Eve’s Wedding Knight

Chapter 11

He came in while she was in the whirlpool bath, still sweating from his workout, with a towel looped around his neck and his hair standing out from his head in a bristle of wet spikes. He spoke in an undertone to the FBI agent posing as Marcie the physical therapist, who nodded and left the room.

Eve observed this from under cover of her lashes as she lay in the tub, half-reclining in the warm, churning water with her head back and her neck supported by a specially designed cushion, pretending drowsy indifference while her heart mocked her with its thundering tattoo. She watched him approach the tub with a rocking, unhurried gait, his eyes pinioning her, studying her with a curious combination of self confidence and wariness, like a seasoned fighter taking a new opponent’s measure. And even though she knew most of her body would be invisible to him in the swirling water, under that dark, unyielding gaze she felt utterly and completely naked.

With her pulse throbbing at the base of her throat, she waited, hoping to let him speak first. But when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to, and when she couldn’t stand the terrible feeling of vulnerability another minute, she curved her lips into a languid smile, forced her voice low in her throat and purred, “I wasn’t sure you were coming.”

He made a short, ambiguous sound. “You knew I’d be here.” And he moved closer, towering over her so that in order to see him she had no choice but to open her eyes.

Oh, but her eyelids felt heavy…and the rest of her body, too, weighed down by a strange lassitude that had nothing to do with the warmth and the water.

Strange, too, that in the midst of all that water and humidity her throat felt dry as dust; and when she swallowed, the thirst was carried deep into her belly and from there to every part of her. When she stared at Jake’s chest, hair shadowed and glistening with sweat, she felt as if she were beholding the only source of relief for that thirst in a cruel and barren desert. When she gazed at his hands, even knowing that moments ago those same hands had been engaged in brutally pounding a bag of sawdust, her body felt the water’s gentle caress only as a taunting, teasing simulation of their touch. She felt heavy and ripe at her core, like a fruit ready to fall of its own weight; and at the same time as if she would shiver into a million pieces and blow away if he touched her.

“Weird…” she murmured, closing her eyes.

“What is?”

His voice is like…molasses, she thought. Blackstrap molasses… rich and thick and not too sweet…kind of a bite to it.

“This…the water…it feels weird.”

Jake growled, “I thought you liked hot tubs.” And he couldn’t look at her a moment longer, lying there spread out before him like a banquet, and he the beggar standing outside the hall with his face pressed up against the window.

Turning one shoulder to her, he leaned his backside against the tub and buried his face in the towel he’d thrown around his neck after his workout. But it did no good. He could still see her-almost more vivid in his mind’s eye than the lush reality-the outlines of her body undulating beneath the swirling water, moisture beading on her chest and throat, face dewy and pink from the heat, lips parted, breath suspended… as if, he thought, in the very next moment she expected to be kissed…

“I’m curious.” He cleared his throat. “How in the hell did you manage to bug a Jacuzzi?”

She laughed-a blood-stirring chuckle. “That was easy, actually. I put it in the boom box. Had it sitting there on the deck beside me. I played your tape.”

“I heard. Heard you singing, too.” He said it harshly, and she looked momentarily startled. Then her face hardened almost imperceptibly, as if she’d donned a transparent mask.

“Heard about your Thanksgiving plans,” he said, and she shifted as if the water had suddenly become uncomfortable to her. “So, you’re going to your sister’s?”

She shrugged and said without expression, “I tried to get out of it, but…Sonny wants to go.”

For a moment Jake didn’t trust himself to speak. Then, very quietly, he said, “What the hell were you thinking?”

Her head snapped toward him, too quickly for muscles that had been immobilized for most of the past several weeks. He saw her wince and grab at the back of her neck, then gingerly rotate her head as she flashed at him, “Look, I don’t want him anywhere near Summer and her kids, okay? Not after what he tried to do to them. I don’t want him anywhere near any of my family.”

A dozen angry replies to that zapped through his mind. He squelched them, and instead found himself moving around to the head of the tub, slipping his hands under her head. He began to massage the muscles of her neck with his fingertips, and heard her give a gasp, then a sigh…saw her lashes settle onto sweat-spangled cheeks…felt her head grow heavy in his hands.

He found that there was something relaxing about it for him, too. Something about the touching…as if her warmth and weight and textures measured on the nerve endings of his fingers had opened doors and allowed those messages of pleasure and contentment to pour into the corners of his body, soul and mind.

After a while, without altering the rhythm and pressure of his fingers, he said quietly, “You know it’s what has to happen. We have to allow Cisneros to play his hand. It’s the only way we’re ever going to end this. The only way.”

Her voice was soft and slurred. “I thought-if I can get something on him, or if you get something from the bugs-”

“Never happen. The man’s too careful-and too smart. Lady, we’ve got state-of-the art equipment at our disposal-hell, some of it sounds like science fiction even to me. If it was possible to nail Cisneros with electronic surveillance, we’d have had him put away years ago.”

Her lashes flew upward. He felt her neck muscles tighten in his hands, but instead of pulling away from him she tilted her head back in order to look at him. “Then why did you have me do this? The…collar. The bugs. What’s the point, if it’s not-”

Jake was shaking his head. “Unless you wanted to reveal the fact of what you heard, which would make your life not worth…doo-doo, you had no choice but to go back to him. That being the case, we figured we’d keep an eye on him through you, he’d eventually make his play to go after those records Hal Robey stole from him, and that’s when we’d be there to nail him.” He let out a breath. “You know what the collar’s for.”

“And the bugs?” Her upside-down gaze was unflinching. Her pulse hammered against the pads of his fingers.

He cleared his throat, but the words came in a growl anyway. “We couldn’t let you go in there unprotected. Had to have some way to keep an eye on you-or ear, rather.”

“All this time I’ve been bugging myself?” She jerked in his hands, and he braced himself. Then he realized she was laughing. “Oh, man. And I was really getting into it, too. Little Miss Espionage.” She sighed.

Her eyes had started to close when he rasped, “Don’t sell yourself short, Waskowitz.” And they flew open again, and her head jerked back and he found that instead of massaging her neck muscles, his fingers were stroking the taut arch of her throat, the wet-velvet undercurve of her chin. “For this to work, we need you there, and we need you safe. You’ve got to quit doing things to arouse his suspicions. Capish?” Her head moved slowly in the cradle of his hands. Her lips parted.

And suddenly he couldn’t feel his own feet. He felt like one gigantic throbbing pulse. “If he doesn’t want you to go to a health club, if he wants to set you up with a private therapist, don’t worry about it.” His voice seemed to come from a great, echoing distance. His jaws felt rigid as wire. “We’re flexible, we’ll find another way to contact you. Let us do our job. Yours is to go along with him. Play his game. Keep him happy.”

Her rueful laughter bumped against his fingers. Electric charges ran up his arms and into his chest. “I don’t think he’s very happy right now. I just wish…” The laughter ended, and then she whispered, “I just want it to be over.”

He held her still, her face framed upside down in his hands, and stared down…down into her eyes. She gazed steadily back at him for a long, unmeasurable time…just time enough, it seemed, for him to play back over all the moments of his life from the very first until this one…the very moment when it seemed almost inevitable that he would kiss her.

Time enough to relive all the missteps and wrong turns he’d taken, all the blind alleys and deep waters he’d stumbled into. Time to review his failures and broken dreams and the reasons for them. To remember who he was, and why for him, some things, no matter how much he wanted them, simply were not possible.

“You’re a civilian. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” he said in that cracked and gravelly voice he was learning to accept as his own. “If you want to call it off-”

“No! No…” Her lashes drifted down as if she felt utterly exhausted, and she said in a soft, dead voice, “This is the only way. I know that. I want to finish it.”

“All right then.” Exhaling through his nose, Jake pulled his hands away from her neck and straightened slowly. He felt stiff and achy in every joint. “You’ll go to your sister’s for Thanksgiving?” He waited for her nod. “Okay. Unless something comes up in the meantime, that’ll be our next meeting.”

She lifted her head and her eyes followed him as he came around to the front of the tub. “You’ll be there?”

He almost smiled, but in the end just snorted again instead. “Do you seriously think we’re gonna let Cisneros anywhere near your sister unless we’re within shouting distance? Of course we’ll be there.”

“But bow-it’s clear out in the country, there’s going to be people all over the place-”

“Waskowitz-” he squinted up his eyes in an exasperated grimace “-let us worry about that, okay? That’s our job.” He walked to the door and paused with his hand on the knob. ‘“We’ll think of something. Or you will. If you do, just…talk into a bug. We’ll hear you. And if we come up with a plan, we’ll give you the signal. Which is…?”

She bobbed her head impatiently. “The appointment’s been changed. I know, I know.” She suddenly looked overheated and cross. “Okay, so…I guess I’ll see you on Thanksgiving.

“Oh-do me a favor, will you?” She stopped him as he was going out the door. “If you see Marcie out there, ask her to come get me out of this…blinkin’ tub? I’m starting to prune.”

“Will do,” said Jake solemnly. He closed the door and leaned against it for a moment, eyes closed, breathing hard. If he hadn’t been in so much pain, he probably would have laughed.

Somehow the weeks passed. Not that there was any lack of things for Eve to do-as Sonny had pointed out to her more than once, and with exasperation, Hilton Head was a veritable playground, at least for the privileged. But golf and tennis, two of the island’s principal attractions, were obviously not available to her, and if the truth were told, wouldn’t have appealed to her even if she hadn’t been wearing a neck brace.

It was also true that the recent surge of development had produced a plethora of shopping and dining pleasures, ranging from touristy T-shirt and souvenir shops and every kind of fast food known to mankind, to the finest champagne, candlelight and caviar restaurants and upscale malls anchored by the likes of Saks Fifth Avenue. Plus, just across the bridge on the mainland were the new factory outlet malls-small cities of stores that could swallow up shopping enthusiasts for days at a time. But Eve had never considered either food or shopping to be forms of recreation; she shopped when she needed something and ate when she was hungry. These days, thanks to Sonny’s attentiveness to her every need, she seldom fell into either of those categories, and as a result, was losing weight at a rate that would have alarmed her, had she not been too miserable to notice.

She spent her days walking the beaches in search of shells and sand dollars, strolling the miles of equestrian and bicycle trails through resorts and golf courses, staking out man-made ponds and lagoons in hopes of spotting one of the alligators that gave a whole new meaning to the term “water hazard.” Sometimes she wandered into one of the few remaining pockets of undeveloped land, where modest and ramshackle frame houses squatted stubbornly beneath century-old live oaks on real estate grown valuable almost beyond the comprehension of the people who lived there-for these were people who did not measure the worth of their land in money.

Once in a while Eve caught a glimpse of one of the few black people left on the island, descendants of the Gullah people who had been Hilton Head’s original owners, working in a yard or walking down a shaded back road. They didn’t return her waves, and who could blame them? To them she was just another of the mainlanders who’d invaded their island, bought them out, fenced them off and made them unwelcome in their own land.

They couldn’t know that Eve understood them. That she knew what it was that made them cling to their land so obstinately, in spite of pressure and hostility, skyrocketing taxes and offers of money beyond their wildest imaginings. She knew that, simply put, this was home. Their place of belonging.

She envied those people, and when she passed their homely little houses she sent up silent cheers of encouragement, and vowed that if ever she did find her own place she would hold on to it as tenaciously.

Sometimes she stopped at the edge of the marshes to watch the sun go down in a red blaze of glory, and alerted by distant honkings she would catch the breathtaking descent of geese as they settled into their night’s refuge. It was at times like that that she felt the familiar wave of longing that was almost like grief. Why? she would cry out in silent anguish and bewilderment. Why?

As always, she reminded herself that she was the luckiest of women. She had been privileged to see so much of the world, and so much that was wondrous and beautiful. But why was it that the more fascinating, awe-inspiring or poignantly lovely something was, the sadder it made her feel? Watching a glacier calve or finding a hermit crab in a tide pool, she would gasp first with the wonder of it, the bright, sharp stab of joy. And then, as she looked in vain for someone to share the joy and wonder with, feel instead the creeping ache of loneliness.

With Thanksgiving approaching, she felt more guilty than ever for feeling sad. As she had that day in the church garden in Savannah, the last day, it seemed to her now, of innocence, she thought of all her many blessings with a fervent, almost superstitious thankfulness. She was the luckiest of women. And if her place of belonging had thus far eluded her, and if beauty made her sad because she had no one to share it with, she could at least give thanks for the beauty. And she did-oh, she did.

She did wonder, sometimes, if there might be a connection between those two things-the search for her place, the longing for someone to share her soul’s secrets-but when she tried to pin down exactly what the connection was, it eluded her; it was like trying to remember the details of a dream. Though lately she’d had the feeling that she was coming closer to the answer, that it was hovering out there, just beyond her reach.

So intent was she on trying to grasp it, that she failed to notice the refrain that played constantly now in the background of her mind. Or perhaps she’d grown so accustomed to it that, like music in a shopping mall, she hardly heard it most of the time. Oh my God… it went. My God… it’s Jake… it’s Jake.

It was Thanksgiving Day. Dinner had been served and consumed, and in its aftermath, on her way back to the kitchen with her hands full of dirty plates, Mirabella nudged Summer in the ribs with her elbow. “He’s making himself right at home, isn’t he?” she muttered, sotto voce.

Summer looked lost for a moment, then, following the jerking movement of Mirabella’s head toward the living room, where an assortment of male bodies in varying degrees of somnolence and gastric distress were sprawled in front of the television set, said, “Oh, you mean…”

“Sonny. Our sister’s fiancé, Mr. Cheesy Las Vegas himself, making like one of ‘the guys.’ And did you notice the way he oiled himself through dinner, complimenting every mouthful and oozing charm from every pore? Just about ruined my appetite.”

“Oh, Bella.” Summer sighed. “Don’t be so judgmental. Maybe he really is nice. Did you ever think of that? He does seem genuinely crazy about Evie. Isn’t that what counts? It doesn’t really matter what we think.”

“It wouldn’t,” Mirabella huffed in a fierce undertone meant only for Summer, as the sisters unloaded their burdens into the already crowded sink, “if I thought for one moment she felt the same way about him. If I thought she was happy. ”

Summer cast a troubled glance over her shoulder at the bustling, noisy trio of Starrs-Jimmy Joe’s mother, Betty, his sister, Jess, and Granny Calhoun-discussing the disposition of heaps of leftovers on the kitchen table. She lowered her voice to a barely audible murmur. “You don’t think she’s happy?”

“Do you?”

“Well, I-”

“Did you see how thin she is?”

“Yes, but don’t you think it could just be…you know, the injury, the neck brace…”

Mirabella said derisively, “Oh yeah, right-if I couldn’t exercise, couldn’t do anything except lay around all day and eat, I’d certainly lose weight, wouldn’t you? No-something‘s not right. I can feel it. She does not look like a woman in love-at least not with…” Her voice trailed off as a new and appalling thought crossed her mind. She pushed it aside.

“She doesn’t have that… that glow,” she said to Summer, who was gazing distractedly through the window above the sink, watching the children romp and play in the piles of leaves on the lawn. Their shouts and laughter and the sound of crackling leaves made a staccato counterpoint to the mellower murmurs and chuckles of the three women behind them, and to the rush and roar of the football game and the occasional accent marks of exclamation from its audience in the living room next door. “When she’s around him, you know what I mean? She doesn’t look like you do when you’re anywhere near Riley, that’s for sure.”

Summer threw her a look, as a beautiful, rosy flush spread over her cheeks. “There,” said Mirabella, “that’s what I mean. The glow. Have you seen Evie glow?”

“You know, actually,” said Summer, “I haven’t seen Evie at all, for quite a while. Have you?”

Mirabella made a wry face. “And you won’t. It’s cleanup time. Eve always was a magician when it came to doing the disappearing act when there was work to be done, remember?”

Summer smiled. “That’s right. That always used to bug you so bad. Still-” she cast a futile look around her “-I wonder where in the world she is. She’s not in there with the guys. Do you suppose she could be upstairs with Charly, taking a nap?”

“Who? Your sister?” Jess, Jimmy Joe’s sister, had come to the sink with a load of serving platters in time to hear the last question. “She was in here just a little while ago, dishing up a plate.”

“Dishing up…?” Summer and Bella looked at each other.

“Yeah, you know-like she was fixin’ to carry it to somebody? Heaped it high. Covered it all up with aluminum foil… Oh-and she took along a couple bottles of Corona, too. Last I saw of her, she was headin’ across the lawn. I figured she was taking it out to the limo driver, or something.”

Summer’s eyes widened and a pleat of distress formed between her eyes. Mirabella could see that they shared the same thought-a mental image of their sister tiptoeing across the church garden in her wedding gown with a bottle of vino and two crystal glasses in her hands.

Eve stood contemplating the row of behemoths in the grassy field behind her sister’s house. When she’d come up with the brilliant idea for Jake to meet her in Jimmy Joe’s eighteen-wheeler, which she knew would be parked, as it always was when he was at home, in the field next to the house, it hadn’t occurred to her that there’d be more than one. Much less a whole fleet. Who knew that sweet brother-in-law of hers would make sure every last one of his drivers was home for the holiday? Because here, arrayed before her like a congregation of huge, curious beasts, were not one, but six tractor-trailer rigs, plus another two extra reefer trailers besides.

So, what next? Which one was the right one? Mirabella had once confided to Eve that Jimmy Joe didn’t always lock up his truck when it was parked in his own yard. Eve had passed that information on to Jake, who had assured her a locked door wouldn’t present a problem anyway. So, the bottom line was, he could be in any one of these royal-blue monsters. What was she supposed to do, go down the line trying every door? Carrying a couple of cold ones and a plateful of turkey and trimmings?

Oddly, Eve found the little problem almost comforting. It was an annoying inconvenience, a small obstacle to overcome. And there was something about the mental exercise that seemed to help calm her jitters and steady her rapidly beating heart. Even so, as she approached the trucks she noticed that her legs felt weak and her insides wired and shivery, as if she’d been plugged into a low-voltage electrical current.

Suddenly she saw the truck on the end of the row, the one farthest from the house, flash its headlights-once on and off, then once more. Her head went light with relief, and at the same time, confusingly, apprehension made a shivery star-burst in her belly. She moved quickly to the far truck and around to the passenger side, and was contemplating the step up to the cab, debating the best way to tackle it, when the door swung open and a hand reached down to her.

“Come on, give me that,” said a familiar masculine growl, and Eve’s heart gave a leap of pure, unadulterated joy.

“Which do you want?” she asked mildly, squinting up at him against the reflected glare of a late-afternoon sun. “The plate or the bottles?”

Jake grunted as he relieved her of both. “Hurry up-get in here. You want somebody to see us? What is this?” He was sniffing the foil-covered plate like a suspicious bloodhound.

“I brought you some dinner. Happy Thanksgiving.”

She was already hauling herself awkwardly up the steps and into the cab when Jake transferred the plate and bottles to the driver’s seat and reached down to help her. His hands, one warm and dry, the other cold and wet from the condensation on the beer bottles, grasped one of hers and enfolded it, and she felt a lurch in her middle.

“You sure nobody saw you?” Jake asked in his grave and gravelly voice once they were inside the truck and the door shut firmly behind them.

Eve rolled her eyes. “I can’t guarantee nobody saw me leave the house, but I know for sure nobody followed me out here. The guys are all sacked out in front of the TV set-”

“Cisneros?” He looked as if he found that hard to believe.

“Oh, yeah.” Her smile was off center. “He’s very busy being ‘one of the boys.’ Anyway, the women are, of course, cleaning up in the kitchen, Charly and the babies are napping upstairs, and the bigger kids have some sort of tag game going on the lawn, clear on the other side of the house.” She stopped, out of breath, to sweep her hair back from her face with both hands. It helped to quell her jitters somehow. “So-I’m pretty sure we’re in the clear. How ‘bout you? Have any trouble finding the place? Was the truck unlocked?”

“No problems…” Jake’s mumble was distracted as he scowled through the windshield, as intently as if he expected hostiles to pop up any minute out of the landscape of grassy hummocks and fire ant mounds.

“Where’s your backup?”

“Parked on a logging road on the other side of that stand of pines.” He threw her a look as he moved back between the seats. “If necessary, they can be here in three minutes.”

“Three?” Eve murmured, her tone faintly mocking. Had he timed it? she wondered. And she thought that a lot could happen in three minutes…

“We can talk in here,” Jake said tersely. He was poised in the entrance to the sleeper compartment, one knee on the bunk, one hand on the sliding curtain. “Doors are locked. If we pull this curtain, no one’ll ever be able to tell anyone’s inside.”

Eve scooped up the plate and bottles from the driver’s seat, then paused. “Oh, look,” she said, “this must be Jimmy Joe’s truck.” Clipped to the dashboard were two photographs-a school portrait of Jimmy Joe’s son, J.J., and a snapshot of Mirabella holding her baby, Amy Jo.

“Come on, hurry up.” Jake was gesturing urgently.

She nodded and eased herself between the seats to join him in the sleeper, at the same time looking around her, overcome by an unexpected sense of awe. She was thinking that this must be the very same truck, the very same sleeper in which Mirabella had given birth, with Jimmy Joe’s help, to a beautiful baby girl on a snowbound Texas interstate. On Christmas Day, that had been-almost two years ago.

Jake, watching her, asked as he pulled the curtain across the opening, “Never been in one of these before?”

“Nope,” she murmured, scooting herself backward onto the bed and pulling her legs up under her, Indian-style, “it’s a first.” She wanted to tell him about Mirabella’s Christmas miracle; it was part of her family’s folklore, a tale told and retold around dinner tables and at family gatherings. But for some reason it seemed too intimate a thing to share in these circumstances, the two of them closed in together in this tiny, womblike space. Instead, she said casually, “Nice digs. Are we bugged?” It had come to seem almost natural to her.

But Jake looked at her for a long, somber moment, then shook his head. “Not today.” He pulled the foil-covered plate toward him.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he mumbled as he peeled back the foil. He felt twinges of guilt when he thought about Birdie and Franco out there in the van, dining on fast-food burgers and fries, but then the smells of roasted turkey, sage stuffing, giblet gravy and candied sweet potatoes assailed him, and he went light-headed with pleasure. He’d read somewhere that the sense of smell was the most evocative of the senses. Right now he understood what that meant, because for one achingly poignant moment he was a child again, and back in his mother’s kitchen, cracking walnuts on the warped linoleum floor. He swallowed saliva along with the unexpected lump in his throat and said in a dazed voice, “I haven’t had a feast like this since…”

Eve was digging in the pockets of her jacket. She glanced at him as she drew out a set of silverware wrapped in a white linen napkin, another napkin bundle containing home-baked rolls, and a triangular-shaped, foil-wrapped package Jake devoutly hoped was pumpkin pie. “Go on, you can say it- since your divorce. Last time I looked, that’s not a four-letter word.”

He made a sound as he reached for the silverware, one she probably wouldn’t recognize as a chuckle. It was, though-he was profoundly glad for the distraction; sentimental at his core, the prospect of revealing such feelings dismayed him.

“How come?” Having taken his response for agreement, she was watching him with glittery-bright eyes and flushed cheeks above the rim of her collar, reminding him not so much of a titmouse now, but of the furred variety, peeking out of its hole, nose all aquiver with curiosity. “Don’t you have other family? What about your parents? Are they alive?”

“Yeah, they are. They live in Pittsburgh…” Fork poised above the heaped plate, he pondered the delicious choices.

“Really? Pittsburgh?”

“Yeah. And I have a sister who lives in Philly.” He stabbed the side of the mashed potato crater, allowing the pool of gravy to pour into the stuffing, then scooped up a huge forkful of all three and put it in his mouth. The combination of flavors almost sent him into ecstasy. He closed his eyes as he chewed, and made soft, guttural sounds of pleasure.

He opened his eyes and found her watching him hungrily. “You want some of this?” he offered, nudging the plate slightly toward her. “There’s plenty-more’n I can eat.” Which was an out-and-out lie, and he was relieved when she shook her head.

“No, thanks-I’m stuffed.” But she belied that as soon as she’d spoken, claiming one of the rolls.

He watched her as she broke it open, slathered it liberally with cranberry sauce, closed it up again and took a generous bite that left a small blob of sauce clinging to her upper lip. Instantly, without thinking, he reached over to wipe it away with a corner of the white linen napkin.

Her tiny, almost inaudible gasp woke him to himself and what he’d done. For a few moments he stared at her over the napkin, frozen… half in embarrassment, half in fearful anticipation, like someone who’d stepped on a squeaky stair tread and now waited to see if he’d given himself away.