Eve’s Wedding Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  “Eve? Oh, Evie…oh my God-”

  “Mom…? Oh, Momma, I’m so sorry…” All right, so she was forty-three years old. And yes, she’d been on her own, a world traveler and successful filmmaker, for years and years. But she had just come from that childhood nightmare, had been longing for a time when all it took to banish terror was to be gathered into those familiar arms. Perhaps she could be forgiven-and was most definitely not acting-when she burst noisily into tears.

  And then her mother was bending over to kiss her and oh, so carefully touching her bandages, then tenderly cupping her cheek and whispering, “Shh…it’s all right, sweetheart… you’re all right, that’s all that counts,” and enveloping her in the familiar scents of Jergens lotion and talcum powder that in a way held more comfort than either the words or the touch.

  Beyond her mother’s shoulder, through a shimmer of tears, she saw her father’s face hovering, flushed red and set in a mask of grief and anger. She could only imagine the frustration he must be feeling, that he, her father and a police officer, had yet been unable to protect his little girl from harm.

  “Pop?” she squeaked, reaching for him with one hand as her mother moved aside to make room, “it’s okay…I’m okay.”

  And her father was squeezing her hand, brusquely kissing it and then turning away, grumbling and harrumphing in the garbled and gravelly voice he used to camouflage fierce emotions, about talking to the officer in charge, and what was being done to ensure that the low-life scum that had done this to his little girl was found and brought to justice. And all the while wiping at his eyes and furtively blowing his nose on his familiar white pocket handkerchief, as if he seriously thought no one would notice.

  Her sisters were there, too, crowded into that curtained space, and so were their husbands-Riley, the newest member of the family, and Jimmy Joe, hanging back a little as if they understood their purpose was mostly to provide backup-their faces, too, wearing the dark, set look of male outrage.

  Eve murmured an abashed “Hi, guys. Some wedding, huh?” and gave her sisters a wry shrug and touched her lip in a way that said she’d smile if only she could. When they didn’t say anything back, she gave a careful, whispering laugh and said, “Come on, I know what you were thinking. You were thinking, Boy, Evie’s really done it this time! Right? Am I right? You know you were…” Summer and Mirabella both laughed then, but in a funny way that had more than a little of tears in it.

  And then they were moving up, one on either side of her to form a protective phalanx around her just as they had when they were children and still believed that the three of them together were invincible, impregnable to any threat from near or far, grown-ups, other children or things that go bump in the night.

  There was Mirabella, white as a sheet, puffed up like a little red bird spoiling for a fight, brushing and fussing at the bedclothes as if any imperfections in them were a personal affront. And Summer, the vet, forehead furrowed, sky-blue eyes misty with compassion, her strong, long-boned hands already resting on Eve’s shoulder, gently stroking her arm, touching her hair, as if just their touch could make things better.

  My family, Eve thought. And whether it was lack of sleep, the residual effects of too much champagne or simply a reaction to all the stresses and traumas of the past twenty-four hours, suddenly the love she felt for them seemed almost too much to bear. I don’t want to leave them! she thought, terrified both of dying and of the separation from those she loved so much that would be like a kind of dying.

  If this charade didn’t work, if she couldn’t convince Sonny she posed no threat to him, he would kill her. It was as simple as that. Or, to prevent that certainty, the FBI could whisk her away into some sort of Witness Protection Program, cutting her off forever from all those she loved. But even then there was no guarantee Sonny wouldn’t then turn on her family as a way to force her to come back! Eve was accustomed to taking risks, but never before had she been asked to risk so much. Her life? Even that seemed insignificant. What was really at stake was all there with her in that cubicle-the love… the people… her family.

  It has to work, she thought. It has to.

  And right on the heels of that thought came another. I have to stop Sonny. Put an end to him. I have to put him away. No matter what it takes. I must. It’s the only way…

  The only way she or any of the people she loved would ever be safe again.

  With that realization neon bright in her mind, she heard a new commotion, voices raised in the corridor outside the exam room. One voice in particular.

  “Hey, what’re you talkin’ about-family? I’m tellin’ you I am family. If this hadn’t happened, she’d be my wife right now!”

  Sonny. Oh God, she thought, I’m not ready! I can’t do this! Jake… where are you?

  Beyond the curtain there were murmurs, low and adamant, and Sonny’s voice rolling over them. Jimmy Joe and Riley were already moving to form a protective blockade, if need be, looking over at Eve to see if that was what she wanted. And it was-oh, it was. But how would she explain? Sonny was her fiancé, the man she supposedly loved enough that a few hours ago she’d been ready to pledge to honor and obey him until death-

  Her heart skipped. She drew a catching breath, then nodded. But her eyes darted among the faces gathered around her like a panic-stricken mouse looking for a hiding place-Bella’s and Pop’s, so much alike, both gray and stormy; Summer’s more like Mom’s, sky-blue but clouded with compassion and worry.

  And what about Evie’s eyes? What do they show?

  She thought, He’ll look into them and know. How could she hide what she felt for him now-the fear, the loathing?

  But the curtain was pulling back… and he was there. Sonny Cisneros, her fiancé-multimillionaire, loud and gregarious, bigger-than-life Sonny Cisneros-broad-shouldered and powerful looking in his expensive suit, no tie, expensive shirt open at the neck, showing gold chains and a thick nest of hair. He moved toward her like an emperor through a throng, sparing quick handshakes for the brothers-in-law, a little longer one for Pop, a one-armed hug for Mom…and then he was beside her bed, looming above her, bending over her… Reaching out to touch the bandage on her head, oh, so gently. Saying, with what sounded like a genuine break in his voice, “Evie…baby-look at you.”

  Eve drew a shuddering breath, held it and heard herself squeak, “I’m sorry, Sonny, I’m sorry!” And once more and, please God, for the last time that night, burst into tears.

  “Hey, what you got to be sorry for?” Sonny crooned; leaning close, brushing her forehead with his fingertips. His breath smelled like Scotch and breath mints. Eve’s stomach heaved, and she fought to control it. “You’re the one got beat up. Hey-they catch the miserable slimeball that did this, I’m gonna kill ‘im with my bare hands.”

  “He took my engagement ring… the pearls you gave me-”

  “Hey, what’s a pearl? Oyster poop, that’s all. I’ll buy you all the pearls you want. I’ll get you another ring, too. A rock is a rock. Important thing is, you’re gonna be okay. This is never gonna happen to you again, I promise you. I’m gonna make sure of that.”

  “Honey-” Eve’s mother was patting her shoulder “-I think we should go now-leave you two alone. Don’t you think so, Pop?” She squeezed Eve’s hand and rubbed her arm as she moved away from her side, pausing to smile tearily at her past Sonny’s broad shoulder as she grabbed at Summer and made shooing motions at Mirabella. “Come, girls-we can come back tomorrow.”

  “They’re going to keep me here a couple of days,” Eve said, sniffling. “I guess they’ll be admitting me soon-I’m just waiting for X rays.”

  “We’ll be back tomorrow,” her mother assured her, “after you’ve had time to get some rest.” And she was herding everyone out of the exam room amidst foot-shufflings and hand-squeezings and awkward little pats on whatever part of her sheet-shrouded anatomy was closest. Eve caught a glimpse of her sisters’ faces, set and pale, clinging to hers until the last second, until the c
urtain swished back and she was alone… with Sonny.

  It was strange. She could feel her heart pounding, feel her body trembling, feel the sticky dryness of fear in her throat-and yet there was a part of herself that felt detached from all that, as if she were sitting somewhere apart from the scene but watching events with a critical eye-the director, perhaps, judging her own performance. Fear… Okay, the fear is real, so go with that. Make it work for you…

  “Sonny, the wedding, our beautiful wedding… all our plans-”

  “Shh… Hey, what’d I tell you? It’s not your fault.”

  “I don’t know what happened. The last thing I remember, I’d opened the champagne-I had this bottle I’d been saving, you know?-and I was going to find you. There was a little time before the ceremony, and I thought we could…” Sickness rose suddenly in her throat. Sonny was leaning down, his face blocking out the light as he pressed his lips to her undamaged cheek, then to the top of her head. The smell of his hair spray and aftershave almost made her gag.

  “Shh…it’s okay, baby. We’ll make up for it, I promise you. As soon as you’re outa here-”

  “It must have been so awful for you…” Shaking like a leaf, she felt herself lift her arms and twine them around his neck…

  In a windowless room not far away, Jake watched the scene on a hospital security monitor. He had a knot the size of a baseball in his gut, but his face betrayed only a slight frown of concentration, nothing that would have given him away even if the other two people in the room had been looking at him-which they weren’t. Like his, their eyes were glued to the monitor.

  “Scared to death,” Jake’s partner, Burdell “Birdie” Poole, muttered into his knuckles. He had one arm folded across his barrel chest, the other bent at the elbow, the hand fisted and pressed against his mouth, and as he spoke leaned slightly away from the screen, as if by distancing himself from it physically he could disconnect emotionally, as well. Birdie looked, with his buzz haircut, slightly harassed look and gradually expanding waistline, like the family man he was. He kept a picture of his patient wife, Marjorie-a saint, in Jake’s opinion, and probably the only genuinely happy cop’s wife he knew-and their four chubby children on his desk and carried snapshots of them in his wallet When it came to women and kids he had a soft spot a mile wide. And a pit bull toughness when it came to the bad asses of the world that made Jake glad they were on the same side.

  Now Birdie exhaled through his nostrils. “She’s shakin’ like a leaf-you can see it from here. She’s gonna blow it…

  “Maybe not… maybe not.” His supervisor, Don Coffee, was leaning toward the bank of monitors, his weight on one forearm while the fingers of the other hand beat an erratic tattoo on the countertop, eyes riveted on the screen. Without turning his head, he said, “Redfield, you know the man-is he buying it?”

  Jake snorted. The fact was, he did know Sonny Cisneros-just well enough to know there was no way in hell to know what the man was thinking. The guy was a sociopath-a man without a conscience. He played by nobody’s rules except his own.

  Aloud, he said, “Why wouldn’t he buy it? Sure she’s shaking-she gets beat up and thrown into a Dumpster on the way to her own wedding, leaves the guy standing at the altar, no explanation, and now she’s facing him for the first time? Hell, be strange if she wasn’t shaking.” He knew his voice sounded like a junkyard dog’s growl, but didn’t make any effort to clear it or ease the tension in his jaws. The two men in the room with him were used to him tightening up whenever Cisneros’s name came into the conversation.

  Right now, though, there was a lot more going on inside him than just the usual teeth-clenching edginess. There was that brassy tang at the back of his throat, for one thing-he wanted this to work so badly, he could taste it. And something else-that knot in his belly, which was something he didn’t remember feeling before. Cold-no, not cold…white-hot, as if it would burn right through him. He’d felt it back in his apartment, when his witness had put it into words-the fact that she’d slept with Cisneros.

  What the hell was the matter with him? Of course she’d slept with the man-she was marrying him, wasn’t she? But whenever the thought came into his mind, he felt the knot… the cold fire in his belly. Right now, watching the two of them together, seeing that blond, bandaged head next to Cisneros’s and those slender arms twined around his thick neck, those big, dark-blue eyes closed…he felt the fire eating its way through his guts… into his chest… all but eating him alive. He knew he should probably stop watching for the sake of his own mental health, if nothing else, but he didn’t. For some reason he couldn’t take his eyes from the screen.

  “You really think she could pull this off?” Coffee asked, swiveling to look at him. “It’s a hell of a risk-you know that, don’t you? Are you sure she’ll even agree to go along with it? What we’d be asking her to do would be dangerous even for a trained agent. She’s a civilian and she’s vulnerable-”

  “She’ll go along with it.” Jake’s eyes burned in their sockets as he watched Cisneros pull back from the bed, watched his hand, winking with gold and diamonds, slide lingeringly across the woman’s breasts. He felt her shrinking in the depths of his soul. “She’s tougher than she looks,” he growled.

  Cisneros was leaving, finally. Jake watched as he moved to the curtains… watched Eve give him a wan and teary smile…blow him a kiss. And then she was alone, and he saw her body shudder with revulsion, and her eyes, wide-open and staring, now, darken with rage until they looked like two holes burned into marble.

  “She’ll go along with it,” Jake said softly, his heart quickening within him.

  “Seems to me she’s between a rock and a hard place,” Birdie said. “She’s got to go back to the guy-how’ll it look if she doesn’t? But can you imagine what it’s gonna be like for her, knowing what she knows?” He shook his head.

  “That’s why she’ll do it,” Jake said. “Because she’s got no choice.”

  “I think you’re jumping to conclusions, Bell,” Summer said in an undertone as she and Mirabella hurried across the hospital parking lot, once again bringing up the rear. The night was moving along toward the wee hours and the low-country fog was already coming in, swirling around the light posts and settling like crystal dust onto the hoods and windshields of parked cars. “Of course she’d be upset-”

  “Not upset-afraid. You saw her face.” Mirabella’s voice was low-pitched, as well, but staccato with impotent fury. “I’m telling you, she’s scared of him. Scared to death. We have to do something. We can’t just let her-”

  Her sister’s hand clutched her arm, stopping her in her tracks. “You can’t mean you think he did that to her. Bella, that’s just ridiculous. On their wedding day? And even if he did, Evie would never put up with such a thing-never. She’d have him in jail so fast, it’d make your head swim!”

  Mirabella grudgingly conceded, “Maybe not But some-thing’s not right, I can feel it. You saw her face, Sumz. She didn’t want us to leave her alone with him. I just wish I knew what the hell’s going on. If she’s in some kind of trouble-”

  “If Evie was in trouble, she’d tell us,” Summer said in a shaky voice. She was hugging herself against the dampness and chill, but shivering anyway. Her face looked pinched and unhappy. “I’m sure she would. We’re her family, after all.”

  “Would she?” said Mirabella, her tone softly accusing. “You didn’t.”

  Chapter 6

  Eve opened her eyes in the hospital’s perpetual twilight and knew at once that she wasn’t alone. From her curled-on-her-side position she let her eyes roam as far as they would, but saw only the stark walls, the bedside cabinet and visitor’s chair, the graying rectangle of a window.

  And yet she’d definitely heard something…someone…the stealthy brush of cloth on cloth… the whisper of an exhalation. The nurse, perhaps, coming to check on her yet again? But no, there’d been no footsteps, no sounds of an opening or closing door, no subtle swirls and eddys of air curren
ts stirred by a passing body. Her mother, then, or one of her sisters, unable to stay away, come to sit quietly and wait for her to awaken? The thought made her feel deliciously warm and loved, and at the same time near to weeping.

  She turned carefully onto her back and stretched her legs beneath the thin hospital covers, and the dark shape slumped in a chair near the door stirred to instant alertness.

  Her heart gave an odd bump. “Jake?” she said on a rising note of surprised laughter. “Is that you?”

  The FBI man leaned forward from the waist, arms extended above his head, stretching out stiffness. “Yeah, it’s me.” His voice sounded as if he’d stifled a yawn.

  “What on earth are you doing here? When did you come back?” She felt the strangest all-over prickling, the tiniest shower of shivers, almost like goose bumps. It was the most pleasant feeling she’d had in quite a while actually, and it was hard to keep the smile out of her voice, even as she supplied the answer with its grim reminder, “Are you my bodyguard?”

  His eyes regarded her from deep in their shadowed sockets. “You could call it that. Keeping an eye on my star witness.”

  “I take it you don’t trust Sonny’s ‘All is forgiven’ act?”

  She heard a noise that she might have taken for a laugh, except she remembered that Agent Jake Something wasn’t capable of laughter. “Just taking no chances.”

  “How long have you been here?” Now that she thought about it, the idea that he’d watched her sleep was disconcerting; she wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or appalled.

  His shoulders casually rose and fell. “Couple hours. I got tired of lurking in the hallway. When the nurse wasn’t looking, I ducked in here. Hope you don’t mind.”

  To cover the ambiguity of her emotions, she gave a dry snort.