Loving Evangeline Read online

  She didn’t know why he had targeted her marina, and she didn’t care. She marked it down to simple avarice, the greedy impulse to take what belonged to others.

  She hadn’t known him at all.

  She was still calm and dry-eyed when she reached her house. No—not her house any longer, but the Campbells’. Dazed, she unlocked the door and walked inside, looked at the familiar form and content of her home, and bolted for the bathroom. She hung over the toilet and vomited up the little coffee she had swallowed, but the dry, painful heaves continued long after her stomach was emptied.

  When the spasms finally stopped, she slumped breathless to the floor. She had no idea how long she lay there, in a stupor of exhaustion and pain, but after a while she began to cry. She curled into a ball, tucking her legs up in an effort to make herself as small as possible, and shuddered with the violent, rasping sobs that tore through her. She cried until she made herself sick and vomited again.

  It was a long time before she climbed shakily to her feet. Her eyelids were swollen and sore, but she was calm, so calm and remote that she wondered if she would ever be able to feel anything again. God, she hoped not!

  She stripped, dropping her clothes to the floor. She would throw them out later; she never wanted to see that skirt again, or any other garment she had worn that night. She was shivering as she climbed into the shower, where she stood for a long time, letting the hot water beat down on her, but the heat sluiced off her skin just like the water, none of it soaking in to thaw the bone-deep cold that shook her.

  She would have stood there all day, paralyzed by the mind-numbing pain, but at last the hot water began to go and the chill forced her out. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed, close her eyes and forget, but that wasn’t an option. She wouldn’t forget. She would never forget. She could stay in the shower forever, but it wouldn’t wash his touch off her flesh or his image out of her mind.

  He had never wanted her at all. He had wanted the marina.

  The marina. Her mind fastened on it with desperate gratitude. She still had the marina, had salvaged something from the ruin Robert Cannon had made of her life. No matter how much damage he had done, he hadn’t won.

  The habits of years took over as she moved slowly about, getting ready to go to work. After towel-drying her hair, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror to brush out the tangles and braid it. Her own face looked back at her, white and blank, her eyes dark, empty pools. Losing Matt had been devastating, but she had carried the knowledge of his love deep inside. This time she had nothing. The care Robert had shown her had been an illusion, carefully fostered to deceive her. The passion between them, at least on his part, had been nothing more than a combination of mere sex and his own labyrinthine plotting. The man could give lessons to Machiavelli.

  He had destroyed the protective shield that had encased her for so many years. She had thought she couldn’t bear any more pain, but now she was learning that her capacity for pain went far beyond imagination. She wouldn’t die from it, after all; she would simply rebuild the shield, stronger than before, so that it could never be penetrated again. It would take time, but she had time; she had the rest of her life to remember Robert Cannon and how he had used her.

  She hid her sore, swollen eyes behind a pair of sunglasses and carefully drove to the marina, not wanting to have an accident because she wasn’t paying attention. She refused to die in a car accident and give Cannon the satisfaction of winning.

  When she drove up to the marina, everything looked strangely normal. She sat in the truck, staring at it for a few seconds, bewildered by the sameness of it. So much had happened in such a short time that it seemed as if she had been gone for weeks, rather than overnight.

  No matter what, she still had this.

  Robert prowled the house like a caged panther, enraged by the need to wait. Waiting was alien to him; his instinct was to make a cold, incisive decision and act on it. The knowledge of the pain Evie must be feeling, and what she must be thinking, ate at him like acid. He could make it up to her for the house, but could he heal the hurt? Every hour he was away from her, every hour that passed with her thinking he had betrayed her, would deepen the wound. Only the certainty that she would refuse to listen to him now kept him from going after her. When Mercer was in jail, when he had the proof of what he’d been doing and could tell her the why, then she would listen to him. She might slap his face, but she would listen.

  It was almost three o’clock when the phone rang. “Mercer’s moving early,” his operative barked. “He panicked and called them from the office. No dead drop this time. He told them that he needed the money immediately. It’s a live handoff, sir. We can catch the bastards red-handed!”

  “Where is he now?”

  “About halfway to Guntersville, the way he was driving. We have a tail on him. I’m on the way, but it’ll take me another twenty-five minutes to get there.”

  “All right. Use the tracking device and get there as fast as you can. I’ll go to the marina now and get ahead of him. He’s never seen my boat, so he won’t spot me.”

  “Be careful, sir. You’ll be outnumbered until we can get there.”

  Robert smiled grimly as he hung up the phone. Everything he needed was in the boat: weapons, camera, binoculars and tape recorder. Mercer’s ass was in a sling now.

  He drove to the marina, ignoring the speed laws. He only hoped Evie wouldn’t come out when she saw him and do something foolish like cause a scene. He didn’t have time for it, and he sure as hell didn’t want to attract any attention. He tried to imagine Evie causing a scene, but the idea was incongruous. No, she wouldn’t do that; it wasn’t her style at all. She would simply look through him as if he didn’t exist. But when he reached the marina, he didn’t take any chances. He went straight to the dock where his boat was moored, not even glancing at the office.

  Evie heard him drive up. She knew the sound of that Jeep as intimately as she knew her own heartbeat. She froze, trying to brace herself for the unbearable, but the seconds ticked past and the door didn’t open. When she forced herself to turn and look out the window, she caught a glimpse of his tall, lean figure striding purposefully down the dock toward his boat. A minute later she heard the deep cough of the powerful motor, and the sleek black boat eased out of its slip. As soon as he was out of the Idle Speed Only zone, he shoved the throttle forward, and the nose of the boat rose like a rearing stallion as the craft shot over the water, gaining speed with every second.

  She couldn’t believe how much it hurt just to see him.

  Landon Mercer walked in ten minutes later. Loathing rose in her throat, choking her, and it was all she could do to keep from screaming at him. Today, though, there was none of the slimy come-on attitude he thought was so irresistible; he was pale, his face strained. He was wearing slacks and a white dress shirt, the collar unbuttoned. Sweat beaded on his forehead and upper lip. He carried the same tackle box, but no rod and reel.

  “Got a boat for me, Evie?” he asked, trying to smile, but it was little more than a grimace.

  She chose a key and gave it to him. “Use the one on the end.”

  “Thanks. I’ll pay you when I get back, okay?” He was already going out the door when he spoke.

  Something in her snapped. It was a quiet snap, but suddenly she had had enough. Mercer was definitely up to no good, and today he hadn’t even made the pretense of going fishing. The marina was all she had left, and if that bastard was dealing drugs and dragged her into it by using her boats, she might lose the marina after all.

  Over her dead body.

  It was too much, all the events of the day piling on top of her. She wasn’t thinking when she strode out to the truck and retrieved her pistol from under the seat, then hurried to her own boat. If she had been thinking, she would have called the police or the water patrol, but none of that came to mind. Still reeling from shock, she could focus on only one thing—stopping Mercer.

  Robert had positione