Eve’s Wedding Knight

Chapter 4

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

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

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

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

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

She just did manage to find the bathroom in time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He got up and headed for the kitchen, inquiring over his shoulder, “Can I get you a couple aspirin, while I’m at it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After a moment of the silence, the witness opened one eye and ventured, “FBI, right? And your name is… Jake?” She waited for his nod, then smiled her skewed smile, showing an unexpected dimple, like a little girl much pleased with herself. She sat up and placed the mug on the coffee table with an air of getting down to business. “I suppose you’d like an explanation.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” Jake murmured.

She acknowledged his politeness with an ironic snort, waited a moment, then angled a look at him and said, “Well, for starters, I did not get mugged, no matter what I look like. I got this face falling out of, or maybe into-it’s sort of a blur-a Dumpster.” She held up a hand, though he wouldn’t have dreamed of interrupting. “I do not make a habit of getting falling-down drunk. I’m not even very much of a drinker at all. I seriously do not know what got into me. I didn’t even realize I’d drunk the whole bottle-I did drink the whole bottle, didn’t I?” She sighed and closed her eyes. “What a waste. Do you know what that was? There probably aren’t more than a few hundred bottles of that vintage left in existence, and I just… oh, hell.”

She covered her eyes briefly with one hand, and when they met Jake’s again they held a different kind of pain, the kind aspirin doesn’t have much effect on. “I just kept drinking it. It seemed like the only way I could keep from coming completely unglued. After what I’d heard… I didn’t know what to do.”

Jake cleared his throat. In spite of the fact that his stomach was tying itself in knots and his jaws were tight as steel traps, his voice when he spoke was almost gentle, issued from a layer of calm that was like a thin film of oil on roiling waters. “What exactly was it you heard?”

She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. Then her mouth quirked sideways in her droll little half smile. “Why do I have a feeling you already know this? But… just found out the man I was going to marry is a very bad man.”

Jake held himself still, except for a single nod.

Her smile vanished. “I, however, had no idea. You have to believe that. I had no idea he-or anyway, his men-were the ones who burned down my sister’s mobile home and threatened her and her kids. I think he would even have had her killed…” Her face blanched dangerously and a look of panic crossed her face.

“And how,” said Jake softly, giving her a moment to regain control, “did you find this out?”

“I heard him say so.” Equilibrium restored, she rose and began to pace. “It was an accident! Pure chance. Just think-I could be married to him right now. If I hadn’t had this crazy idea-” She stopped and put her hands to the sides of her head, her face, trapped between them, a horror-stricken mask. “Oh, God. To think…I’ve actually slept with-oh Lord, I feel sick…”

“Would you like a moment?” Jake asked, pleased that his voice could sound so calm-merely solicitous, nothing more. Because this time it was he who needed that moment, those few heartbeats of concentration in which to find his pathway, his solid footing once again. Because to his astonishment, somewhere in the part of him that was most primitively and essentially male, a clarion call had sounded, roused to battle readiness by her words and the images evoked by them. It seemed half a lifetime of training had failed to make him immune to gut-churning passions and primal imperatives af ter all.

Outwardly relaxed, he watched her through half-closed eyes, watched her shoulders shrink inside his robe as she fought her own inner battle against shame and self-revulsion, while he fought to block out the images his mind had formed…of this woman and Sonny Cisneros, writhing together in tumbled sheets. He told himself the brassy tang in the back of his throat had nothing to do with the woman, that it was his hatred of Cisneros that cloaked those images in a bloodred fog of rage.

“I’m okay,” she said, though the tightness in her voice betrayed that for the lie it was. Jake knew that “okay” was something Eve Waskowitz was not likely to be for a while, no matter how hard she might try to convince herself otherwise. She was an intelligent woman, and quick-witted; and for all her charm and buoyant agelessness, not a bit naive. Not one of the nuances of her situation or their significance had escaped her; her agile mind had followed each possible consequence to its unpalatable conclusion, and it was what she had seen there that gave her eyes that dark and hunted look.

Because he understood gentleness from him would only confirm her certainties, he chose a businesslike tone. “Tell me what happened, everything you remember. From the beginning.”

Eve stared at the top of the kitchen table from between the hands that framed and supported her face. “I have told you everything-three times.” Her voice was soft, exhausted and hopeless. “That’s all-there just isn’t anything else.”

“I know. It’s okay.” Jake muttered the soothing words while his mind hurled itself against the cul de sac to which her story had led him with the helpless fury of a trapped eagle.

With his back to her, he braced his hands on the edge of the sink and leaned his weight on them while he stared out the window at the black-lace pattern of thinning woods silhouetted against the floodlit silver of the hospital parking lot beyond. The distant wail of a siren grew louder, then abruptly ceased.

“It’s not enough,” he said in a voice thick with disappointment. “Not to take to the U.S. Attorney. A statement overheard and uncorroborated-a good attorney would have it buried before it ever got to court. You know that, don’t you?”

He heard the careful clearing of her throat, and then, in a flat voice he imagined must be totally alien to someone so naturally effervescent, “Unfortunately, it’s more than enough for Sonny-just the fact that I heard it. He can’t let me go. You do know that? Plus, I humiliated him-publicly.” She laughed, utterly without humor. “Nobody gets away with that.”

Jake let out a slow and silent breath as he turned to look at her. Though only a few feet away, she seemed somehow to have retreated to a great distance and at the same time grown smaller, not as though she’d shrunk, but more as if she’d consolidated herself-gone inside the walls of privacy and pulled them close around her. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen it happen. It seemed to be in the direst circumstances that people felt most constrained from seeking help. It was the instinct of the doomed animal to go it alone.

“Sonny won’t let this go,” she went on, in a voice close to breaking. “He won’t stop-and he’ll stop at nothing-until he finds me. What scares me is, if he can’t find me, he’ll go after my family. Like he went after Summer and the children…to get Hal. He’d have killed them, if he’d thought it would serve his purpose. The children, too-without even bunking-”

“We’re not gonna let that happen,” Jake said flatly. But it was an automatic response. An angry pulse tapped against his belt buckle, while beyond the windows yet another siren sliced through the night. It’s Saturday, he thought. The hospital would be a busy place, the terminus of the night’s sweepings, the usual debris from the bars, back alleys and… Back alleys…

His heartbeat quickened. “Tell me again,” he said slowly, “what happened after you dropped the champagne glasses.”

She shrugged. “I ran like hell-I told you that. And I hid in the Dumpster-”

He held up a hand, stopping her. “How far were you from the alley? How sure are you that they saw you running?”

“Well, they had to know it was me,” she said with a snort.

“But-” and he was forming words carefully, reining in his hope with the ruthlessness of long practice “-how did they know? You ran like hell, you say-in what? Your high-heeled shoes?” His gaze shifted to the feet she’d tucked back under her chair, feet still clad in the tattered remains of white lace stockings. He heard a gasp, and looking once more at her face, found that she’d touched the fingertips of one hand to her swollen lip.

“My shoes. I think…I must have left them there. I heard the glasses shatter on the walk, and the next thing I knew I was running. I never even-but how could I have run like that in heels? I must have left them. So… that could have been how they knew it was me. Not that it makes a whole lot of difference…”

“Maybe it does…maybe it does.” The pulse was beating in his throat, now, so that he had to breathe carefully around it. “Think about it. Sonny and his men are talking. They can’t be looking out the window at that time, or they’d see you coming and shut up before you got there. They hear glass breaking. What do they do? What most people do-they freeze. For a second or two. Even if they react instantly, it takes a couple of seconds to get to the window. You’re already running. Maybe they catch a glimpse of you disappearing through the gate-maybe not. They run out, see the shoes and broken glasses. Meanwhile, you dive into the Dumpster. Your veil gets caught, the lid falls and hits you on the head-”

“Boy, did it ever. I’ve got a bump, even. And I actually saw stars-” Her voice broke off as Jake grabbed her arm and all but lifted her out of the chair. “What?”

“Come on-” and his voice was like a growl, low and intense “-go get your dress. Put it on-don’t bother with the buttons. We’re getting out of here. No, wait-”

“Where are we going?” He’d frightened her; she was breathless and pale, tense as wire.

“Let me have those pearls-hurry up-come on, take ‘em off.”

Her eyes held his, bright with questions, as she nevertheless lifted her hands to the back of her neck. After a moment she gave up her own attempt at the choker’s clasp and simply turned her back to him.

“I have an idea, but we have to move fast.” Jake frowned at his fingers as they slipped under the slightly curling ends of her short-cropped hair, dipped into the humid warmth inside the collar of his robe, found the clasp and opened it. When, without thinking, he rubbed his thumb over the tiny red mark the metal had left on her skin, he felt her shiver.

She turned again to face him, the fingers of one hand absently rubbing the place where the choker had been, and he knew the questions that must be quivering on her lips. But he had no time for questions then. Already he was opening a drawer, taking out a box of zippable plastic bags, pulling one out and dropping the pearls inside, while his mind rocketed on like a missile leaving its own noise behind.

He growled, “The rock, too-your engagement ring-come on, come on,” motioning impatiently when she looked confused. But she took off the diamond ring and gave it to him. Trusting him. And a part of him acknowledged that trust and was warmed by it as he dropped the ring into the bag with the pearls, returned it to the box it had come out of and the box to the drawer.

It was that warmth, and his fear of softening, that made his voice harsh when he spoke to her. “Go-get the dress on and meet me back here. Dammit, move-it’s been six hours already.”

But this time she stood where she was, hands clutching the lapels of the bathrobe. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” As softly as she spoke, Jake recognized the danger in her tone, as well as in the slight elevation of her chin. Trust him she might, but not blindly; it wasn’t in her nature.

He frowned, but let go of his impatience with a breath. “To the hospital. But I need to make a call first.” The receiver was already in his hand.

“The…hospital? But I’m not-I don’t need-”

Jake punched a button, then leveled a look at her, this time asking her for the trust she’d given so freely a few minutes before. “I think we might have a way out of this, but we have to hurry. I’ll explain on the way. Go.”

And he turned his back to her, already growling instructions into the phone. Eve waited for a moment, waiting for the spark of rebellion within her to mushroom into full-blown insurrection. When it didn’t happen, she gave a mental shrug and went. It wasn’t in her nature to take orders without a full and detailed explanation. But the man was… the FBI. And she had, after all, pretty much committed herself to his protection when she’d crawled into his surveillance van. Probably the least she ought to do was trust him.

Upstairs, she made use once more of the bathroom, then crossed into Jake’s small, spartan bedroom, unbelting the robe as she went. She shivered a little as she abandoned the warm terry cloth and its comforting masculine smells for the cold satin wedding gown and the sour odors of garbage and stale champagne. Though that seemed somehow weirdly appropriate to her, now. Once beautiful, the dress now seemed spoiled-in more ways than one. It felt contaminated… slimy against her skin.

She suppressed a shudder as she pulled the stiff, pearl-and-lace-encrusted bodice up and plunged her arms into the narrow sleeves. Then, holding up the top with one hand and the skirts with the other, she made her way carefully down the stairs.

She met Jake coming from the kitchen, the cordless phone still in his hand. “Can you help me-” she began, but he anticipated her request and brusquely waved it aside.

“Never mind the buttons-the dress is just for the witnesses, anyway.”

“What?” She looked at him blankly.

“In case anybody’s asked how you came in-to the emergency room, capish? They’ll remember a woman in a wedding dress.”

She breathed a silent “Oh” as he guided her past him, his manner almost deferential, not touching her, just a slight gesture toward her elbow. She felt the tension in him, the energy radiating from his body like heat from a stove. The exposed skin of her back felt it, too, and shivered as if something-the barest of touches-had skimmed across its surface.

When they were in the van, Jake said in the low but sharpedged murmur of a man intent on his mission, “Okay, here’s the story.” They were heading slowly out of the cul-de-sac, quiet at that hour except for the thumping of someone’s stereo. Eve turned her head to look at him and caught the grim shape of his profile, frozen in the cold illumination of a yard lamp. Feeling her eyes on him, he returned her glance, his eyes flicking to her throat and then to the hand with which she held the top of her dress in place just above her breasts. “You were mugged-robbed.” He hesitated for Eve’s bark of surprise, then shifted his gaze back through the windshield. “The assailant conked you on the head, took your necklace and engagement ring, then dumped you into the trash bin. You regained consciousness, crawled out of the bin and wandered off in a state of confusion. You apparently found your way into my unlocked van, where you once again lost consciousness. I only just found you and called the local police.” He glanced her way again, briefly. “An officer will meet us at the hospital to take your statement.”

Eve could think of nothing to say. At his first words her heartbeat had kicked into high gear, spurred by excitement, reaction…hope. Was it possible? Could this man really accomplish such miracles? Could Sonny be outwitted, his suspicions allayed, her life salvaged so easily? Even allowing for the resources of the FBI, it seemed too much to believe.

Almost as if he’d heard her thoughts, Jake went on in a flat, policeman’s drone that was somehow the more convincing for being utterly devoid of emotional intensity. “The police have been apprised of the situation and have promised cooperation. Medical personnel will be brought into the picture only on an as-needed basis, but-” and he flicked her a sardonic glance “-I don’t think it’s going to be necessary to tell them much. You look pretty convincing. In any case, you will be provided with all necessary verification and evidence of your injunes-”

“Injuries?” said Eve faintly.

“You suffered a concussion. Consequently, you have no memory of the attack, or of events immediately preceding or following the incident. Your family and, uh, loved ones will be notified as soon as you are able to identify yourself. You will probably be kept in the hospital for observation, however, as is customary with any potentially serious head injury

Her own eyes were fixed without focus on the windshield, but she felt his head turn toward her, and as they idled at a signal light, the long and weighty burden of his scrutiny. The light changed and as they moved forward again he added, “That gives you a day or two, if you need it.”

She nodded. Words screamed inside her mind, trapped behind the hand she’d clamped across her mouth; emotions tumbled futilely inside her, trapped simply by their own enormity. She sat trembling-ironically, now that her predicament seemed all but solved, on the verge of tears-feeling Jake’s glance brush her intermittently, like the sweep of a searchlight.

Finally, as the van turned off the main street and jolted through the hospital’s emergency entrance, driven to panic by the knowledge that the opportunity was about to slip by her, she blurted it out, and all of her horror, fear and despair was there in her voice for him to hear. And she felt more naked; the exposure was more intimate to her, than even the knowledge that he’d undressed her.

“What am I going to do?” she cried, in the rapid, breathless voice of a frightened child. “I can’t go back to Sonny-I can’t! If I don’t, he’ll know something’s wrong. But how can I go back to… being with him, knowing… what I know?”

“Well,” said Jake without much evidence of sympathy, “I guess you’d better hope you’re one hell of an actress.”

An incredulous gust of laughter blew away her tears. “The man was-is-my fiancé. You do realize what that means? He’s going to expect me to sleep with him. Can you imagine what that would be like? Nobody’s that good an actress!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jake said in a curiously acidic tone. But he checked himself, and his gaze slid past her to the side window as he jerked the van to a stop beside the E.R.’s double automatic doors. When he spoke again, it was in an altogether different voice-crisp, quiet, full of authority.

“Speaking of acting, it’s showtime. Slump down and put your head back-you’re supposed to be half-conscious, remember? One thing at a time. Right now let’s worry about saving your life. You can figured out what to do with it later.”

Eve muttered, “That’s easy for you to say.” But she did as he’d told her and slid down in the seat, closed her eyes and let her head flop to one side. She felt the driver’s side door of the van open and then slam shut. A moment later the door on her side opened, letting in a gust of damp October night.

“What are you doing?” she demanded in a squeaking whisper as an arm insinuated itself between her bare back and the seat cushion. A hand pushed roughly under her knees.

“Dammit, what do you think I’m doing?” His voice was so low, its vibrations were felt rather than heard, so near her ear, the breath that carried it was a gauzy stirring of warmth on her skin. “You’re barely conscious-what are you gonna do, walk in?”

“Oh…God.” That was all she could manage. Eve was not a small and dainty woman-five foot nine in her stockinged feet, at least; she hadn’t been carried since she was six years old.

“Holy…” Jake’s blasphemy hissed past her ear, raising goose bumps all over her body and contributing dangerously to her giddy impulse to giggle. “What do you want me to do, drop you? Put your head down on my shoulder, dammit. And relax-my God, would you just please trust me?”

Relax… trust me… With few or no other options open to her, what else could she do? She closed her eyes and buried her face in the FBI man’s warm, masculine shoulder and thought of carnival rides…roller coasters. For all her daredevil nature, she had never liked roller coasters-something to do with the surrendering of control. She hated being strapped m, powerless to do anything but go along for the ride. Like now, at this moment. She felt frightened, helpless. The sensation of motion, of being carried through space, made her queasy.

But… with her face pressed in the hollow of Jake’s neck and shoulder, as she breathed in his warmth, felt the rasp of his beard against her temple, the beating of his heart against her breasts, a certain scent began to invade her nostrils… a scent somehow familiar to her. She’d smelled it just this evening, in Jake’s bathrobe. It was the smell of safety, and she inhaled it like a drug, pulled it deep inside herself. While around her footsteps hurried and voices questioned and strangers’ hands took control of her fate, she wrapped it around her panicked soul like a security blanket. When Jake’s arms relinquished her to the cold and sterile efficiency of a gurney, she felt bereft.

“You okay?” she heard a deep voice murmur.

She opened her eyes and found Jake’s gazing down into hers, darkly brooding and only inches away. She looked into them for a long time before she nodded. “Showtime,” she whispered.

Like it or not, she was on the roller coaster. Nothing to do now but buckle herself in for the ride.