It was nowhere near that easy. The neckline began high on the back of her neck, then looped across her shoulders and breasts in a series of scallops designed to show off a triple-strand pearl choker of what sure did look to Jake like the real deal. He decided to leave the pearls where they were and just concentrate on the buttons-concentrate being the operative word. It was hard, damned hard not to think about the intimacy of what he was doing. Hard not to let his fingertips feel the cool, wet kiss of her sweat-damp hair… Hard to avoid the velvety warm brush of her skin. Hard to hold himself aloof from the beckoning warmth of her body, and to keep his head clear with her sweet woman’s scent enveloping him like an opium cloud…
By the time he’d gotten as far as her waist, he’d worked up a good sweat. The problem was, he couldn’t seem to convince himself that what he was doing was just a routine procedure for a highly trained federal law-enforcement agent. In his Special Forces training he’d learned how to kill a man with his bare hands inside three seconds and in total silence, and was confident he could do so with ice water in his veins. As a hostage negotiator he’d talked down men wired with enough explosives to demolish a high-rise, without breaking a sweat. So why couldn’t he undress a woman without his heart pounding like a runaway freight train?
It didn’t help that she had the most beautiful back he’d ever seen. And so far, he’d gotten the dress apart almost to her waist, and that was all he’d uncovered-lots and lots of that smooth-as-satin skin, sweet little bumps and ripples of spine, muscles delicately hinted at rather than bluntly defined. What was she wearing under that dress? Nothing?
He was relieved when he encountered lace a couple of buttons farther on. Well, he was. After all, he reminded himself, he was going to want to interrogate the lady. It would be nice if he could look her in the eye while he was doing it.
Once he had the buttons dealt with, he rolled her carefully onto her back. He was breathing easier now, figuring the worst was over. There were a few more buttons on each sleeve at the wrists, but once those were taken care of, all he had to do was peel the top over her shoulders and ease it on down… down her arms, carefully over her breasts… And all the while she went on sleeping soundly as a child, lips slightly parted, a fine dew of moisture clumping the hair on her forehead-
He avoided looking at her battered face, concentrating instead on getting the tight sleeves over her limp hands. And then it was easy to pull the dress past her hips and-
His heart stopped. He felt like a Chinese gong, and he’d just been rung.
What the hell was she wearing? He wasn’t much of an expert on feminine undergarments, so he wasn’t absolutely certain that what he was looking at was a teddy. Whatever it was, it seemed to consist entirely of some kind of stretchy lace that hugged her body like a second skin, only to end abruptly at the top of the curve of her hips. Below that, elastic garters snaked down over a tiny lace triangle, arrowed the length of smooth golden thighs to connect with the tops of the lacy white stockings.
All Jake could think, when his mind started working again, was, All this for a creep like Cisneros? What a waste.
He’d peeled back the covers and was just about to roll her between the sheets when he remembered those grimy black feet. So instead of tucking her in, he went to the closet and got the blanket he’d taken off his bed and stowed there, being a warm-blooded sleeper himself. When he got back with it, he found that his sleeping beauty had rolled away from him onto her side and pulled her knees up, the way little kids do when they sleep. Except she sure didn’t look anything like a kid, especially from where he was standing. He got that blanket over her just as fast as he could.
Once he’d done that, the cop part of him was able to resume functioning. He stood there looking down at the woman asleep on his bed, snoring softly with her ungrazed cheek pillowed on one hand like a child. Eve Waskowitz…who by this time should have been married to the man Jake hated most in this world.
Lady, he thought, what happened to you in that church garden today? What in the hell happened?
He sat down on the edge of the bed and carefully lifted the bottom edge of the blanket, then put his hand under one slender, lace-stockinged ankle and tilted the bottom of her foot toward the light. The stocking was torn and worn through, almost nonexistent in places. And under all the dirt and grime, he could see that the ball of her foot and the delicate pads of her toes were scraped and bruised.
And he thought, Lady, where in the world have you been? What happened to make you run in fear for your life from the man you were about to pledge to love, honor and obey until death do you part? What happened to your face? Did he do that to you?
His belly burned at the thought. But the lady’s only response was an inarticulate murmur, and Jake knew that was all the answer he was going to get, for a while, anyway. With a silent sigh, willing himself to patience, willing the triphammer beat of his heart to resume its normal rhythms, he lowered the foot into place beside its mate and tucked the blanket around them both.
He rose and walked out of his bedroom, and was about to start down the stairs when he changed his mind. Instead, he went across the hall to the bathroom, took his bathrobe from its hook behind the door, carried it into the bedroom and laid it across the foot of the bed.
Then he went downstairs, poured himself a cup of cold coffee and settled down to wait.
Chapter 4
Eve felt no sense of surprise or unease when she opened her eyes; she was accustomed to waking in unfamiliar places. As far as she was concerned, there were two items of greater importance to her at that moment than figuring out where in the world she was. Number one, she was thirsty; her mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage. And second-okay, maybe even first-she really, really needed to go to the bathroom.
The first alarms went off when she threw back the blanket that covered her and found that she was dressed like a page from a Victoria’s Secret catalog. “What the hell?” she muttered aloud.
Sitting up, she shifted her feet around and lowered them to the floor, where they encountered something soft and slithery. It was when she leaned over to peer at the pile of white satin under her lace-stockinged feet that the bells really cut loose-a cacophony of bells, a pounding of drums, a whole anvil chorus. In an attempt to shut out the din, she moaned and put her hands over her ears-which was when she discovered that the clanging was coming from inside her own head.
She waited, breathing slowly and shallowly until the pounding had subsided, then rose with caution. Someone had thoughtfully left a bathrobe on the foot of the bed, she observed. The same person who had peeled her out of the expensive pile of white satin she was standing on? She just wished she could remember who that someone was. The last thing she did remember was being in some sort of surveillance van… Good Lord, had it been the FBI…? And a video monitor… Sonny’s face…
“Oh, God…” She was overcome, all at once, with cold and pain and nausea. She groped for the bathrobe and shrugged it on, drew it tightly around herself, hoping to draw from it the warmth and comfort that would dispel the horror that had just enveloped her. Because she remembered it all-everything.
She just did manage to find the bathroom in time.
When she heaved herself up off the bathroom floor a short time later, she still felt wobbly in the legs, but considerably less queasy. “Well, Evie,” she softly scolded herself, “you’ve really gotten yourself into it this time, haven’t you?”