed to be. No blue, no borrowed…I’m screwed.
With a last beseeching glance toward the heavens, or in this case the incredible ceiling paintings of nine centuries past, I step onto the crisp, white virginal bridal cloth that leads the way to Father O’Leary and the groom.
The wedding party is an international sampling—Norwegian bride, Scottish groom, Irish priest, a bridesmaid from Japan and one from the States, and the groom’s men, representing Paris, Malaysia and Istanbul. Liam’s best man, the dark Parisian, smiles too broadly, his too-white teeth blinding even across the great sea of bodies. It doesn’t escape my notice that he wears a weapon under his coat jacket and a back-up weapon on his left ankle.
Are we all armed then?
I look at my bridesmaids in their strapless column dresses, stiff satin forcing them to stand in perfect posture. If they wear weapons, none are visible. Nice. I can always count on my girls to be discreetly armed.