Immediately the agent clambered back into the boat, and Evie relinquished her place behind the wheel. She didn"t want to go anywhere with Robert, however, and looked around for anyone else she knew.
"Get in the boat," he said, his voice steely, and rather than make a fool of herself, she did. There was no way to avoid him, if he was determined to force the issue. If he wanted to discuss private matters, then she would prefer that they were private when he did.
Nothing was said on the ride back to the marina. The black boat moved like oiled silk over the choppy waves, but still every small b.u.mp jolted her head. She closed her eyes, trying to contain the nausea rising in her throat.
As Robert throttled down to enter the marina, he glanced over at her and swore as he took in her closed eyes and pale, strained face. "d.a.m.n it, you are hurt!"
Immediately she opened her eyes and stared resolutely ahead. "It"s just reaction."
Coming down off an adrenaline high could leave a person feeling weak and sick, so he accepted the explanation for now but made a mental note to keep an eye on her for a while.
He idled the boat into his slip, and Evie climbed onto the dock before he could get out and a.s.sist her. True daughter of the river that she was, she automatically tied the lines to the hooks set in the wood, the habits of a lifetime taking precedence over her emotions. The boat secured, she turned without a word and headed toward the office.
Burt was behind the counter when she entered, and a look of intense relief crossed his lined face, followed by surprise and then concern when he saw her condition. It went against his grain to ask personal questions, so the words came reluctantly out of his throat, as if he were forcing them. "Did the boat flip? Are you all right?"
Two questions in a row from Burt? She needed to mark this date on her calendar. "I"m all right, just a little shaken up," she said, wondering how many more times that day she would have to say those words. "The boat"s wrecked, though. Some guys are bringing it in."
Robert opened the door behind her, and Burt"s expression went full cycle, back to relief. "I"ll get back to the shop, then. How long do you reckon it"ll take "em to get the boat here?"
"About an hour," Robert answered for her. "They"ll have to idle in." He went to the soft-drink machine and fed in quarters, then pushed the b.u.t.ton. With a clatter, the bottle rolled down into the slot, and he deftly popped off the top.
"Well, don"t make no difference. I reckon I"ll stay until they get here." Burt left the unnatural surroundings of the office and headed back to where he felt most comfortable, leaving the oily smell of grease behind.
Evie walked behind the counter and sat down, wanting to put something between herself and Robert. It didn"t work, of course; he knew all the moves, all the stratagems. He came behind the counter, too, and propped himself against it with his long legs outstretched and crossed at the ankle.
He held out the c.o.ke. "Drink this. You"re a little shocky and need the sugar."
He was probably right. She shrugged and took the bottle, remembering another time when she"d been fished out of the water, and how he had insisted she drink very sweet coffee. The last thing she wanted to do was faint at his feet, so she tilted the bottle and drank.
He watched until he was satisfied that she was going to follow his orders, then said, "Mercer was manager of my computer programming firm in Huntsville. We"ve been working on programs for the s.p.a.ce station, as well as other things, and the programs are cla.s.sified. They began turning up where they shouldn"t. We figured out that Mercer was the one who was stealing them, but we hadn"t managed to catch him at it, so we didn"t have any proof."
"So that"s what was in the tackle box," she said, startled. "Not dope. Computer disks."
His dark eyebrows rose. "You thought he was a drug dealer?"
"That seemed as plausible as anything. You can"t sneak up on anyone in the middle of the river. He must have been weighting the package and dropping it in a shallow spot between the islands, and the others were picking it up later."
"Exactly. But if you thought he was a drug dealer," he said, his voice going dangerously smooth, "why in h.e.l.l did you follow him today?"
"The federal seizure law," she replied simply. "He was in my boat. I could have lost everything. At the very least, he could have given the marina a bad reputation and driven away business."
And she would do anything to protect the marina, he thought furiously, including sell her house. Of course she hadn"t balked at following a man she suspected of being a drug dealer! She had been armed, but his blood ran cold at the thought of what could have happened. She had been outnumbered three to one. In all honesty, however, she had had the situation under control until the waves from his boat had washed them all together.
"You could have killed yourself, deliberately ramming the boat like that."
"There wasn"t much speed involved," she said. "And my boat was bigger. I was more afraid of the gas tanks exploding, but they"re in the rear, so I figured they"d be okay."
She hadn"t had time to consider all that, he thought; her reaction had been instantaneous and had nearly given him a heart attack. But a lifetime spent around boats had given her the knowledge needed to make such a judgment call. She hadn"t known that reinforcements were almost there, she had simply seen that one of them was about to escape, and she had stopped him. Robert didn"t know if she was courageous or foolhardy or both.
She still hadn"t so much as glanced at him, and he knew he had his work cut out for him. Carefully choosing his words, he said, "I"ve been working with the FBI and some of my own surveillance people to set a trap for Mercer. I soured some deals he had made, put some financial pressure on him, to force him to make a move."
It didn"t take more explanation than that. Watching her face, he saw her sort through the implications and the nuances of what he had just said, and he knew the exact moment when she realized he had also suspected her. A blank shield descended over her features. "Just like you did with me," she murmured. "You thought I was working with him, because he was using my boats, and because I"d been following him, trying to find out what he was doing."
"It didn"t take me long to decide that if you were involved at all, you probably didn"t realize what was going on. But you kept doing suspicious things, just enough that I didn"t dare relax my pressure on you."
"What sort of suspicious things?" she asked, a note of disbelief entering her flat tone.
"Leaving the marina in the middle of the day to follow him. The day before yesterday, when you left the bank, you immediately stopped at a pay phone and made a call that we couldn"t monitor. Yesterday you led the guy following you all over Guntersville, then ditched him by making an abrupt turn across traffic, and we weren"t able to find you again until you came to work."
Evie laughed, but the sound was bitter and disbelieving. "All that! It"s amazing how a suspicious mind can see suspicious actions everywhere. When the mortgage was turned down a second time, I realized there had to be someone behind it, someone who was blocking the loans. I couldn"t lose the marina. The only thing left to do was sell the house, and I knew if I didn"t make the call right then, I"d lose my nerve. So I stopped at the first pay phone I came to and called some people who have tried several times to buy the house, to see if they were still interested. They were so interested that they decided to pay me immediately rather than take a chance that I"d change my mind.
"Yesterday," she said softly, "I was looking for a place to live. But I knew I was just dithering, and that the longer I put it off, the worse it would be. So I made a quick turn, drove to an apartment complex and rented an apartment."
Yes, he thought, watching her colorless face. A quick, sharp pain was better than endless agony. Innocent actions based on desperate decisions.
She shrugged. "I thought you wanted the marina. I couldn"t figure out why. It means a lot to me, but if you were looking for a business investment, there are bigger, more profitable ones around. Instead, you thought I was a traitor, and what better way to keep tabs on me than to start a bogus relationship and push it until we were practically living together?"
This was the tricky part, he thought. "It wasn"t bogus."
"The moon isn"t round, either," she replied, and turned to look out the windows at her kingdom, saved at such cost to herself.
"I wasn"t going to go through with the foreclosure," he said. "It was just a means of pressure. Even if you"d been guilty, I"d already decided to prevent them from prosecuting you."
"How kind of you," she murmured.
He uncrossed his ankles and left the support of the counter, moving until he was directly in front of her. He put his hands on her shoulders, warmly squeezing. "I know you"re hurt and angry, but until Mercer was caught, I didn"t dare ease up on the pressure."
"I understand."
"Do you? Thank G.o.d," he said, closing his eyes in relief.
She shrugged, her shoulders moving under his hands. "National security is more important than hurt feelings. You couldn"t have done anything else."
The flat note was still in her voice. He opened his eyes and saw that he hadn"t cleared all the hurdles. The issue of the house was still between them.
"I"m sorry about your house," he said gently. "I would never have let you sell it if I"d known that was what you were planning." He cupped her cheek with one hand, feeling the warm silkiness of her skin under his fingers. "I can"t get your house back, but I can give you mine. I"m having the deed made over in your name."
She stiffened and jerked her face away from his hand. "No, thank you," she said coldly, standing up and turning to stare out the window, her back to him.
Of course she had jumped to the wrong conclusion, he thought, annoyed with himself that he had brought up the house before settling the other issue. "It isn"t charity," he said in a soothing tone, putting his hand on the nape of her neck and gently rubbing the tense muscles he found there. "It isn"t even much of a gesture, come to that, since it will be staying in the family. Evie, sweetheart, will you marry me? I know you love it here, but we can compromise. I won"t take you completely away from your family. We can use the house for vacations. We"ll come down every summer for a long vacation, and of course we"ll visit several times during the year."
She pulled away from him and turned to face him. If she had been white before, she was deathly pale now. Her golden brown eyes were flat and l.u.s.terless, and with a chill he remembered how Becky had said she"d looked after Matt had died. What he saw in Evie"s eyes was an emotional wasteland, and it froze him to the bone.
"Just like everything else, your compromises are heavily in your favor," she said, a rawness in her voice that made him flinch. "I have a better one than that. Why don"t you stay in New York, and I"ll stay here, and that way we"ll both be a lot happier."
"Evie..." He paused, forced himself to take a deep breath and reached for control. She was wildly off balance, of course, with everything that had happened today. She loved him, and he had hurt her. Somehow he had to convince her to trust him again.
"No!" she said violently. "Don"t try to decide how you"re going to manipulate me into doing what you want. You"re too intelligent for your own good, and too d.a.m.n subtle. Nothing really reaches you, does it?" She spread her hands far apart and gestured. "You"re over here, and everyone else is way over here, and never the twain shall meet. n.o.body and nothing gets close to you. You"re willing to marry me, but nothing would change. You"d still keep yourself closed off, watching from the distance and pulling strings to make all the puppets do what you want. What I had with Matt was real, a relationship with a person instead of a facade! What makes you think I"d settle for what you"re offering?" She stopped, shuddering, and it was a moment before she could speak again. "Go away, Robert."
Chapter Eighteen.
EVIE"S ABSENCE LEFT a great, gaping hole in his life. Robert had never before in his life missed a woman or let one a.s.sume enough importance to him that he was lonely without her, but that was the predicament he found himself in now. After her flat rejection of his marriage proposal, he"d returned to New York the next day and immediately taken up the threads of his business concerns, but the social whirl he had enjoyed before seemed simultaneously too frantic and too boring. He didn"t want to attend the opera or the endless parade of dinner parties; he wanted to sit out on the deck in the warm, fragrant night, listening to the murmur of the river and enjoying the array of stars scattered across the black sky. He wanted to lie naked on the chaise with Evie, motionless, their bodies linked, until their very stillness was unbearably erotic and they both shattered with pleasure.
s.e.x had always been a controlled but extremely important part of his life, but now he found himself unresponsive to the lures cast his way. His s.e.x drive hadn"t abated; it was driving him crazy. But he didn"t want the controlled pleasure he"d known before, his mind staying remote from his body. He hadn"t been remote when he"d made love with Evie, and several times he hadn"t been controlled, either. Having her naked under him, thrusting into her tight, unbelievably hot sheath, and feeling her turn into pure flame in his arms...
The carnal image brought him to full arousal, and he lunged to his feet to prowl restlessly around the apartment, swearing between his teeth with every step. Nothing else made him hard these days, but just the thought of Evie could do it. He wanted her, and her absence was like acid, eating away at his soul.
He still couldn"t decide what had gone wrong. He sensed the answer, but it was an ethereal thing, always floating just beyond his comprehension. His inability to understand the problem was as frustrating, in its own way, as his hunger for Evie. He had always been able to grasp nuances, see clearly to the crux of any problem, with a speed that left others in the dust. Now it was as if his brain had failed him, and the thought infuriated him.
It wasn"t the house. As much as that had hurt her, she had understood his explanation; he had seen that in her eyes. Balanced against national security, her house was nothing, and she had believed him when he"d told her that he"d never intended to go through with the foreclosure. It was a dreadful miscalculation on his part, and though it chafed that he had made such a mistake, Evie had made a move that no one could have antic.i.p.ated. Mortgage the house, yes, but not sell it. He was still stunned by the solution she had chosen.
But she had forgiven him for that, had even forgiven him for suspecting that she might be a traitor.
Why in h.e.l.l, then, had she refused to marry him? The expression in her eyes still haunted him, and he lay awake nights aching with the need to put the glow back into her face. His golden, radiant Evie had looked like...ashes.
She loved him. He knew that as surely as he knew his heart beat in his chest. And still she had turned him down. "Go away, Robert," she"d said, and the finality in her voice had stunned him. So he had gone away, and he felt as if, every day away from her, he died a little more.
Madelyn had called several times, and she was becoming insistent that he come to Montana for a visit. Knowing his sister as he did, he was ruefully aware that he had maybe two more days to get out there before she turned up on his doorstep, holding one toddler by the hand and the other balanced on her hip, a ruthless expression in those lazy gray eyes. She knew him well enough to sense that something was wrong, and she wouldn"t rest until she knew what it was. Her determination had been a fearsome thing when she"d been a child, and it had gotten worse as she"d grown older.
Robert swore in frustration, then made a swift decision. Other than Evie, Madelyn was the most astute woman he knew. Maybe, as a woman, she could put her finger on the reason that was eluding him. He called Madelyn to let her know he was coming.
With the time difference, it was still early the next morning when his plane landed in Billings. The ranch was another hundred and twenty miles, and had its own airstrip, so he had long since developed the habit of renting a small plane and flying the rest of the way, rather than making the long drive. As he banked to align the Cessna with the runway, he saw Madelyn"s four-wheel drive Explorer below; she was leaning against the hood, her long hair lifting in the breeze. The color of her hair was lighter and cooler than Evie"s tawny-blond mane, but still his heart squeezed at the similarity.
He landed the plane and taxied it close to the vehicle. As he cut the engine, he could see the two lively little boys bouncing in the cargo area, and a rueful smile touched his eyes. He had missed the little hooligans. He wanted some of his own.
As he crossed the pavement, Madelyn came to meet him, her lazy stroll fluid and provocative. "Thank G.o.d you"re here," she said. "The imps of Satan have been driving me crazy since I told them you were coming. Did you know that when a one-year-old says Uncle Robert, it sounds remarkably like Ali Baba? I"ve heard it fifteen thousand times in the past hour, so I"m an expert."
"Dear G.o.d," he murmured, looking past her to where the two imps of Satan were shrieking what was undoubtedly their version of his name.
She went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek and he hugged her to him. Something guarded inside him always relaxed when he set foot on the ranch. The sense of nature was much closer here, just as it had been in Alabama.
Madelyn waited until after lunch before broaching the subject he knew had been eating her alive with curiosity. The boys had been put down for their afternoon naps, and he and Reese were sitting at the table, relaxing over coffee. Madelyn came back into the dining room, sat down and said, "All right, what"s wrong?"
He gave her a wry smile. "I knew you couldn"t wait much longer. You"ve always been as curious as a cat."
"Agreed. Talk."
So he did. It felt strange. He couldn"t remember ever needing help before in deciding what to do. He concisely outlined the situation with Mercer, explaining Evie"s suspected involvement and the method he had used to force them into action. He described Evie, unaware of the aching hunger in his eyes as he did so. He told them everything-how Evie had sold her house to stop the foreclosure on the marina, how she had discovered that he was behind it all, and how Mercer had been caught. And how she had turned down his marriage proposal.
He was aware that Madelyn had stiffened during his recital of events, but she was looking down at the table, and he couldn"t read her expression. When he finished, however, she lifted her head, and he was startled to see the molten fury in her eyes.
"Are you that dense?" she shouted, jumping to her feet with a force that overturned her chair. "I don"t blame her for not marrying you! I wouldn"t have, either!" Infuriated, she stomped out of the dining room.
Bemused, Robert turned to stare after her. "I didn"t know she could move that fast," he murmured.
Reese gave a startled shout of laughter. "I know. It took me by surprise the first time I made her lose her temper, too."
Robert turned back to his brother-in-law, a big, tough rancher as tall as himself, with dark hair and hazel-green eyes, coloring that he had pa.s.sed on to his two sons.
"What set her off?"
"Probably the same thing that set her off when I was being that dense, too," Reese explained, amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes.
"Would someone please explain it to me?" Robert asked with strained politeness. On the surface he was still in complete control, but inside he was dying by inches. He didn"t know what to do, and that had never happened to him before. He was at a complete loss.
Reese leaned back in his chair, toying with the handle of his cup. "I almost lost Madelyn once," he said abruptly, looking down. "She probably never told you, but she left me. She didn"t go far, just into town, but it might as well have been a million miles, the way I felt."
"When was this?" Robert asked, his eyes narrowing. He didn"t like knowing that Madelyn had had problems and hadn"t told him about them.
"When she was pregnant with Ty. I tried everything I could think of to convince her to come back, but I was too stupid to give her the one reason that mattered."
Reese was going somewhere with this, Robert realized. He was a private man and not normally this talkative. "Which reason was that?"
Reese lifted his gaze to meet Robert"s, and hazel-green eyes met ice-green ones, both stark with emotion.
"It isn"t easy to give someone else that kind of power over you," Reese said abruptly. "h.e.l.l, it wasn"t easy to even admit it to myself, and you"re twice as bad as I ever was. You"re a tough son of a b.i.t.c.h, more dangerous than you want people to know, so you keep it all under control. You"re used to controlling everything around you, but you can"t control this, can you? You probably don"t even know what it is. I practically had to be hit in the head before I saw the light. You love her, don"t you?"
Robert froze, and his eyes went blank with shock. Love? He"d never even thought the word. He wanted Evie, wanted to marry her, wanted to have children with her. G.o.d, he wanted all of that with a fierce pa.s.sion that threatened to destory him if he didn"t get it. But everything in him rebelled at the thought of being in love. It would mean a terrible helplessness; he wouldn"t be able to hold himself apart from her, to keep uncompromised the basic invulnerability that was at the core of him. He was well aware of his true nature, knew the savage inside. He didn"t want to unleash that kind of raw pa.s.sion, didn"t want anyone to even know it existed.
But Evie knew, anyway, he realized, and felt another shock. She had seen through him right from the beginning. With that maddening intuition of hers, she sometimes went straight into his thoughts. He could shut everyone else out, but he had never been able to shut out Evie, and he had spent the entire time they were together trying to regain control over himself, over the situation, over her. She knew him for what he was, and she loved him, anyway.
He swore, running a shaking hand over his face, blinding truth staring him in the eye. Evie wouldn"t have loved him if that savage intensity hadn"t been there. She had known real love with Matt, and lost it; only something incredibly powerful could take her beyond that. Loving Evangeline couldn"t be a civilized, controlled affair; she would want him heart and soul, nothing held back.
The house hadn"t been the issue. Neither had suspecting her of a crime. He could offer her a hundred houses, all the power his wealth could bring, and none of that would tempt her. What she wanted was the one thing he hadn"t offered: his love.
"It was that simple," Reese said softly. "I told Maddie that I love her. More importantly, I admitted it to myself."
Robert was still stunned, still turned inward. "How do you know?" he murmured.
Reese made a low, harsh sound. "Do you feel as if you can never get enough of her? Do you want to make love to her so much that the ache never quite leaves your gut? Do you want to protect her, carry her around on a satin cushion, give her everything in the world? Are you content just being with her, listening to her, smelling her, touching her hand? Do you feel as if someone"s torn your guts out, you miss her so much? When Maddie left me, it hurt so d.a.m.n bad I could barely function. There was a big empty hole in me, and it ached so much I couldn"t sleep, couldn"t eat. The only thing that could make it better was seeing her. Is that the way it feels?"
Robert"s green eyes were stark. "Like I"m bleeding to death inside."
"Yep, that"s love," Reese said, shaking his head in sympathy.
Robert got to his feet, his lean face setting in lines of determination. "Kiss Madelyn goodbye for me. Tell her I"ll call her."
"You can"t wait for morning?"
"No," Robert said as he took the stairs two at a time. He couldn"t wait another minute. He was on his way to Alabama.