Eve’s Wedding Knight

drilled him with his patented cold-steel stare “-you’d better make damn sure nothing happens to make me regret it. I don’t intend for my career in federal law enforcement to end with this operation. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Jake and Birdie chorused.

“Okay. You’ve got…what is it, three weeks? I’ll expect the full details of the operation on my desk by tomorrow morning. I assume you’ve talked to all the parties involved? You have their full cooperation?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jake staunchly, “full and wholehearted.” Which was an understatement-the Waskowitz sisters had expressed delight and enthusiasm for the plan.

With one notable exception. Jake wasn’t afraid of very many things, but when he thought about how Eve was going to take to the idea of using her family’s Christmas gathering to set a trap for her fiance, he got a bad case of the cold-and-clammies…

Chapter 14

If Eve had found the pace of her days monotonous before the Thanksgiving holiday, afterward they seemed to crawl by with a soul-sapping tedium she imagined must be akin to doing hard time in a maximum-security prison.

Sonny left the Saturday after Thanksgiving to go back to Las Vegas to tend to business, which was an immense relief to her for more reasons than one. He’d been in a mood ever since the blowup in the Jacuzzi, still sulking over his enforced celibacy, so being around him was already a strain. Add to that her feelings of guilt over what had happened between her and Jake in the sleeper of Jimmy Joe’s eighteen-wheeler…

No, not guilt, exactly. It wasn’t guilt she felt when she thought of that. Longing… hunger… craving… desire-yes, all of those. But not guilt. She felt certain that if ever in her life she had done something right, making love with Jake was it. It was regret at not being able to repeat the occasion that was hard to abide and to hide from those around her, and a sense of impatience at time being wasted, a deep and constant yearning to be with someone, and to be someplace, other than where she was.

To make matters worse, the lovely autumn days had finally come to an end. Although winter would not officially arrive for weeks, the weather had already declared its intent. Chilly drizzle alternated with a dreary overcast. Everything was wet, a cold dampness that penetrated clear to the bone, and stayed that way for days on end. California desert-raised, Eve longed for even a glimpse of the sun.

Somehow the days did pass. She went, trembling inside, to her first scheduled physical therapy session after the holiday, but Jake didn’t show, and she was too proud to ask the FBI’s therapist about him. After that she called and made excuses not to go, claiming she had a cold and didn’t feel up to it.

Then, after stubbornly refusing to give up her daily walks along the fog-shrouded marshes, she actually did come down with a cold, her first in years and one of the worst she’d ever suffered. She spent her days in front of the television, sniffling into soggy tissues over the likes of Casablanca and An Affair To Remember, as the pounds that had slipped away unnoticed a few weeks before came gleefully home, and brought friends. The calendar rolled over into December, and she still had not given a thought to Christmas.

On Saturday morning, the week after Thanksgiving, Sergei interrupted the death scene in A Farewell To Arms to inform her, with sneering deference, that she had a telephone call.

“Who is it?” Eve asked soggily and without much interest, blowing her nose. Surely not Sonny; it wasn’t even seven o‘clock in the morning in Las Vegas-practically the middle of the night to a night owl like him.

“She said she is your sister,” said Sergei stiffly. He handed her a cordless phone and went out.

Eve sniffed and punched the button. “H‘lo? Bella…?”

“It’s me, Summer. Evie? Are you crying?”

“What? Oh, doh-well, yeah, but…dot really. I was watching this ridiculous movie. Plus I have a cold. What’s up? You sound upset. Is everything-”

“Oh, Evie. It’s Bella. She’s gone into early labor! She might lose the baby. I’m going up there now-can you come?”

It was afternoon when Eve pushed through the Augusta hospital’s slow-to-open automatic doors with two beefy and edgy-looking men close on her heels. A lavender-haired lady in a pink smock at the information desk in the main lobby directed her to Maternity on the fourth floor.

“You could wait for me in the car,” she suggested to Sergei and Ricky with mild sarcasm when the elevator arrived. The door opened; they followed her on in stony silence, one on each side.

On the fourth floor Eve found a nurses’ station manned-and that was the word-by a very large woman who looked like a cross between somebody’s mama and an M.P. “Family only in the patient’s room,” she announced, sizing up Eve’s companions with an implacable eye. “You two can wait in the waiting room, if you want to-down there to your left.” She pointed the way. Neither Sergei nor Ricky were stupid enough to give her any lip.

To Eve, she said kindly, “Miz Starr’s room’s right down there-number 412.” She pointed in a direction opposite the one to which she’d dispatched Sergei and Ricky. “Her sister and her husband are with her, but you can go on in.”

Eve said, “Thank you,” and hurried down the corridor, past doors standing open to reveal weary but happy- looking women propped up and surrounded by clusters of relatives. Some of them cradled tiny pink- or blue-wrapped bundles in their arms. All of them wore ecstatically happy, bemused or besotted expressions on their faces.

Oh, God. Eve prayed as she glanced enviously at them, please let Bella and her baby be all light… Her own troubles suddenly seemed ridiculously small.

The door to 412 was closed. She paused in front of it to blow her nose and take a deep breath, then, resolutely smiling, heart pounding, she turned the knob and went in.

The first thing she saw was Mirabella, cranked up in the hospital bed almost to a sitting position, obviously still pregnant, also rosy-cheeked and smiling-no, laughing-at something Summer had said. Summer stood beside the bed, and the two of them had turned their heads to look at her, both bright-eyed and breathless, as if they shared some delicious joke.

Eve halted. What was wrong with this picture? Suddenly wary and suspicious-the exact same feeling she’d occasionally had right before someone jumped out at her and yelled, “Surprise!”-she ventured a cautious “Hi, what’s going on?”

“False alarm,” sang Mirabella gaily. “They think it must have been muscle spasms. Guess I overdid it, raking leaves yesterday.” She and Summer exchanged that secretive look. “Anyway, the baby-John William-and I both check out fine.”

“Thank-” Eve did a double take. “John-does that mean…?”

Mirabella looked ready to burst with delight. “Ultrasound confirms it-we’re having a boy.”

“You know that child is going to wind up being called John Willie,” said Summer in mock disgust. “Or worse.”

“Over my dead body,” promised Mirabella blithely. “Anyway, they gave me some stuff for muscle pain, and now I feel just peachy. Sorry you had to come all this way for nothing.”

“That’s okay…” Weak in the knees, Eve sat on the edge of the hospital bed. She looked around. “Where’s Jimmy Joe?”

“Who? Oh-” Mirabella waved a hand “-somewhere between here and Houston, I imagine. Why?”

“I just assumed… The nurse said your husband was here.” Eve looked at Summer. “Riley came with you?”

Summer shook her head; she seemed to be holding her breath. But before she could say anything, the curtain surrounding the bed next to Mirabella’s was drawn back. A voice, gravelly and solemn, said, “I believe she meant me.”

To Eve it felt as if her heart exploded. A powerful electrical surge shot through her body; her scalp prickled, her hair lifted and her hands and feet tingled with it. “Jake…”

“Evie, are you all right?” That was Summer.

“Don’t faint,” said Mirabella tartly. “And don’t get mad. This was my idea. We had to think of some way to get