by Fleur Smith
Once he was certain he was alone, Evan moved to the stone and placed his hand on it, as though it would offer him the spark of love that he craved. It was just cold stone though, and beneath the dirt were just bones. Anything that was left of his love had left long ago and everything important was now in the girl he’d just let walk away.
He recalled the first time he saw Rose and a sad smile graced his lips. She’d been so young the first time they met, only fourteen, but even then she’d had the beginnings of a womanly body. Being a typical fifteen year old boy, he’d said something complimentary about her breasts, and his words had earned a punch to the nose—delivered by her delicate fist.
They’d shared their first kiss together only a couple of months later. Before long, he was forbidden to go anywhere near her by her ultra-strict father and shortly after that, her family had moved away.
He’d never really expected to see her again, but almost ten lonely years later they were reunited, albeit briefly. Although he’d never forgotten her, he’d never really expected to see her again either. He hadn’t even known she was looking for him until she arrived on his doorstep in tears. In a story that made him lament for what might have been, she told him of how she was trapped in a loveless marriage which her father had arranged in order to gain prestige. She sobbed about how she hated and feared her husband. Holding her in his arms, Evan had sworn to do everything he could to keep her safe.
Trying desperately to keep his promise, Evan did what he could to protect her, but he was one man battling two families—one with power and reach far beyond anything Evan could have ever guessed at. Before long Rose had been forced into a car and reunited with her husband. She kept in contact with Evan though, sending him letters filled with fear and longing, but warning him of her inability to leave her husband again. When the last letter he would ever receive from her had arrived, it was accompanied by a photo of her corpse.
Evan shuddered at the memory. The guilt had driven him mad. His guilt ate at him from all angles, he hated himself for not having the ability to protect her but he was also convinced that if he’d left her alone, forced her not to write to him, maybe she would have lived. They would never have been together, but she might have remained alive. In his worst moments, he wondered whether her death was a blessing for her—it had taken her away from so much pain and heartache on Earth. It was that frame of mind that had eventually driven him to the edge of the cliff.
It had taken his return as a cupid to make him see that it was her marriage to the bastard who’d taken her life that was to blame. If Evan was able to have his time over, he would have made sure she never returned to that horrid man. It was impossible to think such things though; he couldn’t change the past no matter how much he might have wished he could. All that was within his power now was to ensure the matches he made didn’t endure the same suffering she had.
He was so lost in his memory that he didn’t realize he’d started crying until he felt the moisture on his cheeks drip down onto his arm. The ache of his memories drained Evan of every bit of energy he’d had left in reserve—which had been so little after Becca’s heartache. Although he was still standing, he didn't have the strength to move. He realized that he'd be in for a world of hurt if he didn't find Becca a match soon. Even as the thought struck him, it caused the weight in his limbs to pull further downward, as though the demons from Hell which he'd once escaped through his choices were now reaching out to pull him under while he was weakened.
He pressed his fingers to his lips and then touched them to the cold stone. There was nothing left here.
Becca was the future and maybe by helping her find her match, he could be free. Almost as soon as the thought struck him, it resonated through his body as right. She would be his last. The truth of that statement, the rightness of it which coursed through him, was a shock. It was as though it was an affirmation from the bodiless—and he sometimes thought soulless—creatures who guided the destiny of humans.
Not that there was any use in being free. Not now that his promised Heaven was lost. Once again he had to choose between two terrible choices. Set Becca up with someone else and move on without that promise of a reunion or continue to wander the Earth in agony.
It wasn't really a choice—there was only one option. He just hoped he could convince himself that it was for the best when the time came to see her happy with someone else.
Resigning himself to necessity, he closed his eyes, focused on Becca and arrived on the front seat of her Mustang a second later.
The Mustang swerved to the side when he appeared. Clearly his arrival had spooked Becca again.
“Christ on a cracker! You cannot keep doing that,” Becca exclaimed. One hand strangled the steering wheel and the other pressed against her chest. “Have you been here the whole time?” she asked. When she turned her gaze off the road to look at him, her eyes were narrow pinpoints that made him squirm.
He was about to tell her that of course he hadn’t been there all the time, when her gaze softened as she considered his appearance. He wondered what he must look like in order to earn such pity.
“What's the matter?” she asked.
He was about to tell her that there was nothing wrong—a complete lie of course—but that wasn’t what came out. “I just saw something I'm not sure I wanted to see,” he found himself saying before he could stop the flow of words.
“Was it my love life?” she asked, reaching over and giving him a small nudge.
He offered her a half-smile in response to her obvious attempt at a joke. The fact that she was willing to try to make him laugh after he’d crashed unceremoniously into her life made the writhing in his belly increase. He pushed the feeling aside though, not willing to examine it while thoughts of Rose rushed through his mind.
“No, it was something from . . .” He trailed off, uncertain how to even start explaining it to her. “My past,” he finished with, knowing it was a grossly inadequate explanation.
Becca wasn't sure why, but seeing her cupid turn up in her car looking like someone had just stolen his puppy made her heart ache. She wanted to comfort him and cheer him up.
When did you start thinking of him as your cupid? You need to see a shrink.
“If you want to talk about it, I'm a good listener,” she offered.
He seemed to rouse himself and then his lips pulled up into a proper smile, one that caused that single dimple of his to slice through his cheek once more. It was ridiculous how much she liked that sight.
“I bet you are,” he said. “But so am I. And right now, I need to know what you want in a man.”
Becca laughed until she realized he was being earnest and was waiting for her to answer him.
“What I want?”
He nodded.
“In a man?” she clarified.
He nodded again, smiling this time.
“Um, I don't know. Tall?”
He raised one brow at her. “Tall? That's the only qualifying factor for a man to earn your undying love?”
“Well, I dated a few guys shorter than me back when I first left high school and it just wasn't pleasant having them talk to my boobs all the time.”
“Becca?” he said, leaning forward conspiratorially.
“Yeah?”
“All straight guys will only talk to your boobs.” He winked at her, causing her to laugh. ”They’re guys.”
“You're in a better mood than you were a few minutes ago. What gives?”
“One of my prior assignments just found out that she's going to be a mommy. The energy boost helped to ease my melancholy a little.”
Becca thought that even though the sentence left her lost, it probably made perfect sense to him. She also figured that it should make her want to run away—just like everything else about the strange man—but the tenderness in his face made her melt into a puddle of goo instead. “But how could you possibly know that?”
“I told you, I know when they know. Call it cupid's
intuition. When you find a guy that makes your knees weak and your heart pound, I'll probably know before you do.”
It was a difficult notion for Becca to wrap her head around. “That's a little weird.”
He shrugged. “It's my purpose; my raison d'etre.”
“So you’re being serious? You really wanna know what I want in a man? My ideal partner so to speak?”
He might have flinched, or it could have been her imagination. “It’s not necessary,” he said. “But it will make my job easier.”
“I’ll have to think about it.” Becca barely knew what her ideal man would be. She’d never really had a type, not like some of her friends at least. For Cathy, it was blonde comedians. At least her husband, Gary, liked to think he was hilarious.
Hazel eyes and messy chestnut hair suddenly seemed more attractive than they ever had before, but Becca wasn’t willing to admit to herself why that was.
“Are you going to develop the photos you took today?” Evan asked as she pulled into her garage.
She shook her head. “For once I might actually have time, but I still prefer to leave the negatives to dry overnight.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s partly because it guarantees they’re dry and . . .” she trailed off and ducked her head.
“And?” he prompted.
She felt the corner of her mouth lift. “Well, I find waiting makes the reward that much sweeter; does that make me odd?”
Evan blinked at her, almost as if he wanted to say something more but chose not to.
“I do have a set of negatives I never got around to developing last week,” she said. “I ran out of time when something made me drop one.” Since the moment he’d appeared in her car, Becca had been certain her cupid was the one who’d been causing things to go bump in the night. It was the perfect opportunity to test him on it.
He screwed up his nose. “Yeah, I’m really sorry about that. I was fascinated with watching you work and I kinda got in the way.”
“I knew it was you!” She couldn’t help the victorious edge that crept into her voice. “I mean, I didn’t know it was you at the time, but today when I found out about you, I knew that it was you that did that back then. You know, when I dropped the print the other day. What I mean is that I knew before you said it was you, and, well, now I know it was, since you said it was.”
“Becca?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re rambling.” he chuckled.
“Sorry.” She climbed from the car before heading for the trunk and grabbing her camera bag. Without thinking, she turned and walked into the house, allowing Evan to follow behind her. It was only after she’d unlocked the house and turned to wait for him to follow that she realized that somehow Evan had gone from a virtual stranger who’d randomly popped into her car into someone she was willing to trust in her home. An unknown entity who she was practically inviting into her life.
It’s only because he’s been in your house for a while now anyway, she justified. And he said he wouldn’t go away even if I asked.
Both of those thoughts should have caused her at least some panic, but it didn’t. Although it did bring back earlier curiosities about what he might have seen. She waited until they were in the soft red light of the dark room before confronting him about it. Her hands were buried inside a changing bag, giving her something to concentrate on other than his steady gaze assessing her as she questioned him. She could have just used the darkroom without any lighting, but the idea of being completely alone in the pitch black darkness with the practical stranger made her heart pound.
Okay, it was for all the wrong reasons, but that was beside the point. Being stranded alone in the dark with Evan was still not something she thought was wise to do.
“So, you’ve been following me around?”
“Only for the last week.”
“Starting when?” Had he seen her humiliating non-date where she’d had to listen to the sad, sad man drone on and on about the loss he’d suffered? Was that why Evan was so desperate to help her out? “I mean, what exactly was the first thing you saw.”
“The photos you were developing the last time you were in the darkroom. When I interrupted your process, I mean.”
That was the day after her disaster date—maybe she was right in her assumption that the date was the catalyst for his arrival after all.
“If you’re all into stealth and secretly traipsing around after people—which you shouldn’t be, by the way, because it’s just weird and creepy—why did you show yourself today?”
“Honestly?”
She stopped working for a moment to glance at him. “If I’m willing to sit here calmly and listen, I think honesty is the least that I deserve.”
“I didn’t intend to, it just kind of happened.” His cheeks flushed pink, almost as if he was embarrassed that he’d revealed himself to her.
“How?”
“I don’t know. I was just thinking that following you around wasn’t netting any of the usual results, and neither was watching your dreams.”
She lost her grip on the film within the changing bag and it clattered to the counter. “W—Watching my dreams?”
“Uh, yeah.” He flashed a grin that would have been amazing under any other circumstances. She couldn’t help noticing how pristine and white his teeth were. “Dreams are, uh, a great way to, uh, get some information about a person’s true desires.”
“You’ve been watching my desires in my dreams?” Flashes of the dreams she’d been having lately, for the last week in fact, filled her mind and it was her cheeks turn to grow crimson. “Since when?”
He moved closer to her and brushed his finger over her cheek, trailing the red blush that spread over her face.
“Don’t be ashamed. There’s nothing wrong with the dreams you had.” His words confirmed that he knew exactly what had occurred in her dreams and yet they somehow comforted her and lessened the mortification she’d felt moments earlier. “I wish all of my assignments owned their sexuality so explicitly, even if it is just in their dreams.”
She tipped her gaze back to the changing bag, there was no way she could meet his eyes when they both were thinking about her having the best sex of her life—especially if it was all only in a dream. Searching for the film again to finish setting them into the developing tank, she suddenly realized that if he’d seen her in the darkroom and then later that night, he’d likely seen everything in between. Which meant he’d probably seen everything. For the first time since he’d managed to calm her in the car, panic over his appearance in her life struck her once more. “Have you been watching me while I’m in the shower?”
He shook his head quickly and his eyes darted away a moment too soon. She’d dealt with enough people lying to her at the hospital that her bullshit detector worked a little better than most. And there was one thing she was certain of. “You’re lying.”
He held his hands up in surrender. “I swear I’ve never watched you while you’ve been in the shower.”
The last three words held far too much emphasis—they confirmed he had indeed seen her naked. She was certain of it. “In the bath then?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and she knew she had him.
“You are some sort of pervert, aren’t you? Going around all invisible-like and watching poor defenseless women while they’re blissfully unaware of you?”
“Not just women.”
“What?”
“It’s not always a woman. Sometimes I get assigned to men.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No?”
“No, definitely not. If anything, that makes it worse. You’re just an indiscriminate peeping Tom.” She wasn’t sure why, but although she was upset her voice sounded more teasing than genuinely mad. She just couldn’t seem to rouse the correct level of rage—just like she couldn’t make herself be afraid of him even though she knew she probably should be.
He scratched hi
s head. “It’s not like I do it for a personal thrill. How can I know who is right for someone if I don’t know them?”
“And how exactly is watching someone bathe helping you learn more about them?”
“You’d be surprised. After all, the fact that you like rose-scented bubble bath tells me an awful lot about you.”
“Like?”
“The rose scent tells me that you’re searching for romance, that you long for it and associate it with being able to relax fully. But the fact that you use bubbles and not oil tells me that you still regard yourself as young. You like to have fun.”
“My choice in toiletries tells you that much about me?”
“Sure.” He grinned again.
“So it’s not a sexual thing?”
“Definitely not.” He shook his head, but swallowed heavily. There was something more he wasn’t saying and Becca was determined to get it out of him—and she had a plan about how she might be able to.
She pulled her hands out of the changing bag, stood, and walked over to him. She trailed her fingers over his shoulder. He stood stock still, her movements left him discombobulated and Becca couldn’t deny she enjoyed leaving him a little speechless for once.
“Maybe it’s not a sexual thing,” she whispered as she brushed her hands through his hair. “But it is an intimate thing.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Evan had to do everything in his power to bite back on the moan that rushed to his lips the instant Becca’s fingers brushed feather-light through his hair. Her breath blew across his skin and Little Evan—who, until recently, had been motionless for so long—stood to immediate attention. The random thought of what it would be like to press his lips against Becca’s in a proper kiss rushed through his mind together with an image of wrapping her in his arms.
He didn’t realize exactly how close Becca was to him until her gaze dropped away from his, looking down between them to watch the spot where his stiff little soldier had brushed against her hip.
In an instant, she had pushed away from him, rushing backward until her ass connected loudly with the counter behind her.
