Loving Evangeline Read online

  “God.” Abruptly he drew away, letting his head fall back as he drew in a deep breath. Her response had been hesitant at first, but then she had come alive in his arms, and he felt singed, as if he had been holding the sweetest of fires. His own response to her shook him with its violence. It was difficult to think of anything but taking her, and only their present location kept him from trying. “I’m the one calling a halt this time, sweetheart. We either have to stop or find a more private place.”

  She felt bereft, suddenly deprived of his touch. Her heart was pounding, and her skin felt as if it glowed with heat. Still, he was right. This wasn’t the place for making out like teenagers. “There isn’t a more private place,” she said as she reached out to turn the television from rock to a country video station. The music abruptly changed from rap to a hauntingly passionate love song, and that was even more jarring to her nerves. She punched the Off button, and in the sudden quiet the rain sounded heavier than before. She looked out the window at the gray curtain that veiled the lake, obscuring the far bank.

  “No one will be using their boats for the rest of the day,” Robert said. “Why don’t you close early and we’ll go to Huntsville for dinner.”

  She considered how his questions and suggestions sounded like statements and demands. Had no one before her ever said no to this man? “I can’t close early.”

  “The rain is supposed to last halfway through the night,” he said reasonably.

  “But that won’t stop people from coming in to buy tackle. Granted, there probably won’t be many, maybe not any, but the sign says that I’m open until eight.”

  And she would be, he thought, exasperated by the difficulty of courting a woman who refused to make time for him. He had certainly never had that problem before. In fact, he couldn’t say that he’d ever had a problem with a woman at all—until Evie. Getting close to her presented him with as many obstacles as a mine field. Ruefully he thought that if he was going to spend any time with her, most of it would obviously be here at the marina.

  Rather than become angry, which would only make her more obstinate, he said, “Could Craig swap shifts with you occasionally, if we give him advance notice?”

  A tiny smile lifted the corners of her mouth, telling him that he was learning. “I suppose he could. He’s generally accommodating.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  This time she almost laughed aloud. “I can’t tomorrow.” She had an appointment with her doctor at ten in the morning. Though she had told Robert that she didn’t want to sleep with him, he had said only that he would stop if she told him to. The “if” told her that she should be prudent, because his physical effect on her was potent. Of course, she wasn’t going to tell Robert that she was arranging birth control; he would consider it a green light to making love.

  He sighed. “The day after tomorrow?”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  “Thank you,” he said with faint irony.

  Robert received two phone calls the next morning. He was out on the deck, reading a sheaf of papers that Felice had faxed to him; it was remarkably easy, he’d found, to keep abreast of things by way of phone, computer and fax. The first call was from Madelyn. “How are things in Alabama?”

  “Hot,” he replied. He was wearing only gym shorts. The rain of the day before had made everything seem even more green and lush, the scents more intense, but it hadn’t done anything to ease the heat. If anything, the heat was worse. The morning sun burned on his bare chest and legs. Luckily, with his olive complexion, he didn’t have to worry about sunburn.

  “The weather is perfect here, about seventy-five degrees. Why don’t you fly up for the weekend?”

  “I can’t,” he said, and realized how much he sounded like Evie. “I don’t know how long I’ll be down here, but I can’t leave until everything is tied up.”

  “The invitation stands,” Madelyn said in her lazy drawl. A funny pang went through him as he realized how similar Madelyn’s accent was to Evie’s. “If you do happen to find a couple of days free, we’d love to see you.”

  “I’ll try to get up there before I go back to New York,” he promised.

  “Try really hard. We haven’t seen you since spring. Take care.”

  The phone rang again almost immediately. This time it was the man he had hired to keep watch on Landon Mercer. “He had a visitor last night. We followed the visitor when he left, and we’re working on identifying him. There hasn’t been anything of interest on the phones.”

  “All right. Keep watching and listening. Has he spotted his tail yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Anything in his house?” Robert was briefly thankful that he was a civilian and didn’t have to follow the same tortuous rules and procedures that cops did, though it could have been sticky if his men had been caught breaking and entering. They hadn’t seized any evidence, merely looked for it. Information was power.

  “Clean as a whistle. Too clean. There’s not even a bank statement lying around. We found out that he has a safety deposit box, so he might keep his paperwork in it, but we haven’t been able to get into it yet. I’m working on getting a copy of his bank statement.”

  “Keep me informed,” Robert said, and hung up. In a few days Mercer would start feeling a slight squeeze. He wouldn’t think much of it at first, but soon it would become suffocating. Robert’s plans for Evie, both personal and financial, were moving along nicely, too.

  Chapter Seven

  Robert didn’t intend to see Evie at all that day. He was an expert strategist in the eternal battle between men and women; after his determined pursuit of her, she would be expecting him to either call or come to the marina, and the lack of any contact with him would knock her slightly off balance, further weakening her defenses. He had often thought that seduction was similar to chess, in that the one who could keep the other guessing was the one in control of the game.

  He was in control of the seduction. His instincts in that part of the game were infallible. It might take him a few weeks of gentling, but Evie would end up in his bed. Not long after that, he would have this entire mess cleaned up; Mercer and Evie would be arrested, and he would go back to New York.

  Damn.

  That was the problem, of course. He didn’t want Evie in jail. He had been furious when he had come down here, determined to put both her and her lover away for a very long time. But that was before he had met her, before he had held her and tasted the heady sweetness of her. Before he had seen the underlying sadness in those golden brown eyes, and wondered if he would cause that expression to deepen. The thought made him uneasy.

  Was she even guilty? At first he had been convinced that she was; now, even after such a short acquaintance, he was no longer certain. No criminal was untouched by his deeds. There was always a mark left behind, perhaps in a certain coldness in the eye, a lack of moral concern in certain matters. He hadn’t been able to find any such mark in Evie. He had often thought that those who dealt in espionage, in the betrayal of their own country, were some of the coldest people ever born. They lacked the depth of emotion that others had. That lack of feeling wasn’t evident in Evie; if anything, he would say that she felt far too much.

  She hadn’t hesitated at all in going into the river after Jason. That in itself wasn’t unusual; any number of strangers would have done the same thing, much less a relative. But, knowing that every second counted, she had stayed down far too long herself in the effort to find the boy. He knew as surely as he knew the sun was in the sky that she would not have been able to make it back to the surface without his help…and that she had been willing to die rather than release Jason and save herself. Even now, the memory made his bones turn cold.

  He had gone inside to work at the computer, but now he got up and restlessly walked out onto the deck, where the burning sun could dispel his sudden chill.

  Only a person of deep emotion was capable of that kind of sacrifice.

  He braced his hands on the top r