Eve’s Wedding Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  “That.” She mimicked his little warning head jerk, then grimaced. “Oh, shoot-I’ve got to quit doing things like that.”

  “Like the doc said, that’s what the collar’s for,” Jake said sourly. “To keep you from doing things like that.”

  “Uh-huh… He said he’d have the collar ready by this evening. He said that to you, Jake. He said he’d have the collar ready for you. What have you got to do with my neck brace?”

  She sure didn’t miss much. Which, he reminded himself, was exactly what was going to make her one helluva witness.

  Instead of answering her, he walked over to the window where he stood for a few minutes looking out at the parking lot, slowly filling up now, with Sunday-afternoon visitors. Then he turned, leaned against the wall and folded his arms.

  It was a small room; he could almost have reached out and touched her, and yet he felt that she was far, far away from him. Which was, of course, the way he wanted it. Detachment, that’s what he had to have if he was going to make this work. Keep a professional distance, keep the operation and its goal in front of him at all times. Care about her safety-that went without saying. But beyond that-stay away.

  But as he stood there staring at the Eve lying just beyond his arm’s reach in her hospital bed, he couldn’t keep himself from seeing instead all the other Eves he’d met over the course of the last twenty-four hours, the Eves from which he hadn’t managed to keep that critical distance.

  The battered bride, reeking of garbage and tanked on vintage champagne, taking him by surprise in his van and then turning to him with terror and pleading in her eyes…

  The sleeping beauty he’d had no choice but to undress… and it had been like Pandora opening her box, revealing every adolescent male’s fantasy… Lush femininity wrapped in creamy skin and all tied up in garters and lace… Long, smooth legs in silky white stockings that he could feel wrapped around him-hoo boy, and how was he supposed to put that mischief back in the box? Tell himself he hadn’t seen it? Order himself not to remember?

  Oh, and for God’s sake, don’t remember the brave but doomed princess who’d stood with her head trustingly bowed, like Anne Boleyn baring her neck to the headsman, while he relieved her of her jewelry. And why was it he could still feel that mouth-watering sensation he’d gotten when he’d thought-just for an instant-of putting his mouth on the little red mark the clasp had made on her skin?

  Why was it he could still feel the weight of her body in his arms, the warm, moist pool of her breath against his shoulder as he’d carried her into the hospital? The shivers of suppressed laughter-mostly nerves, he knew, but dangerously contagious nonetheless-that had made him think of tumbling her into something soft and near and romping with her there with the mindless abandon of puppies and children and very new lovers.

  And finally, the one image that had brought him back to her room last night and kept him company through the hours of his vigil while she slept…one solitary tear slipping down her cheek, leaving its trail of silver…

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” Her voice was quiet, not accusing, just accepting. Waiting.

  Jake shook his head, not in answer to the question, but to chase the images of those other Eves from his mind. And he frowned, not at her, but as a means to force himself to concentrate on the Eve that faced him now with her bruises and bandages and a bright, intelligent gaze. Finally he took a breath, let it out slowly and said, “That time I just bought you-I said it’s up to you what you do with it?”

  She nodded, her face grave. “I understood what you were saying. I have to find a way to break up with Sonny without making him suspicious.” She looked away before she swallowed. “It’s not going to be easy.”

  “How would you feel,” Jake said carefully, “about doing something…a a little bit more… preemptive than that?”

  Her eyes came back to him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how would you feel about helping us nail your…fiancé?” He said it warily, not certain about her reaction. Regardless of what she’d told him about her feelings and how she’d gotten involved with Cisneros, the guy had been her lover. Breaking off a relationship was one thing; taking somebody she’d been intimate with and putting him in prison for life was another.

  She wasted no time in dispelling his doubts as she exhaled in an explosive little gasp of surprise. “Help you-you mean like…spy? On Sonny?”

  Jake drew a hand over his face, muffling his swearing. “Jeez, Waskowitz,” he finally muttered. “Spy? You think I’d go to this much trouble to save your ass and then get you killed? No. All we want you to do is plant some listening devices-”

  “Bugs!” she cried gleefully.

  He snorted. “Okay, we’d like you to bug Sonny’s private space-bedroom, office, car-anywhere he’s likely to do business-”

  “What about his telephone?”

  “That’s…tricky.”

  “You could show me how.” She was sitting up straight in bed, as eagerly predatory and bright-eyed over the idea of those bugs as a little banty hen who’d just scratched up a whole nest of the six-legged kind. “And-oh, God, now I get it-you’re going to hide the bugs in my collar! That’s what Dr. Shepherd meant when he said he’d have it ready for you. That is so cool.”

  “You don’t miss a trick, do you?” said Jake dryly.

  Eve shrugged. “It’s a no-brainer. That was my question, remember? What’s with the collar? So it’s obvious.” She gave herself kind of a shivery little hug, then looked past him toward the window as she said pensively, “I guess great minds do think alike. I was going-I was planning-to see if I could find anything out about Sonny’s… business-” Jake’s breath expired like a pressure valve letting go, but she raised her voice and rushed on before he could interrupt. “All right, I know-but the thing is, I’m not sure I can. What if I can’t?-I don’t know if I’m a good enough actress to break up with Sonny without making him suspicious. I’d always be afraid…looking over my shoulder-”

  Jake pushed away from the window. It took only that to bring him close enough to her to take her by the shoulders. “Listen to me,” he said in his softest, growliest voice. “You are not to do anything except what we tell you to do, capish? No poking around, no snooping, no lurking in places you shouldn’t be. You’ll plant the bugs only where it’s possible to do so without arousing suspicion, and that’s all you’ll do, or no deal. You understand?”

  She nodded and whispered, “Capish. ”And her eyes clung to his face as if she were mesmerized.

  As for Jake, after the first sweeping search for the verification he needed, and finding it in her eyes and her nod, his gaze zeroed in on her mouth and stayed there. He watched it form the word as she whispered it, saw the first fine sheen of perspiration appear on her chin and upper lip, like diamond dust on her skin. He felt the tickle of a pulse in his fingers where they gripped her shoulders, and his own heart slamming hard against his ribs.

  Her lips parted. She drew a breath in the soft, careful way of someone afraid of shattering a soap bubble…or preparing to be kissed.

  He let go of her as if she’d burst into flames and spun away, holding up one hand in a vague gesture that was meant to be the “I’m sorry” he couldn’t quite form into words.

  Lord help us, I’ve lost my mind, he thought, staring morosely down at the parking lot from his safe haven by the window. It was the only explanation. As if this whole thing wasn’t balanced on the razor’s edge as it was…

  “Jake?”

  He didn’t want to turn around. Didn’t want to answer her. Sure as hell wasn’t going to look at her.

  “I’ve been thinking. You know, about what you said before? About how could I change my feelings so quickly? And what I told you, about Sonny, and it being a matter of tim-ing… well, that was true, but I think it was only part of it. I know this is going to sound like I’m trying to justify myself with the benefit of hindsight, but… somewhere inside, I think…I knew.”

&n
bsp; “Knew…?” With great reluctance he shifted so that he could look at her, one shoulder against the wall, arms casually folded, one ankle crossing the other. Aloof, he told himself. Completely detached.

  She had pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, and above the drape of hospital bedding, her eyes were the luminous violet of a twilight sky. “Knew…that it was wrong. Oh, not that I knew Sonny was a crook, I don’t mean that. Just that he was wrong…for me. That I was wrong to marry him. Because I kept finding excuses. For God’s sake, we were in Vegas-the world capital of weddings! I could have married him months ago-that’s what he wanted. But I said no, I wanted my family there. Then I got the bee in my bonnet about Savannah, and I insisted on that particular church even though there was a three-month waiting list. What was that? I’m not even religious.” She let out a breath and looked away, and he watched a blush deepen under her natural tan, like time-lapse photography of a ripening peach.

  “What you said? About being ready to ‘jump his bones’?” She sounded ashamed but hell-bent on confession. And why tell him? he wondered. Her relationship with Cisneros was the last thing he wanted to have to hear about. But she was going doggedly on, in a low, tense voice. “It wasn’t…quite like that. I mean, that wasn’t what it was about. When I opened that bottle of champagne and went looking for Sonny, it wasn’t because I wanted him so much, I just couldn’t wait to…” She collected another breath, a quick little in-and-out, stalling for time, then dragged her gaze bravely back to him. “I think…what I wanted more than anything else, was to be convinced. I had all these butterflies. I was thinking, My God, Evie, what are you doing? Are you crazy? All of a sudden I wanted to prove to myself I wasn’t crazy. I wanted Sonny to make love to me-I mean really knock my socks off-so I’d know I was doing the right thing by marrying him. As if sex was enough…” She swallowed, looked away again briefly, then came back to him with a wry smile.

  Detach, he thought, silently grinding his teeth.

  “See, I have this awful tendency, where emotions are concerned. I sort of go overboard in the opposite direction from what I’m really feeling, you know what I mean? Like, I cry at parties and make jokes at funerals-that sort of thing. Terrible. So…the more uncertain I was about whether I wanted Sonny, the more I… Well, you know.”

  She groaned and bowed her head, resting her forehead on her drawn-up knees. He saw her shoulders begin to shake, but it was a moment before he realized that she was laughing. “Oh, God…” She lifted her head, but covered her eyes with her hand. “I bought all this sexy lingerie. I mean, what was that? It sure as hell isn’t me. That thing I was wearing-”

  “You mean, the teddy?” Jake asked, in a tone of polite interest. Complete detachment.

  The hand came away from her face and something sparked in her eyes, something bright and breathtaking and too quickly gone, like a bluebird flashing across the periphery of his vision, or a fish breaking the silver surface of a lake at dawn. She cleared her throat. “Actually, I believe the technical term is merry widow.”

  “Ah,” said Jake. Detached? Sure he was. On the outside, anyway. Only problem was, somebody had forgotten to clue his vital organs in on the plan. So there was his heart pumping away like crazy and a furnace firing up in his belly, sending all that heat and blood flow to the parts of his body where he needed it the least and leaving him critically short in other vital areas-like his brain.

  She made another small, throat-clearing sound “I’m strictly into cotton and comfort myself.”

  “Uh-huh.” Her face was so demure and still. And what did that mean, he wondered, in light of what she’d just said about always showing the opposite of what she was feeling? Did that mean that right now her heart was banging away like the Energizer Bunny and her temperature soaring and all her nerves jumping and twitching and pulses thrumming like jungle drums?

  Aw, hell, he thought. Just because he was crazy, didn’t mean she was. And with everything she’d had come down on her in the last twenty-four hours? No-no way.

  He shook himself and straightened; oxygen starved, he found himself fighting an urge to yawn.

  Which Eve was quick to pick up on. “You must be tired. You didn’t get much sleep last night. Or did you sleep at all?”

  He shrugged and didn’t answer her; the last thing he needed was for her to be concerned about him. For her to be nice-on top of everything else. He frowned at his watch. “I’ve got some things to do. It’s almost lunchtime-I need to be going before they show up with your tray. Didn’t your family say they were coming back later on?” She nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll see you this evening. Should have everything in place by then. We’ll…ah…go over the details with you-make sure you’re up to speed on the equipment, arrangements for making contact, get you familiar with the collar… Okay?” Again he waited for her nod.

  “Capish, ” she said with a faint smile.

  So it was he who nodded. “Okay, then. See you later.”

  He opened the door a crack, looked through it, up and down the corridor. He threw one last look over his shoulder at the woman huddled in the middle of her hospital bed, arms hugging her drawn-up legs, forehead resting on her knees. Then he slipped out of the room and left her there.

  Mirabella and Summer came out of the third-floor rest room just as the elevator doors were closing.

  “What?” Mirabella demanded, as Summer checked abruptly with a small exclamation of surprise.

  “Oh…nothing. I’m sure it wasn’t…” But she went on frowning for a moment in the direction of the elevators, before shaking her head and turning away. “I thought I saw somebody I knew, but…I’m sure it wasn’t.” She shifted some of the shopping bags she was carrying in order to consult her watch. “It’s past noon. I’ll bet she’s going to be right in the middle of eating lunch. We should have picked up something. I’m starving.”

  “You want a breakfast bar?” Mirabella was rummaging in her cavernous handbag. In her sixth month of pregnancy she was constantly ravenous and never beyond reach of a food source.

  Summer shook her head. “Thanks, but I believe I’ll wait for some real food.” She leaned against the wall while Mirabella hunched over the water fountain. “I hope Evie likes the stuff we got for her. I hardly know what her taste is anymore. It’s been so long since we all used to go shopping together… borrow each other’s clothes…”

  “You used to borrow each other’s clothes. The only thing of Evie’s that ever fit me was that poncho she brought back from Baja, remember? I think you were a freshman that year.”

  Summer gave soft huff of laughter. “Yeah, I remember. She and a bunch of her friends took off down there in a Volkswagen bus. Pop had a fit. Didn’t he call the CHP and try to have them stopped, or something?”

  Mirabella nodded, popped an antacid tablet into her mouth, drank water and swallowed before she answered. “He’d have called out the marines, if he could. He was sure something terrible was going to happen. As usual, where Evie was concerned, he was wrong. They were fine-probably had an absolute ball, too.”

  Summer shifted restlessly. “You know what? We probably are, too-wrong to worry about her, I mean. Bella, as long as I can remember, Evie’s been doing crazy, wild things and driving everybody mad with worry, and it always turns out to be for nothing. She’s just not like the rest of us. She doesn’t know the meaning of the word fear.”

  “That’s just it-” Mirabella interrupted herself with a soft burp; indigestion had been a major annoyance with this pregnancy. “She’s never afraid. That’s why-”

  “Who’s never afraid?” her mother asked, coming from the rest room just then, shaking her hands irritably. “I hate those hand-dryer things.” She gave up and wiped them on her slacks.

  “Evie,” said Summer, handing over some of her parcels.

  Her mother gave a bark of surprise. “Why would you think that about Eve?”

  Summer and Mirabella looked at each other. “Well, Mom,” said Mirabella with exaggerate
d patience, “she’s always done such wild and crazy things. Skydiving, spelunking, whitewater rafting-is there anything terrifying she hasn’t done?”

  “She’s never been a mother,” said Summer dryly, and they all smiled. Then, still smiling but in a different way, their mother shook her head.

  “I can’t believe she managed to hoodwink the two of you all these years.”

  “Hoodwink? What do you mean?” the sisters said together.

  “Oh, my dears, don’t you know?” Ginger Waskowitz looked at each of her daughters and laughed softly. “Eve didn’t do all those things because she wasn’t afraid. She did them because she was.”

  Chapter 8

  Eve stared out of the limousine’s darkened windows, watching the warrens of Sun City’s massed rooftops and islands of outlet shopping malls give way to marshes. Not even the breathtaking flash of an egret against the seas of waving yellow-green grasses, or the glimpse of a ‘gator sliding into the murky-blue waters of an inlet could prevent the blanket of loneliness from settling around her.

  Heaven knew, Eve was no stranger to loneliness. Growing up in the California deserts, she’d called it the “wild lone-lies,” and mistaken it for wanderlust-a vague, unfulfilled yearning fed by the endless wind and vastness of sky and a land as cruel and beautiful and spellbinding as any. sorcerer. I don’t belong here, she’d thought then, and had spent hours gazing at the sparkling skies and empty vistas like a foundling hearing the call of some distant memory, sure that her true home must lay out there somewhere, just beyond the place where the sky and the desert came together. So far, she’d spent her life pushing that horizon and had yet to find her place of belonging.

  But this loneliness was different. For the first time in her life she understood the difference between loneliness and alone. Never before had she known such a terrible sense of isolation and abandonment, the feeling of being cut off from anyone who could help her, and everyone who loved her.