Eve’s Wedding Knight

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

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

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

“Bugs!” she cried gleefully.

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

“What about his telephone?”

“That’s…tricky.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jake?”

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

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

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

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

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

Detach, he thought, silently grinding his teeth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He shrugged and didn’t answer her; the last thing he needed was for her to be concerned about him. For her to be nice-on top of everything else. He frowned at his watch. “I’ve got some things to do. It’s almost lunchtime-I need to be going before they show up with your tray. Didn’t your family say they were