Troubleshooters 02 The Defiant Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  However, after more than fifty years and many trips across the Channel to France, Eve’s French could be described as shaky at best.

  But she knew enough to be able to communicate with Amy. “We wait,” she told Amy now, in her patchwork French. “If I tell you to do something, if I tell you to run, you don’t ask, you just do it, do you understand? You run and you don’t stop running. You go get help and let the police come back for me.”

  Amy nodded, her small face so serious, her mouth a tight little line.

  Children were growing up much too quickly these days. Eve thought of the sixth grade girls in Amy’s school, taunting the fifth graders because they were virgins. How the world had changed since she was a child.

  “You must try very hard not to cry,” Eve continued in English. It didn’t matter that the Bear overheard this part. Besides, she’d used up most of her broken French. “Especially if that woman is around. We must be very quiet then.”

  Amy nodded again. “I won’t cry.” Her lip trembled.

  Please, God, help me keep this child alive. Eve glanced at the Bear. He was glowering at them again, and had been ever since Amy had first spoken in French.

  “Where was I in the story?” Eve asked calmly.

  “Ralph spent about a week teaching your brother to box,” Amy remembered, “while you hid from him.”

  “That’s right,” Eve said. “And then it happened. The awful day I’d been dreading. Ralph finally sat down with Nick and a reading primer.”

  She settled Amy more comfortably against her. “I was going into the library, thinking Ralph and Nick would be safely ensconced in the garage practicing their jabs and hooks. My plan was to take a book and lose myself up in the orchard until Ralph had gone safely back to town. But they weren’t in the garage, Nick and Ralph. They were there in the library. And as I went in, Nicky bolted out of there so fast, he knocked me over. Literally. I went flying. Arse over teakettle right there in the corridor.”

  Amy only managed a wan smile at Eve’s use of the A-word.

  “He didn’t stop to see if I was dead or alive,” Eve continued. “He just shouted, ‘Make him go away,’ and bolted, the little beast. But Ralph had been right on Nick’s heels, and although he managed not to step on me—which I honestly appreciated—he had to do what I’m positive was the world’s very first triple lutz. It was beautiful—or it would have been if he hadn’t skidded on a throw rug and landed hard on his butt.”

  Thank God she’d been wearing her blue jeans. It would have been horrendously embarrassing if she’d been lying there with her skirt up over her head.

  “Are you all right?” Ralph scrambled to his feet, sliding a little more on the throw rug as if he were part of some slapstick vaudeville act, before he managed to regain an upright position.

  Eve had smacked the back of her head on the floor. It was throbbing and she felt a little queasy, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “Nick!” she called in the direction her brother had vanished. “Get back here, you little creep!”

  “No, let him go,” Ralph said. “I mean, well, he’s already gone, and it was . . . it was entirely my fault for . . . for . . .”

  As he helped her to her feet, she knew without a doubt that he’d never seen a woman in blue jeans before. He looked stunned.

  “Did you call him stupid?” She glared at him. “I may be a girl, but I swear, if you called my brother stupid, I’ll throw you off this property with my bare hands and then I’ll get a gun and shoot you if you try to come back!”

  “Didn’t you just call him names yourself? Something like . . . little creep, it was, I believe.”

  “Please leave.” Eve could do haughty quite well. It had been one of her mother’s specialties, too, used on those rare occasions when things weren’t happily going her way.

  “I didn’t call him stupid,” Ralph told her calmly. “I’d never say such a thing to a child. He was the one who used the word. And I informed him he was wrong, that I happen to think he’s uncommonly bright. He then proceeded to call me stupid and ran from the room. I’m going to go track him down and give him the rest of the day off—tell him to go find young Rupert Harrison from down the lane and spend the afternoon fishing. What are you wearing? It’s lovely but I think you might’ve misplaced your six guns and cowboy hat somewhere west of the old Chisholm trail.”

  “Women wear trousers like this in California all the time,” Eve told him defiantly. That wasn’t exactly true—movie actresses like her mother had worn blue jeans at times, because they created such a stir. Eve wore them because they were comfortable. And they reminded her of home.

  “I see.” Ralph nodded. “My mistake.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me, have I done something to offend you? You’ve managed to avoid me quite admirably this past week—one would think you’d trained for years with Scotland Yard. However, if there’s something I should apologize for . . . ? “

  Eve felt herself blush. “I just thought it might be easier for you to do your job if I weren’t around. I was . . . trying to help.”

  “That’s very kind,” he said. “But unnecessary. In fact, I think Nick was a little disappointed that you didn’t come to watch him box.”

  “But I did watch,” she told him. “Nicky knows. I told him I . . .” She’d told him she didn’t want to get too close to his tutor. That her plan to get rid of him depended on her remaining something of a mystery.

  Ralph smiled at her. “Well, then,” he said. “One of us was definitely disappointed. If it wasn’t Nick, it must’ve been me. Look, if you’re still keen on helping, I could use some today—some real help, that is. I need a ride into town—if you’re not in the middle of something else. Like a roundup of the herd of longhorns on the back forty.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “I have to confess to an addiction to American dime novels,” he admitted with a smile. “If you give me a ride, I promise I’ll make no more cowboy jokes.”

  He wanted a ride. “Well,” she said. “Sure, I can drive you to town. What for?”

  He didn’t seem at all put off by her less than gracious inquiry.

  “It’s a long story; I’ll explain in the car.” He was already halfway down the hall. “Let me set things straight with Nick, and I’ll meet you by the garage in ten minutes. Is that long enough for you to change?”

  Eve crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “Why would I change?”

  He turned back to face her. “You should, of course, wear whatever you like. Of course.”

  “But . . . ?” The word was there, dangling unspoken, so Eve said it for him.

  Ralph cleared his throat delicately. “You will, however, cause minor traffic accidents in your, ahem, current outfit—as well as make it difficult for fifty percent of the population to concentrate on the task at hand—myself included. And no doubt the other fifty percent will spend some not small amount of time giving you thoroughly disapproving looks.”

  “I’m American,” she said. “I get thoroughly disapproving looks from Englishwomen as soon as I open my mouth and speak.”

  “I apologize for that.” He took several steps back toward her. “Of course, I must add that I doubt your generalized statement is entirely accurate—surely there are one or two Englishwomen out there who don’t automatically disapprove of beautiful young Americans, but nevertheless, I do apologize.”

  “The way I figure it, if most of you English are going to disapprove of me—and it’s not just the women, it’s the men, too—I might as well wear whatever I damn well want, right?”

  “Now, there’s a good American attitude. Your ancestors must’ve been those fellows who threw all the tea into Boston Harbor,” he told her. “And by the way, have I mentioned how completely, utterly, entirely I approve of both what you’re wearing and the fact that you’re an American? If you like, I’ll even sing a few bars of your ‘Star Spangled Banner’ while I salute you.”

  Eve laughed. She couldn’t help
it.

  “Don’t you dare change your clothes,” he ordered her. “Drive me into town just like that—I’ll be the envy of every man within a hundred mile radius. And we’ll stick our tongues out and recite your Pledge of Allegiance to anyone who disapproves. How’s that?”

  He was serious.

  Well, half serious, anyway.

  And Eve knew she’d been right in keeping her distance from Ralph Grayson. She liked him. Much too much. She liked the idea of him here for the entire summer. But he’d already started trying to teach Nick to read, and even though he hadn’t called her brother stupid, Ralph’s lesson had made him feel stupid.

  It wasn’t going to work.

  Make him go away.

  Eve still had the power to do just that.

  She’d let them be seen in public together. She’d hang on his arm and flirt with him mercilessly. She’d lean close and gaze into his eyes so that anyone who saw them would assume they were romantically involved.

  And then she’d tell him how old she really was.

  “I’ll meet you by the garage in a few minutes,” she told Ralph.

  His smile was warm and immediate.

  And Eve felt like a snake.

  “It wasn’t until we were in the car,” she told Amy and the Bear, who was definitely listening, “and I was about to make the turn to go into Ramsgate, that he told me to take a different road entirely. And I realized then that when he’d said he’d wanted a ride into town, he’d meant Town with a capital T. He wanted to go to London. Of course, I was terrified—I’d never driven into the city before.

  “I pulled over to the side of the road, ready to cop to the truth, about to have a panic attack. I was about to confess that I didn’t have a driver’s license, sure that he would realize I wasn’t really twenty years old, but he didn’t even blink when I told him he was going to have to drive. He thought I was nervous about driving in the city—didn’t give my reasons a second thought. We just switched seats, and he took over the wheel.

  “And while I was catching my breath,” Eve told them, “he told me that we were going to London to do some research at one of the larger libraries there.”

  She could see him as clearly as if it were yesterday. The window was open and he rested his arm on the door. The wind tousled his hair as he turned to her and smiled and said, “Have you ever heard of something called word blindness?”

  Mystified, she’d shaken her head no.

  “Ralph believed that Nick was dyslexic,” she told Amy and the Bear. “But this was back in 1939, remember, and it wasn’t called dyslexia at the time. And it was pure luck—no, I take that back. It was conscientiousness and a desire to be informed about everything under the sun that made Ralph read an article about the innovative work several doctors were doing with people who couldn’t read. People for whom their inability to read seemed due to physical limitations rather than lack of intelligence. Apparently they’d discovered some new techniques that helped these people. But Ralph had read only one small article, and we were going into London to find out as much about this as we possibly could.

  “He told me that he hadn’t mentioned anything at all about this to Nick—he didn’t want to get his hopes up. Ralph wasn’t sure how this new teaching method worked, if it even would work with Nick, or if Nick truly was afflicted with this word blindness.”

  “The only thing I know for certain,” he’d told her in the car that afternoon, with the wind blowing through his hair, looking like the poster boy for all of England, “is that your brother is not stupid.”

  They talked about Nick, nonstop, all the way to London. Ralph had been impressed, just from talking to the boy, at how well-read he was for someone who couldn’t get through a baby’s primer. Nick had told him that Eve read to him. At least an hour, sometimes more, usually two, every day. But in the weeks since he returned from that awful boarding school, he’d avoided their nightly sessions. It seemed to make him angry—as if having his sister read to him was proof that he was stupid.

  Eve admitted to Ralph that she had also written for Nicky in the past. He had a vivid imagination and he would dictate long, complicated, fascinating stories while Eve wrote it all down, longhand, as fast as she possibly could.

  “Maybe he’s not merely not stupid,” Ralph speculated. “Maybe he’s some kind of genius.”

  And if that weren’t enough to win her heart forever, when they were on their way back home, after many exhausting hours finding far too little information, Ralph broke the silence in the car by turning to Eve again.

  The sun had long gone down, and she knew he must’ve been tired, but he didn’t look it in the darkness.

  “I’ve been thinking and it seems to me that the first thing we need to do is restore Nick’s self-confidence,” he told her. “We need to figure out a way to renew his spark, to make him want to learn again—to learn about everything—not just to read. Even if he never does read, Eve, he has to realize that doesn’t make him stupid. And there are other ways for him to gain the knowledge he needs to be a well-rounded man. We’ll just have to be a little creative—and make him understand that there’s nothing wrong with listening while someone reads aloud. I’d be in heaven,” he admitted with a smile, “to have you following me around, reading to me all day.”

  “He pulled up the drive,” Eve remembered, “and stopped the car outside of the garage. We both got out of the car, and he started getting ready to ride his bike back into town. It was very late—the Johnsons had already gone to bed and we were alone, and I was unable to stop myself. I thanked Ralph for all he was doing, all he’d already done, and I found myself sort of launching through the air, toward him. It was strange. I knew it was the last thing I should do, but there I went. Right into his arms. And I hugged him, and thanked him again, and even cried a little bit—I was so overwhelmed at the thought that he might actually be able to help Nicky, that we might have found someone who was on our side.

  “He was surprised, I think mostly because I was suddenly so emotional. It’s one thing to have a girl in your arms when you’re standing out under the moon, but it’s another thing entirely when she’s all weepy. But he was very kind, and he held me close—although he was still very much the gentleman.

  “I told him that I had been trying to think of ways to make him leave, but now I hoped he’d stay forever.”

  Ralph had laughed at that, but when he’d pulled back to look at her, his eyes were very serious. “Forever’s a long time,” he whispered.

  His arms were still around her, and he was holding her so tightly she could feel the taut muscles in his shoulders and chest. He wasn’t much taller than she was, but he was solid.

  On the passenger ship from New York, a boy named Horace Wilkins had asked her to dance. He was seventeen and skinny and he’d held her much too close. She’d been afraid if she leaned too hard on Horace, he’d snap in half.

  That wasn’t so with Ralph. Ralph made her feel almost small and delicate.

  And instead of smelling like the gin Horace had guzzled—showing off, no doubt—Ralph smelled like the butterscotch candy he’d bought for her in London and they’d shared in the car on the way home.

  Would he taste sweet as well, she wondered wildly, if he kissed her?

  His eyes were dreamy as he gazed down at her, and she realized he was touching her, running his fingers through her hair.

  “I want to kiss you,” he murmured. “All day long, I’ve been dying to kiss you.”

  Eve’s heart was already hammering in her chest, and now it got so loud, it seemed impossible he didn’t hear it, too.

  She stood there, frozen, just staring up at him.

  And yet he didn’t move either. He just looked at her. “I think I’m waiting for permission,” he finally said breathlessly.

  How could she give him permission to do something that would get him into such trouble?

  Eve shifted back slightly, and he released her instantly. She put even more space between them, d
etermined not to repay his kindness this way. “I . . . have to go inside.”

  He was uncertain and embarrassed. He tried to hide it behind a smile, but she could see it in his eyes, clearly illuminated by the full moon.

  “I’m sorry,” he started to say. “That was stupid of me. I’m a complete idiot and . . .”

  He thought she didn’t like him.

  With her hand on the knob of the door leading into the house, Eve knew she should tell him the truth—that she was only fifteen—but she also knew that if she did, he’d never tell her that he wanted to kiss her again. Instead, she blurted out a different truth.