Under the Surface (23 page)

She waited for him to join the chorus of people suggesting she die a slow death in a gray-walled cubicle. Matt finished his mouthful of mashed potatoes, then said, “While there are a variety of security measures Eve could implement at Eye Candy, I believe Murphy singled her out because of their past history, not because she owns a nightclub. Any number of small businesses would have worked as a front. Ultimately, it's not my place to speak for her.”

Caleb's gaze sharpened. Her mother covered her astonishment by guiding the conversation to mutual acquaintances, local politics, and the road construction snarling traffic into downtown. Promptly at six, her mother laid her napkin on her plate and got to her feet. “Excuse me,” she said to Matt. “I'm one of the few people left in the world who gets her local news from the evening news broadcast.”

“Pastor Webber, can I have a moment?” Matt asked.

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

In the kitchen Eve scraped the remnants of dinner into the garbage as water ran into the sink to wash the crystal, which was too delicate for the dishwasher. Caleb brought the last of the dishes from the dining room and leaned against the counter, his wineglass in one hand. “You've got a mark on your neck,” he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of his collarbone with his empty hand.

“The hell I do,” Eve said matter-of-factly as she slid the leftover lentil casserole into the fridge.

“Evangeline!”

“Sorry, Mom,” she called. The door to the den closed. Eve gave a resigned sigh. That had gone about as well as she'd expected. She wondered what Matt wanted with her father.

“Good to know,” Caleb said with obvious relief.

“He's too skilled for that.” Ruthlessly controlled, in fact, a master of the very fine line between not hard enough and too hard. She'd felt the edge of his teeth against her shoulder, her thigh, the power of his grip on her hip or her wrist, giving her resistance to arch and writhe against, making her nerves sing in anticipation and need, but not enough to leave a single mark.

She was rewarded for her noncommittal manner with Caleb choking on his wine. “I didn't need to know that,” he muttered.

“Then mind your own business.”

With a lift of his glass he acknowledged a point scored, but switched tactics in a lowered voice. “Jesus, Eve. You're sleeping with him?”

“Five seconds later and still none of your business, Caleb,” she shot back.

“It
is
my business. You're my sister. And if you're being pressured in any way, then we call this off and the police department can figure out another way to get to Lyle. Are you okay working with him like this?”

“Trust me, I'm not being pressured.” She thought about it for a moment. “We are so close, Caleb. So close to making the East Side redevelopment efforts a reality. Yes, I want that for Eye Candy, but I want it for the East Side too. If we don't stop Lyle now, the city council will pull backing again and give Mobile Media space for their location somewhere else. And if having him around for a few weeks will make that happen, then I'll deal with it.”

“It's not the having him around I'm worried about. It's the consequences of living in close quarters in a difficult situation with someone you're clearly, although inexplicably, attracted to.”

“It's no big deal, Caleb.” It wasn't. It was purely physical. No emotions involved, just intense, visceral, feral desire sweeping through her body and shutting down her brain. She kind of liked him. Given the way they'd begun, kind of liking him wasn't a bad place to be.

“Eve,” Caleb said, in his serious voice. “This is a violation of about fifteen different statutes on police conduct.”

“Caleb,” she replied, in her serious voice. “I know when I'm being used. And it's still none of your business.”

He swallowed the rest of the red and set the glass on the counter, then picked up a tea towel. “Remember Steve Hollister?”

She handed him a dripping plate and said, “From the Christmas party? Vaguely. Why?”

“He's a mediator who specializes in troubled families in the court system for one reason or another. Never married. No kids. Volunteers with Habitat for Humanity when he's not working. I guarantee he won't treat you like a piece of ass, and anyone who drives a ten-year-old Honda Accord doesn't give a damn about whether your outfit matches his car.”

No horrified shouts from the dining room. Mom must be out of earshot, she mused as she finished washing the crystal. “As much as you'd like to pretend we didn't have a cop sitting at the dinner table, he was there and he's not going anywhere. I can't possibly date right now.”

“You never know. He might be into ménage.”

“Caleb!” she yelped with a glance at the door.

“Evangeline,” he said, his face completely serious as he dried the last glass, “medals aside, you don't know jack shit about this guy. Even if you did, this isn't real life.”

It was hard to remember, given the immediacy, the sheer intensity of “now.” “Now” meant she and Matt would go back to his house, and go back to bed, perhaps even to sleep for a while before returning to Eye Candy tomorrow. “Yes, I remember Steve Hollister,” she conceded.
Barely.
“I'll think about it when this is over. I promise.”

She collected Matt from the front room and kissed her parents as they moved through the front door.

Neither one of them said anything until they were back in the Jeep. “So …
not your first time at that rodeo
?” she asked as she jammed the buckle into her seat-belt clasp.

“It's what happens when you join the Army after nine eleven,” he said, his voice tight as he shifted into first and accelerated down the street. “You're assigned to an infantry division in a war zone. People shoot at you and you shoot back. It happens less frequently as a cop, but it does happen.”

Are you freaking kidding me?
“Are those your medals hanging at the end of the hall?”

“My dad's,” he said abruptly.

“Where are yours? The Bronze Star? You have dog tags hanging from your mirror.”

“Framing medals wasn't high on my list of priorities when I got home.” He consciously relaxed his grip on the wheel. “Your name's Evangeline? Your records all say Eve Marie Webber.”

The topic switch and the white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel told her to go with the flow. “It's vaguely creepy that you've seen my records, Matt.” His face didn't change, so she dialed down the sass. “They wanted to name me Evangeline, but I was three weeks early and Dad was away at his annual retreat. Mom was completely out of it when the nurse asked for my name, and Mom gave her the nickname. I'm Eve to everyone except my family, and then I'm Evangeline only when I'm screwing up.”

“Or swearing.”

She looked at him, dread in her heart. “How much of that conversation did you hear?” she asked.

“No ménage,” he clarified.

She sank down in the seat, embarrassment heating her cheeks. “I'm going to kill him,” she said.

“Unless the next time you get pissed at me, you decide that's how you want to work out your anger.”

Her jaw dropped. “You're kidding, right?”

“Yes,” he said. “No ménage.”

Thank God.

“Caleb's hiding an honest-to-God big brother under that swagger,” he said.

“Takes one to know one?” She sighed. “Sometimes he's such a jerk I forget he really cares.”

Matt downshifted and coasted to a stop at a light. “What drives him? They teach argumentation in law school, but he takes combative to a whole new level.”

She thought about how to answer that question for a long time before saying, “He made a mistake. Lives were ruined forever. He puts on a front because the world sees gold and Caleb knows better.”

He nodded, as if that made perfect sense to him. Maybe it did. “What do you see?”

“My brother,” she said simply. “He used to strap my Barbie dolls to bottle rockets, and light them while I screamed. He taught me to shoot free throws well enough that I won the school competition my senior year.” She laughed. “Classic Caleb story. My sophomore year I wasn't allowed to date, but Nate Marshall asked me out. He was a senior starting wide receiver on the football team, teen idol movie star gorgeous, and he knew it. I was all angles, no curves, and he asked me out. So I snuck out to meet him. Nate drove me out to the reservoir north of town and said he wouldn't take me home until I—red light! Red light!”

The Jeep jerked to a halt halfway through the crosswalk, the seatbelt locking with the force of the stop. Matt cursed, shoved the gearshift into reverse, and backed up a few feet.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” he ground out. “What happened?”

“I told him to go to hell and fuck himself when he got there. Then I got out of the car and started walking, and he took off, spraying me with dust and gravel from his nifty Camaro as he drove away. Caleb got wind of the whole thing, and found me a mile from home, walking along the highway. He got me inside without Mom and Dad finding out, and the next day, after school, he went after Nate. I didn't see it, you understand, so I'm just repeating what I heard, but apparently the entire offensive line was clustered around Nate's Camaro when Caleb waded through them, twisted Nate's arm up behind his back, grabbed his hair, and slammed his pretty face into the trunk of the car.”

“I would have done the same thing.”

“Two broken teeth, a broken nose, split lip, and Caleb hadn't hit him yet. Caleb took him apart. I was minding my own business, sitting on the front steps of the school with most of the drill squad, wondering where the hell Caleb was because he was my ride home, when Caleb shoved Nate in front of me and told him to impress us both with his eloquent apology.”

Another one of those deep, unwilling laughs. “You have to respect his style.”

“The school tried to suspend Caleb for fighting, but they couldn't get Nate to identify Caleb as the person who did it because Caleb said he'd make Nate tell the principal, the football coach, his parents, my parents, and most important of all, the football recruiter from Ohio State why Caleb beat him up.”

“Nate believed him,” Matt said, but it wasn't a question.

“Years and experience have reined in the temper, but Caleb takes personal offense when the strong take advantage of the weak.” She watched the scenery shift from the small homes and small lots of the East Side to Matt's neighborhood. “He's just Caleb. That's all I see.”

Matt said nothing for a few moments. “You were on the drill squad?”

“No. President of the Future Business Leaders of America. Nat was on the drill squad.” Another memory surfaced, one that made her laugh at the irony. “I just remembered how Caleb found out what Nate had in mind for me. Lyle was at Aquinas High by this time, selling steroids to football players. He heard about it, and called Caleb.” She looked out the window. “Maybe in the suburbs things are black and white, good and evil. It's harder to pin down the East Side. I know Lyle's bad news now, but to me he's still the kid who called my brother. Even then Caleb hated him, but Lyle still called him.”

He pulled into his driveway and cut the engine, but didn't get out of the Jeep. “It's a gift, you know.”

“What is? Forgiving Caleb for taking on the world and everyone in it?”

“Seeing people as they are and caring about them anyway.”

Might get her in trouble, given how much slack she'd cut Lyle. “Guess I paid attention in church.”

Another laugh, the noise tugged from somewhere deep inside, rusty and unused, but she liked it. She liked seeing his battered face morph into something filled with humor and personality. She liked being the woman who did that for him.

“They ride you pretty hard,” he said quietly. “Why?”

Sitting in the now-warm Jeep, she smoothed the strap of her purse in her lap before answering. “Because at heart I'm selfish. I want what's best for the East Side, but I want something for me too. A good person, a good girl, wouldn't do what I do. I'd be teaching or in social work, volunteering at church and the SCC. I should be married by now. Raising babies.”

“You'll be good with kids, but I can't see you at an insurance company, boss.”

“You and I are the only ones with that particular deficit in our vision, Matt.” When he didn't say anything else, she added, “It's Monday night.”

“It is,” he agreed.

“Football night, right?”

“Preseason game in New York,” he said.

“Do you want to watch the game?” she asked. “We could order a pizza. My treat. Dinner was inedible. Mom's an amazing cook with unlimited quantities of butter and…”

Her voice trailed off. His eyes were heavy-lidded and intense. Despite the setting sun, the air in the Jeep was heating rapidly, twilight-dark, close.

“What do you want to do, Eve?”

Uncertainty shimmered in her stomach. Dinner with her family only brought back the realities she was ignoring, the troubles the East Side faced, her job, her lack of a steady boyfriend, and suddenly the fear was back, the threat from Lyle intensifying every worry she had about the present, let alone her future. Matt sat next to her, hands relaxed on his thighs. His only concession to the heat in the Jeep was the deep red flush on his cheekbones and the glimmer of sweat at his hairline. The scent of his skin, his sweat, was engraved on her memory, and oh, she wanted him. He could make her forget all her troubles, at least for now.

“I want to stop thinking for a while,” she admitted.

Emotion flickered in his eyes, unreadable and almost imperceptible, and as the seconds passed she began to wonder if she'd seen it at all. “Stay there.”