HiddenDepths (13 page)

With a dramatic sigh and shaking her head, she turned to
Tommy. “Just ignore him. I’ll ring you up.” Pushing her way behind the counter,
she found herself further annoyed by the look her father shared with Evan’s
mother. It screamed
see what I mean
.

Whatever.

Muscling the tube of toothpaste Tommy probably didn’t even
want away from him, she said, “Was there anything else you wanted?”

“You’re Evan Reynolds’ mother?” Tommy asked.

“Why yes, I am.” For all she seemed to be commiserating with
Cassie’s dad, she did give Tommy a friendly smile. “Do you know him?”

“Not really, but if anybody should be given a lecture about
Cassie—”

“Three eighty-five,” Cassie said loudly.

God, did everybody think they could just talk about her as
if she wasn’t in the room? It was bad enough all these gorgeous guys were
pretty much ignoring her, but she had to hear everybody go on and on about her
needing to be protected! From what? Both Tommy and Evan treated her like glass.

She suddenly remembered the feel of Tommy’s erection against
her tummy.

Tommy a little less so, she guessed.

But still. It wasn’t as if she was getting any. Just ending
up more and more frustrated. And jealous.

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Amanda Reynolds told
Tommy. “Unlike his father, Evan has never really seemed to go for younger
women.”

“Three eighty-five,” Cassie snapped again and Tommy dug the
cash out of his pocket.

“Your father tells me you might take me out to the island,”
Mrs. Reynolds said as Cassie made the change for Tommy. “I’m actually not sure
Evan’s even there, though, as I’ve been calling him and can’t seem to get
through.”

“He’s there. I was just out there and saw him.”

“Oh.” The woman’s smile dimmed, making her look a little
less glamorous. “That’s odd. I’ve been calling.” But then she seemed to
remember her self-possession and flashed a flirty look at Cassie’s dad. “And
unlike some men, Evan never screens me.”

“I’m sure a guy would be nuts to ever screen you.” Her dad
grinned.

Uh!

“Maybe he’s shacked up with somebody,” Tommy offered blithely
in Cassie’s direction, ensuring she was this close to sticking her tongue out.

“Oh no, Evan would never bring a girl to his island.” Cassie
couldn’t quite remember her own mother, but what she had seen of other people’s,
they seemed awfully know-it-all about their kids. “I’m sure of it.”

“A guy?” Tommy teased, completely for Cassie’s benefit, no
doubt, and Mrs. Reynolds did that tittering thing.

“Uh, no. Though I wouldn’t mind that at all,” she added for
everyone’s benefit.

“I can take you,” Cassie said.

“Although you could too, Mr. Bailey,” Tommy noted.

“Mind your own business,” her dad snapped.

“I don’t usually just barge in on my son like this, I hope
you know. But I was nearby and he’s seemed a little down.”

“Well, as I said, I was just there and he was fine. He took
the groceries and, ah…” Both Tommy and her dad were now looking at her
intently. “I mean I barely said five words to him actually, but he seemed fine.
Okay, I mean.”

“I’ll take you, if you like, Amanda,” her dad said suddenly.

The woman looked around, a little unsure, and then said, “I
really shouldn’t go without calling first. And having him answer, I mean! I’ll
give him a little time. He gets into his moods sometimes. So like his father in
some ways. So perhaps I’ll hang around for a day or two, have dinner, do some
antiquing up the coast.”

Her dad smiled. “We have quite a nice restaurant a few miles
out of town.”

Cassie huffed and headed through the connecting door to
their apartment adjacent to the store.

* * * * *

That night there was no moon. Evan’s bedroom was as dark as
a tomb. And though Andrea had thought of tombs many times in her life, she had
never thought of one in as comforting terms as she did now, all wrapped up,
literally, in the dark with her lover. It felt positively Shakespearean.

Since the house was set up on one of the cliffs overlooking
the water—not the highest cliff, but plenty high—the only respite from the
total dark was the occasional ghostly dot of light far out on the horizon,
moving slowly but perceptibly across the big, black window. A ship miles out to
sea making its way through the night, she knew.

Or maybe just the soul of some long-lost lover.

In Evan’s arms, in Evan’s bed, she felt as if she were the
patron saint for all doomed before her who had thought to cheat death or life
or something with this intense emotion.

Before they became lost again.

Evan pushed his cock deeper into her and she murmured an
appreciative sigh.

“What language was that?” he asked softly.

“Language?” She hadn’t realized that whatever she had moaned
had included any actual words, in English or otherwise. So she didn’t bother
answering. She didn’t know anyway.

He continued with slow, languid pushes into her, a sweet
taking and then pulling away. She couldn’t see her own hand in front of her,
let alone her lover, but she could feel every fiber of him with her being.

“What language do you think in, Andrea?” he persisted.

“I’m not thinking right now, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Her legs wrapped around the backs of his and her fingers rubbed the hard
muscles of his neck, his shoulders.

“Is it Greek?”

She froze and he could not have helped but feel it, but
continued to move against her, inside her, no condom again, the two of them
obviously having lost their minds, until she reciprocated beneath him, giving
herself over to the rhythm of it again, forgetting his questions.

If he would only let her.

“Whoever you are, I want you.” He murmured the words into
her ear and followed them up with a long, soulful kiss that left her humming,
no words involved this time, she was sure of it. “Do you understand that?”
Lifting one of her legs higher, he deepened the angle of how she lay beneath
him, under him, and her heel just naturally went to his ass, digging into the
hard muscles as he thrust.

“You’re not exactly keeping it a secret, Evan.”

“I want you here.”

“I am here,” she murmured gently as he nuzzled her neck.

“Don’t you trust me?”

He aimed his cock in a wicked push upward that caused her to
gasp and she laughed. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be letting you do this.”

“Then tell me who you are.”

She hugged him closer. “Who do you want me to be?”

“Mine,” he muttered, his hand moving to one cheek of her
bottom, on the side where she had already lifted her leg, so that he went even
more impossibly deep.

“I am yours, Evan.” She was pretty sure that was in English,
but she belatedly, halfheartedly, wished it hadn’t been.

“When was your last period?”

Not exactly a respondent declaration if she’d ever heard
one.

“What?”

His cock went deeper still. Incredibly pleasurably deep. And
he began to move fast now instead of at that slow, languid pace. Faster with
each thrust until he was panting with it, both his hands underneath her now,
cradling him up to her. And she had made love with this man enough to know what
that signaled.

“When?” he gasped urgently and she ignored it, wrapping both
of her legs fully around his taut behind, a signal of her own.

She pulled his head to hers to kiss him fully and when he
would have pulled away, to further grill her undoubtedly, she wouldn’t let him,
instead giving herself over to the most powerful force in the world as it
pulled them both over the edge.

He groaned into her mouth and then came inside her strongly,
wrenchingly, as her inner muscles clamped down to deliver the same ultimate
pleasure.

He continued to shudder inside her another minute, and
finally she put him out of his misery. “Almost four weeks ago by now.” She
nipped his ear. “And don’t worry. I’m very regular.”

He kissed her neck. “Thank God. You’re kind of a bitch,
though, to make me do it without giving me that reassurance first.”

“To
make
you do it? You cad you!”

She rolled him over, coming on top of him, both of them
laughing.

“Don’t start hitting me again!” he teased and she wondered
if she truly had lost her mind to be able to be so free as to joke with him
about something as painful as her meltdown earlier today.

Later, when they were snuggled up together and she had
almost drifted off to sleep, he said, “I have to leave for a little while
tomorrow. I’m not sure whether I’ll be back before dark, but I’ll try.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want to come with me?”

“No.”

“Don’t you want to know what I have to do?”

“No.”

It was enough to know what she had to do. If not tomorrow,
eventually.

* * * * *

Evan had a boathouse in a sheltered cove of the island, with
two sailboats and two motorboats, one of the latter of which he used to leave
the island. As she saw him off, she noticed the mark all four boats bore, an
“ER” in a fancy scrawl of some kind, and asked him about it.

He grinned. “Just a little vanity on my part. I mark all the
boats I build.”

“You built these?” she asked, astonished, and he shrugged.

“I have a lot of excess energy.” Then the grin again. “Though
you’re helping me a lot with that. I swear I never had so much trouble getting
out of bed in the morning. You’re wearing me out.”

Fighting down the impulse to ask him to stay then, to go
back to bed with her, she just kissed him on the cheek and watched with a wave
as he sped away.

Once he had left the island, there were still three boats
remaining in the boathouse for her to do the same, furtively, if she wanted to.
But she wouldn’t stoop so low as to “borrow” one of his boats without his
permission. She would swim the distance to the mainland first, if she had to.
She probably could do it in calm weather, as there was today. But she didn’t
need to make the decision just yet.

A big believer in fate, she would let the decision be made
for her if it happened that way.

Moseying down the beach, Bingo frolicking beside her, she
finally ended up in one of Evan’s beautifully crafted wooden and padded beach
chairs. The sun lulled her to sleep—she wasn’t sure if she was wearing Evan out
or vice versa—when a voice startled her awake.

“Who the hell are you?”

Struggling to sit up—and not inconsequentially unnerved that
someone could sneak up on her like that—she glanced down the beach to see Bingo
running in and out of the waves, his tongue hanging out and his tail wagging as
the speaker cast her shadow over the beach chair. She could almost hear Evan’s
“some guard dog” lament.

“So? I said who are you?” It was the beautiful blonde girl
who brought Evan supplies the previous day.

Andrea came to her feet, intent on getting on more of an
even keel, only to discover that this young girl was easily as tall as she was.
“I’m a friend of Evan’s.”

“Obviously,” the girl said sullenly, glancing around herself
and yanking up the bright-pink tube top she had been incredibly brave to wear.
Her assets in the tank-top department were considerably bigger than Andrea’s
and Andrea would have never dreamed of testing the elastic of a small piece of
material that way. Of course, the girl probably wouldn’t mind if it slipped as
long as she had the right audience to witness it. Looking around for said right
audience, she asked, “Where’s Evan?”

“Off island.”

“Huh. I guess. I didn’t see him dock, though, and I usually
do.” The girl looked around as if she didn’t believe Evan wasn’t really there
and maybe was ready to do a search. But then she turned her attention back to
Andrea, studying her skeptically. “You know I came over here to tell him his
mother was in town and asking about him. And I think it’s kind of rude not to
let him talk to his mother, by the way, if you’re the reason he’s not answering
her calls. When did you get here anyway? Because I didn’t see you here
yesterday and now she’s just hanging around town and I think my dad might have
even taken her on a date or something if you can believe that.”

The girl talked at a wildly frantic pace and Andrea wondered
if she herself had ever been so young. Actually, she knew she hadn’t.

“So I came to tell Evan, but it’s funny because just as I
was heading to the boathouse I get tapped by this guy with a funny accent who
wanted to show me a picture of a girl. I figured he was a pervert and
everything, and since nobody was around, I just blew him off, but he kept
trying to get me to look at a picture. Said it was a girl with dark hair, real
pretty he said and wanted to know if I’d seen her. I only looked at it for a
second, but you know, it could be you.” She added apparently for the record,
“And she wasn’t that pretty.”

The fact the girl was here out of the blue was more than
enough evidence that no boat stealing or Olympic swim would be required for
Andrea to do what she needed to do. Moreover, since the girl had seen her she
probably should just do it. Leave the island. Leave Evan.

To add this chilling additional piece of information was
almost overkill from the fates.

But Andrea said stupidly anyway, “What? What are you talking
about?”

The girl shrugged. “His mother. Evan’s mother.”

“No, the other thing.”

“Oh that. I’m just saying. If it’s you, though, you look a
lot older in real life. No offense or anything.”

Andrea could feel the blood drain from her face and the girl
added hurriedly, “I didn’t mean that how it sounded. It was just an old picture,
I guess. And don’t worry about it because it seems like nobody told him they’d
seen you. I mean I hadn’t anyway, so
I
didn’t say anything. Is he some
kind of pissed-off husband chasing you down or something? Because really, we
have a sheriff in town for that kind of thing, although he’s kind of a jerk,
always hassling this friend, well not really a friend of mine. Anyway, if this
guy is bothering you, you should report him. Married or not, you have your
rights, you know?”