The Care and Feeding of Unmarried Men (17 page)

E
ve, you're in charge of the chat,” Téa said.

It was morning, and Eve stared out the window of the breakfast room at the Kona Kai. Blue sky, more sunshine, green shrubbery, and clear water. Something flitted through the periphery of her vision, and she turned her head. Butterflies.

You could blame it all on them, couldn't you? She was usually wary of large men, and her look-out-for-#1 life philosophy made her heed her hunches. From the first, she'd been afraid Nash was the snake in her personal paradise. But he was as tricky as the devil, wasn't he, because he'd made himself appear all sweet and safe and manageable by bringing up butterflies. There in that dark bathroom, he'd whispered of them, allaying her anxiety.

Setting her up for a fall.

“Eve.
Eve
.”

She started. “What?”

Téa frowned at her. “Weren't you listening? You're in charge of the chat at the rehearsal dinner next week. I know everything went fine at the bridal shower, but I need you to be on alert at the dinner too. You know, ready to jump in and redirect the conversation or smooth over any awkward pauses.”

Eve closed her eyes. That's exactly what she'd done last night. Jumped into bed with Nash, because she'd wanted to smooth over the awkwardness of their too-personal conversation. And while she'd managed to redirect their energies, she'd failed to follow through with the plan.

I didn't make it clear it was a one-night stand
.

“You can't plan everything, Téa,” Joey said, rolling her eyes. “People are going to have their own agendas…”

Eve stopped listening. Agendas. What was Nash's? She'd wanted to shut him up and scratch an itch, but why had
he
gone to bed with
her
? The Preacher certainly hadn't been thinking romance—he'd made that clear in the massage room—so perhaps she was worrying for nothing. Perhaps he'd been looking for a quick lay and nothing more.

She hated him for that. Of course it would be hypocritical to find fault in the intent, since it was hers as well, but still—

Joey's voice cut into her thoughts. “Eve, tell her to reconsider.”

She blinked. “Reconsider what?”

Now it was Joey who frowned at her. “Haven't you been listening? I think Téa should change her mind about giving herself away on her wedding day.”

Give herself away,
Eve thought
.
That's exactly what it felt like she'd done last night. Given herself away during sex and then not managed to get herself back.

“I think she should have
Nonno
do it,” her younger sister continued.

That recaptured Eve's attention. She sighed. “Oh, Joe—”

“He was not responsible for the groom's father's death, if that's where you're going. Grandpa said he didn't order the killing of Johnny's dad, and I thought we all agreed we believed him.”

The legs of Téa's chair screeched against the tile floor. “I'm going for a refill,” she said and hurried away with her coffee cup in hand.

Eve let out another sigh and narrowed her eyes at Joey. “You've been neglecting your tact exercises again, haven't you?”

“Who do I need to be tactful for? It's just the three of us, and we all know what happened. Johnny's dad was whacked”—she made a slashing motion with her hand—“to curry favor with Cosimo, since the rumor was that he'd killed
our
father. However, it wasn't true. End of story.”

But the story hadn't ended there. Sixteen years later, Johnny had come to town to find out the answers to his father's death, and he'd fallen in love with Téa. Then the two of them had discovered what had happened to both their fathers. Despite the unpleasant truths that had wound their pasts together, Johnny and Téa were determined to have their happy-ever-after future.

Still, it could make for some awkward pauses and uncomfortable conversations amongst the relatives.

Sighing, Eve propped her elbow on the table and her
chin in her hand. “Do you sometimes wonder about other families' lives? What planning a wedding might be like when one-half of the guest list isn't wanted by the FBI?”

“Nobody is wanted by the FBI…well, not half the guest list, anyway,” Joey amended. “But I don't waste my time wondering about stuff like that. We can't choose our family.”

“If I could I would have chosen you, Joe.” The words came from nowhere, even as their older sister returned to the table and sat down. What would have happened to her if Salvatore Caruso hadn't taken responsibility for his paternity and brought Eve home to his wife and other little girls? “I would have chosen you and Téa every time.”

Her sisters exchanged a glance. “Eve?” Téa said. She reached out a hand and covered Eve's cold fingers. “What's going on? What's the matter?”

The matter was that she seemed to have misplaced her customary sangfroid. At unexpected times, and despite her best efforts to keep them down, emotions kept welling up. They would pop free and fill her chest, tighten her throat, sting the backs of her eyes like tears. Maybe even cause her to go to bed with a dangerously wrong man. “Not enough sleep,” she whispered.

Joey shook her head. “Come on, spill. It's got to be more than lack of sleep prompting you to express devotion to Bridezilla, here. Johnny said one more list and he's going to throw her in a plane and take her to Vegas where they'll say yes with only Elvis and Priscilla impersonators as witnesses.”

“Ignore the idiot,” Téa said, “God knows the rest of us do. Except for the part where you spill, Eve.”

And, telling herself not to, she did. “I went to bed with Nash Cargill.”

“Cool,” Joey said, a grin breaking over her face. “He looks competent.”

Téa glared at their younger sister. “What planet do you come from, Joe? If he was competent, would Eve be crying about it?”

“Well, she might, since he didn't stay the whole night. I know, because when I pounded on her door at o'dark-hundred this morning, she answered it wearing that ratty old robe she has and a pillow crease on her cheek. I woke her up, and when I woke her up she was all alone, else she'd have been wearing one of those scratchy-looking sexy numbers she buys.”

Used to buy. Tears stung Eve's eyes again. The man hadn't even stayed the whole night, and she didn't have a single credit card with enough life left in it to buy something with which to entice him back.

She froze. Is that really what this drama was all about? That Nash had walked out on her?

That Nash hadn't waited for her to show him the door first?

There was no denying that she was accustomed to being on a pedestal when it came to men. She called the shots, from the first kiss to the first sex to the last good-bye. That had been her intention last night. From the safe distance of her marble footing, she had planned to bid him good-bye, arrivederci, adieu. With a thank-you, of course. It would have only been polite.

Instead, after the big moment, she hadn't even disengaged! She'd let him turn her in his arms, and then she'd fallen asleep with Nash still half-hard inside of her. When she'd woken to Joey's banging on her door,
he'd been gone and she'd been all alone except for the drool on her pillow.

Maybe because she didn't recall disengaging from his body, she couldn't disengage from the memories of the night before either. Or maybe he'd taken part of her with him when he'd left.

Téa's hand squeezed hers. “Don't look now, but Nash Competent-Or-Not Cargill is on the path outside and approaching the building.”

Oh, God. Eve hastily swiped under her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Of all the times and all the places in the world, why is he
here
?”

Joey glanced over Eve's shoulder, then glanced back at her face. “Uh, because he's staying at the Kona Kai? Because it's morning and the coffee's free?”

“Joe!” Téa scolded. “You're not helping.”

“Don't blame me, okay?” their younger sister said. “I'm in a state of shock. Have you ever seen Eve ruffled? Over a man? I'm thinking it must be chilly in hell today.”

The truth of that had Eve sucking in a calming breath. She disengaged her hand from Téa's and wrapped her fingers around her latte cup instead. “Tell me I look okay.” She kept her voice low and resisted the urge to smooth her hair. “And let me know if it seems like he's coming over.”

“You look like heartbreak as usual, and he's walking in the door,” Joey said. “Now he's spotted you. Now he's heading this way.”

“Oh, great.” Eve felt the back of her neck burn and wondered how she'd managed to swallow the butterflies that had been floating around outside. Was this…this…uncertainty what other women meant
when they talked about the morning after? She didn't know, because she'd never let a man spend the night in her bed. And she'd never let a man in her bed and then out of it without being the first to say good-bye.

The hair rising on her arms, she could feel Nash approaching. “Don't you guys dare leave me,” she said between clenched teeth.

Joey laughed. “Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss this for the world.”

Eve vowed to put Vaseline on her little sister's toilet seat at the very next opportunity.

Then he was there. “Good morning, ladies.” His hand slid up her spine, then underneath her hair, to cup the back of her neck as if he knew it was burning there. And at the touch of his calloused palm on her naked skin it burned even more.

Oh, God
. Images, memories, sensation rushed like goose bumps through her and over her. She was almost grateful for the hold he had on her because she had the distinct, primitive urge to run. But she couldn't let him know he affected her that much. She had to take this opportunity to regain the upper hand.

Pressing her knees and ankles together, she glanced up, hoping she expressed total surprise. “Who?…Oh, it's you. Good morning.”

He looked down at her with his eerie, almost-clear, almost-gray eyes. She thought that if she looked hard enough she might find herself reflected in their silvery mirror and see…what?

A woman who'd been swindled into giving up her place on top.

Worse, somehow, he'd sweet-talked her into giving up some of herself.

He leaned over and kissed her mouth. She tried
pulling away, but his hand was against her nape and there was nowhere to go. His head lifted, and he should have looked silly with her berry-colored lipstick smeared on his masculine mouth, but instead it only reminded her of the night before.

Her lipstick prints on his chest.

His chest. Wide, heavy with muscle, the skin hot against her hands, her mouth, her tongue.

“Damn,” he murmured, and then swooped back in.

Again, it was he who managed to pull back. He laughed as he straightened, rubbing his thumb over his lips. “You taste like coffee,” he said. “And I need some. Don't go anywhere.”

He moved so quickly he probably didn't hear her scoff. “Why would I go anywhere?” she said anyway.
I'm not afraid of you
.

She glanced at Téa and Joey's faces. They were both looking at her with sympathy. Her little sister shook her head in pity. “You are so, so gone.”

And then Eve was. It wasn't a conscious thought. It was her feet pushing against the polished marble floor. Her hands shoving away her cup. Her legs, striding out of the breakfast room in order to find some place where she would be safe. Some place where she could come to grips with having lost part of herself to Nash. Someplace where she could figure out a way to get it back.

J
emima aimlessly followed the maze of paths that led around and between the mini-suites, bungalows, and cottages of the Kona Kai's residential area. Ordering a room service breakfast had been her original plan, but she couldn't stand another minute between the walls that were too close to those of Charlie.

Correction: Mack Chandler.

Her face burned, and she hugged her casted arm tighter against her body. For two days and two nights she hadn't been able to get that image of his face out of her mind. His beautiful face that she'd seen on the covers of a hundred celebrity magazines and tabloids. His rangy body that she'd admired on large screens, small screens, the teeny screen of her portable DVD player. Mack Chandler's irrepressible smile and bright eyes
that softened the knees of a million-plus women, worldwide. But it was the image of his face as he'd stood on her patio that she couldn't erase from her memory, Mack Chandler's face looking down at her with such—what?—pity?

Because Mack Chandler was one and the same with her amusing, ironic, sympathetic, card-shuffling Charlie. What an idiot he must think she was. He'd been playing her while she'd been falling in love with him.

She made an abrupt halt and replayed that last line in her head.

While she'd been falling in love with him
.

No! No. It wasn't true.

This feeling wasn't love. That…knowing, that recognition she'd experienced the first night she'd talked to masked-man Charlie and every time since, was likely just loneliness talking. All by herself in Palm Springs, on her own for the first time in forever, it wasn't surprising that she'd latched onto someone—especially someone as funny, yet rock-solid, as Charlie. She'd wanted to be with him in the dark hours of the night not because this soul-mate-sense was something real but because he'd been the only other person awake nearby.

That had to be it. Because surely it wasn't love.

She would recognize that, wouldn't she? And she didn't find anything familiar about this odd mix of calm and turmoil and security and trembling and happiness and tragedy swirling like a funnel cloud inside of her.

It had to be humiliation or something very like it, since she'd gone ahead and fulfilled her own prophecy. She'd made a fool of herself in front of Mack Chandler.

Now all she could do was regather her pride. Jemima
stared down at her feet, expecting to see the tatters.

But they weren't there, nor was any evidence of how she was to go about the regathering. With a sigh, she squared her shoulders, looked up, and gazed right on the door to Eve Caruso's suite.

Eve! Eve, with all her sophistication and her experience, would know how Jemima could regain her dignity and be able to face Mack Chandler, cool, calm, and collected, once again.

Following her brisk knock on Eve's door, it swung open to reveal the blonde looking half-wary and half-harried. “Oh, it's you,” she said with obvious relief.

“You're expecting someone?”

“Not exactly,” Eve replied, her gaze darting over Jemima's shoulder. “Come on in.”

Jemima frowned, eying Eve's strained expression. “I have a better idea. It looks like we both could use some time away. Do you have a favorite hideout we could disappear to for a few hours?”

The other woman smiled. “Now there's a plan.”

They arrived in the spa's parking lot quickly enough, and Jemima suggested they take Eve's nondescript car instead of her pink SUV. “That way,” she explained, “Nash will think I'm around the premises somewhere and not worry.”

That made Eve hesitate. “Wait a minute. Are you positive you should be leaving the Kona Kai without him?”

“If I tell him, he'll insist on coming with us. Do you want to risk that?”

“God, no.” Eve was already sliding into the driver's seat of her Hyundai.

Jemima made her way to the passenger side, seated
herself, then slammed shut the door. “Despite what I'm sure he's told you, I'm not a child. As a matter of fact, I came to see you about a very adult problem.”

“Oh?” Eve glanced over, her hand stilling on the ignition. “What's that?”

Jemima squirmed on the seat. For her, friends were rare. Not only had her mother hovered at her side for years but Jemima had also gone to studio schools with a minuscule number of pupils; either that, or she'd had special one-on-one tutors. The occasional feeling of connection with another person of a particular cast or crew was only destined to last as long as it took to shoot the movie.

But with time usually so short, Jemima had a knack for quickly assessing the people around her. It was what had given her the confidence to strike up that friendship with Charlie—and look how that had turned out.

But Eve was a woman and Jemima was desperate, to boot. So she inhaled a quick breath. “I need help with a man,” she said, “and I think you're just the one who can give me the best advice.”

Eve blinked. “On men?”

“One in particular.”

Eve was silent as she turned the ignition. The little car coughed to three-packs-a-day life, and then Eve started to reverse. “Well—” Her voice broke off as she slammed on the brakes. “Oh,
hell
.”

At that, one of the back doors opened and Nash wedged his big body into the car. “Just the women I wanted to see.” He was wearing that aw-shucks, shit-eating grin of his, but there was a dangerous glint in his narrowed eyes.

Still, Jemima might have been ticked off by the interruption if Eve hadn't been handling that emotion all by herself. Over her shoulder, she glared at Jemima's brother. “This is a private excursion. Do you
mind
?”

“Nope.” Nash couldn't angle his long legs enough to fit behind either passenger or driver, so he half-reclined along the blue vinyl. “I seem to have this odd hankerin' for a private excursion with you.”

The temperature inside the car soared as Jemima's gaze jumped between the two. Now wasn't this interesting? Her brother, the unmovable force that he always was, butting heads with Eve Caruso, who had her ice-queen act down to a science. Jemima had witnessed her shatter men and their attendant egos with just a dismissive flick of her eyelashes.

It was a skill Jemima envied and one that she'd hoped to acquire from the other woman during their getaway.

Nash looked at Jemima and raised an eyebrow. “You have a problem with a third wheel?”

Suddenly, she didn't. Not that she really expected her self-appointed bodyguard to let her escape with Eve now that he'd caught them, but here was her chance to see an accomplished Woman in action. She shook her head and settled back to watch the show.

Except as they headed out of town on a near-empty stretch of road that led them toward the dun-colored, rubble-strewn hills, the only action inside the car was the flow of the air-conditioning fluttering the ends of Eve's blonde hair. The only sound was the hitch in Eve's breath every time Nash shifted in the backseat.

Jemima finally cracked under the pressure, angling her legs toward the driver's seat. Since she couldn't
bring herself to straight out ask how to cut a man off at his knees, she settled for the next thing she'd been dying to know from Eve. “So, what's it like to grow up in the mob?”

Nash choked. “
Jesus,
Jem—”

Eve held up her hand. “She can ask. I'm not ashamed of it.”

“No?” Jemima waved the fingers of her casted arm. “I mean, not that you
should
be—I certainly don't expect everyone to have the soul of a saint like Nash here does—it's just that—”

“Eve isn't her family,” Nash put in.

“I wouldn't be so sure of that,” Eve murmured. “But the fact is, Jemima, when I was a kid, I didn't know any different. Then, later…well, later you could say it had its uses. It was a convenient way to keep my dates toeing the line, for instance.”

From the backseat came Nash's voice. Soft. “You can't always count on that, darlin'.”

Eve glanced up at the rearview mirror, and her voice mimicked his gentle drawl. “Now I don't have to, Nash. Now I can make men toe the line all by my little bitty lonesome.”

“Careful, now. Because then
lonesome
might be the operative word.” His fingers skimmed her shoulder.

And sophisticated, experienced Eve Caruso jumped at the simple touch. Jemima blinked, wondering at the intense reaction, but Eve whipped a quick left and Jemima couldn't be sure if it had been Nash or almost missing the turn that had caused their driver to jolt.

As the back end of the car fishtailed, Jem braced against the dash and Nash swore. “Are you trying to kill us?”

“It's an idea,” Eve bit out.

This new road was narrower than the one they'd left, and the layer of undisturbed, chalky dust on the pavement ahead made clear it wasn't a well-used route. “This looks like the perfect dumping ground for a badass body,” Jemima told her brother. “If she really has something against you, big bro, I'd be worried if I were you.”

The ensuing silence was thicker than the grime settling on the car. “So much for my chances at hosting
Saturday Night Live,
” Jemima said with a little laugh. “I was joking.”

“I'm sorry,” Nash suddenly said. “I should have left a note or something.”

Jemima turned to look at him, but he was looking at Eve.

“I didn't want a note,” she replied, her unblinking gaze trained out the windshield.

“Then if you'd stayed at the breakfast table with your sisters, I would have explained—”

“I don't want an explanation!”

“Well, hell, woman, what
do
you want?”

Eve's nostrils flared. Jemima could only stare, unsure what was going on but unwilling to miss a second of the surprising drama. If she had to guess, though, this looked like the good part—the part where Eve would cut her big badass brother down to size, just as Jemima longed to do to Mack Chandler.

But instead of a showdown, Eve slowed down. Braked. Jemima looked out the window and realized they'd stopped at the bottom of a steep, winding driveway in the middle of honest-to-God nowhere.

Eve opened her car door. “Jemima wanted a hideaway,” she said. “This is mine.”

They trudged in a single-file line uphill. “I'm surprised your piece of junk vehicle made it this far,”
Nash grumbled. “Smart thinking on deciding against tackling this incline.”

“Where are we going?” Jemima asked. It was summer-hot, and though she was appropriately dressed in shorts and flip-flops, the skin beneath her cast was starting to sweat. The makeup artist on the movie set was going to give her hell if she showed up with a weird tan line.

“A friend's house,” Eve said, sounding as right as rain now, as cool as rain, too, as if she'd never sweated a moment in her life. Her sunflower yellow cotton sundress had yet to wilt. “She's in Toronto at the moment, so I check on it from time to time for her.”

And then, out of the rugged boulders and sandy dirt around them, they saw a turquoise door. A door? Shielding her eyes with her hand, Jemima blinked, and the structure around the doorway became visible. It was a house, made of materials and colors that blended into the environment.

Eve skirted the doorway to a small shaded front terrace. She grabbed two twig armchairs that were tucked in the shadows and drew them forward. “Sit,” she said, then turned to sweep her arm in the direction they'd come, “and take a look at this.”

“This” was an amazing, eye-popping view. Jemima sank onto one of the chairs and tried to take in the desolate expanse of desert spread out in front of them. Perched on a rocky outcropping of a rocky hill, the house was positioned with its back turned on civilization. It had to be around somewhere—Jemima knew they hadn't traveled all that far—but from here they might as well have been a thousand miles from other people, and from the Starbucks and the Jiffy Lubes and the multiplex theaters of the nearby communities.

There was a weird beauty in the barrenness. Without the massive, bright, look-at-me! markers of a big, or even a small, city, at first your gaze discerned nothing, and then…a cactus…the scuttle of a sunning lizard…a rock shaped like the profile of the director of her last movie.

Jemima looked at Nash to gauge his reaction only to realize he hadn't followed Eve's order. He wasn't sitting. He hadn't turned his attention to the vista she'd indicated either. Instead, he remained where he was. And now, his gaze focused on Eve's face, he drifted toward her, joining her as she sat down on the terrace's low wall.

Jemima narrowed her eyes, now way less interested in the scenery than the scene happening right in front of her nose. What the heck was going on between The Preacher and the Party Girl?

Her eyes straight ahead, her elbows propped on her knees, Eve leaned over her legs, her perfect blonde hair half-hanging over her face. Nash caught a few strands with his forefinger and tucked them behind her ear.

“Beautiful,” he murmured.

“I think so,” Eve replied, unaware he was still looking at her face. “It's…comforting.”

For the first time, Nash glanced at the view, then back at Eve's face. He frowned. “Comforting. How?”

Jemima swallowed, now feeling like an eavesdropper instead of an audience. But she didn't want to interrupt the moment. There was something important in the air.

“How is it comforting?” Nash prodded again, looking back out at the desert.

“It reminds me I'm not the only insignificant thing in the world.”

Jemima saw her brother's big body stiffen. Then he turned his head toward Eve slowly, very, very slowly, as if he was afraid of disturbing a butterfly perched on his massive forearm. His voice was husky, yet barely above a whisper. “You…feel insignificant?”