Eve’s Wedding Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

He had that sensation at the back of his jaws again, but it wasn’t craving for food or hunger for a beautiful woman that made his mouth water. It was the blood lust of the hunter, closing in for the kill…

  Once he’d made sure he wasn’t being followed, Jake headed straight out to Abercorn. The traffic near the mall on a Saturday afternoon was brutal, but once past that he could turn off onto the back road that skirted the outer boundaries of the hospital parking lots, and from there it was a matter of minutes before he was pulling into his own driveway.

  The town house apartment he’d rented when he’d transferred-temporarily, he devoutly hoped-to Savannah was in a neighborhood of brick Colonial-style apartment buildings arranged along wooded, curving dead-end streets. On weekdays it was peaceful enough, with the children in school and most of their parents at work, but at that hour on a beautiful October Saturday it was a hive of suburban activity. Children slalomed through the streets on skateboards, in-line skates and bicycles; minivans zipped in and out, disgorging noisy teenagers, pizza deliverers, housewives bearing armloads of grocery bags and armies of children wearing soccer uniforms. Stereo speakers thumped, dogs barked and engines revved at the whim of men happily up to their elbows in car parts and motor oil.

  And how, Jake wondered, was he going to sneak an unconscious bride past all that?

  It was, in fact, easier than he’d expected. The fact that the van he was driving bore the insignia of a utility company helped; no one would think twice about such a van backing in between the buildings, so as to have easy access to the rear of the apartment. And Jake’s was on the end, so he was able to park close to the door.

  After glancing at his still-unconscious passenger, he felt reasonably safe in leaving the van unlocked while he let himself into the apartment. There he gave the ground floor a habitual and cursory once-over, then went upstairs and into the only one of the two bedrooms that had furniture in it. He was trying to decide which would be the least conspicuous method of transporting a body: rolling it into a rug, zipping it into a garment bag or just draping a sheet over it, when he heard something that made alarm impulses go whistling through his nerves, lifting the fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck.

  Stealthy movements… swishing noises.

  One hand on his weapon, he crept down the carpeted stairs, bending nearly double in order to peek around the corner into the living room while still out of the intruder’s range of vision. An instant later he hissed out an exasperated breath and proceeded down the remaining steps at a more sedate pace while his heart banged without apology against his ribs.

  The “intruder” was standing in the middle of the room, looking around her with a small, confused frown on her face, the champagne bottle clasped to her bosom.

  When she saw Jake, she said, “Oh, hi…” in a vague, breathy voice. Then, as the frown deepened into distress, “Would you mind if I used your rest room?”

  Jake muttered, “Upstairs,” as he dodged past her to the door she’d left standing wide open.

  After satisfying himself with a quick look around that his mystery guest’s arrival had gone unnoticed in the neighborhood in spite of his dangerous lapse, he went out to the van to button down and lock up. Though that only took him a few minutes, by the time he got back inside, the bride had vanished. The apartment seemed empty and silent. Way too silent. There wasn’t a sound-no footsteps, no running water… nothing.

  Jake took the stairs two at a time, swearing under his breath. Too late. As he’d feared, the bride in all her bloodstained finery, still reeking of garbage, still cradling the champagne bottle, lay sprawled facedown across his bed, the black-grimed soles of her lace-stockinged feet peeking out of the froth of her skirts like the tar baby’s footprints.

  Muttering a disgusted “Aw, man…” he went over to her and gingerly touched her shoulder. He really had hoped to get the woman cleaned up a little bit before she conked out in his bed. “Hey-Miss Waskowitz…Eve…ma‘am?” But the only answer he got was a determined snore. “Come on now, ma’am,” he said firmly, “at least let’s get you out of those clothes. Upsy-daisy…”

  No dice.

  With an exhalation that was more groan than sigh, he sat down on the bed beside her. Damn… All those buttons. She was right; they went all the way down her back. All the way.

  Given a choice between peeling an unconscious women out of her wedding dress and having that smell all over his bed, plus the remains of whatever it was she’d been wallowing in, Jake had no trouble coming up with the answer to that question.

  “O-kay,” he muttered, “if that’s the way it’s gonna be…” He leaned across her and gently eased the champagne bottle out from under her arm. When he got a good look at the label he did a double take, then whistled softly. No wonder she’d been cradling the thing like it was the crown jewels. Probably cost almost as much. He set the bottle carefully on the floor and went back to the problem of the buttons. No sweat, he thought. Just start at the top and work your way down…

  It was nowhere near that easy. The neckline began high on the back of her neck, then looped across her shoulders and breasts in a series of scallops designed to show off a triple-strand pearl choker of what sure did look to Jake like the real deal. He decided to leave the pearls where they were and just concentrate on the buttons-concentrate being the operative word. It was hard, damned hard not to think about the intimacy of what he was doing. Hard not to let his fingertips feel the cool, wet kiss of her sweat-damp hair… Hard to avoid the velvety warm brush of her skin. Hard to hold himself aloof from the beckoning warmth of her body, and to keep his head clear with her sweet woman’s scent enveloping him like an opium cloud…

  By the time he’d gotten as far as her waist, he’d worked up a good sweat. The problem was, he couldn’t seem to convince himself that what he was doing was just a routine procedure for a highly trained federal law-enforcement agent. In his Special Forces training he’d learned how to kill a man with his bare hands inside three seconds and in total silence, and was confident he could do so with ice water in his veins. As a hostage negotiator he’d talked down men wired with enough explosives to demolish a high-rise, without breaking a sweat. So why couldn’t he undress a woman without his heart pounding like a runaway freight train?

  It didn’t help that she had the most beautiful back he’d ever seen. And so far, he’d gotten the dress apart almost to her waist, and that was all he’d uncovered-lots and lots of that smooth-as-satin skin, sweet little bumps and ripples of spine, muscles delicately hinted at rather than bluntly defined. What was she wearing under that dress? Nothing?

  He was relieved when he encountered lace a couple of buttons farther on. Well, he was. After all, he reminded himself, he was going to want to interrogate the lady. It would be nice if he could look her in the eye while he was doing it.

  Once he had the buttons dealt with, he rolled her carefully onto her back. He was breathing easier now, figuring the worst was over. There were a few more buttons on each sleeve at the wrists, but once those were taken care of, all he had to do was peel the top over her shoulders and ease it on down… down her arms, carefully over her breasts… And all the while she went on sleeping soundly as a child, lips slightly parted, a fine dew of moisture clumping the hair on her forehead-

  He avoided looking at her battered face, concentrating instead on getting the tight sleeves over her limp hands. And then it was easy to pull the dress past her hips and-

  His heart stopped. He felt like a Chinese gong, and he’d just been rung.

  What the hell was she wearing? He wasn’t much of an expert on feminine undergarments, so he wasn’t absolutely certain that what he was looking at was a teddy. Whatever it was, it seemed to consist entirely of some kind of stretchy lace that hugged her body like a second skin, only to end abruptly at the top of the curve of her hips. Below that, elastic garters snaked down over a tiny lace triangle, arrowed the length of smooth golden thighs to connect with the tops of the lacy white stockin
gs.

  All Jake could think, when his mind started working again, was, All this for a creep like Cisneros? What a waste.

  He’d peeled back the covers and was just about to roll her between the sheets when he remembered those grimy black feet. So instead of tucking her in, he went to the closet and got the blanket he’d taken off his bed and stowed there, being a warm-blooded sleeper himself. When he got back with it, he found that his sleeping beauty had rolled away from him onto her side and pulled her knees up, the way little kids do when they sleep. Except she sure didn’t look anything like a kid, especially from where he was standing. He got that blanket over her just as fast as he could.

  Once he’d done that, the cop part of him was able to resume functioning. He stood there looking down at the woman asleep on his bed, snoring softly with her ungrazed cheek pillowed on one hand like a child. Eve Waskowitz…who by this time should have been married to the man Jake hated most in this world.

  Lady, he thought, what happened to you in that church garden today? What in the hell happened?

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and carefully lifted the bottom edge of the blanket, then put his hand under one slender, lace-stockinged ankle and tilted the bottom of her foot toward the light. The stocking was torn and worn through, almost nonexistent in places. And under all the dirt and grime, he could see that the ball of her foot and the delicate pads of her toes were scraped and bruised.

  And he thought, Lady, where in the world have you been? What happened to make you run in fear for your life from the man you were about to pledge to love, honor and obey until death do you part? What happened to your face? Did he do that to you?

  His belly burned at the thought. But the lady’s only response was an inarticulate murmur, and Jake knew that was all the answer he was going to get, for a while, anyway. With a silent sigh, willing himself to patience, willing the triphammer beat of his heart to resume its normal rhythms, he lowered the foot into place beside its mate and tucked the blanket around them both.

  He rose and walked out of his bedroom, and was about to start down the stairs when he changed his mind. Instead, he went across the hall to the bathroom, took his bathrobe from its hook behind the door, carried it into the bedroom and laid it across the foot of the bed.

  Then he went downstairs, poured himself a cup of cold coffee and settled down to wait.

  Chapter 4

  Eve felt no sense of surprise or unease when she opened her eyes; she was accustomed to waking in unfamiliar places. As far as she was concerned, there were two items of greater importance to her at that moment than figuring out where in the world she was. Number one, she was thirsty; her mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage. And second-okay, maybe even first-she really, really needed to go to the bathroom.

  The first alarms went off when she threw back the blanket that covered her and found that she was dressed like a page from a Victoria’s Secret catalog. “What the hell?” she muttered aloud.

  Sitting up, she shifted her feet around and lowered them to the floor, where they encountered something soft and slithery. It was when she leaned over to peer at the pile of white satin under her lace-stockinged feet that the bells really cut loose-a cacophony of bells, a pounding of drums, a whole anvil chorus. In an attempt to shut out the din, she moaned and put her hands over her ears-which was when she discovered that the clanging was coming from inside her own head.

  She waited, breathing slowly and shallowly until the pounding had subsided, then rose with caution. Someone had thoughtfully left a bathrobe on the foot of the bed, she observed. The same person who had peeled her out of the expensive pile of white satin she was standing on? She just wished she could remember who that someone was. The last thing she did remember was being in some sort of surveillance van… Good Lord, had it been the FBI…? And a video monitor… Sonny’s face…

  “Oh, God…” She was overcome, all at once, with cold and pain and nausea. She groped for the bathrobe and shrugged it on, drew it tightly around herself, hoping to draw from it the warmth and comfort that would dispel the horror that had just enveloped her. Because she remembered it all-everything.

  She just did manage to find the bathroom in time.

  When she heaved herself up off the bathroom floor a short time later, she still felt wobbly in the legs, but considerably less queasy. “Well, Evie,” she softly scolded herself, “you’ve really gotten yourself into it this time, haven’t you?”

  She tried her best to avoid the mirror above the sink as she leaned over the basin and turned on the tap, letting the cool water run through her fingers, frowning at the dirt and stickiness, the scraped and broken nails. A shame, she thought. How often did she pamper herself with a real manicure, colored polish, the works? And for what? For what?

  Disgusted with herself, she splashed water on her face. The unexpected sting of it made her straighten up like a shot She whispered a shocked oath, then leaned closer to stare at her reflection in the mirror. “Jeez,” she muttered, “I look like I’ve been mugged.” Her gaze shifted, taking it all in-the cuts in her eyebrow, on the bridge of her nose, the scraped cheekbone, the fat lip-before she finally forced herself to meet her own accusing eyes. Yeah, and it’s probably the least of what could happen to you. You got yourself into this. Now it’s time to face the music. What’re you gonna do about it?

  She drew the terry-cloth robe closer around herself and belted it tightly, picking up as she did a scent that was strange to her yet somehow familiar-a mixture of soap and aftershave, fabric softener and male-definitely a man’s scent. And definitely one she didn’t know. She remembered a tall man, though, with a long, rather patrician face and melancholy eyes. Jake. That was his name-Special Agent Jake… Something.

  Pulling in one more deep breath, both for comfort and for courage, Eve turned off the light and left the bathroom. It was time to hobble downstairs and face this Agent Jake Something of the FBI, the man who’d brought her here, to his home, undressed her to her undies and covered her with a blanket while she slept. And very thoughtfully left her his bathrobe.

  Jake had been waiting for her, sitting stiffly on the rented brown tweed sofa in the living room with a cup of cold coffee on the table in front of him and an album from his collection of blues LP’s playing on the old-fashioned turntable on the floor under the window. He’d shed the coveralls for a comfortable pair of slacks and a polo shirt, and had a copy of a John D. MacDonald paperback-a Travis McGee-open on his lap. He’d been reading the same paragraph over and over since he’d first heard signs of life coming from his bedroom upstairs.

  Now, as the scuff of footsteps sounded on the carpeted stairs, he closed the book and placed it on the coffee table, then peeled off his drugstore reading glasses and hitched forward on the cushions. He was ready. More than ready. In a way he felt as if he’d been waiting for this woman all his life.

  His heartbeat quickened as he watched her slender legs in their white lace stockings come slowly into view. He told himself it had nothing to do with memories of what those stockings were attached to, the way those golden thighs had curved into hips cleft only with a tiny scrap of lace. The tension, the dry-mouthed anticipation, he insisted, were solely for what she could tell him about the man he’d spent five years of his life trying to bring down. They had no connection whatsoever with the fact that she was a beautiful, sensuous woman wearing a white lace teddy under his favorite bathrobe.

  She waited until she’d finished navigating the stairs before she spoke, and then only a husky “Hi” as she came toward him with the careful, slightly canted gait of someone walking barefoot on pebbles while balancing a jar on her head.

  “There’s coffee,” Jake offered, with a gesture toward his own chilled dregs.

  She shook her head, flinched and whispered, “Water, if you have it,” as she groped with one hand for the back of the sofa.

  He got up and headed for the kitchen, inquiring over his shoulder, “Can I get you a couple aspirin, while I’m at i
t?”

  She gave a single huff of laughter-breathy, chagrinned, and a little surprised. “Yeah, okay… maybe… sure.” Then, for a few moments, gave herself up to the complex task of sitting down on the sofa. That accomplished, she looked over at him and frowned. “What time is it? How long’ve I been…?”

  “Asleep?” Jake glanced at his watch. “It’s a little after eleven. You’ve been out about six hours.” He went into the kitchen, filled a plain white mug with water from the faucet, snagged the bottle of aspirin from the top of the refrigerator and went back out to the living room. “There you go,” he said as he placed the mug and aspirin bottle on the coffee table. Outwardly calm, he felt deep inside the shaky nervousness of adolescence. “It’s tap water-that’s all I’ve got…

  She shrugged and reached for the mug. When she made no move to pick up the aspirin, he opened the bottle and shook two tablets onto the tabletop. Wordlessly she held up three fingers. He shook out one more, then picked them up and held them out to her, watched as she took them from him and placed them on her tongue, avoiding contact with her swollen lower lip. He tried not to watch the way the pearl choker rippled against her throat as she swallowed; it was too short a distance from there to the deep, shadowed V of his bathrobe and the secrets hidden therein.

  Cradling the mug in both hands, she cleared her throat and nodded toward the window. “Is that Billie Holiday?”

  Jake arched an eyebrow. “Yeah, it is. You like blues?”

  One shoulder lifted as she eased them both back against the cushions. “I did a piece on blues musicians couple years back…great stuff-fascinating. Don’t really have much time to listen to music myself, unfortunately.” A frown briefly pulled her eyebrows together, drawing lines that were almost a caricature of distress above eyes dark with pain. “It’s nice… but would you mind turning it down… little?”

  Since the record player was already turned down about as low as it would go, Jake switched it off. Then, since his witness was occupying the only piece of furniture in the room designed for sitting, he leaned his backside against the windowsill, folded his arms on his chest and waited.