Eve’s Wedding Knight

he’d finished, then let go an outraged “Sez you!”

It wasn’t easy to look and sound authoritative with his pants unzipped and his undershirt caught in a stubborn roll around his pecs, but Jake did his best. “Now look,” he began, “I don’t think you-”

“No-you look. I don’t think you understand.” She was breathing rapidly, groping for her socks and shoes. Thinking what a funny thing it was to be doing in the middle of an argument, Jake found them and handed them to her. She muttered a breathless “Thank you” then rushed on, her words coming in jerks and gasps as she struggled into her footwear. “It’s like…I told you before. I want…my life back. The only way I’m going to get it back…is if Sonny is put away-for good. Capish?”

An incongruous bubble of laughter bumped against Jake’s sternum. “He will be,” he growled. “It might take a little longer, but we will get him. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Time…” She finished tying her shoe and lowered that foot over the side of the bed before she lifted her head and leveled a look at him-a strange, dark look full of messages he couldn’t read, challenges he didn’t understand. “How much time?” she said quietly. “Weeks…months…years? A lifetime? I don’t have that kind of time, Jake.” She reached for the other shoe.

“What’s time got to do with it?” He waved one hand in impatience and frustration; the other was caught in the sleeve of his henley. “You go in there, break it off with him-tell him you’ve changed your mind-hell, women do that all the time, don’t they? Tell him you don’t want to marry him. Then you leave, and let us take care of the rest. What’s so difficult about that? You get your life back-”

“Do you really think so, Jake?” She skewered him with a look. “Do you really think I, or anyone in my family, will ever be safe as long as Sonny’s out there? As long as he thinks we have information that could destroy him? ‘A ticking time bomb’-that’s what he called it. He knows it’s there, just waiting to be found. Do you think he’s going to just hang around and wait for that to happen? And we don’t know if he really bought it that I didn’t hear anything that day in the rectory-what if he’s just pretending to go along with this charade?” She tapped the collar angrily. “I have to go back. I have to see this through. You know that. We’ve been over this. What’s changed?”

He stared at her in furious silence. What’s changed? He wanted to shout, What’s changed is the way I feel about you. That changes everything. Perspective…priorities… everything.

For what seemed like minutes her eyes searched his face. Then she lifted her hand and laid it along his jaw, and her fingers were a warm and gentle reminder of the heat and passion with which they’d touched only a short time ago…like a breath of a soft, sweet wind when summer is long over. “Nothing’s changed,” she whispered.

She drew back the sleeper’s partitioning curtain a few inches and looked out, then opened it wide and stood stiffly upright between the seats. Turning to gather up her jacket, she paused. “You can’t stop me from going back, Jake. You can pull your surveillance and all that if you want to-that’s up to you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped.

Unable to shrug, she smiled crookedly. “I am going back. And I’m staying until the end-whatever that may be. Capish?” Her eyes seemed to brighten and shimmer, and then she quickly turned away.

“Hey,” Jake said in the raw and scratchy voice he was coming to know well as she slipped between the front seats, “don’t you want to take the plate back?”

She gave a little wave of her hand without turning. “How on earth would I explain it?” Her voice sounded breathless… almost panicky. “You can take the pie and stuff to your partner…what’s his name? Agent Poole? I have to go. So, I guess I’ll see you…” The passenger door opened and she was gone, as completely as if she’d tumbled off the edge of a precipice.

Left alone in the sleeper, Jake sat and stared at the plate in his hands. Capish? Hell no, he didn’t capish. He didn’t understand anything. Somehow, without his noticing it or being able to do a thing to stop it, his world had turned upside down.

Mirabella and Summer were the only ones left in the kitchen when they heard the bang of the screen door and footsteps coming across the back porch. Summer, who had just that second finished wiping and putting away the last piece of silverware, laughed and said, “That’s Eve-right on time.”

Mirabella, who was suffering from indigestion and less inclined to be forgiving, fixed the delinquent with a fishy stare as she came through the door. “Where’ve you been?”

Eve closed the door carefully behind her, and her eyes darted to each of her sisters with a quick, guilty look. But before she could answer, Mirabella felt a nudge in her ribs, and Summer said, “Evie? What’s wrong?” That was when Mirabella noticed Eve’s scarlet cheeks and too-bright eyes.

“What have you-?” she began, but stopped when Summer gave her arm a warning squeeze.

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong.” Eve was brightly smiling, but the smile looked as brittle and ephemeral as the leaves that scuttled across the lawn outside, as if it would crumble at a touch. “I went for a walk-farther than I meant to. I’m pooped. Where are the guys? Sacked out in the den? God, I hope so-I’m all sweaty-is it okay if I take a shower?”

“Uh…yeah, sure, go ahead,” said Mirabella with a questioning look at Summer, who returned it with an almost undetectable shrug. “Use ours-leave the other one free. Extra towels are in-”

“Thanks-you’re a doll.” She slipped past them and danced sideways through the door-not a joyful dance, but urgent-and a moment later they heard the thump of footsteps on the stairs.

“Not one word of apology for skipping out on the dishes!” Mirabella exclaimed on a gusty breath of sheer exasperation.

Summer threw her a troubled look. “Didn’t you hear how fragile her voice was? She sounded like she was going to cry any minute. And her face-Bella, she really looked upset. If I didn’t know better…” She pressed her fingertips against her lips as a pleat of worry formed between her eyebrows.

“Something is definitely wrong.” Mirabella gave the countertop a slap. “I knew it. Didn’t I tell you? There’s something fishy about that guy. She’s not happy with him.”

“But-” Summer cast a look over her shoulder in the direction of the living room and dropped her voice to a husky whisper “-how could this have anything to do with him? He’s been in there all afternoon. Wherever she’s been, whoever’s upset her, it couldn’t have been Sonny.”

Mirabella sucked in air and put a hand over her mouth.

“What?”

“Oh no-it’s too impossible. Even for Evie. She wouldn’t…”

“For God’s sake, what?”

Mirabella’s voice was hushed and horrified. “You don’t think… she’s cheating on Sonny?”

Summer let out a gusty breath. “What? Cheating-no!” Then she gave it up and closed her eyes. “Oh God…”

Now it was Mirabella’s turn to say, “What?”

As Summer hesitated, a distraught hand pressed to her forehead, a muted roar went up from the other room. The football game had just ended; in another moment the kitchen was going to be full of menfolk foraging for pie and leftovers, coffee and beer, it having been all of two hours since they’d finished stuffing themselves beyond all good sense.

“What?” Mirabella persisted, nudging up next to Summer.

“I was just going to say, I think you may be right,” Summer urgently whispered back. “Because you know that flush on her face? When I saw it, the first thing that went through my mind was that if I didn’t know better…I’d say she had one hell of a whisker burn.”

“Oh…God.”

An hour later, Mirabella and Summer stood on the front porch watching Riley, Helen and David as they loaded up the Mercedes. Or rather, the children were doing the loading while Riley supervised, and that ridiculous little Chihuahua of theirs-Beatle-frisked and danced between their feet.

Everyone else had gone home-Eve and Sonny were on their way back to Hilton Head in the limo, Troy and Charly to Atlanta with Bubba drooling in the back seat of the Jeep Cherokee. Jimmy Joe had driven his mom, Granny