by Meg Tilly
Certain her cheeks were flaming, she ducked her head down as she placed the two plates of warm plum-apricot pie à la mode on the table.
“Thanks, Eve,” Dusty said.
“Looks delicious,” Dusty’s sister, Sandy, chimed in. The two of them were so similar in appearance. Clouds of white fluffy hair, a multitude of soft wrinkles lining their faces, and delicate print dresses that were soft and faded from years of wear.
The two sisters would arrive like clockwork every Wednesday afternoon. They would order warm pie à la mode and a pot of Afternoon Blend tea with cream and sugar.
“I had a slice of this delicious pie for lunch,” Eve said. “You won’t be disappoint—” Eve froze. Someone had just slid their hand between her legs and fondled her privates.
She jerked upright, the movement dislodging the hand from her body.
Had the person done it because they could tell she was horny as hell? Was it visible to bystanders that she was walking around in a dazed state of arousal?
Riding the heels of self-doubt and shame came anger. White-hot, incinerating fury.
Eve spun around, ready to read the riot act to whoever the asshole was, but no one was looking at her or acting in the slightest bit suspicious.
A young couple was heading to the cashier. A family was pushing past, snagging a couple of spare chairs to squeeze six people around the corner table that was meant to seat four. The mild-mannered balding husband didn’t look like a sleaze, but sometimes appearances could be deceiving. Hank was in the middle of telling a raucous joke to the Wilson brothers and two members of their crew, men whose names she didn’t know. Mr. La-de-da-black-coffee-please was on his computer, being the big man, placing stock orders, looking at graphs. Ethelwyn and Lavina were sharing a cheddar and chive scone and an oatmeal-raisin cookie while huddled over a worn copy of the Paris Review. No one else had been within reaching distance.
“Did you know”—Eve could hear Dusty speaking to her, but the woman’s soft-spoken voice seemed far away, as if she were in another room—“that the police have confirmed the corpse they found was the body of a young woman? When we heard this, we got worried about you.”
The kitchen doors were swinging slightly. However, if Larry had dashed in and touched her inappropriately, he would’ve had to sprint in order to disappear before she spun around. Wouldn’t she have heard footsteps, even with the chatter of voices and the clang of dishes? Besides, Larry would never do something like that. And he definitely wouldn’t dare behave like that when his mother was standing in line waiting to order baked goods.
Dusty patted her arm. “Promise us you’ll be careful, dear. With a murderer of young women on the loose.”
Eve nodded, a polite smile on her face. Dusty and Sandy weren’t the first of her customers to express these sentiments. “I’ll be careful. Thank you for your concern,” she said absentmindedly as she rescanned the faces at the tables surrounding her, then the faces of the family by the corner table. No one was looking lecherous or smug.
Had she imagined it?
“Everything okay, honey?” Dorothy asked as she swung past with a fresh pot of coffee for refills.
“Did you see . . . ?”
“See what?” Dorothy asked, pausing midstep, looking at her with a concerned expression.
“Anything . . .” Eve wasn’t sure what to say. “Odd or out of place?”
“No. You just had a funny look on your face,” Dorothy said. Then she gasped and clutched her generously endowed braless bosom. “OMG! You’re pregnant!”
“Jesus, Dorothy.” Did the woman need to bellow her wackadoodle theories across the frikkin’ restaurant? “I’m not preg—”
“Are you feeling faint?”
“No, Dorothy,” Eve said firmly. “I am not feeling faint. And since inquiring minds want to know”—conversation in the café had screeched to a halt, and the entire place was staring avidly at her—“I’m most definitely not pregnant.”
“All it takes is one insertion and . . .” Dorothy said helpfully.
“Well, that’d be one more insertion than I’ve had”—she knew from the heat in her face that it had turned beet-red—“thank you very much,” Eve replied, stopping Dorothy’s baby-fantasy train in its tracks. “Nothing to see here, folks.” Eve gave a jaunty wave. “Nobody’s pregnant. Go back to whatever it was you were previously doing.” She plastered a calm, professional smile on her face as she walked behind the counter to deal with the to-go bakery customers.
Twenty-nine
RHYS SPRINTED OUT of the pharmacy and hopped into the SUV. “Sorry it took me so long. There was a bit of a line at the cash register.”
There was no need to tell Eve that the cashier had recognized him. Eve was already skittish about him being an actor. The fact that people recognized him would not help his cause.
Rhys had tried to keep the interaction with the swooning woman brief and low-key, but the young lady was “a huge fan” and wouldn’t stop squealing. This attracted the notice of several other customers. Selfies had to be taken, scraps of papers signed, plus a T-shirt, an arm. Finally, he’d fled before a mob could form.
It was a close call. As he pulled out of the shopping center parking lot, he could see several shrieking girls chasing after the SUV in his rearview mirror. They were taking pictures of his fleeing SUV with their phones.
Shit.
He’d have to switch out his vehicle.
It didn’t used to be like this on Solace. The place was usually pretty mellow, and he could get by without too much of a fuss. Just an acknowledgment of, “Yes, I am Rhys Thomas. Glad you liked the movie,” and he could move on.
When he was younger the fame thing had freaked him out, made him feel hunted. The lack of privacy, the intrusion had made him want to lash out. He’d devised ways of coping.
However, it had been foolish to think he could waltz into the pharmacy—no matter how rural Solace Island was—and expect no one to notice him. Hanging out with Eve, he’d let his guard down. He’d need to be more careful. He blew out a breath, letting the frustration go. To hold on to the negative feelings would be allowing the past to control his present.
“The good news is,” Rhys said, presenting the bag from the pharmacy with a flourish. “We are now fully stocked and ready to roll.”
“Great.” Eve smiled at him, but the joyful enthusiasm of the past twenty-four hours was missing.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, but she looked subdued. “Long day.”
As he drove, the interior of the vehicle was quiet, the world outside the windows irrelevant, a blur of color and sound. His mind sorting through the various connotations.
“Just because I bought condoms,” he finally said, his voice gentle, “doesn’t mean we have to use them.”
“It’s not that. I’m looking forward to being intimate with you. It’s just . . .” She drew in a large breath, then exhaled. “I was thinking about work.”
“What about it?”
She shrugged. “Everyone’s talking about the body that was found, a young woman, apparently. And I was thinking, does her family know? Does she even have family? Or was she a drifter, one of those homeless kids that are camping in the woods behind ArtSprings? Who was she? Was she scared right before she died? I hope she didn’t suffer.” Her gaze flew to his, and he was struck by the bleakness in her eyes. He placed one of his hands over hers, the other firmly on the wheel.
“I know what you mean. It is one of the blessings, but also the curses of possessing an artistic sensibility. We’ve trained ourselves to see and experience things deeply, more viscerally than the average person. We use these insights in our art, but sometimes one feels like an exposed nerve.”
“You’re right.” Eve nodded. “This woman, she’s more than a corpse, more than titillating gossip. She was somebody’s daughter.
Might be someone’s wife or girlfriend, sister or mother. Are they worried and looking for her? And then I thought of my sister, Maggie. We had a scare with her last year. Everything’s fine now, but I can’t deny how easily it could have gone the other way. If she’d been killed, the trajectory of my life would’ve been altered forever, Mom’s and Dad’s, too.
“Such maudlin thoughts, huh?” Eve shook her head with a self-deprecating half laugh. “Guess I’m missing my sister something fierce. Which is weird, because Maggie’s only been gone for five days. And goodness knows, when I lived in New York, sometimes six months would go by between visits, but I’ve gotten used to seeing her every day.”
“You’re lucky to have each other,” he said. “Why don’t you give her a call? Bet she’d like to hear from you.”
“Nah. Don’t want to disturb her vacation. She’ll ask me what’s new, and I don’t want to lie. But if I were to tell her about the break-in at my apartment, she might cut her vacation short and hightail it home. Especially if someone from the island e-mails her and mentions the body being found.” Eve bit her lip. “She’s a bit of a worrier.”
“I can see how that would be problematic. I imagine Luke’s not much better. All his years in the Special Forces and the private security business . . .” There was no need for him to finish that sentence since they both knew Luke only too well. “You could talk about the weather, how the café is doing . . . You could tell her about us.” He said it jokingly, but once the words were out of his mouth, he realized he did want that. Wanted to be important enough in Eve’s life that she would tell her family about him.
He removed his hand from hers and took hold of the steering wheel with a two-handed grip, shaken by the realization.
“Yeah, right.” She laughed dryly. “I’ll wait until there is an us before I mention you to my sister. And on top of all the murder talk flying around the café, this afternoon some asshole touched me inappropriately while I was serving. Pissed me off, so I guess I’m feeling a little—”
“Wait a second. Back up a minute. Somebody did what?” He was aware of anger rising, possessiveness, too.
“Touched me inappropriately.”
“Point the asshole out to me next time they come in.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know who it was. Couldn’t start yelling arbitrarily. Would be bad for business. And no—” He felt her hand alight on his thigh. “I don’t want you to start putting my customers in neck holds and slamming them to the floor, as you so aptly demonstrated with Larry, thank you very much.” Clearly she’d read his mind. “However, I have to admit,” she continued, “I hate that there’s someone in our café who thinks it’s okay to treat women like pieces of meat.”
* * *
• • •
AS EVE SPOKE she felt the tight knot in her stomach unwind. She was glad her sister had found her happily-ever-after in Luke. However, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this sort of companionable talking over the day after the work was done. Having someone to share the preparing and eating of dinner, laughter, and conversation. The silence that fell once Maggie hopped in her car and drove home to Luke and Nathan was sometimes overwhelming. Of course they’d invite her for dinner, but she couldn’t go every night. It wouldn’t be appropriate.
“As much as it pisses me off,” Rhys said, “I agree. Me slamming the customers to the floor”—a text message lit up the screen of his phone, which was resting in the drink holder—“until we discovered the guilty party wouldn’t have been good for your bottom line.” Another message appeared below the first.
“You got two texts. Want me to read ’em for you?” she asked.
“Nah.”
Another text appeared, followed by another and another.
“Three more. Might be important.”
“Doubt it,” he grumbled. “Should have turned the damned thing to airplane mode.” But he handed her his cell.
She tapped messages and scrolled up. “‘Pick up the goddamned phone!’ ‘Busted made another offer.’ ‘Too good to refuse. Call me!’ ‘Fifteen-point-eight mil, sixteen percent of the gross.’” Eve cleared her throat. Her voice at the tail end of that last message had emerged as a squeak. “‘They’ve hired Andy Mitchell to do the rewrite. You love him.’” That was better. She sounded cool and nonchalant. She had been able to keep her voice steady, as if millions and millions of dollars were no big deal. As if she weren’t spending sleepless nights worrying about how she was ever going to get out from under her three-hundred-and-eighteen-thousand-dollar mortgage. Not to mention the fifty-eight-thousand-dollar line of credit for the renovations that had transformed the ground floor of their building into the Intrepid Café. “‘Offer expires ten tonight,’” she continued. “‘Stepping into a screening. Will leave my phone on vibrate.’”
Rhys huffed out a frustrated breath.
Eve studied his face. “You don’t want to do it?” It was hard for her to believe that Rhys might consider turning down such a mammoth amount of money; it was even crazier that someone had offered it. Shit. The realization hit like a cast-iron frying pan over the head. He must be a real big deal in Hollywood.
“Didn’t,” he answered, his fingers absentmindedly drumming on the steering wheel. “Andy changes the equation somewhat. He’s a brilliant writer.”
He must spend his days surrounded by brilliant people, beautiful women. She swallowed hard, her chest suddenly constricted. “Does it take long to shoot a movie?”
“Three months—give or take—on location.” He shrugged. “Prep, of course, but you don’t get paid for that. A couple of days in post. Probably four months of my time, all in.”
“Rhys, that kind of money, it’s nuts. You know that, right?”
He laughed, his head thrown back, eyes crinkling at the corners. He was beautiful in repose, but laughing, the man’s appeal was beyond intoxicating. “Yeah, I’m a lucky son of a bitch, that’s for sure.”
She placed his phone back in the drink holder, moving cautiously, as if it were a poisonous snake that might strike.
“I’m going to have to work tonight,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. I know it’s not what we’d planned, but—”
“I totally understand.”
He captured her hand in his and placed a gentle kiss on her palm, then curled her fingers closed, as if to keep the kiss safe. “Thanks,” he said, glancing over briefly, the expression in his deep blue eyes warm. Then he refocused on the road. She could see the wheels turning as he sifted through his thoughts. “I’ll need to call Andy, see how he thinks Busted can be fixed. Then I’ll need to reread the script while keeping his ideas in mind.”
Even though he was including her, Eve felt a little lost, as though she’d just been plunked in the middle of the Pacific Ocean without a lifeboat. His real life was so foreign, so far removed from the cozy existence they’d started to carve out on Solace Island. We’re playing house, make-believe, she realized, a wave of wistfulness sweeping over her. You’ll have to make up your mind, Eve, a short-term affair or nothing.
“I’ll enjoy an evening to myself,” she said, but the pleasant expression on her face felt like a mask. “I can do some painting.” She glanced at the clock on the dashboard and sighed. In the time it would take her to set up, dusk would have fallen. No painting was going to be taking place tonight.
“Great,” he replied, oblivious to the internal war she was waging. He swung the SUV into their driveway. “You’re the best. Should be a couple hours max.” He suddenly slowed the vehicle. “Who the hell is that?”
Thirty
RHYS SCOWLED THROUGH the windshield. There was a long, lean male resting with his back against the trunk of an ancient red cedar tree by the gate. He was wearing faded jeans, scuffed boots, and a black T-shirt that hugged his cut, hard body. He was strumming on some small instrument. As the vehicle drew closer, it became cle
ar it was a ukulele. Who the hell played a ukulele? Even worse, this guy looked totally cool doing it.
As they drew closer still, Rhys heard Eve’s sharp intake of breath. He glanced at her, but she didn’t notice. She was staring at the guy as if she were seeing a ghost.
The dude straightened as they pulled up next to him in front of the gates, the ukulele dangling loosely in one hand, the other pushing the tangle of dark curls out of his face.
Rhys opened his window. He had a bad feeling about this. “Can I help you?” he asked, voice cool, expression unwelcoming.
“Hey, yeah, I’m looking for . . .” His gaze drifted over Rhys’s shoulder. “Eve, that you?”
Shit.
Rhys had to shut his eyes for a second to block out the fucking joy in this guy’s smile.
“Levi?” Her voice drifted past Rhys, barely audible yet full of feeling.
Better to have my eyes wide open, Rhys thought grimly. It didn’t take a genius to figure out this asshole was the ex-boyfriend. The musician who’d left Eve damaged and reluctant to trust.
“Babe, I’ve been looking for you,” the Levi guy said as he loped around the front of the SUV to where she was sitting. “Can I?” He tipped his head toward the back.
“Sure,” Eve said, reaching behind her, fumbling with the lock. “You don’t mind, do you, Rhys?”
It wouldn’t matter if he did. The guy had already hopped in the vehicle and made himself at home, hands on Eve’s shoulders, dropping a kiss on her cheek.
Eve glanced over at him, looked slightly startled. Damn. I must have growled out loud. Rhys did an internal shrug and punched in the security code for the gate. Better a growl than to leap into the back seat and rip the guy’s head from his torso.
The guy draped his arms over the back of their seats and leaned forward so his body was positioned between them. “Thanks for the ride, man. Hey, do I know you?”
