Eva waved her hand dismissively. “And you’re telling me this because …”
Christ, she was a tough one to crack. “Because sometimes things aren’t always what they appear to be.”
“And sometimes they are exactly as they appear to be. One act of stupidity does not change a damn thing.”
“Granted,” Carter conceded. “I know I’m an asshole, I’ll be the first one to admit it.”
“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?” she asked. “Have you any idea about the amount of sleep I lost when she began working in that … prison?”
“I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t!” Eva snapped. “You have no idea. Being a mother is not easy, especially when your daughter insists on making everything so damned difficult.”
“Kat didn’t take the job at Kill to make your life difficult,” Carter refuted. “She took the job to overcome her fears, to overcome what terrified her and kept her awake at night.”
“And what do you know about that?” Eva spat.
“Enough.” Carter pursed his lips in an effort to reel himself in. “Look, I know about her father. I know what happened. Her teaching criminals—”
“Animals.”
“—is her pound of flesh.”
“To whom?”
“To her dad.”
Eva’s face softened and her voice dropped in volume. “What do you mean?”
“The night he passed, she promised him she would give something back. She promised him she would become a teacher and help people, the way he’d done as a politician.” Carter glanced toward the door his Peaches had gone through. “She just wanted to keep her promise. To pay her debt.”
Eva sat back in her seat and stared out the window. The snow had started falling again. “I didn’t know that.”
“Like I said,” Carter murmured. “Things aren’t always as they appear.” He took a deep breath. “I’m in love with your daughter, ma’am. I’m doing this because I want to do everything right. I’m doing this because she wants to be with me, and I want to be with her.”
Eva’s back straightened. “You barely know each other! You think because she’s told you a few secrets, that you know her?”
“I know her better than you think.”
“Oh, please! You’ve known her, what, four, five months?”
A heartbeat passed. “Try sixteen years.”
Eva’s eyes flickered, fierce yet puzzled.
Carter stared right back, waiting for the penny to drop.
Yeah, it was a big ask, but, hell, at this point what did he have to lose? He hadn’t wanted his role in saving Kat to be the deciding factor as to whether or not Eva would accept him with her daughter, but the damn woman had driven him to it with her incapacity to see him without a list of misdemeanors and felonies tacked to his fucking forehead.
Jesus, he’d even brought up the fact that he went to prison for Max. He wouldn’t have mentioned it, if not for having his ass against a wall with no way out. Desperate for Eva to see past his mistakes, he had nothing else to lay on the table.
“How have you known her for sixteen years?” Eva asked slowly. “There’s no possible way. No way.”
Despite her words of conviction, her eyes told Carter the pieces were falling into place. Her stubbornness was the only thing stopping her from seeing what was right in front of her.
“We met … in the Bronx,” Carter said quietly. “She was nine. I was eleven.”
Horror washed across Eva’s features, but it changed swiftly to emotions that were as indiscernible as they were fleeting. She was warring with herself now, battling with what she believed—he was a hardened, dangerous criminal—and the actual truth—he’d saved her daughter’s life.
“The news,” Eva stammered. “It was all over the news. Everyone knows where they were that night. Everyone knows what happened.”
Carter carried on, ignoring her accusation that he was a liar. “I heard a scream.”
Eva closed her eyes.
“I was across the street and I saw everything: the punks with the bat, Kat, your husband. Christ—it happened so damned fast. He … Your husband was on the ground. They hit him with the bat, kicked him. He tried to fight back, but there were too many of them for one man.”
Eva made a strangled sound and clapped a palm to her mouth.
“Kat was on the ground about two feet away,” Carter continued, lost in the memory. “One of the assholes had hit her.”
“Stop.”
“She was wearing a blue dress. It was dirty from the sidewalk, ripped at the sleeve. Your husband screamed at her to run. He begged her over and over, but she didn’t listen. And I knew that if those fuckers got hold of her, they’d kill her.”
Eva looked up at him finally, tears spilling down her face.
Carter put his hand on his stomach. “Something in here, deep in here, told me to help her. I just couldn’t watch them hurt her. It was so damned wrong.”
“You—you,” Eva hiccoughed, unable to form a full sentence.
“I ran to her,” Carter said. “Grabbed her arm and ran. But I had to drag her most of the way; she was small, but she fought, ya know? She was so strong.”
Eva wrapped her arms around herself, listening to him describe how he’d tackled Kat to the cold, wet ground.
“There was gunfire and she screamed, and all I could do was hold her and make sure that she didn’t run back. I figured I was doing what her old man wanted. I was doing something good.” He ran his hands across his hair. “Saving Kat’s the only good thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.”
Then they stared at each other for the length of two heartbeats, and he hoped they finally understood each other. They’d found their common ground. They both existed for the same reason, and, with that realization, he found it easier to breathe.
“Where did you take her?” Eva croaked.
“A doorway a couple of blocks down. Once she stopped fighting me, she cried until she fell asleep.”
“Then you left her?”
“No,” he replied. “I held her. Stroked her hair, talked to her until help came.”
“But … you disappeared.”
Carter gave a wry smile. “I already had a name with the police because of shit Max and I had done, and I knew if they caught me I’d have to answer questions. So …”
“You ran.”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you go?”
“Back to my friend’s place. Max calmed me down, helped me through the shock of what happened.”
Eva cast her eyes toward the doorway. “She knows?”
“Of course. I had to tell her.”
“How did she take it?”
Carter smiled. “In her own way. But I’m here, right?”
“Yes, you are.”
Carter exhaled and rubbed his face with a weary hand. “Look. I know we’re never going to be the best of friends. I know you’ll never see me as good enough for her, because I know that myself. And I didn’t tell you this to win points. I told you because I wanted you to see I would never ever hurt her. She’s everything to me. I want to give her everything she wants or needs. And I want you and Kat to go back to the way you were before I got involved. I hate that I caused this.”
Eva’s face glimmered with hope of the same thing. “It wasn’t just you. We’re all to blame in some part.”
“I need you to know that I’m not here to do anything but love and take care of your daughter.”
A timid smile played across Eva’s mouth. “You know,” she said wistfully, “you sound like Kat’s father when you talk like that. He had to convince my dad he was good enough for me.”
“And did he?”
“I think so.”
“Have I convinced you?”
Eva stood and walked across the room to the large window. The silence and anticipation caused Carter’s heart to race like a fucking V12 engine.
“My daughter is too much like me for her own good,” she began. “You were right about that, and I can see how much she loves you.” Her cheeks washed with an embarrassed pink. “I didn’t want to see it, but it’s clear as day. Still, having said that, I can’t overlook the fact that Kat’s putting a lot at risk by being with you.”