“I’m sorry,” Meg said. Most people didn’t mean it when they said they were sorry, but Meg did.
“Your folks are both still around, right? Still living in . . .” Nils made a face. “Don’t tell me . . . I’ll get it . . . Massachusetts . . . western Boston suburb . . . Ah, hell, help me out here.”
“Nope,” she said. “This time we’re talking about you. I’m still trying to figure out which part of that story you just told me was the lie.”
“Why would I lie to you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she mused. “I haven’t figured that out yet either.”
Sam found John Nilsson sitting on the floor in what had been Meg Moore’s hotel room.
“I should have searched her,” Nils said, shaking his head in disgust, as Sam hunkered down next to him.
“You were at a disadvantage,” Sam told his friend, “considering that you’ve wanted to get with her for three years now. She was crying on your shoulder, man—you were distracted.” He laughed. “And you know, I still don’t know if there should be an again added to that first sentence. You are one secretive bastard, Johnny.”
“She’s going to die. The FBI are going to track her down, and they’re going to use deadly force and . . . Ah, Christ.”
Sam stared out at the blandly decorated hotel room, pretending not to see the tears in Nils’s eyes. “We could find her first.”
“Yeah, right.” Nils laughed, but there was no humor in it. He used the heels of his hands to brusquely wipe his face. “Like I have any kind of a clue where she went when she left DC.”
“Well.” Sam cleared his throat. “That’s the interesting part. Remember that long-distance tracking device WildCard’s been working on?”
Nils looked up sharply, meeting Sam’s gaze for the first time. His eyes were redrimmed; it was obvious the man hadn’t slept more than a few hours in too many days to count.
“She’s moving south on Route 95,” Sam told his friend. “I’m on duty in about five minutes, so unless you want to wait for my shift to end—”
“Hell, no. Sorry, but—”
“I figured. That’s why WildCard’s in the lobby with his laptop. If the two of you leave now, with a little luck, you can find her and be back by dinnertime.”
“For the next few weeks,” Eve told Amy and the Bear, “Ralph and I worked with Nicky. We were determined to erase his fear of learning, of being labeled stupid. We focused on having fun. I remember, Ralph made us dress up as smugglers from the days of the Napoleonic Wars and took us exploring the network of caves that ran all along that part of the coast.
“And we did our own archeological dig—uncovered mostly mud and a few suspiciously familiar looking spoons I’m sure Ralph seeded in the site. We went fishing and studied the local marine life, flew kites and learned about weather and wind, and had picnics by the sea. And as we sat on our blanket, Ralph would beg me to read aloud to him—to him, not to Nick, mind you. Of course, Nick couldn’t help but overhear.
“And slowly but surely Nicky came to life again. We started to read not just from books, but from plays as well—with both Ralph and me playing a role. And one day Nick cleared his throat and asked if he could take a part, too. Ralph was so low-key about it. I was about to faint, I was so thrilled, but Ralph just matter-of-factly figured out a method for feeding Nick his lines. It was the most wonderful day.”
She smiled ruefully at Amy. “At least until we returned to the estate for dinner. Ralph had been watching me during our walk home—I could feel his eyes on me. And I knew I’d done a poor job that day of pretending to be indifferent to him. Ever since that night in the moonlight, I’d been careful not to be alone with Ralph, and I tried not to let him see just how much I adored him. But that wasn’t easy to do. Of course he never spoke of it when Nick was around, but he didn’t understand why I always ran away from him.
“And that evening, just as I suspected, he asked for a private word with me. Nick went inside, and . . . there we were.”
The early evening sun was still hot against her face. Her clothes were dirty and damp from perspiration and the sea spray. Tendrils of hair had long escaped her twist and they hung lankly around her sunburned face.
And yet Ralph looked at her as if he saw none of her imperfections.
“Why won’t it work?” he asked, completely dissolving the past few weeks, bringing them right back to where they’d left off that night they’d come back from London. The ever-present glint of humor was gone from his eyes. He was utterly serious.
Eve had to tell him the truth. But she couldn’t squeeze the words out past her heart, which was lodged firmly in her throat. She just shook her head and started for the door.
He caught her hand. “I have to know. Is it because . . . are you promised to someone else? Someone back in California?”
“No,” she said before she could think straight, before she realized that lying and saying yes would make Ralph—always such a gentleman—back away for good.
“Then there’s hope,” he said. “I dream of you at night, Eve.”
She turned and ran—as fast and as far as she could.
“I stayed up for hours that night,” Eve told Amy and the Bear, “writing Ralph a note, explaining that I was much younger than he thought. I wanted to be honest with him—to do the right thing. But my good intentions were completely blown to Hades the next day.”
Nick had woken her up, pulling back the heavy curtains in her room to reveal brilliant sunshine and a near perfect morning. Mrs. Johnson was packing them a picnic basket, he announced. They were going out for a jaunt in the Daisy Chain.
Ralph knew her weaknesses well. And although she’d planned to excuse herself from the day’s adventures, to drop her note into his hands and vanish from sight for a few million years, she found herself—a short hour later—floating on the almost ridiculously calm surface of the usually far more turbulent English Channel. The note she’d written was in the pocket of the dress she’d thrown on over her bathing suit.
“Today we shall read a play,” Ralph announced grandly, after they’d eaten their fill of Mrs. J.’s delicious cold chicken, “by Master William Shakespeare.” He took out his familiar tin of butterscotch candies. Butterscotch, he always said, went famously with the Bard.
Nicky was tempting fate, risking an unplanned dip in the ocean by dangling himself off the bow, but he turned eagerly, coming back to join them on the deck. He caught the piece of candy that Ralph tossed to him. “I’m Puck!”
“Excellent,” Ralph enthused. He held out the tin for Eve, far too much of a gentleman to throw candy in her direction. “Except for the fact that Puck doesn’t play a part in Romeo and Juliet.”
“Oh, yuck, a love story?” Nick leaned over the rope railing and pretended to throw up over the side.
Ralph grabbed him by the waistband and hauled him back. “It’s actually about murder and revenge, about two families who have been bitter enemies for years.”
Eve saw that he had two worn copies of the play, yet he didn’t open either of them once as he told Nick the opening of the story. He talked them right up to the scene where Romeo and Juliet first meet.
And then he gave one of the copies of the play to Eve.
“I don’t suppose you’d want to be Romeo?” he asked Nick. “Or possibly Juliet? Remember, in Shakespeare’s day, women weren’t allowed on stage and boys played all the female parts.”
“You wouldn’t get me into a dress,” Nick swore. “Not if you paid me a thousand dollars. I’ll be the audience today,” he decided. “Although I’d rather be fishing.”
“I’m sure old Will had one or two folks in his audience who’d rather have been fishing,” Ralph countered. “When we’re done here, let me know if you think this story could’ve distracted them sufficiently, too.”
“It’s not gonna work,” Nick muttered.
“If I were a betting man, I’d be tempted to place a wager on that.”
Eve stood up,
gesturing to the top of the cabin. “This can be Juliet’s balcony,” she told Ralph. “I can climb up there and—”
“And you will,” Ralph countered, scrambling up to stand right there. “I always thought no red-blooded Romeo in his right mind would stay on the ground below after hearing Juliet say, ‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?’ ”
He spoke in a high voice, struck a pose, and Nick collapsed in a fit of giggles.
“Although rather long in tooth, I will be fair Juliet.” He fluttered his eyelashes and Nick was with the program, although still a little grudgingly. “And Eve shall be my Romeo.”
He jumped down off the cabin roof with a completely unladylike thud.
“You won’t need this.” Eve wound her hair up and put Ralph’s hat on her own head. She began unfastening her buttons. “And I won’t need my dress.”
Ralph turned quickly away, the way he always did when she stepped out of her clothes on the beach. It was silly—she was wearing a bathing suit underneath. What was the big deal?
All he succeeded in doing was to make her completely self-conscious. Which was dumb, since her blue and green flowered bathing suit covered her far more than the skimpy suits her mother had worn, lounging by their Hollywood pool.
“You better give Eve your pants,” Nick ordered his tutor. “She doesn’t look like much of a man in that. Better give her your shirt, too.”
That would be a coup. Ralph never took off his shirt, even when they went swimming. But he did it now, pulling it over his head. And sure enough, there was a flush of pink on his cheeks as he handed it to her. He couldn’t quite manage to meet her gaze, because—horrors—he was standing shirtless in front of her.
And the really dumb part was that he was built like a movie star. His skin was pale, though—but that was to be expected since he never took off his shirt.
“Every time I see an English baby, I’m amazed.” Oh, cripes, she hadn’t meant to say that aloud.
Ralph looked questioningly up at her, and, of course, she had to be gazing directly into his eyes as he figured out what she’d meant—that her amazement came from seeing the proof that an English man and woman had actually managed to quit having tea and apologizing to each other long enough to procreate.
They’d had this argument about Englishmen versus Californians—completely in fun—before. She thought that the English were too bloody polite. But now it took on a whole new edge.
“You’d prefer it if I weren’t polite?” he murmured as he handed her his pants, too.
With his clothes on and his eyes twinkling, Eve could forget that he wasn’t sixteen or seventeen. But dressed only in his bathing suit, it was obvious Ralph Grayson was a full-grown man. The muscles in his shoulders and arms were well defined and—it was hard not to stare—he had hair on his chest.
Thick and dark, it looked as if it would be soft to touch.
Eve jerked her gaze away, feeling her own cheeks flame, felt them heat even more as she realized the note she’d written to him last night was still in the pocket of her dress. Which he was now rather grimly stepping into.
“You’d make a fortune in Hollywood,” she told him in her mother’s voice—light and breezy—as she pulled on his trousers. They were still warm from his body heat, and his shirt was slightly damp from perspiration. It smelled of his soap and the distinctive brand of cologne he wore. It smelled of Ralph. She breathed in deeply as she pulled it over her head.
His pants were much too big for her, and she pulled his belt as tight as it would go.
“I’m not that good an actor, I’m afraid,” he replied.
“I didn’t mean as an actor,” her mother’s voice countered. “I meant as a gigolo.” With his British accent, pretty eyes, and gentleman’s manners . . . yeah, he’d make a bundle.
“Is that supposed to be some kind of California style compliment?” His voice was light but his eyes held danger.
Why was she doing this? She was playing with fire.
Nick was laughing at them both, unaware of the undercurrent of tension. “Eve, you look like a boy with your hair up like that, but Mr. Grayson is the funniest looking girl I’ve ever seen.”
Ralph hadn’t been able to button the top few buttons of her dress, and dark hair poked through the gapping neckline, in direct contrast with the tiny blue flowered print. It would have been funny, if she hadn’t completely ruined things with her stupid comments.
“Act one, scene five,” Ralph told Eve, flipping through the pages of his playbook.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I don’t know why I’m so rude sometimes.”
“I do, and it’s all right,” he said quietly. “I’ve got you figured out—so you can’t offend me.” He glanced up at her, and the smile he gave her was so sweet, Eve felt her eyes start to fill with tears.
“The line is yours,” Ralph told her. “ ‘What lady’s that which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight?’ ” He looked at Nick. “Romeo spots me while I’m dancing,” he added, doing something that might be called dancing if you were from Mars, “and it’s love at first sight.”
The picture Ralph made, dressed as he was, hopping from one foot to another, swishing the skirt of her dress around, was unbearably funny.
Nick laughed so hard, he nearly fell off the boat.
Ralph would have won his bet. It wasn’t long, as they read through the few scenes that were actually between Romeo and Juliet, and talked through the rest of the story, that the boy was completely absorbed by the play.
And by the time Juliet awakened from her feigned death to find Romeo dead by his own hand from poison, Nick was holding his breath.
“ ‘What’s here? A cup closed in my true love’s hand?’ ” Ralph wasn’t reading anymore. He knew these words by heart. Eve kept her eyes tightly shut as she felt him gather her into his arms. He radiated such heat, she felt nearly on fire. After he gave it back, her dress would smell like Ralph. She would never wash it again.
She prayed he wouldn’t feel the way her heart was pounding.
“ ‘Poison I see has been his timeless end.’ ” His voice broke. “ ‘O churl, drunk all; and left no friendly drop to help me after? I will kiss thy lips; haply some poison yet doth hang on them, to make me die with a restorative.’ ”
And then it happened.
Ralph kissed her.
It was the softest kiss, just the sweetest, gentlest pressing of his lips to hers.
Eve opened her eyes.
They were nose to nose, and she was in his arms, half lying across his lap.
She expected him to be shocked. She thought he would be appalled at what he’d done, but instead she couldn’t begin to read the odd expression in his eyes. Was it a glimmer of . . . satisfaction? Had he planned this from the start?
“But wait, methinks I best try that again,” he said. “Perhaps a deeper kiss will do this thing.”
The lines weren’t in the script, but he spoke in perfect, poetic iambic pentameter.
And he was going to kiss her again.
Eve knew she should move. She should tear herself out of his arms. She should leap up and away before he got himself into even more trouble.
“ ‘Go breath, go soul . . .’ ” Ralph’s gaze was locked on hers, she couldn’t have looked away, let alone moved out of his arms if her life had depended upon it. “ ‘. . . with thou who holds my heart.’ ”
“That’s you, sweet Eve,” he whispered, and kissed her again. Not as Juliet kissing Romeo, but as Ralph kissing Eve.
And oh, it was wonderful. His lips were so soft against hers, his mouth was sweet. He tasted of butterscotch and sunshine.
She knew all about kissing from the movies, and she’d always been afraid of laughing the first time someone tried to put his tongue into her mouth.
But suddenly, there she was, kissing Ralph, and it wasn’t funny or strange or even the slightest bit disgusting. Instead, it was perfect.
His mouth was warm and he tasted delicious. Dizz
y and giddy and melting inside, she clung to him, wanting . . . what? She wasn’t sure, but it definitely involved kissing him like this forever.
“Can we skip the kissing part?” Nick demanded plaintively.
Ralph pulled back, and Eve knew from the sudden flare of chagrin and embarrassment in his eyes that he was about to apologize for what had to be the best thirty seconds of her entire life and—God help her—transform back into a proper, too-polite Englishman.
She wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“No,” she told her little brother, grabbed Ralph by the front of her dress, and kissed him again.
She could taste his surprise, feel his laughter.
Troubleshooters 02 The Defiant Hero Page 16
