Eve’s Wedding Knight

She placed her bag on a bench in front of an empty locker and undressed quickly, putting on the one-piece bathing suit she’d just bought, and her new warm-ups over that. And all the while her heart was pounding, and her mind kept replaying the words, Oh my God…my God-it’s Jake.

Chapter 11

He came in while she was in the whirlpool bath, still sweating from his workout, with a towel looped around his neck and his hair standing out from his head in a bristle of wet spikes. He spoke in an undertone to the FBI agent posing as Marcie the physical therapist, who nodded and left the room.

Eve observed this from under cover of her lashes as she lay in the tub, half-reclining in the warm, churning water with her head back and her neck supported by a specially designed cushion, pretending drowsy indifference while her heart mocked her with its thundering tattoo. She watched him approach the tub with a rocking, unhurried gait, his eyes pinioning her, studying her with a curious combination of self confidence and wariness, like a seasoned fighter taking a new opponent’s measure. And even though she knew most of her body would be invisible to him in the swirling water, under that dark, unyielding gaze she felt utterly and completely naked.

With her pulse throbbing at the base of her throat, she waited, hoping to let him speak first. But when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to, and when she couldn’t stand the terrible feeling of vulnerability another minute, she curved her lips into a languid smile, forced her voice low in her throat and purred, “I wasn’t sure you were coming.”

He made a short, ambiguous sound. “You knew I’d be here.” And he moved closer, towering over her so that in order to see him she had no choice but to open her eyes.

Oh, but her eyelids felt heavy…and the rest of her body, too, weighed down by a strange lassitude that had nothing to do with the warmth and the water.

Strange, too, that in the midst of all that water and humidity her throat felt dry as dust; and when she swallowed, the thirst was carried deep into her belly and from there to every part of her. When she stared at Jake’s chest, hair shadowed and glistening with sweat, she felt as if she were beholding the only source of relief for that thirst in a cruel and barren desert. When she gazed at his hands, even knowing that moments ago those same hands had been engaged in brutally pounding a bag of sawdust, her body felt the water’s gentle caress only as a taunting, teasing simulation of their touch. She felt heavy and ripe at her core, like a fruit ready to fall of its own weight; and at the same time as if she would shiver into a million pieces and blow away if he touched her.

“Weird…” she murmured, closing her eyes.

“What is?”

His voice is like…molasses, she thought. Blackstrap molasses… rich and thick and not too sweet…kind of a bite to it.

“This…the water…it feels weird.”

Jake growled, “I thought you liked hot tubs.” And he couldn’t look at her a moment longer, lying there spread out before him like a banquet, and he the beggar standing outside the hall with his face pressed up against the window.

Turning one shoulder to her, he leaned his backside against the tub and buried his face in the towel he’d thrown around his neck after his workout. But it did no good. He could still see her-almost more vivid in his mind’s eye than the lush reality-the outlines of her body undulating beneath the swirling water, moisture beading on her chest and throat, face dewy and pink from the heat, lips parted, breath suspended… as if, he thought, in the very next moment she expected to be kissed…

“I’m curious.” He cleared his throat. “How in the hell did you manage to bug a Jacuzzi?”

She laughed-a blood-stirring chuckle. “That was easy, actually. I put it in the boom box. Had it sitting there on the deck beside me. I played your tape.”

“I heard. Heard you singing, too.” He said it harshly, and she looked momentarily startled. Then her face hardened almost imperceptibly, as if she’d donned a transparent mask.

“Heard about your Thanksgiving plans,” he said, and she shifted as if the water had suddenly become uncomfortable to her. “So, you’re going to your sister’s?”

She shrugged and said without expression, “I tried to get out of it, but…Sonny wants to go.”

For a moment Jake didn’t trust himself to speak. Then, very quietly, he said, “What the hell were you thinking?”

Her head snapped toward him, too quickly for muscles that had been immobilized for most of the past several weeks. He saw her wince and grab at the back of her neck, then gingerly rotate her head as she flashed at him, “Look, I don’t want him anywhere near Summer and her kids, okay? Not after what he tried to do to them. I don’t want him anywhere near any of my family.”

A dozen angry replies to that zapped through his mind. He squelched them, and instead found himself moving around to the head of the tub, slipping his hands under her head. He began to massage the muscles of her neck with his fingertips, and heard her give a gasp, then a sigh…saw her lashes settle onto sweat-spangled cheeks…felt her head grow heavy in his hands.

He found that there was something relaxing about it for him, too. Something about the touching…as if her warmth and weight and textures measured on the nerve endings of his fingers had opened doors and allowed those messages of pleasure and contentment to pour into the corners of his body, soul and mind.

After a while, without altering the rhythm and pressure of his fingers, he said quietly, “You know it’s what has to happen. We have to allow Cisneros to play his hand. It’s the only way we’re ever going to end this. The only way.”

Her voice was soft and slurred. “I thought-if I can get something on him, or if you get something from the bugs-”

“Never happen. The man’s too careful-and too smart. Lady, we’ve got state-of-the art equipment at our disposal-hell, some of it sounds like science fiction even to me. If it was possible to nail Cisneros with electronic surveillance, we’d have had him put away years ago.”

Her lashes flew upward. He felt her neck muscles tighten in his hands, but instead of pulling away from him she tilted her head back in order to look at him. “Then why did you have me do this? The…collar. The bugs. What’s the point, if it’s not-”

Jake was shaking his head. “Unless you wanted to reveal the fact of what you heard, which would make your life not worth…doo-doo, you had no choice but to go back to him. That being the case, we figured we’d keep an eye on him through you, he’d eventually make his play to go after those records Hal Robey stole from him, and that’s when we’d be there to nail him.” He let out a breath. “You know what the collar’s for.”

“And the bugs?” Her upside-down gaze was unflinching. Her pulse hammered against the pads of his fingers.

He cleared his throat, but the words came in a growl anyway. “We couldn’t let you go in there unprotected. Had to have some way to keep an eye on you-or ear, rather.”

“All this time I’ve been bugging myself?” She jerked in his hands, and he braced himself. Then he realized she was laughing. “Oh, man. And I was really getting into it, too. Little Miss Espionage.” She sighed.

Her eyes had started to close when he rasped, “Don’t sell yourself short, Waskowitz.” And they flew open again, and her head jerked back and he found that instead of massaging her neck muscles, his fingers were stroking the taut arch of her throat, the wet-velvet undercurve of her chin. “For this to work, we need you there, and we need you safe. You’ve got to quit doing things to arouse his suspicions. Capish?” Her head moved slowly in the cradle of his hands. Her lips parted.

And suddenly he couldn’t feel his own feet. He felt like one gigantic throbbing pulse. “If he doesn’t want you to go to a health club, if he wants to set you up with a private therapist, don’t worry about it.” His voice seemed to come from a great, echoing distance. His jaws felt rigid as wire. “We’re flexible, we’ll find another way to contact you. Let us do our job. Yours is to go along with him. Play his game. Keep him happy.”