Eve’s Wedding Knight

coming back later on?” She nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll see you this evening. Should have everything in place by then. We’ll…ah…go over the details with you-make sure you’re up to speed on the equipment, arrangements for making contact, get you familiar with the collar… Okay?” Again he waited for her nod.

“Capish, ” she said with a faint smile.

So it was he who nodded. “Okay, then. See you later.”

He opened the door a crack, looked through it, up and down the corridor. He threw one last look over his shoulder at the woman huddled in the middle of her hospital bed, arms hugging her drawn-up legs, forehead resting on her knees. Then he slipped out of the room and left her there.

Mirabella and Summer came out of the third-floor rest room just as the elevator doors were closing.

“What?” Mirabella demanded, as Summer checked abruptly with a small exclamation of surprise.

“Oh…nothing. I’m sure it wasn’t…” But she went on frowning for a moment in the direction of the elevators, before shaking her head and turning away. “I thought I saw somebody I knew, but…I’m sure it wasn’t.” She shifted some of the shopping bags she was carrying in order to consult her watch. “It’s past noon. I’ll bet she’s going to be right in the middle of eating lunch. We should have picked up something. I’m starving.”

“You want a breakfast bar?” Mirabella was rummaging in her cavernous handbag. In her sixth month of pregnancy she was constantly ravenous and never beyond reach of a food source.

Summer shook her head. “Thanks, but I believe I’ll wait for some real food.” She leaned against the wall while Mirabella hunched over the water fountain. “I hope Evie likes the stuff we got for her. I hardly know what her taste is anymore. It’s been so long since we all used to go shopping together… borrow each other’s clothes…”

“You used to borrow each other’s clothes. The only thing of Evie’s that ever fit me was that poncho she brought back from Baja, remember? I think you were a freshman that year.”

Summer gave soft huff of laughter. “Yeah, I remember. She and a bunch of her friends took off down there in a Volkswagen bus. Pop had a fit. Didn’t he call the CHP and try to have them stopped, or something?”

Mirabella nodded, popped an antacid tablet into her mouth, drank water and swallowed before she answered. “He’d have called out the marines, if he could. He was sure something terrible was going to happen. As usual, where Evie was concerned, he was wrong. They were fine-probably had an absolute ball, too.”

Summer shifted restlessly. “You know what? We probably are, too-wrong to worry about her, I mean. Bella, as long as I can remember, Evie’s been doing crazy, wild things and driving everybody mad with worry, and it always turns out to be for nothing. She’s just not like the rest of us. She doesn’t know the meaning of the word fear.”

“That’s just it-” Mirabella interrupted herself with a soft burp; indigestion had been a major annoyance with this pregnancy. “She’s never afraid. That’s why-”

“Who’s never afraid?” her mother asked, coming from the rest room just then, shaking her hands irritably. “I hate those hand-dryer things.” She gave up and wiped them on her slacks.

“Evie,” said Summer, handing over some of her parcels.

Her mother gave a bark of surprise. “Why would you think that about Eve?”

Summer and Mirabella looked at each other. “Well, Mom,” said Mirabella with exaggerated patience, “she’s always done such wild and crazy things. Skydiving, spelunking, whitewater rafting-is there anything terrifying she hasn’t done?”

“She’s never been a mother,” said Summer dryly, and they all smiled. Then, still smiling but in a different way, their mother shook her head.

“I can’t believe she managed to hoodwink the two of you all these years.”

“Hoodwink? What do you mean?” the sisters said together.

“Oh, my dears, don’t you know?” Ginger Waskowitz looked at each of her daughters and laughed softly. “Eve didn’t do all those things because she wasn’t afraid. She did them because she was.”

Chapter 8

Eve stared out of the limousine’s darkened windows, watching the warrens of Sun City’s massed rooftops and islands of outlet shopping malls give way to marshes. Not even the breathtaking flash of an egret against the seas of waving yellow-green grasses, or the glimpse of a ‘gator sliding into the murky-blue waters of an inlet could prevent the blanket of loneliness from settling around her.

Heaven knew, Eve was no stranger to loneliness. Growing up in the California deserts, she’d called it the “wild lone-lies,” and mistaken it for wanderlust-a vague, unfulfilled yearning fed by the endless wind and vastness of sky and a land as cruel and beautiful and spellbinding as any. sorcerer. I don’t belong here, she’d thought then, and had spent hours gazing at the sparkling skies and empty vistas like a foundling hearing the call of some distant memory, sure that her true home must lay out there somewhere, just beyond the place where the sky and the desert came together. So far, she’d spent her life pushing that horizon and had yet to find her place of belonging.

But this loneliness was different. For the first time in her life she understood the difference between loneliness and alone. Never before had she known such a terrible sense of isolation and abandonment, the feeling of being cut off from anyone who could help her, and everyone who loved her.

“Hey, babe, what’sa matter? You feeling okay? You look scared. Like you seen a ghost.” Sonny’s voice was solicitous, full of concern. But Eve, shifting her eyes carefully sideways to look at him, couldn’t help but wonder whether, if she’d been able to look more quickly, she might have caught the gleam of speculation and suspicion in his black, unreadable eyes.

His eyes are like the windows of this limo, she thought. Nobody can see what’s going on inside.

She didn’t even try to repress her shiver. “Don’t try to hide the fact that you’re scared. You’ve been a victim of a violent assault,” Jake had reminded her during her final briefing last night. “Fear is normal. Cisneros will be warned to expect it, so don’t worry about letting it show…”

And she’d murmured, “Capish-” at the same time he’d said it, and had laughed. He had not, but instead had looked for a long, silent moment into her eyes.

“I was just…thinking about…it,” she answered Sonny now, sliding her gaze once again to the windows. “Yeah, I feel scared. I wish I didn’t, but I can’t help it. I keep thinking-”

“Hey-it’s okay…it’s okay.” Sonny leaned over to give the cashmere blanket that covered her legs a reassuring pat. There was a pause…and then his hand began to stroke her leg. When it moved past her knee, she couldn’t hide a reflexive stiffening.

Instantly he took his hand away, and Eve gave a sharp gasp and then groaned, “Oh, God-Sonny, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-I’m just so…jumpy-”

“It’s okay…it’s okay.” But this time his voice was more growl than croon. “The doc said it was gonna take some time-you know, before you’re your old self again. I understand that. I’m not gonna rush you. Hey, baby, you take all the time you need-you just let me know when you’re ready, okay? Come on, Evie. What’s this, huh?” He leaned over to brush away a tear that was balanced, trembling, on the lower lashes of her good eye. “Aw, baby, don’t do that. You know it makes me crazy…”

The tear bad surprised Eve, too. She didn’t know what was the matter with her. Sonny was being sweet…so gentle and kind. She was beginning to feel confused. This was the Sonny she’d fallen for, the Sonny she’d intended to marry. How had she forgotten so quickly how wonderful and charming he could be? Was it possible…could she have been mistaken somehow? What didn’t seem possible was that this could be the same man she’d heard coldly regretting the fact that his men hadn’t killed her sister! What if it was all a mistake? Maybe she hadn’t really heard what she thought she’d heard. After all, that Dumpster lid had come down on her head pretty hard…

But…there was Jake. If she was mistaken, he would have to be, too. Either that, or he was lying to her, he and the whole FBI: Jake, Dr. Shepherd, that nice teddy bear of a man, Agent Poole… And the other one, the guy in charge-what was his name? Coffee?-who’d shown her how to plant a bug in a telephone, and finally, finally provided her with the one thing she’d been too embarrassed after all that time to ask for: Jake’s last name.