Eve’s Wedding Knight

Chapter 7

Eve’s mind was spinning like a bogged-down wheel, going absolutely nowhere. “Uh…” was all she could think to say.

“Did you hear what I said?” Jake growled again. “There’s some things we need to go over before your fiance gets there. It’s important. Capish?”

Smile, she thought. Let them think it’s Sonny. “Can’t you come now? I mean, why…”

There was an impatient exhalation. “Look-your sister Summer knows me. We met during that business with her ex-husband last summer. If she sees me, she’s gonna know something’s going on. Is that what you want? You want your family in on this?”

“God, no.” Smile, dammit. Remember to smile. “Okay, then, I guess I’ll see you in a little bit. Yeah…bye for now, darling. Mnun-hmm…me. too…” She made sickening kissy sounds into the phone, taking great pleasure in imagining Jake’s face as she did so, and hung up on the ambiguous hiss of his exhalation.

“That was Sonny,” she announced, and smiled widely for the benefit of the three pairs of eyes that had been trying their best to watch her avidly without appearing to do so at all. “He’s coming over in a little while. Hey, guys-I really hate to ask it, but I’d kind of like to, you know…clean up a little bit before he gets here? Would you mind terribly…?”

“Of course not, dear,” said her mother, patting her shoulder. “We’ll go, and let you get yourself spruced up.”

Mirabella exchanged a look with Summer and complained, “We just got here.”

“And we can come back later.” Her mother leaned over to plant a kiss on the undamaged portion of Eve’s forehead. “There’s a nice mall just up the road. We can kill a few hours there. Anything we can get for you, honey? Some pj’s, maybe?”

Eve made an attempt to hitch herself up on her pillows and tried to look pitiful. “Maybe you could pick me up something casual to wear…everyday stuff, you know? Something that buttons in front, so I don’t have to pull it on over my head?”

There was a brief knock on the door, and a nurse stuck her head in. After smiles and a cheery “Well, hi, there!” for the visitors, she turned the smile on Eve. “Miz Waskowitz, your doctor’s here to see you.”

My doctor? Eve had never been sick a day in her life-not counting the occasional tropical bug or spider- or snakebite-and except for her gynecologist out in California, did not have a doctor. However, before she could think of an appropriately noncommittal response, the door opened wider and a man she’d never seen before slipped past the nurse and into the room.

He was tall and thin and looked very fit, with hair that Eve suspected was prematurely silver, although it might have been his jovial manner that made him seem ageless. He seemed to bound into the room, rather like an overly friendly greyhound, with that slightly stooped-over gait very tall people often use in an effort to seem less so. Tucking the large brown envelope he’d brought with him under one arm. he beamed at her and said in a thick Georgia accent, “Hello there, Miss Eve. Well now-you don’t look s’bad.”

“Uh…hi. Mom, everybody-this is…my doctor. Dr.-”

“Dr. Shepherd-good to meet you.” He lunged forward to pump all three hands with immense enthusiasm, and added in the polite Southern way, since it was apparent they were about to, “Don’t rush off.”

“Yeah, Mom, maybe you guys should stick around.” But her voice was faint and breathless, and went unnoticed in the flurry of polite assurances and hasty goodbyes.

Eve kept her smile rigidly in place until the door had closed behind her mother and sisters. Then she filled her lungs with air and whispered, “Okay, you’ve got about two seconds to prove to me you are who you say you are and tell me who sent you, before I start screaming bloody murder. One…two…”

Instead of answering, Dr. Shepherd held up a hand, asking for-demanding-silence. Moving with surprising quickness for one so angular, he went to the door and opened it a crack, looked through, then opened it a little wider. As if he’d been waiting for a signal, Jake stepped into the room.

Eve let out the breath she’d been holding, in one great gust. “Okay, you want to tell me what in the hell’s going on? Who the devil is this? First you spend the night guarding my room ‘just in case,’ so I’m seeing bogeymen under the bed, and then you send some strange guy in here without warning me? For all I know, he’s some kind of hit man, for God’s sake!”

From mild pique, the anger level in her voice had escalated with each sentence until the last three words were delivered in a splutter of full-blown outrage. Most of her annoyance, she acknowledged, was due to the absurd little surge of joy she’d experienced at her first glimpse of the FBI man’s glowering face. A ray of sunshine he definitely wasn’t, and she couldn’t imagine why she should be so happy to see him. The only reason she could imagine was so ludicrous and unlikely, it didn’t even bear acknowledging, must less thinking about.

Obviously unimpressed with her diatribe, Jake barked right back at her. “Waskowitz, do me a favor-shut up a minute and listen. Cisneros is probably on his way here as we speak, so no telling how much time we have. This-” he nodded at the silver-haired man, who thrust his jaw toward her and grinned toothily, rather in the manner of FDR “-is Dr. Matthew Shepherd. He is in fact an M.D., but he also consults for the Bureau. We think we may have come up with a solution to your problem. Matt?”

At his cue, the doctor lunged forward, opening the brown envelope as he did so, and extracted several X-ray films, which he laid across the foot of Eve’s bed.

“Are those mine?” she asked as she raised herself up and hitched forward to get a better look.

“In… a manner of speaking.” Dr. Shepherd took a pair of rimless glasses from his jacket pocket, put them on and peered through them down his long, bony nose at the films. After a moment his gaze vaulted the tops of the glasses to twinkle conspiratorially at her. “Actually, they are about to become your X rays. See this here?” He was once more bent over the films, pointing with a long, elegant finger.

Eve nodded and dutifully said, “Uh-huh,” though she hadn’t seen anything but fuzzy shades of gray. “What does it mean?”

Dr. Shepherd straightened, whipped off his glasses and beamed at her. “What that means, young lady, is that for the foreseeable future, you are gonna have to keep your upper spinal column as immobile as possible. That means wearing an orthopedic device to limit movement, sleeping in a specially designed bed…ahem…alone-” Eve’s sharp intake of breath barely interrupted him. “In addition to which, I would recommend a program of extensive physical therapy…”

Eve was barely listening. Her eyes had slipped past the doctor to find Jake’s, and’ she clung to their steady and bottomless gaze as he added, without inflection, “Which gives us a reason to keep you here in the area, as well as cover in case you need to get in touch with us-or vice versa. If you need us, you’d just call your doctor. Or, say, if we need to contact you, your doctor’s office would call you-maybe change the date or time of an appointment, for instance.”

“My God,” Eve whispered, “it takes care of everything.”

Jake grunted. “It buys you some time. What you do with it’s gonna be up to you.”

“I understand. Jake…I don’t know how to thank you.”

Something black and angry slashed across his face, gone so quickly, she couldn’t be certain she’d seen it at all. Because in the next instant he’d disappeared soundlessly into the bathroom as the outer doorknob turned and the door cracked open to admit the croaking sound of a naturally boisterous voice trying its best to whisper.

“He’s in there with her now? Yeah…that’s good. Sure, you bet I wanna talk to him. Okay…thanks, sweetie- you’re a doll.”

Yeah, Sonny, and it’s a good thing you’re such a flirt, Eve thought. Because even while he was stopping to sweet-talk the nurse, she barely had time to flop back against the pillows and arrange an appropriately pain- wracked expression.

Meanwhile, for the second time that day, Jake found himself reduced to the indignity of skulking in the bathroom like an illicit lover. The space was so small, he couldn’t even pace to release his nervous energy, which he could feel building up inside him like pressure in a steam locomotive. Through the barrier of the door he could hear the muffled murmur of voices, mostly the doctor’s, explaining his patient’s “condition” and outlining the plan for her