HiddenDepths

by Angela Claire

  “Tommy has a right to shop here too, Dad. What’s your problem?”

  “My problem is he doesn’t look like he’s shopping, Cass. My problem is he looks like he’s chasing after you, like always. That’s my problem.”

  With a dramatic sigh and shaking her head, she turned to Tommy. “Just ignore him. I’ll ring you up.” Pushing her way behind the counter, she found herself further annoyed by the look her father shared with Evan’s mother. It screamed see what I mean.

  Whatever.

  Muscling the tube of toothpaste Tommy probably didn’t even want away from him, she said, “Was there anything else you wanted?”

  “You’re Evan Reynolds’ mother?” Tommy asked.

  “Why yes, I am.” For all she seemed to be commiserating with Cassie’s dad, she did give Tommy a friendly smile. “Do you know him?”

  “Not really, but if anybody should be given a lecture about Cassie—”

  “Three eighty-five,” Cassie said loudly.

  God, did everybody think they could just talk about her as if she wasn’t in the room? It was bad enough all these gorgeous guys were pretty much ignoring her, but she had to hear everybody go on and on about her needing to be protected! From what? Both Tommy and Evan treated her like glass.

  She suddenly remembered the feel of Tommy’s erection against her tummy.

  Tommy a little less so, she guessed.

  But still. It wasn’t as if she was getting any. Just ending up more and more frustrated. And jealous.

  “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Amanda Reynolds told Tommy. “Unlike his father, Evan has never really seemed to go for younger women.”

  “Three eighty-five,” Cassie snapped again and Tommy dug the cash out of his pocket.

  “Your father tells me you might take me out to the island,” Mrs. Reynolds said as Cassie made the change for Tommy. “I’m actually not sure Evan’s even there, though, as I’ve been calling him and can’t seem to get through.”

  “He’s there. I was just out there and saw him.”

  “Oh.” The woman’s smile dimmed, making her look a little less glamorous. “That’s odd. I’ve been calling.” But then she seemed to remember her self-possession and flashed a flirty look at Cassie’s dad. “And unlike some men, Evan never screens me.”

  “I’m sure a guy would be nuts to ever screen you.” Her dad grinned.

  Uh!

  “Maybe he’s shacked up with somebody,” Tommy offered blithely in Cassie’s direction, ensuring she was this close to sticking her tongue out.

  “Oh no, Evan would never bring a girl to his island.” Cassie couldn’t quite remember her own mother, but what she had seen of other people’s, they seemed awfully know-it-all about their kids. “I’m sure of it.”

  “A guy?” Tommy teased, completely for Cassie’s benefit, no doubt, and Mrs. Reynolds did that tittering thing.

  “Uh, no. Though I wouldn’t mind that at all,” she added for everyone’s benefit.

  “I can take you,” Cassie said.

  “Although you could too, Mr. Bailey,” Tommy noted.

  “Mind your own business,” her dad snapped.

  “I don’t usually just barge in on my son like this, I hope you know. But I was nearby and he’s seemed a little down.”

  “Well, as I said, I was just there and he was fine. He took the groceries and, ah…” Both Tommy and her dad were now looking at her intently. “I mean I barely said five words to him actually, but he seemed fine. Okay, I mean.”

  “I’ll take you, if you like, Amanda,” her dad said suddenly.

  The woman looked around, a little unsure, and then said, “I really shouldn’t go without calling first. And having him answer, I mean! I’ll give him a little time. He gets into his moods sometimes. So like his father in some ways. So perhaps I’ll hang around for a day or two, have dinner, do some antiquing up the coast.”

  Her dad smiled. “We have quite a nice restaurant a few miles out of town.”

  Cassie huffed and headed through the connecting door to their apartment adjacent to the store.

  * * * * *

  That night there was no moon. Evan’s bedroom was as dark as a tomb. And though Andrea had thought of tombs many times in her life, she had never thought of one in as comforting terms as she did now, all wrapped up, literally, in the dark with her lover. It felt positively Shakespearean.

  Since the house was set up on one of the cliffs overlooking the water—not the highest cliff, but plenty high—the only respite from the total dark was the occasional ghostly dot of light far out on the horizon, moving slowly but perceptibly across the big, black window. A ship miles out to sea making its way through the night, she knew.

  Or maybe just the soul of some long-lost lover.

  In Evan’s arms, in Evan’s bed, she felt as if she were the patron saint for all doomed before her who had thought to cheat death or life or something with this intense emotion.

  Before they became lost again.

  Evan pushed his cock deeper into her and she murmured an appreciative sigh.

  “What language was that?” he asked softly.

  “Language?” She hadn’t realized that whatever she had moaned had included any actual words, in English or otherwise. So she didn’t bother answering. She didn’t know anyway.

  He continued with slow, languid pushes into her, a sweet taking and then pulling away. She couldn’t see her own hand in front of her, let alone her lover, but she could feel every fiber of him with her being.

  “What language do you think in, Andrea?” he persisted.

  “I’m not thinking right now, in case you haven’t noticed.” Her legs wrapped around the backs of his and her fingers rubbed the hard muscles of his neck, his shoulders.

  “Is it Greek?”

  She froze and he could not have helped but feel it, but continued to move against her, inside her, no condom again, the two of them obviously having lost their minds, until she reciprocated beneath him, giving herself over to the rhythm of it again, forgetting his questions.

  If he would only let her.

  “Whoever you are, I want you.” He murmured the words into her ear and followed them up with a long, soulful kiss that left her humming, no words involved this time, she was sure of it. “Do you understand that?” Lifting one of her legs higher, he deepened the angle of how she lay beneath him, under him, and her heel just naturally went to his ass, digging into the hard muscles as he thrust.

  “You’re not exactly keeping it a secret, Evan.”

  “I want you here.”

  “I am here,” she murmured gently as he nuzzled her neck.

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  He aimed his cock in a wicked push upward that caused her to gasp and she laughed. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be letting you do this.”

  “Then tell me who you are.”

  She hugged him closer. “Who do you want me to be?”

  “Mine,” he muttered, his hand moving to one cheek of her bottom, on the side where she had already lifted her leg, so that he went even more impossibly deep.

  “I am yours, Evan.” She was pretty sure that was in English, but she belatedly, halfheartedly, wished it hadn’t been.

  “When was your last period?”

  Not exactly a respondent declaration if she’d ever heard one.

  “What?”

  His cock went deeper still. Incredibly pleasurably deep. And he began to move fast now instead of at that slow, languid pace. Faster with each thrust until he was panting with it, both his hands underneath her now, cradling him up to her. And she had made love with this man enough to know what that signaled.

  “When?” he gasped urgently and she ignored it, wrapping both of her legs fully around his taut behind, a signal of her own.

  She pulled his head to hers to kiss him fully and when he would have pulled away, to further grill her undoubtedly, she wouldn’t let him, instead giving herself over to the most powerful force in the world a
s it pulled them both over the edge.

  He groaned into her mouth and then came inside her strongly, wrenchingly, as her inner muscles clamped down to deliver the same ultimate pleasure.

  He continued to shudder inside her another minute, and finally she put him out of his misery. “Almost four weeks ago by now.” She nipped his ear. “And don’t worry. I’m very regular.”

  He kissed her neck. “Thank God. You’re kind of a bitch, though, to make me do it without giving me that reassurance first.”

  “To make you do it? You cad you!”

  She rolled him over, coming on top of him, both of them laughing.

  “Don’t start hitting me again!” he teased and she wondered if she truly had lost her mind to be able to be so free as to joke with him about something as painful as her meltdown earlier today.

  Later, when they were snuggled up together and she had almost drifted off to sleep, he said, “I have to leave for a little while tomorrow. I’m not sure whether I’ll be back before dark, but I’ll try.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want to come with me?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you want to know what I have to do?”

  “No.”

  It was enough to know what she had to do. If not tomorrow, eventually.

  * * * * *

  Evan had a boathouse in a sheltered cove of the island, with two sailboats and two motorboats, one of the latter of which he used to leave the island. As she saw him off, she noticed the mark all four boats bore, an “ER” in a fancy scrawl of some kind, and asked him about it.

  He grinned. “Just a little vanity on my part. I mark all the boats I build.”

  “You built these?” she asked, astonished, and he shrugged.

  “I have a lot of excess energy.” Then the grin again. “Though you’re helping me a lot with that. I swear I never had so much trouble getting out of bed in the morning. You’re wearing me out.”

  Fighting down the impulse to ask him to stay then, to go back to bed with her, she just kissed him on the cheek and watched with a wave as he sped away.

  Once he had left the island, there were still three boats remaining in the boathouse for her to do the same, furtively, if she wanted to. But she wouldn’t stoop so low as to “borrow” one of his boats without his permission. She would swim the distance to the mainland first, if she had to. She probably could do it in calm weather, as there was today. But she didn’t need to make the decision just yet.

  A big believer in fate, she would let the decision be made for her if it happened that way.

  Moseying down the beach, Bingo frolicking beside her, she finally ended up in one of Evan’s beautifully crafted wooden and padded beach chairs. The sun lulled her to sleep—she wasn’t sure if she was wearing Evan out or vice versa—when a voice startled her awake.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Struggling to sit up—and not inconsequentially unnerved that someone could sneak up on her like that—she glanced down the beach to see Bingo running in and out of the waves, his tongue hanging out and his tail wagging as the speaker cast her shadow over the beach chair. She could almost hear Evan’s “some guard dog” lament.

  “So? I said who are you?” It was the beautiful blonde girl who brought Evan supplies the previous day.

  Andrea came to her feet, intent on getting on more of an even keel, only to discover that this young girl was easily as tall as she was. “I’m a friend of Evan’s.”

  “Obviously,” the girl said sullenly, glancing around herself and yanking up the bright-pink tube top she had been incredibly brave to wear. Her assets in the tank-top department were considerably bigger than Andrea’s and Andrea would have never dreamed of testing the elastic of a small piece of material that way. Of course, the girl probably wouldn’t mind if it slipped as long as she had the right audience to witness it. Looking around for said right audience, she asked, “Where’s Evan?”

  “Off island.”

  “Huh. I guess. I didn’t see him dock, though, and I usually do.” The girl looked around as if she didn’t believe Evan wasn’t really there and maybe was ready to do a search. But then she turned her attention back to Andrea, studying her skeptically. “You know I came over here to tell him his mother was in town and asking about him. And I think it’s kind of rude not to let him talk to his mother, by the way, if you’re the reason he’s not answering her calls. When did you get here anyway? Because I didn’t see you here yesterday and now she’s just hanging around town and I think my dad might have even taken her on a date or something if you can believe that.”

  The girl talked at a wildly frantic pace and Andrea wondered if she herself had ever been so young. Actually, she knew she hadn’t.

  “So I came to tell Evan, but it’s funny because just as I was heading to the boathouse I get tapped by this guy with a funny accent who wanted to show me a picture of a girl. I figured he was a pervert and everything, and since nobody was around, I just blew him off, but he kept trying to get me to look at a picture. Said it was a girl with dark hair, real pretty he said and wanted to know if I’d seen her. I only looked at it for a second, but you know, it could be you.” She added apparently for the record, “And she wasn’t that pretty.”

  The fact the girl was here out of the blue was more than enough evidence that no boat stealing or Olympic swim would be required for Andrea to do what she needed to do. Moreover, since the girl had seen her she probably should just do it. Leave the island. Leave Evan.

  To add this chilling additional piece of information was almost overkill from the fates.

  But Andrea said stupidly anyway, “What? What are you talking about?”

  The girl shrugged. “His mother. Evan’s mother.”

  “No, the other thing.”

  “Oh that. I’m just saying. If it’s you, though, you look a lot older in real life. No offense or anything.”

  Andrea could feel the blood drain from her face and the girl added hurriedly, “I didn’t mean that how it sounded. It was just an old picture, I guess. And don’t worry about it because it seems like nobody told him they’d seen you. I mean I hadn’t anyway, so I didn’t say anything. Is he some kind of pissed-off husband chasing you down or something? Because really, we have a sheriff in town for that kind of thing, although he’s kind of a jerk, always hassling this friend, well not really a friend of mine. Anyway, if this guy is bothering you, you should report him. Married or not, you have your rights, you know?”

  “Who was he?”

  The girl did a double take. “You’re asking me? Like how would I know? Anyway, don’t get all heart-attacky or anything. I won’t say anything if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Andrea gave a metaphorical as well as physical nod to fate, her loose hair falling in her face. Freddie had sent someone else. Of course he had. And now maybe Evan would get dragged into it. Hurt even.

  So much for her plan of hiding out here.

  Almost subconsciously, her hand went to the bandage underneath her T-shirt. She was healed.

  She was. Physically anyway. But Evan was unwittingly providing fodder for fresh wounds, and even worse, she was letting the danger potentially come close to him. Now that she was thinking straight—sort of—she needed to get away from him before either of them did any further damage.

  “Listen, I meant to go back with Evan but he left before I woke up,” she lied blithely into the scowl occasioned by the reference to her and Evan sleeping in the same vicinity. “I need to get back, though, and I can’t wait for him to come back and take me. So do you think you could help me out and give me a ride back to town?”

  Having a woman on Evan’s island didn’t make the girl very friendly, but getting one off it seemed to certainly seemed to please her. The girl smiled for the first time, the effect of it making her fresh beauty even more appealing, incredibly enough. Andrea fought the stab of jealousy she felt at leaving Evan to this girl’s unfair charms.

  “Yea
h, sure. My boat’s at the dock. I was going to tell him about his mom and see if he needed anything, but since he’s not here I guess I can drop back another time.”

  Andrea felt certain the girl would, with maybe even more ammunition than a tank top next time.

  “Do you need to go back to the house to get anything?”

  “No. I’m fine.” She reached in the pocket of her jacket, or rather Evan’s jacket, for the thin-tipped marker pen she knew was there and scribbled out a message to Evan on his own chair. It’d wash away in the rain—she wouldn’t leave any permanent damage, to his chair or anything else—and she didn’t want to take the time to leave him a note at the house.

  “Hey, so what about the guy with the picture?”

  “Oh that? I guess it must be somebody else.”

  They walked back in silence to the dock. Andrea climbed into the speedboat, just managing to sit on one of the cushions against the side when the girl gunned the boat up and took off.

  “I’m Cassie, by the way,” she shouted over her shoulder into the wind.

  “Babs,” she responded spontaneously, figuring it sure as hell wouldn’t matter at this point what name she gave. She didn’t plan on seeing this girl, or this corner of the world, ever again.

  The spray of the ocean on her face washed away the blood caused by biting through her lip at that thought.

  * * * * *

  A helicopter was such an ostentatious mode of transportation that Evan couldn’t recall ever having arranged to take one of his own free will before. But desperate times called for desperate measures. He needed to get into Manhattan to see Michael as soon as possible and he only thanked God that Miss Prentiss Jr. assured him that his oldest brother was in the office and could see him this morning. Since he had not wanted to spook the real Miss Prentiss, in a manner of speaking, with setting up a meeting in advance, he had just called from the mainland once he docked his boat. He was worried somehow Andrea might have been able to discover it if he had contacted Michael’s office while on the island. And overhearing him making the appointment wasn’t what he meant.