What are you afraid of? Oh, Lord. She was going to be sick.
She picked up another, dated several days later. “Dear Eve, I float! You spent the day with Nick and me! Suddenly I’m sixteen again, and would sell my soul for a chance just to hold your hand.
“What is it about you that I love the most? It’s not your beauty, although I can’t deny you have the power to move me with just a smile. Is it the fact that you’ve read and adored so many of the books I adore, too? Is it your unembarrassed desire to keep on learning despite the fact you’re long out of school? Is it your love of life? That you seem so unself-consciously childlike at times and so wise beyond your years at others? Is it because when you look at me with such admiration in your eyes, I know it’s real, not some contrived false emotion designed to flatter or manipulate?
“I’ve never met a woman so unafraid to speak her mind, so unafraid to laugh out loud, so honest and true.”
Oh, God. Tears filled her eyes, but Eve couldn’t stop reading.
“I dream of making beautiful love to you, but the truth is, I could sit across the room from you and still be completely satisfied. Just being with you is enough. Please, Heavenly Father, let this summer last forever. I am yours, always, until the end of time, Ralph.”
“July 15. Dearest Eve, Tonight I’m dying. I spent the day with you and Nick, while harboring the most dreadful secret.
“I’m leaving Ramsgate. A letter came from my father, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell you of its contents—that I’ve been called into the army—for fear it will change everything between us.
“I kissed you good-bye tonight, knowing that I have less than a fortnight of good-bye kisses left to steal. I want the next few weeks to continue on, untarnished by this grim news.
“But tonight I feel like the blackest of scoundrels. I am a liar, not for telling a mistruth, but for omitting a truth. You are everything that is good and honest and—”
Good and honest.
Eve refolded the letter, put the cover back on the box.
Honest and true.
She was going to throw up.
Ralph had poured himself another glass of wine while he watched her read and he took a sip of it now. “Say something, would you? It’s rather like cutting my heart out and putting it in a box for you. I should have given you diamonds, shouldn’t I have?”
But he had. He’d given her a box of perfect diamonds.
“I’m a little embarrassed,” he admitted. “A little lightheaded, and—”
Eve started to cry.
It wasn’t just that the tears she’d been blinking back suddenly overflowed. It was an emotional explosion. They were noisy tears, stormy tears, sobbing, gasping, runny-nosed tears that wouldn’t stop no matter how hard she tried.
It was stupid—she who never cried had now burst into tears three different times over the past few weeks. Ralph must’ve thought she was a complete ninny.
No, he didn’t. He thought she was good and honest and oh, God!
She would have run for the door if he hadn’t reached her first and pulled her into his arms.
“Oh, Eve, oh, damn, what have I done?” He sounded ready to cry himself. “I didn’t mean to upset you—”
It wasn’t his fault. He’d done nothing wrong. He’d given her the most romantic, most precious gift anyone had ever given her in her entire life. She was the villain here—and what a villain she was. A liar and a fake and a cheat.
“I’m so sorry,” Ralph said. “The last thing I wanted to do was to make you cry. God, I should have just bought you a bracelet. What was I thinking? Please, forgive me.”
Eve loved the box of letters and she loved him. If there was any forgiving to be done here, it was him forgiving her. But there was no way she could say any of that, so she kissed him.
He hesitated only the briefest fraction of a second, and then he kissed her, too.
It wasn’t enough, and she kissed him harder, deeper, uncertain of what it was she really wanted, but sure that she didn’t want his gentle restraint.
She got much more than she bargained for. It was as if she had lit a match and set Ralph on fire. He kissed her hungrily, possessively, demandingly, again and again, deeper, longer, pushing her back onto the bed, his thigh pressed up hard between her legs, his hands . . .
She didn’t know when it changed. When her passion turned to fear. Maybe it was when he shifted his weight, pressing his entire body where his one leg had been. Maybe when his chin had rasped roughly against her cheeks and her neck as he kissed her throat. Maybe when she tried to pull away, but found he had her completely pinned.
“Stop,” she gasped. “Don’t! Don’t!”
He was off of her in a flash, sitting on the edge of the bed, breathing hard, head in his hands as he began to apologize, again.
“It’s not your fault.” She pulled down her skirt from where it had ridden up, shockingly, all the way to the tops of her thighs. “It’s my fault.”
“I promised I’d go slowly.” He turned and looked at her. “But I lied. I don’t think I can, Eve—”
“I’m the liar,” she told him. “I should have told you a long time ago. I’m not ready for this. I’m so sorry!”
“I want you so badly. I know you’re frightened, but—”
“I’m only fifteen!”
Silence.
He stared at her, a flurry of emotions crossing his expressive face. “My God,” he breathed. “Please tell me this is a joke?”
Eve shook her head. No joke.
“You’re fifteen . . . years old?” His voice broke.
She nodded, unable to look into his eyes, where shock was turning into anger.
Ralph started to laugh but it was strained and humorless. “Well, that took care of my . . . overwhelming, uncurbable passion. Nothing like facing charges as a pedophile to douse any romantic urges. Jesus, Eve, you’re fifteen? How could you . . . ? Why didn’t you . . . ? You knew that I thought . . . What in God’s name were you thinking?”
She stuck with honesty. “That you would leave if you knew the truth. I know you thought I was older and—”
“Damn right I would have left! I’m a teacher! I’m supposed to be teaching children, not— Oh, my God!” He stood up and started to pace, an explosion of energy, unable to sit still a moment longer. “I should have known. How the bloody hell could I not have known?”
He turned to stare at her, angry tears in his eyes.
“How could you be fifteen? You don’t look fifteen. And yet . . .” He smacked himself in the head. “Jesu Christe, I should have known.”
“I’m so sorry. I know you wanted to . . . But, I need some time—a few days—to . . .”
“You don’t need a few days. You need a few years! Oh, my God, I’ve ruined you. You’re a child and I took your trust and—”
“I’m so sorry. Please . . .” Don’t go.
But he was putting on his jacket, his movements jerky. “I’ll call my father’s solicitor in the morning, make arrangements for an annulment. Maybe with his help, we can avoid a scandal. Here I was, thinking I was keeping your reputation from being shredded, while in fact, all along, you were ruining me.”
“No.” Her tears had started again. “Wait. Ralph, no one knows how old I really am. My own stepmother thinks I’m seventeen or eighteen. We just won’t tell anyone. And . . . and . . . You said we could take things slowly tonight.” Eve prayed that this could still have a happy ending, rather than the train wreck they seemed careening toward. “Why can’t we just take it really slowly? And maybe this fall when you get leave, I’ll be ready to . . . We’ll be able to . . .”
“You want me to continue this charade?” He was incredulous. “Can’t you just hear it? ‘Going back to England, eh, Grayson?’ ‘Indeed, Major, I’m going home for the weekend to see if my fifteen-year-old wife’s old enough yet to consummate my marriage.’ God damn you.” He started for the door. “The solicitor will send you the paperwork necessary. There�
��ll be a generous settlement, of course.”
“I won’t sign it!” she cried. “I don’t want your stupid money! I love you! And you love me!” She clung to the box of his letters like a life buoy.
He turned back and his face was hard, his eyes like that of a stranger. “I fell in love with someone honest. Someone who never would have used such deceit and trickery the way you did. The person I fell in love with apparently doesn’t exist.”
Eve gazed at him, stricken. There was nothing she could say, no argument that could challenge that.
“Sign the papers when they come, Eve,” he said quietly. “My solicitor will do his best to keep this entire incident hushed up. For both our sakes. And with the settlement money, you’ll be able to get out of town and go back to California.”
Incident. Just like that, he’d reduced the months of magic that they’d shared to one cold, impersonal word.
“I will regret meeting you for the rest of my life,” he whispered.
As Eve watched, Ralph went out the door without looking back.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fifteen
SAM DIDN’T KNOW what in hell was going on.
Traffic had been a pain in the ass, and it had taken them just short of forever to find a space in a parking garage near the hospital. Alyssa had lightened her load by tossing her fanny pack into the trunk, and they’d headed for the hospital at a dead run.
They took the information desk by storm—Alyssa more tense than he’d ever seen her before.
And when a quick phone call to the maternity ward revealed that Tyra had given birth to a little girl just thirty minutes earlier, and that both mother and child were doing remarkably well, Alyssa Locke, the coldhearted ice bitch, actually started to cry.
Sam was stunned.
He was completely speechless.
It wasn’t as if she’d started sobbing, tears pouring down her cheeks as she gasped for air. No, didn’t it figure? Alyssa Locke cried like a man.
She cried the way WildCard Karmody had cried when he’d gotten that Dear John email from Adele Zakashansky. The way Nils had cried when Meg had gone AWOL. Her eyes filled with tears that she couldn’t blink back and she turned her head away, as if she hoped Sam wouldn’t see.
So, like with WildCard and Nils, he pretended not to see.
And, upstairs, he pretended not to watch and listen as Alyssa hugged her sister and the sister’s husband, a tall black man who gave Sam a handshake, a candy cigar, and a tired smile as they came into the private hospital room.
The baby’s name was Lanora, and for some reason, that got the tears started again—both from Alyssa and her sister.
But it wasn’t until they’d left the maternity ward that Alyssa had a total meltdown.
Of course, being Alyssa Locke, she managed to do it quietly, and with dignity.
One second she was walking beside Sam, heading for the elevators. And the next, she just stopped walking.
She sat down on a waiting area sofa, covered her face with her hands, bent over as if she had a stomachache, and silently wept.
Sam wanted to do something. With any other woman, he would’ve been right there, next to her, putting his arms around her, giving her a shoulder to cry on, whispering words of comfort into her ear.
But Alyssa wasn’t just any woman.
So instead he sat down across the room, far enough away to give her privacy. Close enough so that she could keep an eye on him.
It was what he would have done if Mike Muldoon or Frank O’Leary had started to cry.
Clearly there was something else going on here besides a sister giving birth to a healthy baby girl.
But chances were that he was never going to find out.
Nils didn’t move. He didn’t change his breathing, didn’t open his eyes, but he was instantly awake.
Someone was touching him—reaching into the front pocket of his pants.
Friend or foe?
His brain was fuzzy from exhaustion, so it took him a few seconds longer than usual to remember where he was, what he was doing there, and who the hell could be touching him.
He was outside—he could feel the sun on his face, smell the recently cut grass. He was lying on his back, on the ground and . . .
Meg Moore. Razeen. Kidnapped daughter. Meg Moore. Hostages in the K-stani men’s room. Meg.
He was in Georgia, taking a desperately needed break from the hypnotizing drive south on the relentless sameness of Route 95.
And that was Meg’s hand inching farther into his pocket. He could smell her hair, feel the warmth of her body as she leaned over him.
She was going for the car keys.
God damn it.
Hadn’t anything he’d said to her gotten through?
Apparently not.
Nils kept his eyes shut and his breathing steady as he felt her hesitate. The pockets of the coveralls were deeper than she’d thought.
Maybe she wouldn’t do it. Maybe she’d give up because she really didn’t want to ditch him here, in backwoods Georgia. Maybe she’d give up because she wanted him with her, needed him, even though she couldn’t yet admit it to herself.
She reached farther. And froze.
You bet, sweetheart. That’s exactly what you think it is.
One of the biggest problems with going commando under a pair of loose coveralls was that nothing lined neatly up.
“Oh, God,” she breathed.
But she kept going.
Nils managed to keep his eyes closed and to keep breathing. God bless Master Chief Vandegrift for drilling Nils’s BUD/S class relentlessly when it came to waking up silently and feigning sleep or lifelessness. Although, as much as he now tried, his body was having a decidedly nonlifeless reaction to her hand against his inner thigh.
He tried to focus on the fact that she had her hand in his pants for all the wrong reasons. She was going to take the keys. And then she was going to stand up, get in the car, and drive away without him.
Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe after she got the keys, she wouldn’t be able to do it. Nils stayed silent and still, wanting to wait and see what she would do.
He knew he could stop her. At any time. Even after she got the keys and got to her feet.
He knew he could outrun her to the car, even starting from a completely prone position like this. He could overpower her easily, take her little handgun pretty damn easily. But he didn’t want to do it that way. He didn’t want to take her handgun.
He wanted her to give it to him.
If she gave it to him, there would be no mistakes. No one would be at risk for being accidentally shot. If she gave it to him, she’d be voluntarily turning herself in. Any chance that she had of making right all her wrongs depended on that.
Painstakingly slowly, she pulled the keys from his pocket.
Please don’t do this, Meg.
“I’m sorry, John,” she whispered, almost as if she’d heard him. “I don’t have a choice.”
It seemed like the right time to open his eyes. “There’s always a choice.”
Startled, she tried to jerk her hand free, but she was trapped by his pocket. She lost her balance and fell forward, directly on top of him, her arm pinned.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch!” Her wrist was twisted, and he reached between them to free her hand from his pants, deftly removing the keys from her fingers as he did so and stashing them in his left pocket.
“You’re awake,” she accused him, struggling to sit back up.
But he had both arms around her now, and he wouldn’t let her go. “Actually,” he said, “I’m not sure about that. For all I know, this could be a dream. One of the better ones I’ve had lately, if you want to know the truth.”
She’d stopped struggling, but she was breathing hard as she gazed down at him. Her face was maybe two inches away from his. Maybe less. “You can’t come with me,” she said fiercely. “You can’t.”
Troubleshooters 02 The Defiant Hero Page 27
