Chapter Twenty-five
Harbor View Marina, Ludington, Michigan
9:27 a.m.
What the hell is the matter with me? Bill thought as he secured the last rope around a cleat on the weathered dock. Eve Edens had professed her love, her no strings attached love, almost two hours ago, and he’d yet to do or say anything in response.
And, yeah, yeah. So, they’d been a little busy fighting a raging storm that’d battered them unmercifully until it finally decided to blow itself out a mere five minutes before they pulled into port. But that was only a small part of the reason why it’d been Mum City inside the cramped wheelhouse. The truth was, he’d kept his mouth shut was because he didn’t know what to say to something like that. A part of him gloried in her confession. She loved him! Everybody wanted to be loved, right? According to Lennon and McCartney, that’s all you needed. On the other hand—there’s always another hand, isn’t there?—a part of him was—
“Your turn,” Eve said, cutting his thought short. She’d emerged from the cabin after donning a dry T-shirt and a clean pair of jeans. Standing at the sailboat’s rail, she was in the process of pulling her damp hair back into a ponytail. The way her arms were raised, he could see the faint outline of her erect nipples. Those sweet nipples. Those sensitive nipples. Those nipples he’s sucked and laved and licked and…
Shit. Now was not the time to be thinking about her nipples. If he started thinking about her nipples, next thing you know he’d be thinking about getting her back into bed. And a man shouldn’t think about getting a woman who’d just confessed her love for him back into bed unless he had something more than slack-jawed silence to offer her.
“I, uh…” He had a tough time meeting her gaze. Her eyes were too sad. Too hurt. Too…something he didn’t want to acknowledge. “I think I’ll go make sure Chris left his extra truck for us.” Chris was an old high school friend who’d moved from the city to Ludington to become a fishing guide. Before they’d pulled away from the dock back at Belmont Harbor, Bill had called and asked the man to leave his spare truck in the parking lot. “Also, I need to stop at the yacht club, if it’s open, to call back to BKI. Let the guys know we made it,” he told her, shuffling his flip-flops against the slats of the dock. “Why don’t you get everything secured on the boat, and after I’ve, uh, checked on everything, I’ll come back and help you with the bags.”
Silence met his suggestion. And he was forced to raise his eyes. She was just standing there at the rail staring at him, chewing on a hangnail. “Billy,” she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t tell you that to make you—”
“I know,” he cut her off, feeling like a complete ass-hat for fucking this thing up. And he was fucking it up. But, goddamnit! He didn’t know what to say to her! His feelings for her were…confusing.
Yeah, he mentally snorted. Which is like saying advanced nuclear physics is confusing…
“O-okay.” She nodded, still chewing on that nail.
Blowing out a breath—he was quickly becoming disgusted with himself—he regarded her for a second more before turning to traipse up the dock. His flip-flops made a slapping sound that echoed out over the quiet harbor. For all the fury of the storm, its passing had brought on an eerie calm, made even more so by the fact that the marina was deserted.
Yeah, because no sane person would be caught dead out on the lake on a day like this…
Jesus Christ, what a morning! If he lived to be one hundred and eighty, he hoped he never had to experience another like it. When he closed his eyes, the image of Eve’s orange life vest and black hair adrift out in the middle of all that frothing water blazed on the backs of his eyelids. It caused his heart to stutter, his ulcer to start complaining, and his brain to stumble over a series of questions—most of them along the vein of: If you don’t love her back, then why does that memory haunt you?
Shit on a stick! What a morning, indeed…
He shook his head as he stepped off the end of the dock, traipsing up a small slope toward the large, empty parking lot. The air smelled crisp and clean, like wet evergreens and cool, clear water. It looked like his buddy Chris had come through for them. An old, beat-up, blue—well it used be blue, but now it was mostly rust—Chevy sat parked at the far end of the lot. He decided to pull it closer, so they wouldn’t have as far to walk with the bags.
I regret not telling you right from the very start that I still love you. And I will always love you…Eve’s words whispered through his mixed-up, mashed-up skull for about the thousandth time. And even though they caused warmth to pool in his chest and spread out through his limbs, he still didn’t know how to respond to them.
Was he a coward? Had he been accusing Eve of being lily-livered when all this time he was the one who needed to man-up and grow some balls? Was he so afraid of being hurt again that he wasn’t willing to risk—
The sound of squealing tires invaded his thoughts. He glanced up to see a dark SUV careening around the corner into the parking lot, and all his warrior’s instincts sprang to life. But, it was too late…
Fuck! He was late!
Jeremy torqued the wheel of the big SUV, the second one he’d been forced to borrow from Devon Price since the first one had crapped out on him about two-thirds of the way to Ludington. And then because, you know, he couldn’t exactly call AAA to come give him a tow since that would mean a paper trail, he’d been forced to sit on the side of the road for three fucking hours waiting for one of Devon’s flunkies to deliver him a new vehicle.
Hence, he was late.
But not too late, he assured himself. Because if he wasn’t mistaken, that was Bill Reichert standing in the middle of the parking lot, which meant Eve couldn’t be too far behind. And if he could just get them both back out on the sailboat, maybe he could tie them up, which would give him time to hotwire a motorboat, and then everything could still go as planned.
Yeah, this thing can still work out…
Stepping on the brakes, his stomach sat where his heart should be and his heart throbbed in his throat, he flipped off the safety on the stupid, nickel-plated 1911 Devon had given him.
Why the hell gangbangers thought bright, shiny, nearly glow-in-the-dark guns were something to be coveted he’d never know. Then again, now was not the time to contemplate the idiocy of the thugs who made up the Black Apostles, because Reichert was lunging toward the ratty old truck parked fifteen feet away, and Jeremy couldn’t let the man secure transportation. Shit would go downhill fast if he allowed that to happen.
Throwing open the driver’s side door, he pointed the pistol straight at Reichert’s bare chest and yelled, “Halt! Stop right there!”
But Reichert didn’t listen to him. The idiotic sonofabitch just kept on racing for the truck, and Jeremy’s plan went up in a puff of smoke. He was left with only two options. He could kill Bill and Eve right here in the parking lot, leaving behind a pile of evidence with the hope there wasn’t enough to lead back to him, with the hope that with Devon’s alibis and cars and weapons he could still slip the noose. Or he could give up and go home. In the first option, he stood a chance, a small chance, but still a chance of coming out of this thing on top. In the second option? Well, in the second option he’d be dead. Devon Price didn’t make idle threats.