Arms of Promise (13 page)

“She’ll love that.” Anna set a gentle hand on his knee. “I mean it. Your work is special. You should take your portfolio to a gallery. They’d carry it in a heartbeat. I’m sure of it.”

“Doubt that.”

“You didn’t used to.”

She’d just experienced a traumatic situation, and yet the only concern she showed was for him. She had no idea what the ache in her voice did to him.

He picked at the corners of the first aid kit and cleared his throat. “We should get you cleaned up.”

Anna followed him into the kitchen without saying anything.

At the table, he dragged a chair in front of hers and tended to her cut. Anger at Painter boiled each time she winced at Evan’s touch. That lowlife better hope Evan kept his cool when he found him. As if Michelli’s men weren’t enough to deal with. Anna shouldn’t have to worry about dodging Painter, too.

Anna peered back to the living room. Her brow creased with whatever she was thinking.

Evan lowered the warm washcloth, now coated in crusted blood. “What?”

“I’m just trying to make sense of it . . .” She turned her green eyes on him, equal parts soft and piercing. “I mean, when I think about it, it’s obvious you’d make a great soldier, but why didn’t you pursue photography?”

Was she serious? “Carrying a camera around as a kid didn’t make me a photographer. It never amounted to anything.”

“Don’t you dare discount your talent as some worthless hobby.” She squeezed his arm and let go. “You have what it takes.”

“To be a starving artist the rest of my life?”

She winced again. This time, from his words.

“That didn’t come out right. You’re talented enough to succeed in that field. I’m not.”

She squared her shoulders. “That’s your dad talking.”

He grunted. “The old man was bound to get at least one thing right.”

“How can you say that?” Visible heartache streaked her face. “What happened to our plans?”

Her voice cracked on the last question, right along with Evan’s insides. He set the rag aside and squeezed some antiseptic cream onto his fingertip. “They were a kid’s daydreams. An escape from things I couldn’t change back then. Thinking it’d ever be more only breeds disappointment.”

“Art isn’t a disappointment, Evan. And neither are you. The only thing that’s disappointing is seeing you believe that.”

Conviction and belief brimmed in her eyes until he couldn’t take it. Why did she have to stir things better left forgotten?

He straightened the chain to his dog tags along the back of his neck. “Wishing for that life wasn’t going to keep me from ending up like my dad.”

“You could never be like him.”

“Not a drunk, maybe, but still a deadbeat mechanic with no future.” He released a hard breath. “C’mon, Bells. I would’ve stayed the town joke.”

A flare of indignation stormed the sadness in her eyes. “You’re the only one who ever saw yourself like that.”

“More like you were the only one who didn’t.” He scooted forward and dabbed the ointment on her cut. “You were my best friend. I think you might’ve been a little biased.”

Her heart-wrenching stare didn’t waver. “No. I just saw what you couldn’t.” She brushed a cool hand to his cheek. “Still do.”

Heat spread through him. The green in her sweater brought out depths in her eyes he couldn’t tear himself away from.

She grazed her thumb across the bruise on his lip. “We make quite a pair, don’t we?”

Her hand drifted from his cheek and trailed the length of the dog tags tucked under his tuxedo shirt. His body quaked against the failing war inside him. Her touch, her voice, her belief in him.

He didn’t deserve her affection. And whatever she thought she felt for him would change if she knew why. But when her lips parted just enough to draw his eyes to her mouth, he couldn’t mask what he felt, what he wanted. Not when he was this close to her.

Evan’s pulse echoed the one beating through her palm against his chest. Adrenaline teemed across his muscles, every part of him hyperaware of her. She swept her lashes toward him and broke the last barrier holding him suspended.

An abrupt ring blared from his cell on the table. They both flinched. Finding his voice again, he grabbed the phone and swiped the screen. “O’Riley.”

“Evan, it’s Kate. I stepped out for two minutes to use the ladies’ room, and when I came back, your date was leaving with some dude. They headed toward a blue Lexus. Both looked pretty wasted.”

Evan craned his neck to the ceiling to keep the string of words neither she nor Anna needed to hear from coming out. “Thanks for letting me know.” What else could he say?

Anna sat back when he hung up. “What’s wrong?”

“We have to take a ride.” He handed her the wrapped-up bag of ice. “Keep this on your lip. It’ll stop the swelling.” He jogged into the bedroom, checked the mag on his Sig, and wedged it into the holster at his back. After the night he’d been having, all he needed was one more excuse to use it.

Chapter Thirteen

Boundaries

Evan pulled into the gala hotel’s lot. If Marissa was with one of the guys she’d been leading on all night, they probably hadn’t left their parking space yet.

He choked back an image he didn’t want to think about and braced himself for her impending wrath. The rain might’ve stopped, but he was about to unleash a whole other storm by interrupting.

Marissa didn’t need a babysitter. But they’d traveled here together, and while she was on his watch, he’d look out for her.

Anna turned from the window and lowered her ice compress.

Evan raised it back up to her mouth. “Keep pressure on it for another ten minutes.” He unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” She didn’t need to see this confrontation.

This late, the parking lot had thinned out to only a few dozen cars. He approached the only blue Lexus. Tinted windows. Figured. He banged on the passenger window in the back and opened the door. “Marissa, let’s go.”

Two pairs of feet stretched out from the seat. Evan’s lip curled. Getting close to a lead on a story was one way of putting it.

The guy fell onto the floorboard and hustled to button his shirt while Marissa’s biting glare skewered Evan from the backseat.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Sparing you from regretting a bad hangover more than you already will. You’re loaded. You need to go home.”

She shimmied out of the car and resituated her dress. “I don’t
need
to do anything. I’m a grown woman. I’ll do what I like.”

Jaw twitching, Evan pointed at the loser still crouched on the floorboard. “I’m not leaving you here with some guy who’s too plastered to know he shouldn’t get behind the wheel.”

“Just because you have a soldier complex doesn’t mean everyone else needs you to protect them.”

The anger he’d anticipated sank straight to his gut. He swallowed the sting. “You’re a lousy drunk, Marissa. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“And you’re a lousy . . . boyfriend,” she sputtered, as though unable to come up with a better insult. Her cutting gaze skimmed past him. “You certainly didn’t waste any time moving on.”

Anna shrank behind another car when he turned. Why did he ever bother telling her to stay put?

He prodded Marissa forward.

She dragged her heels. “What are you doing?”

“Hailing you a cab.” At the curb, Evan whistled through his fingers, and a taxi whipped out of traffic. Sometimes, he loved Chicago. He paid the driver. “The Hilton on South Michigan. No matter what she says.”

The street’s Christmas lights shimmered over Marissa’s irate expression from the backseat.

Without wasting another word, Evan closed her door and tapped the cab’s trunk. A gust of exhaust clouded him as the taxi merged back into the fast-paced traffic.

Evan turned to apologize to Anna, but she must’ve gone back to the car. Hard to blame her. She’d probably heard enough. He certainly had.

Still fuming, he sank into the driver’s seat but couldn’t bring himself to face her yet. Instead, he zipped the car out of the lot and punched the gas.

Speed. Pavement. Space. He drove until the road absorbed the hurt and frustration of what he didn’t want to admit. Marissa was right about him.

After stopping by the precinct for Anna to give her statement about the attack, Evan slowed the car on a side street leading to her neighborhood. His blood pressure had leveled out over the last two hours, but the embarrassment of what’d gone down with Marissa hadn’t waned.

“Anna, about earlier . . . I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“Which part?” She set her icepack in the cup holder. “Marissa being a real you-know-what or you being an honorable guy?”

“I don’t think that’s what she’d call it.”

“She will. Eventually.”

He eased into a parking spot beside Anna’s building. “Glad you’re confident of that.”

“I may not know her, but I know you.” She unbuckled her belt. “Your intentions are upright, Evan. They always are. Marissa will realize that after she has time to accept it.”

He cut the ignition and rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s that friendship bias kicking in again.”

Her chin drooped slightly as she mumbled something he couldn’t hear.

He pulled the keys from the ignition. “Marissa wasn’t like this when I first met her.”

“You don’t owe me an explanation.”

After what she just saw? “Yeah. I do.” Fidgeting with the keys, Evan stared out the windshield. “She lost her job. Layoff. She’s too proud to tell me, but the signs were hard to miss. That’s why she asked to come on this trip. Hoping she’d sniff out a story or some kind of lead to a new job. And apparently, she’ll do whatever . . . or whoever,” he muttered below his breath, “to catch a break.” He scoffed. “Nothing like a little pressure to show you who someone is underneath it all.”

Anna set her fingers over his sleeve. “Which is exactly what she saw, too. The real side of both of you. That’s why she said those things.” She waited for him to look up. “Because she knows she doesn’t deserve you.”

The compassion in Anna’s eyes took over the inside of the Accord until he felt nothing else.

She blinked and reached for the icepack and the door handle. “And it has nothing to do with bias.”

It took him a minute to move. He got out, skirted around the bumper, and jogged up to the building with her.

A draft snuck into the stairwell and fluttered a piece of paper taped to her apartment door.

He stopped her on the top step and approached it first. A handwritten note in black magic marker read,
Rent’s due in 8 days. Clock’s ticking
. Evan yanked it off. What a world class—

“It’s okay.” Anna unfolded his hand and took it from him. “Mr. Reyes is just doing his job.”

“That doesn’t mean he has to be a jerk about it.”

She shrugged like she was the problem instead of him. Even if her landlord had the right to press, she didn’t need that reminder on top of everything else she’d faced today.

In front of the welcome mat, Anna toyed with her key ring. A look of fatigue joined the exhaustion already plaguing her movement. And when she lifted her gaze from the tiles, a trace of her earlier fear escaped her tired eyes. “Would you mind checking out the apartment before you go?”

He hid a smile. As if he’d leave without making sure she was safe first.

Evan withdrew his Sig and motioned her behind him after she unlocked the deadbolt. Once he cleared the initial area, she followed and locked up while he checked the remaining rooms.

“All clear,” he said on his way back down the hall.

“You been carrying that thing around this whole time?” She flicked a glance at his gun.

No way to hide it now. He nodded.

Looking away, Anna dropped the icepack on the end table. “Any word from Harris?”

Evan swiped his cell screen. “Not yet.”

She hung up her coat and ran her hands over her arms. She had every right to still be scared.

Knowing her, she was probably fighting the urge to ask him to stay. One of these days, he’d convince her needing help wasn’t a sign of weakness.

Evan motioned to the outdated, undersized TV in the living room. “Mind if I stay and watch the game replay for a while? Your TV is way better than the one in my hotel.” He took off his tux jacket and reclined on the couch, straining to keep a straight face.

Anna tossed a throw pillow at him. “Dork.” She strode down the hall, shaking her head.

Bailey lunged onto the cushion and pawed over his lap. Purring louder than a Humvee, she nestled into the cramped space between the armrest and his legs. Evan rubbed a finger to her cheek. She pushed against his hand and curled her whole body into him until her legs ended up in the air.

“Make yourself comfortable.” He ruffled her gray and white speckled belly. “You just stay right there and keep me warm, ‘kay?”

She answered with a purring rumble. Worked for him.

A few minutes later, Anna returned in a long-sleeved T-shirt, camo-patterned flannel pajama pants, and glasses that shouldn’t look anywhere near as attractive as they did on her.

He tried to play it off. “Nice outfit.”

“Hey, consider it a compliment. I don’t let just anyone see me like this.”

Only someone she considered a brother. An inward grimace twisted inside.

Anna shuffled into the kitchen while whirling her hair into a messy half ponytail. “Hot chocolate?”

“You read my mind.” He flipped on the TV at the same time she snapped on the burner under the teakettle.

The sound of the front door opening drew his gaze. “What are you doing?”

She held the door open with her back and waved a food container at him. “I’m taking Mrs. Santos’s dish back to her.”

He splayed his hands to his sides. “You were just attacked, and you’re worried about returning a dish to a neighbor.”

She made a face like it was a perfectly normal response. “I want to check on her. It’ll just take a minute.” Halfway over the threshold, she stopped and peered back at him. “Stay put,” she said with the same tone he usually used on her.

The door shuddered into its metal frame and set off his already-live nerve endings. Images passed on the TV, but he might as well have been staring at a blank wall. He lifted off the cushion to straighten out his wrinkled dress pants and sat back down.

Bailey twitched awake and glared at him for disturbing her.

Evan flung his palms up. “Sorry.” He shifted again, gingerly this time. If Anna didn’t return in thirty more seconds, staying put would no longer be an option.

Right as he started to get up, she breezed back in with the container still in hand. “No answer.”

Evan sank into the back of the couch and pretended to be engrossed in the game. She’d have a fit if she thought he couldn’t handle letting her out the door by herself.

After a few commercials, a mint chocolate aroma billowed into the living room and relaxed him even more.

Anna shuffled across the carpet with two mugs and a bag of popcorn tucked under her arm. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to change.”

He followed her stare to his dirty white tux shirt and gave a small shrug. “I’m used to uniforms. It’s not much different.” He pulled his flattened bow tie off and undid the top button.

She handed him one mug and steadied the other as she sank onto the cushion. Bailey crossed over Evan’s legs and snuggled into a ball on Anna’s lap instead.
Little traitor
.

With the empty space now cooling his leg, he sipped the hot chocolate Anna made perfectly every single time. “I didn’t hear you making popcorn.”

“That’s ‘cause I made it three days ago.” She pulled open the bag. “It’s best when it’s stale.”

Brow cocked, he tipped his head at her.

“I’m serious.” She tossed a handful into her mouth and formed a contented smile. “Stale snacks are my favorite.”

“You need help.”

“Whatever.” She flicked a piece at his face. “It’s better than those nasty peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches you used to make.”

He laughed. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”

“I’ll pass. Thanks.”

Anna jutted her mug at the screen when the game came back on. “Ooh, perfect,” she mocked. “I’ll be asleep in no time.”

He extended an arm toward the TV. “You kidding me? It’s the Bears.”

She raised a nonchalant shoulder, visibly fighting a grin.

“And you say
I’m
not a true Chicagoan.” He set the remote down.

Exaggerating a yawn, she curled her feet onto the couch. “If I had a VHS player, we could watch my old
Pretty In Pink
video instead.”

A sip of hot chocolate almost came back out. He held the mug away. “You trying to run me out?”

Still smiling, she leaned into his side. “Never.”

Evan drank in the feel of her body cozied up to his. Who needed the cat? Anna warmed every inch of him. She may have thought he’d only stayed because she needed him. But truth was, he needed her more. No matter how much in life spun off its axel, she was his anchor. Calming, reassuring. Right here was the only place he wanted to be. Ever.