Eve’s Wedding Knight

Chapter 14

If Eve had found the pace of her days monotonous before the Thanksgiving holiday, afterward they seemed to crawl by with a soul-sapping tedium she imagined must be akin to doing hard time in a maximum-security prison.

Sonny left the Saturday after Thanksgiving to go back to Las Vegas to tend to business, which was an immense relief to her for more reasons than one. He’d been in a mood ever since the blowup in the Jacuzzi, still sulking over his enforced celibacy, so being around him was already a strain. Add to that her feelings of guilt over what had happened between her and Jake in the sleeper of Jimmy Joe’s eighteen-wheeler…

No, not guilt, exactly. It wasn’t guilt she felt when she thought of that. Longing… hunger… craving… desire-yes, all of those. But not guilt. She felt certain that if ever in her life she had done something right, making love with Jake was it. It was regret at not being able to repeat the occasion that was hard to abide and to hide from those around her, and a sense of impatience at time being wasted, a deep and constant yearning to be with someone, and to be someplace, other than where she was.

To make matters worse, the lovely autumn days had finally come to an end. Although winter would not officially arrive for weeks, the weather had already declared its intent. Chilly drizzle alternated with a dreary overcast. Everything was wet, a cold dampness that penetrated clear to the bone, and stayed that way for days on end. California desert-raised, Eve longed for even a glimpse of the sun.

Somehow the days did pass. She went, trembling inside, to her first scheduled physical therapy session after the holiday, but Jake didn’t show, and she was too proud to ask the FBI’s therapist about him. After that she called and made excuses not to go, claiming she had a cold and didn’t feel up to it.

Then, after stubbornly refusing to give up her daily walks along the fog-shrouded marshes, she actually did come down with a cold, her first in years and one of the worst she’d ever suffered. She spent her days in front of the television, sniffling into soggy tissues over the likes of Casablanca and An Affair To Remember, as the pounds that had slipped away unnoticed a few weeks before came gleefully home, and brought friends. The calendar rolled over into December, and she still had not given a thought to Christmas.

On Saturday morning, the week after Thanksgiving, Sergei interrupted the death scene in A Farewell To Arms to inform her, with sneering deference, that she had a telephone call.

“Who is it?” Eve asked soggily and without much interest, blowing her nose. Surely not Sonny; it wasn’t even seven o‘clock in the morning in Las Vegas-practically the middle of the night to a night owl like him.

“She said she is your sister,” said Sergei stiffly. He handed her a cordless phone and went out.

Eve sniffed and punched the button. “H‘lo? Bella…?”

“It’s me, Summer. Evie? Are you crying?”

“What? Oh, doh-well, yeah, but…dot really. I was watching this ridiculous movie. Plus I have a cold. What’s up? You sound upset. Is everything-”

“Oh, Evie. It’s Bella. She’s gone into early labor! She might lose the baby. I’m going up there now-can you come?”

It was afternoon when Eve pushed through the Augusta hospital’s slow-to-open automatic doors with two beefy and edgy-looking men close on her heels. A lavender-haired lady in a pink smock at the information desk in the main lobby directed her to Maternity on the fourth floor.

“You could wait for me in the car,” she suggested to Sergei and Ricky with mild sarcasm when the elevator arrived. The door opened; they followed her on in stony silence, one on each side.

On the fourth floor Eve found a nurses’ station manned-and that was the word-by a very large woman who looked like a cross between somebody’s mama and an M.P. “Family only in the patient’s room,” she announced, sizing up Eve’s companions with an implacable eye. “You two can wait in the waiting room, if you want to-down there to your left.” She pointed the way. Neither Sergei nor Ricky were stupid enough to give her any lip.

To Eve, she said kindly, “Miz Starr’s room’s right down there-number 412.” She pointed in a direction opposite the one to which she’d dispatched Sergei and Ricky. “Her sister and her husband are with her, but you can go on in.”

Eve said, “Thank you,” and hurried down the corridor, past doors standing open to reveal weary but happy-looking women propped up and surrounded by clusters of relatives. Some of them cradled tiny pink- or blue-wrapped bundles in their arms. All of them wore ecstatically happy, bemused or besotted expressions on their faces.

Oh, God. Eve prayed as she glanced enviously at them, please let Bella and her baby be all light… Her own troubles suddenly seemed ridiculously small.

The door to 412 was closed. She paused in front of it to blow her nose and take a deep breath, then, resolutely smiling, heart pounding, she turned the knob and went in.

The first thing she saw was Mirabella, cranked up in the hospital bed almost to a sitting position, obviously still pregnant, also rosy-cheeked and smiling-no, laughing-at something Summer had said. Summer stood beside the bed, and the two of them had turned their heads to look at her, both bright-eyed and breathless, as if they shared some delicious joke.

Eve halted. What was wrong with this picture? Suddenly wary and suspicious-the exact same feeling she’d occasionally had right before someone jumped out at her and yelled, “Surprise!”-she ventured a cautious “Hi, what’s going on?”

“False alarm,” sang Mirabella gaily. “They think it must have been muscle spasms. Guess I overdid it, raking leaves yesterday.” She and Summer exchanged that secretive look. “Anyway, the baby-John William-and I both check out fine.”

“Thank-” Eve did a double take. “John-does that mean…?”

Mirabella looked ready to burst with delight. “Ultrasound confirms it-we’re having a boy.”

“You know that child is going to wind up being called John Willie,” said Summer in mock disgust. “Or worse.”

“Over my dead body,” promised Mirabella blithely. “Anyway, they gave me some stuff for muscle pain, and now I feel just peachy. Sorry you had to come all this way for nothing.”

“That’s okay…” Weak in the knees, Eve sat on the edge of the hospital bed. She looked around. “Where’s Jimmy Joe?”

“Who? Oh-” Mirabella waved a hand “-somewhere between here and Houston, I imagine. Why?”

“I just assumed… The nurse said your husband was here.” Eve looked at Summer. “Riley came with you?”

Summer shook her head; she seemed to be holding her breath. But before she could say anything, the curtain surrounding the bed next to Mirabella’s was drawn back. A voice, gravelly and solemn, said, “I believe she meant me.”

To Eve it felt as if her heart exploded. A powerful electrical surge shot through her body; her scalp prickled, her hair lifted and her hands and feet tingled with it. “Jake…”

“Evie, are you all right?” That was Summer.

“Don’t faint,” said Mirabella tartly. “And don’t get mad. This was my idea. We had to think of some way to get you away from You-Know-Who so we could make our plans.”

“P-p-plans?” Eve sputtered, recovering fast. “Our plans?” She rounded on Jake, who was watching her from under lowered brows, a look of appeal in his eyes. Which she ignored. She felt cold; her scalp prickled now with fury. “You told them?”

“Yes, he did,” Mirabella answered for him, “and I’m sure glad he did. I knew something was wrong about that guy-I knew it.” She glared at them all in happy triumph; there was nothing Bella enjoyed more than being right.

“I wanted them kept out of it. You knew how I felt.” Eve’s voice was pitched low and for Jake alone. She was trembling with shock, stunned by what she saw then only as a terrible betrayal. “You knew. You had no right. Not without-”

“Yes, he did.” This time it was Summer who broke in, and her voice was so uncharacteristically sharp that Eve turned to stare at her. “We had a right to know. How could you even think about keeping this from us? We’re your sisters. And what about me? This was my fight a long time before it became yours.”

Eve had to look away from her sister’s tear-filled eyes before she could speak. “All right, maybe I should have told you what was going on. But-” and she threw Jake a glaring glance “-I do not want you guys involved in this. I will deal with it. We-Jake and I-will deal with it. You stay out of it.”

“Oh, no,” said both of her sisters together. And Mirabella continued, “Don’t even think about going it alone. The Sisters Waskowitz, remember? Nobody can beat us if we stick together.”

“Don’t forget,” Summer added softly, “I tried it. It doesn’t work. Trust me.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Eve whispered, already knowing it was futile. “You both have families… children to protect.”

Summer nodded. “That’s exactly why you can’t shut us out. That’s why we’re doing this-to protect our families. Sonny’s a danger to all of us, Evie, not just you. If there’s one thing we can do to help put him away, of course we’re going to do it.”

“Yeah…okay.” Ignoring Jake, Eve reached for the box of tissues on the bedside stand. But his presence was a drumbeat inside her chest, a silent scream in her ears, a bomb burst inside her head. She blew her nose, cleared her throat. “Fine-I understand that. But there isn’t anything you can do. So-”

“But,” said Mirabella gleefully, “that’s where you’re wrong. We already have a plan.”

“Plan?” Eve stared over her wad of tissues with a feeling of foreboding. “What plan?”

“Well…it involves Christmas-”

“-which we’re going to have at my house,” Summer continued, firing the words with machine-gun speed, hoping to get it all in in one burst before Eve could object. “We’ll all be mere-except Mom and Pop-we’ll send them off on a cruise, or something. Troy and Charly will be there, too. Troy’s an ex-SEAL, which should come in handy in case something goes wrong.”

“Which it won’t,” Jake growled.

Summer glanced at him and smiled tranquilly. “Of course not. Anyway, apparently, Sonny thinks Hal hid something there that can incriminate him, right? So-we’ll let him look for it. Jake’s going to have the whole house wired for surveillance.”

“No,” Eve choked out. “No.” She bolted for the bathroom.

Summer and Mirabella looked at each other. After a moment, Summer said, “That went well.”

Jake muttered, “Excuse me,” and went to knock on the bathroom door. There was no answer. He glanced at the two sisters, who both gave him a nod. He opened the door a crack, then pushed it the rest of the way and went in, shutting it behind him.

She hadn’t turned the light on, so he did. Then for a few moments he stood where he was, not knowing what to do or what to say to her. His heart felt as if it would pound a hole in his chest. He didn’t know when he’d felt so unsure. So exposed.

She stood with her back to him, hands braced on the sink. For some reason she’d taken the collar off; the pieces sat askew in the basin in front of her. Her head was bowed and her shoulders hunched, and her nape looked unprotected and vulnerable as a child’s. Seeing it like that, he thought about what she’d had to endure these last few weeks, what she must be feeling now, and anger burned in his belly like acid.

“Eve,” he began in a cracking voice, reaching toward her.

About as vulnerable as a cougar kitten, she rounded on him, eyes spitting dark fire. “How could you do this? How could you go to them without even telling me? You knew how much I wanted to keep them out of this. Couldn’t you at least have told me?”

“You didn’t give me a chance,” he said stonily. “You haven’t been going to your therapy sessions lately.”

Her mouth twisted, and she looked away. “I went to the first one after…the holiday. You weren’t there.”

“I was in a meeting with Coffee-getting authorization for all this.” But he’d talked with her sister by that time, and that knowledge was heavy in his belly. He took a breath, but it didn’t ease it much-or the pounding of his heart, either.

“Eve-” he said, and her name was thick and scratchy m his throat. But she interrupted him before he could say what he wanted to say, gazing at him and slowly shaking her head.

“I don’t understand, Jake. I mean, I know how important it is to you to bring Sonny down-I know you’ve been working on it for years, I know you feel that it’s at least partly to blame for the breakup of your marriage. But just a week ago you wanted me out of it completely. You were going to ‘bring me in.’” She raised two sets of fingers, setting that off in quotes. “You wanted me to break up with Sonny and call the whole thing off. I’m the one that wanted to keep on with it. And then you turn right around and get my whole family involved? I don’t understand, Jake. What’s going on? What’s changed?”

“What’s changed…” He released a breath that was like a pressure valve letting go. She’d asked him that before, and he hadn’t had the courage to answer her. “What’s changed? For starters, we-” And he stopped, suddenly terrified, like a man walking on thin ice, hearing it crack under his feet.

“For starters…?” All at once she was breathlessly alert, as if she’d heard that cra-ack, too. “You mean…because we…”

The tension inside him was unbelievable. “Because of what happened in the truck…yes.” There was so much emotion in him, his jaws had locked tight, so the rest was a thickened mumble. “We’ve never…addressed that.”

“Addressed what?” In the glaring bathroom light, her eyes seemed to shine and shimmer like sapphires. “We made love. That’s it. What’s there to talk about? You think just because we made love, that automatically changes everything? That it gives you the right-” And suddenly her jewel-like eyes had turned to liquid; tears sparkled like tiny pearls on her cheeks.

That was it. He felt it like a gunshot inside his head-the ice cracking under him, the tension snapping, his self-control giving way. With a groan of anguish he reached for her, felt her flesh beneath his fingers, felt her mouth, her lips warm and wet and salty from her tears. Sinking…drowning…he moved his mouth over hers, felt the moisture slick on his lips, and the salt-taste sweet on his tongue. He felt her mouth open under his, and heard-no, felt-her sigh.

He made a sound, then, deep in his throat, an animal sound of hunger and need that stunned him, shocked him to the depths of his soul. Helpless to stop himself, no longer even wanting to, he drove his tongue deep into her mouth. And when he felt her give way, yet whimper and open to him, hungry for more, he brought his hand up to the back of her head to steady it. With her head cradled in his hand, he drew back just long enough to nip at her lips and glaze them with his own moisture, until she gave a tiny, gasping cry and lifted to him, blind and trembling.

Her response and her helplessness touched him unbelievably, and when he plunged his tongue between her lips again, it was no longer a plundering, but a giving. He took nothing from her, exerted no dominance, extracted no surrender, but instead poured into her all the hunger and need he’d stored away deep inside himself during the years of his self-denial, and the loneliness and vulnerability he hadn’t even known was there inside him, too. He let it flow from the depths of his soul in trembling, shuddering waves of emotion that should have appalled him, but instead came as unbelievably sweet relief.

At last, drained and fragile, he tore his mouth from hers and with his arms around her, held her as though she were the only thing keeping him upright and anchored to the ground. “Not because I made love with you,” he whispered with his cheek against her hair. “Because I’m probably in love with you.”

He wrenched himself from her, suddenly high on the overdose of his own emotions and finding it impossible to keep still. Unable to pace in that tiny room, he turned jerkily, driving a hand through the wreckage of his hair. “Which is without any doubt the most insane thing I have ever done.” He whirled back to her. “Do you have any idea how insane this is? Do you? You’re involved in a case I’m working on-not just any case, probably the most important of my career. So all of a sudden my judgment is impaired, my objectivity shot to hell-do you have any idea what my superiors would say about this if they knew? I’d be off this case so fast, it’d make your head swim.”

“Would that be so bad?” she whispered, so faintly he almost didn’t hear her. Then she closed her eyes and touched her lips with her fingertips, gave her head a quick, hard shake and mumbled, “I know…I know. I’m sorry. I just wish…”

“You wish…what?” But she looked away and didn’t answer. “You said that once before,” he reminded her as he laid his hand along the side of her face and touched her lips with his thumb. “This time… I think you’re gonna have to tell me.”

Her eyes drifted closed and her breath flowed warmly over his hand. “Maybe…my judgment’s not all that great, either,” she finally said in a low and shaken whisper. “It’s so complicated… all mixed-up together-this case, how we feel. I think…you’d be happy if you could just somehow separate me and my family from the case completely-put us away someplace safe and out of the way so you could go on and do your job the way you’ve always done it. But-” and she quickly put her fingers against his lips to forestall any possible interruption “-what I want, is for the case to be over. Not just for me and my family, but for you, for everybody.” She was gazing at him now, and her eyes were the somber slate-blue of winter. “Because until it is, I don’t think it matters much what we feel. The case is always going to get in the way. Do you understand?”

Jake said nothing, because he was afraid he did understand. Heartsick and cold, he stared at her, while she searched his face, then sadly closed her eyes.

“You’re thinking it’s like your wife all over again. That’s not what it is-I don’t know how to explain it, or what I can say to convince you, but it’s not. It’s not your job, it’s not even the case itself-not really. It’s like…somehow over the years you’ve let this case get all tangled up with who you are, how you think of yourself. Everything-the breakup of your marriage, your past, your present, your future-it’s all about this case. It’s all about getting Sonny. It’s like a cancer. It’s taken over your life. Call me selfish-everybody does-but I want you whole and healthy, Jake. I have too much to give. I don’t want it wasted.” A tear spilled over and trickled down her cheek, and his fingers moved automatically to wipe it away.

Standing close, almost touching him, she sniffed and then whispered, “That’s why I won’t pull out of this-not until it’s finished. One way or the other.” She closed her eyes and gave a watery and distressed laugh. “Like I said, maybe my judgment’s not so hot, either.”

Jake cleared his throat, to absolutely no effect. After a while he said, “So, I guess we all know where we stand. Right? You want this over with. God knows I do, especially since it doesn’t look like I’m going to get you out of it any other way.” He paused, holding her by both arms, realizing that he’d begun to gently stroke them. His heartbeat thundered in his chest, and he felt its distant echo in his loins. “This Christmas operation at your sister’s looks like it may be the best hope for accomplishing both our goals.” He took one more breath, and with his lips close to her ear, softly growled, “Come on, Waskowitz. Are you with me on this?”

This time, when he lowered his mouth over hers, it wasn’t emotions that governed him. Heat boiled through his veins; he felt pumped full to bursting with life force and energy. With the emotional battle won, more or less, and he the triumphant, if slightly bloodied victor, the surge of desire that followed felt completely natural to him-almost a biological imperative.

This time, his arms held her tightly, not for his own need and comfort, but with deliberate masculine assertiveness, to make her feel the heat and power of his body, and to brace her to receive the force of his thrusts. This time, when her lips opened under the demand of his mouth and his tongue drove deep into hers, it was a claiming pure and simple, and as graphic and unmistakable as any in nature.

And she knew the difference. Rocked by his primal rhythms, within seconds he felt her panting and gasping, raking at his clothes in a passion as compelling as his own, oblivious to surroundings and circumstances, and to the impossibilities…

But he wasn’t oblivious-not quite. Somewhere, in a miniscule corner of his mind, he knew that they were standing in a hospital bathroom, that he had Eve pressed against the sink, and that her legs had wrapped themselves around his hips. And that, no matter how much he wanted to, they could not-must not-continue with what they were doing. Not here, not now.

The adolescent male part of him wanted to argue. We could! I could take her here-standing up…sitting down… I want to!

But the forty-something-year-old federal law officer part knew that there were other considerations. People-sisters-just beyond that door. And plans to be made, a bad guy to catch.

“We…can‘t-” he gasped. It took every ounce of willpower and strength he possessed to tear himself from her and hold her at half an arm’s length. There they stood, gripping each other’s arms for reassurance and support, shaking and panting like marathon runners, trying to regain their footing in a universe that had just come within an eyelash of spinning out of control.

“Are you okay?” Jake asked in a croaking whisper.

Staring at the middle of his chest, Eve replied in the same voice, “Yes, fine.” Silently and ruefully she began to laugh.

So he gathered her once more into his arms and held her, rocking her as they laughed together in the giddy, shaken way people do when they’ve just managed to escape disaster.

Presently, feeling stronger, he kissed the top of her head and murmured, “Ready? Need another minute?”

She shook her head, pulled back from him and combed her fingers through her hair. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.” A residual bubble of laughter burst from her like a hiccup. “What do you suppose they’re thinking?”

“Those two?” Jake snorted and reached for the doorknob as Eve gathered up the two halves of her collar. “I’ve got news for you, Waskowitz. They don’t think. They already know.”

Early on Christmas Eve, Summer Grogan stood in the middle of her beautiful formal living room and gazed critically at the tree that soared almost to the top of the twelve-foot ceiling.

“Not bad,” she murmured in glorious understatement.

Though not as large as the one in Rockefeller Center, her tree, she was sure, was every bit as magnificent. Festooned with tiny twinkling lights, silver garlands, red bows, glass balls and dozens of ornaments ranging from those the children had made from bread dough and macaroni and popcorn to the most elegant handblown crystal, then topped with a gauzy white angel, it shimmered and sparkled from every view. Evergreen garlands looped across every mantelpiece, window and doorway in the house and twined around the banister of the curving staircase. Candles and holly adorned every tabletop; red poinsettias flanked the stairs and brightened every corner. Outside, thousands of tiny white lights winked in the trees and shrubbery and cascaded from the eaves. No house, she was sure, had ever looked more beautiful, more warm and welcoming.

She thought how incredible it was that she should be here on this Christmas Eve, in so lovely a place. What an amazing year it had been. How could anyone have forseen, in the gloom of last January, when she had first faced Riley Grogan in the humiliating courtroom debacle that had brought her already-precarious financial world crumbling down, that she would end the year in this gracious and happy home with a man she utterly adored, her precious children, Helen and David, safe and happy, and all the animals, too-although for their own immediate safety, Beatle the Chihuahua, Peggy Sue the ancient and cranky Persian cat, and Cleo the African Gray parrot had been banished to their various and separate quarters until after the holiday.

Yes, thought Summer, everything was ready-for Christmas, and for whatever else might happen this night…

The week before, Jake and an army of FBI surveillance experts in brown coveralls, under the pretext of putting in a new sound system, had installed hidden cameras and microphones in every room of the house, and throughout most of the grounds, as well. With the exception of the children, and Sonny and his two henchmen, everyone had been shown how to cover the camera lenses and turn off the microphones, although they’d been asked not to do so unless there was a serious need for privacy. A command post had been set up in the house, in a cubicle of a room in the unused attic. In addition, a van containing a second surveillance unit lay hidden in the woods not far from the estate’s front gate, and teams of armed agents had been posted, well camouflaged, all around the perimeter of the grounds.

Everything that could be done, had been done. Every eventuality had been considered and prepared for. They were ready. Summer just prayed it wasn’t all for nothing.

The elements were in place for a final showdown. Eve and Sonny had arrived this morning; they and the two “bodyguards” had been assigned three of the six spare bedrooms. Two of those remaining had been taken over by Mirabella and Jimmy Joe and their children, who had come earlier in the week to help with the preparations.

The last one had, until a couple of hours ago, been reserved for Troy and Charly. Unfortunately, around noon today, Charly had begun experiencing what was at first thought to be acute indigestion. By midafternoon it was apparent that she was in the early stages of labor, and given her difficult and troublesome pregnancy, Troy had decided to take no chances. Rather than trying to drive back to Atlanta, especially with the weather forecast predicting freezing rain, he had taken Charly to the hospital there in Charleston. He had called a little while ago to report that they were settled in and things were proceeding slowly, and had offered to come back if he was needed. In spite of the fact that they’d been counting on Troy’s training and experience as a SEAL in the event of an emergency, Riley had told him to stay where he was.

So far, other than the weather, that had been the only glitch in the well-laid plans, and even that had its upside. At least having Charly in labor provided an excuse for the tension that permeated the house like an electronic squeal… a hum of sound just off the register of human hearing.

As the antique clock on the mantelpiece launched into the Westminster chimes, Summer automatically checked her watch. Soon it would be time to set out the Christmas Eve buffet, but before that there were still a few last-minute things she had to do. A few more presents to be pulled from their hiding places and wrapped and put under the tree-which was already in danger of being buried beneath the mound of packages heaped around it. All day long people had been tiptoeing and scurrying, scuttling in and out of rooms, giggling behind closed doors, the children whispering in each other’s ears, beckoning for help from the adults while sneaking stealthy sideways looks at each other.

Which was, Summer thought with a sigh, just as it should be on Christmas Eve. Like almost every other in the country that night, theirs was a house full of secrets.