Love Unlocked

by Libby Waterford

  As she continued to probe with her fingers, she started to feel another part of his anatomy waking up. His stamina was impressive. She should really go before he woke up. But her touch was on his lips, and before she knew it, his eyes were open and he was sucking on her index finger, while his erection pressed itself with intent against her hip. She let him tease her for a moment, but resisted when he moved to roll her to her back and cover his body with hers.

  She pushed him back into the mattress, and knelt over him, taking his cock in her mouth in one motion before he could protest. He called her name weakly at first, then with more strength as she managed to fit more and more of him inside her.

  Eve relished the slick hardness of him, feeling supremely female as she tasted him, teased him, brought him to the edge. She would have gladly kept sucking until he came again, but he wrenched himself free, and took her mouth in such a fierce, possessive kiss that she almost came herself. She could tell the signs by now, that he was close to losing his control again, and she ran a fingernail along the underside of his cock, stroking the velvety tip, to ensure that he did. With a growl, he flipped her onto her back, and plunged into her again. They both erupted with breathless cries at the same moment.

  Eve was wrung out. She was only dimly aware of Hudson withdrawing, covering her with a sheet, nestling her against him once again. He was murmuring to her, something about supper at Honeydale Farm. She was too limp to respond, too tired to tell him that she wouldn’t be around for supper. She felt herself drifting into a sweet, sated sleep, as if from far away.

  ***

  When she awoke, the sun was high in the sky and doing its best to seep around the edges of Hudson’s dark blue linen curtains. Curtains. Huh. They suited the room, with its dark wood furniture and spare lines, but they smacked of a woman’s touch. His mother? Eve doubted he’d let a girlfriend give him decorating advice. Perhaps he’d hired a professional.

  With a start, she realized she had been daydreaming about curtains when she had a plan to put in motion. Sleeping in was not step one of that plan.

  She was alone in the bed, alone and naked and sticky from head to toe after their sex marathon. Hudson would not begrudge her a shower, though she had a pang of guilt about continuing to impose on his hospitality when she had every intention of walking out of there today without saying goodbye.

  Any feeling of guilt washed away in the extra large, modern shower with its glass doors and three strategically placed showerheads. If there had been coffee waiting for her downstairs when she carried her suitcase down with her, she might seriously have considered never leaving again.

  The kitchen was empty. There was only one place Hudson could be. She set a note on the kitchen counter, and picked up the Lotus keys from the table. She hesitated for a moment, caught between walking outside and heading back for the studio. She promised herself she would see him again, in time. She could do this; she could leave without saying goodbye.

  Shouldering the suitcase, she went for the front door. If she’d paused to peek into the studio, it would have been that much harder for her to leave.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Hudson rotated his neck from side to side, barely noticing the pops of the vertebrae as they snapped back into alignment. He squinted at the digital clock in the corner. After one p.m.? That couldn’t be right. He’d forgotten how completely zoned in on work he could be when he found his flow. Eve had done that for him, turned on a faucet of ideas and inspiration that he’d thought shut off for good.

  He rubbed a hand over his stubbly chin. This was how he repaid her, by abandoning her after the most incredible night of lovemaking he’d ever experienced, followed by the most incredible morning of lovemaking.

  If he had anything to say about it, the most incredible afternoon of lovemaking was shortly to begin.

  First, he carefully set the watercolor to finish drying on an easel. He shuffled through the sketches he’d made last night and this morning and set a few out on the table, to remind him of the direction he wanted to go in when he next picked it up. He studied the watercolor. Eve’s face stared back at him, her eyes vividly rendered, her mouth a lush paradise. Everything else was a vague impression, the slash of dark hair, the delicate pointed chin, the shell of her ear. He wanted to paint her in oils, but he needed to practice in a faster medium. It seemed like forever and like no time at all since he’d last spent a session hunched over the desk in his studio. He’d had to intentionally focus the motions of his hand at first, until they loosened up and started becoming an extension of his artist’s brain.

  His mind, body, and spirit were whole for the first time in a long time. He couldn’t wait to share his breakthrough with the woman he loved.

  He hoped she was taking a luxurious bath or, better yet, still asleep. Neither of them had slept much the night before, and he had serious plans for the rest of the day—plans that included the shower, the bed, and the shower again. However, a cup of coffee wouldn’t be remiss, even that God-awful emergency instant kind. He went to the kitchen, hoping Eve wouldn’t mind leftover pizza for lunch. If they were ambitious, they could go out for dinner, or maybe stay in and order Chinese. He was so high on art and sex that coffee and food battled for a distant third place in his hierarchy of needs.

  He opened the cupboard and reached for the jar of coffee crystals, but his attention snagged on the note lying directly beneath on the counter. Hudson recognized Eve’s bold cursive in his name on the front. Something was very wrong.

  ***

  Something was wrong. Eve had unthinkingly gotten out of the Lotus once she’d parked in front of her house. She was surprisingly happy to see it, experiencing a foreign sensation: the feeling of returning home.

  She’d stopped to fill the car with gas on the way from Hudson’s. She didn’t think he would come after her, but she still only wanted to grab a few things and then head up north. She could be in San Francisco in three hours, return this silly car, and get her relatively practical sedan back. She’d already called to confirm reservations for Genevieve Walker at the Huntington Hotel.

  But she hesitated, staring at her house. Everything looked fine in the midday sun. No alarms seemed to have been set off, all the doors and windows were closed. But again, she saw an unmistakable flash of movement in an upstairs window that was only partially covered by a curtain.

  Someone was in her house.

  She was parked in plain view outside. The intruder would know she was here. She saw no other vehicle, but there could have been one parked at the cul de sac around the next bend in the road.

  Eve thought quickly. If the alarms had been activated, Will or the police would arrive eventually. If John or Deacon were inside, then having the police involved could get messy.

  On the other hand, if she was a victim of a crime of opportunity, then the presence of Will or the police would be comforting.

  The question was, would Deacon or John have even tripped the alarm?

  She sat back down on the driver’s seat of her car and picked her cell phone up from the center console. She scrolled down to Will’s number and held her breath for four rings, about to give up when his voice came on the line.

  “What can I do for you, Eve?” he said, sounding calm and strong, and enough like his brother to make her heart twinge a little. He also sounded a bit surprised. Which meant the alarm hadn’t been tripped.

  “Um, hi Will. Yeah, I was wondering if…I wanted to let you know that I’ll be leaving town for a little while. So if you see the house dark, don’t worry.”

  “A little while?” he asked.

  “At least a week. I’ll let you know if it’s going to be longer than that.”

  “All right.”

  Eve resolved to go investigate when the front door opened a fraction. She heard Will as if from a distance. “…everything okay? Is Hudson giving you trouble, because if he is, I can kick his ass for you.”

  She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “No, everyth
ing’s fine,” she said as convincingly as she could. “Thanks for the offer. I have to go now. Thanks again, Will.” She ended the call.

  While she’d sat in the car, the summer sun had rapidly heated the interior. She was sticky and sweaty, but she paused to gather her revolver and her keys. Even though it had to be in the low eighties, the outside air felt cool on her overheated skin. She should have been at the beach enjoying a stiff breeze and a paperback novel on this perfect, cloudless day instead of approaching her own home with a gun and a sick feeling of dread in her stomach.

  Her silk blouse clung to the small of her back. She hovered on the threshold of the front door to remove her sunglasses and wipe her hands on her cotton shorts. Sweaty palms and handguns didn’t mix.

  She’d lived in this house for mere weeks, and she’d been away from it for a little over two days, but she hadn’t recognized how much she’d come to consider it home until she walked in, breathed in the familiar scented air, saw the furniture she’d chosen herself, glimpsed the brand new deck out the kitchen’s French doors as she swept through, looking for the trespasser. Home. If she left, would she ever come back?

  The floor appeared to be empty, then she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. She whipped around and put her gun-wielding hand behind her back in time to see John carrying something rectangular wrapped in the white eyelet coverlet from her bed.

  Three rectangular objects wrapped in various pieces from her linen closet leaned against the wall behind the front door.

  She’d thought that after yesterday’s betrayal she couldn’t have been surprised by anything this man did, but her heart broke again, perhaps all the way through this time.

  A brief flash of anger surged and then faded away until all she felt was a kind of resignation. “Don’t forget the Rembrandt. It’s in the guest bathroom upstairs.”

  John faced her, his face red from trucking up and down the stairs. “I already got it.”

  “I don’t suppose you left the Wyeth? It’s one of my favorites.”

  “Sorry, darling. I’m not going to get a tenth of what these are worth and if I don’t come through, I’m dead.”

  “I know,” she said tiredly. “What happened to Deacon?”

  “Dead, if he’s lucky. Kwan saw right through his little magnanimous gesture. Stupid git. I wasn’t there, but I know they found the Mondrian because I barely missed Kwan’s goons in the hotel. Deacon must have been persuaded to tell them where to find it.”

  Eve was relieved that Deacon was unlikely to be a further threat, and that the painting being a fake had apparently escaped notice.

  “Where are you going to sell them?” she asked, gesturing to the pile of treasures wrapped in blue polka dot sheets.

  “I’m meeting a contact of Maurice’s in San Francisco tomorrow. I could probably get more in New York, but I don’t have the time.”

  “What happened?” she asked. “Why now? What did you do? What happened to everything you made over the last ten years?”

  “Evie, darling, you have one of the steadiest hands in the business, you know art, but you don’t have the soul of a criminal. That’s probably why you managed to get out. But I have extracurricular activities that I never told you about. Somehow, my ill-gotten gains never stretched as far as I needed them to. Then I borrowed some money, quite a bit, actually, from some very unpleasant people.”

  “And you figured you could use me as your own personal ATM,” she said, her voice betraying the barest hint of emotion.

  “I’m sorry, really, I am. If I make it though this, I swear I’ll make it up to you.”

  “You know what, John? I owed you for getting me out of the sidelines and into the game. Let’s consider us even. Now, please leave my home. I meant what I said yesterday. It goes double today. I never want to see you again.”

  He looked vaguely confused. “You aren’t going to try to stop me?”

  Eve viewed the man she’d once considered a brother. “Do you want me to?”

  “Evie, if I wasn’t so damned desperate, you know I wouldn’t do this to you.”

  “Then don’t go back. You can go somewhere they won’t find you, you can start over, like I am.”

  “Right,” he whined. “Look how well that’s working out for you.”

  Maybe she was naïve, but she refused to think that this was John’s only option.

  John seemed to consider her words, but drew up. “No. I’m sorry, but no. This is the only way. I’m going to retrieve my car from down the lane, finish loading these beauties in, and then I’ll be going.”

  Regret seeped through her over the loss of her friend and her exquisite paintings. She was sad that these gems would disappear, go underground, in all likelihood become collateral for crimes like drug deals and money laundering. She could live with probably never seeing them again. It would be more of a crime if they were damaged or destroyed. She’d tried so hard to make amends for her sins, and it seemed that her past would never let that happen.

  She nodded once, a lump in her throat. John wasted no more time on conversation. He grabbed one of the paintings in his other hand, but froze before swinging the front door all the way open.

  “Who’s that? Did you call the police?”

  A truck cruised by her house at a crawl. Her heart leapt into her throat, but it wasn’t Hudson’s vehicle. Then she saw the three A’s emblazoned on the side of the door. Will Cleary stopped the truck across the street, and she watched, her sense of dread growing, as he exited the cab and surveyed her house, a hand on his belt, hovering near the cell phone he kept clipped to his hip.

  “Eve, I don’t like this.”

  The note of desperation in John’s voice jump-started the adrenaline pumping in her veins. He lowered the paintings to the floor and pulled a small pistol out of a holster strapped to his ankle. Deacon must have armed him.

  “John.” She struggled to keep her voice even and calm. “Don’t worry, he’s one of my contractors. I’ll get rid of him and you can leave.”

  “He looks suspicious. Why does he look suspicious?” His hold on the gun tightened.

  “He’s not suspicious. Let me go out there and talk to him.” She tried to tuck her gun into the waistband of her shorts and beneath her loose blouse unobtrusively so she could walk by John with it concealed.

  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice getting tighter and tighter. Eve wondered if he was using drugs of some kind.

  She’d tried calm, so she tried commanding. “John! Pull yourself together. I’ll make him leave. You stay here.”

  He seemed to respond a bit better to her authoritative tone, but she’d lost her window of opportunity. Will tapped on the partially open front door, and John’s shred of control vanished.

  “Eve? Are you all right?” Will said as John yanked the door open and dragged the man inside. Eve watched helplessly as John slammed the door shut and leveled his gun at Will.

  “What the hell?” Will said, surprised and then wary.

  She tamped down her anger at John for putting her in this position. What mattered was getting Will out of here unharmed.

  She had two aces up her sleeve—her gun, and the fact that John didn’t know that Will was a security man. If he found that out, there was no telling what his paranoia might lead to.

  “Will, it’s all right. This is a friend of mine. He’s a little nervous because he’s taking these paintings to the framer for me and they’re worth a lot of money. He’s taking his charge very seriously.”

  Will looked far from convinced, and John frowned. She tried to keep her voice light. “Put away the gun, John, I’ll help you load up the Lotus. You can take it and I’ll take your car. Deal?”

  She moved two steps toward the door, between John and Will, in the hopes that she could usher Will back outside and get him out of there without arousing his suspicions even more than they were already.

  “Eve,” John said in a dangerously sharp tone. She’d heard only him snap like that once before,
when he had been dealing with a fence who’d gone back on his word about something. He’d ordered her to leave in that same scary voice and they’d never worked with that fence again. If she hadn’t been so sheltered, she would have learned the truth about what John had done to him, understood what he was capable of. Will Cleary wouldn’t be in danger because of her.

  She started to turn, slowly, but John stopped her with a hand on her hip. He grabbed her gun from behind her back. She let him. She had no other choice when his gun was trained on her at close range.

  “What’s this?” he said, more softly, but the danger hadn’t passed.

  Will was keeping blessedly silent though Eve could feel the tension radiating off of him. She thought of his children, of Caitlyn, Jordan, Gracie, and cursed her naiveté. In Chelsea, her friends would come because that’s what people did. Anonymous city living hadn’t trained her for the dangers of helpful, caring friends.

  When would she stop putting the Clearys in danger? And John had both guns.

  “John, don’t be silly, you can—”

  “Shut up! I’m thinking.” His voice was staccato like gunfire.

  Eve glanced at Will, hoping her expression was reassuring. He looked frozen in place.

  “Give me your cell phones,” John ordered. She handed hers over slowly. John tucked her gun in his waistband and took her phone, powering it down, and then motioned with the gun to Will. “Now yours.”

  Will was possibly in some kind of shock, because he didn’t immediately comply. Eve nudged him, and he mechanically unhooked the smartphone from his belt loop and handed it to John. When John snatched it away, Will flinched, and she sensed his fear.

  The downstairs powder room was right behind John. He backed up, gun never wavering from its angle straight at her heart. He dropped the phones into the open toilet bowl. “Upstairs.”