HiddenDepths (9 page)

“That was uncalled for,” she admitted softly. “I’m sorry.”

If he was pacified by her apology, he didn’t show it. “What
is this all about, Andrea? I have a right to know at this point. Am I harboring
a criminal or something?”

“Would that bother you?”

“Depends on the crime,” he said carefully.

“I’ve never been convicted of any crime,” she hedged.
Yet.
She might be one bloody corpse away, though.

“So what is it, then?”

She weighed whether to tell him. For the first time in her
life, she wanted to tell someone. She never had before. Not the expensive
school therapists. Not the few friends she had ever had. Never her mother. The
one time she had even hinted at the truth, her stepfather had beaten her so
badly—

She shut off the thought.

“Out, you!”

For one horrified second, she thought Evan was talking to
her. But he was looking at the doorway to the bedroom, pointing at something
she couldn’t see. She heard a whimper and twisted, trying to make out what he
was looking at.

“Don’t.” He turned back to her, pressing her gently against
the pillows. “You’ll hurt your stitches turning that way.” Glancing over his
shoulder, she heard quick taps against the hardwood floor and saw big brown
eyes and silky golden fur. She didn’t know much about dogs, but if she had to
guess she’d say it was a golden retriever. Evan got up and spoke to the dog,
pointing at the door again. “I mean it. Out.”

She smiled as the dog ignored him with a soulful look and
flopped down on the floor by the side of the bed, tail wagging.

“You have a dog.” She stated the obvious.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

She held a tentative hand out toward the thing and it lunged
up to lick her hand, startling her.

Evan grabbed the dog’s collar as she laughed.

“He doesn’t mean any harm. He’s just a big puppy. But right
now he probably weighs more than you do and I don’t want him to hurt you.”

She petted the dog’s big sleek head. “He won’t hurt me.
Sit,” she said with more authority than she felt and the dog obeyed.
Pleased—she still had a little of the Andrea Prentiss left in her—she asked,
“What’s his name?”

Evan sat back beside her on the bed. “You tell me. I haven’t
gotten around to naming him yet.”

“How long have you had him?”

“About a month.” At her expression, he added, “I know. I
know. I think his feelings are starting to get hurt.”

“At least have you built him a doghouse?” She had been
touched by his long-ago story even if she hadn’t shown it at the time.

“I didn’t have to. I’m an even bigger pushover than my
grandfather ever was. I let him sleep inside from the get-go.”

She shook her head. “But then I showed up and you kicked him
out of the bedroom.”

“You’re more fun,” he quipped, giving her a little thrill of
excitement.

“Not lately.”

He turned away to pet the dog.

“How about Bingo?” she asked.

He hesitated. “Is that a macho enough name? It sounds kind
of lightweight, like an entertainer or something. He’s ostensibly a guard dog.
I don’t want to offend the poor guy’s masculinity.”

“It can be a macho name.”

He nodded. “Okay. Bingo it is, then. Although I guess he
didn’t do a very good job on the guard-dog front since he let a little slip of
a thing like you sneak onshore.”

Well, that was an opening if she had ever heard one. “I’m,
ah, in trouble, Evan. I guess that won’t come as any surprise to you.”

“No.”

“And I, ah, well, I guess you won’t swallow ‘I was in the
neighborhood’, will you?”

He said nothing.

“I don’t want to burden you with this.”

“You already have,” he pointed out.

She smiled slightly. “Yes, I guess I have.”

He didn’t smile back.

“But I can’t tell you what it’s all about, Evan. I’m sorry.
I just can’t.”

He stood up and said coldly, “What do you want, then?”

She had thought herself long past getting her feelings hurt,
but a need for physical softness wasn’t the only thing she craved apparently.
Her eyelids felt heavy and something around the vicinity of her chest throbbed
painfully, but it wasn’t her knife wound. She shook her head, blinking back the
sudden moisture. “Nothing. I’ll go as soon as you say.”

He glanced at the darkened windows, then back at her. “You
won’t have something to eat?”

She closed her eyes as he flicked off the lamp. “No,” she
whispered and felt him slide into bed beside her, tugging her down, into his
arms, spooning against her.

“Then go to sleep,” he added, “You too, Bingo.”

She sighed. He had known what she wanted without her having
to say it.

Evan held the painfully thin Andrea Prentiss in his arms as
her breathing slowed and became even. Despite that he had only been able to
give her a sponge bath while she slept and hadn’t even been able to wash her
hair, just braid it, she smelled clean and fresh snuggled up in his arms, in
his shirt, in his bed. What did she want? Hell, the better and more elusive
question was what did
he
want?

After stitching up her wound last night, he had found sleep
impossible in the guest bedroom, less because of the unfamiliarity of that bed
and more due to his worry for the injured girl in his own bed. He’d finally
settled on dragging a comforter back into his room and settling into an easy
chair, alternating between dozing and watching his unexpected guest sleep, the
dog letting out a plaintive sigh every once in a while from the hallway where
he’d been exiled.

Although Evan was fully awake by dawn the next day, Andrea
was definitely out for some time after. When she stirred enough to take the
glass of whiskey, she went right back to sleep, her body and probably her
spirit as well obviously exhausted.

He had left her long enough to walk around the island, twice
just as he’d told her, his puppy enthusiastically at his side, and there was no
evidence of a boat other than his own. But it could have been dashed against
the rocks, all trace of it swept out to sea again. It probably was, although
that still didn’t explain why she was here, even if it explained how.

He let her sleep through the day and into the night, as she
seemed almost unconscious, so deep was her rest, sponging her off every few
hours. She was quite a bit thinner than six months ago. So much so he wondered
if she really had not had a good meal in a long time. Her ribs, covered only
partially with the bandages, were right up against the skin, her tummy concave
and her breasts not quite as lush as he had last seen, but smaller, though
still high and firm.

Not that he touched them, except with the cloth. The mixed
messages that sent his long-celibate body were what had prompted him to pull a
dress shirt out of his closet and button her into it, though he had no
underwear he could put on her. Even as she snuggled up to him now, wrapping her
arms around his as they clasped her narrow waist, the thought of the no-underwear
thing gave him pangs.

Was why he had been so indignant when she accused him of
wanting sex from her? Because he did? Or because that wasn’t all he wanted. He
sure as hell didn’t know. Her long dark braid teased his nose and he moved his
head slightly.

“Did you braid my hair?” she asked in a sleepy voice,
proving she was not quite asleep.

“Yes. It was getting matted as it dried, the way you were
tossing around in bed.”

“Where did you learn to do that?”

“I had a little sister,” he said vaguely.

Of course he never would have been permitted to touch
Samantha’s hair, Daddy’s little princess having her own lady’s maid in addition
to a governess from the time she could walk—before she started driving both of
them away screaming.

Evan wouldn’t have wanted to brush his little sister’s hair
anyway. What guy would want to brush a girl’s hair? It was a ridiculous
concept, but one that his first girl friend at prep school had harbored. Mary
Lehmann. He still remembered her name. She was at the sister school to his own
elite prep school and they would sneak away whenever they could, him to try to
get in her pants—like all the boys were trying to do with their girlfriends at
that age, and pretty successfully, times being what they were. But he had the
bad luck to choose a romantic for a girlfriend. Pretty little Mary Lehmann
wanted him to take her on picnics—which was okay as far as he was concerned
since he was as romantic as the next guy and if he could score in a deserted
meadow, fine with him—but once there, she somehow managed to get him to do any
number of ridiculous things such as reciting poetry, singing love songs and,
yes, brushing her hair. He went along, since at that age he would have tap-danced
for a girl if it meant getting laid, but had always thought the whole thing
pretty ridiculous. Last he had heard, Mary Lehmann had become a poetry
professor specializing in Shelley and Byron. Big surprise. When he had finally
gotten into her pants, he found she was a pretty uninspired lay anyway and he
quickly moved on, pig that he was.

But she had given him one useful skill he hadn’t known he
would need until Miss Andrea Prentiss was passed out in his bed. Braiding hair.
And he had found it surprisingly intimate, pleasurable.

Once he had Andrea in the shirt, he had taken his brush and
tugged slowly and carefully through the long, drying hair for quite some time
before he pulled it back into a braid, the dog watching him, head cocked at an
angle.

“Yeah, I know,” Evan had said to him softly as he tied the
end with a strip of cloth. “Next thing I know I’ll be having to brush you. Or
tap-dancing,” he added with a mutter.

But now that he and Andrea were in bed together for the
first time, he wished he had unbraided her hair as well. Something about having
her here was so right. With her dark brown hair falling down her back and
gleaming in the firelight, his shirt in place of a proper white cotton
nightgown, she could be the lighthouse keeper’s wife in some long-forgotten
time. Except he was the lighthouse keeper now. And he was never getting
married. His mother’s broken heart and his father’s relentless quest to replace
his long-dead first wife had convinced Evan of that.

Still, he would love to feel her long hair all around him,
above him as she rode his cock.

He involuntarily jerked at the thought, his whole body, not
just his cock and felt her startle.

“I’m sorry. Go to sleep. I’m going back to the guest room. I
don’t want to hurt your stitches.” Or prove to be the mercenary she’d accused
him of being. “I’ll bring the—er, Bingo, with me.”

But she grabbed his arms and brought them tighter against
her waist, below the bandage. “No. you’re not hurting me. Stay with me.”

Hearing that from this woman, who had so coldly pushed him
away the last time he had seen her, was incredibly satisfying.

And who was he to refuse? For the first time in a long time,
since well before she had gotten here, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Hours later, his cock woke him up, jamming determinedly
through his sweats against her silky bottom, bared by the shirt that in her
sleep had hiked up. He froze, but she seemed to be asleep. Tempted to groan in
frustration, he settled for extricating himself from the same spooning position
they apparently were in all night and getting up. It was dawn anyway—his usual
time to rise on the island, although he’d never had a gorgeous woman here to
stay in bed with. Standing by the window, hands on hips, he tried to calm the
damn erection down—comical as it almost was sticking straight out like that—by
looking out at the view. The morning air was grayish mist and the rest of the
tableau just the darker blue of the ocean waves beyond. Like every morning, it
was beautiful and humbling and mesmerizing.

He glanced down. His cock was not appeased. He better just
hit to the shower and jerk off to the view in his mind’s eye if not in the corner
of it if he turned just a bit. Andrea all bottomless and sleepy, ready for him
to slip between her legs.

“Oh.”

He turned automatically and Andrea was sitting up slowly,
staring right at his erection. He wished he had a folder or a tea tray or
something in a thousand other comedies the protagonist would use to shield his
enthusiasm. But with nothing, there was no use trying to pretend it wasn’t
there. Better to try to minimize it, if not physically, at least conceptually.

He pointed to his cock, as if he was in one of those
comedies. “No big deal. Happens every morning.” Especially if there was a bare
female ass snuggled up to it. “Don’t worry about it.”

Her hand went to her hair, pulling back the strands that had
come loose in the night, and she looked away. “I’m not worried.”

She did get out of bed, though, the sight of her long bare
legs not helping much. “Where did Bingo go?”

He concentrated on the mist outside the window in an effort
to forget the no-panties thing as she came to stand next to him. He shrugged.
“The dog has the run of the place. He’s probably up in the lighthouse room.”

“You’re all alone on the island?”

He glanced at her, surprised that she hadn’t known that
since she had apparently chosen it as her sanctuary from whatever she was running
from. “Yes. It was uninhabited before I bought it.”

“You don’t get spooked all alone here so far from another
living being?”

“No, I’ve never been spooked.” Except when she showed up at
his sliding-glass door, of course. He had never been lonely either, not until
lately, that is. “Why? Are you afraid of ghosts?”

“Not afraid of them so much as cognizant of them, I guess.”

He snorted, but declined further comment. “How do you feel?”

She put her hand to the spot in the shirt where the wound
was, gauging. “It’s going to be sensitive for a while, but I’m okay. I’ve had
worse.”

“Worse than taking a knife in the ribs?”

He saw immediately that she regretted letting that slip. So
he changed the subject. “You must be starving. Let me get you something to
eat.”

That seemed to relax her, although she said, “I’m not
hungry.”

“Come on. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re skin and bones.”

“Kitten? Work? Skin and bones? I’m sure you’re certainly
pleased I showed up here.”

She sounded so much like the old Miss Prentiss he was cheered.
“Actually, I kind of am, Andrea. Now come on, I’m sure I have some sweats you
can put on and roll up. Take your pick while I cook us some breakfast.”

* * * * *

She was a little slow at eating, but after some concerted
effort, she got one entire pancake, dripping in syrup, down before she pushed
the plate away. He, in the meantime, managed to eat two stacks.

“Very good,” she said as he leaned back to watch her.

“So if you can’t tell me the whole story, can you at least
tell me where you’ve been?”

Her lashes dipped down. “I guess that couldn’t hurt. I won’t
be going back there after all.” She looked up. “I was in a little town in
Maine. Not far from where you dock when you go inland, as a matter of fact.”

“In my own backyard, eh? That’s a coincidence.”

She said nothing.

“Who stabbed you?”

When she didn’t respond, he prompted, “How about do you
think whoever it was followed you?”

“No,” she said immediately.

Okay. That was definitive, which kind of gave him the
willies.

“Are you related to Angelica Stavros somehow?” He had kept
the name in the back of his mind, certain it couldn’t be a coincidence.

“In some ways, you’re just a more annoying version of your
brother.”

He laughed. “Michael and I are nothing alike.”

“How about I promise to tell you as much as I can before I
leave? How’s that?”

“You’re in trouble and I could help you.”

“You are helping me. By bandaging me up. By letting me stay
here until I’m up on my feet again.”

He played with the salt shaker. “I usually don’t trade on
the Reynolds name, or the Evans name for that matter, but both families could
be pretty powerful allies if you’d let them.”

“The only ally I need right now is in the room with me.”

He nodded, unreasonably pleased that she needed
him
and not just what he stood for. “If you say so.”

* * * * *

Francesca Stavros watched her husband descend into one of
his inevitable rages. An expensive vase was always the first thing to go. The
Baccarat crystal shattered into a million diamond-like shards against the silk
wallpaper. The leg of the Hepplewhite table she’d just purchased was the next
casualty as he kicked it with a force he usually reserved for human beings but
had to make do with on inanimate objects when necessary. But that could be
repaired. He made his way with his solid-gold letter opener toward the painting
above the fireplace and she cautioned softly, “Your mother won’t be pleased,
Fredrico.”

He glanced at her with the loathing that always warmed her
heart, but left the portrait of his mother alone. Fredrico Stavros hurt things he
claimed to love, but anything he hated was not worth his effort.

She stood up and smoothed her evening skirt, absently noting
the six carats on her ring finger. She really should get something bigger since
that bitch Gloria Almeida had a gaudy ten carats on practically every one of
her fat fingers. “So shall we be going to the opera or are you not finished
here?”

Glaring at her, Freddie sputtered, “I don’t see why you’re
not more upset, Frannie. You know what this means.
Athena
,” he gasped.

Athena Stavros had always spelled trouble. Freddie’s
beautiful, brown-haired, willowy little niece had been fifteen years old when
her mother Angelica married the fabulously rich and aristocratic Fredrico
Stavros, who in satisfyingly Greek tragedy fashion was her dead husband’s
brother. So smart she had breezed through every advanced course her exclusive
private school had to offer, Athena had also benefitted from the early
education that only a diplomat’s daughter can get, having traveled with her
parents to countries all over Europe and Asia before her father died in a plane
crash. Angelica and her husband, an attaché, had been so awfully proud of their
daughter’s early and seemingly effortless grasp of languages. But the girl was
like that in a lot of things, numbers as well, as Francesca learned when she
became stepmother to the girl after marrying Freddie a scant few months after
Angelica’s death.

Frannie, in love with the older man and his mistress already
for a number of years, had never asked about that death, just as she had never
asked about so many things in those early days.