Winner Takes All (37 page)

Cole smiled at the image. “But still a worthy endeavor nonetheless. I assume your victim was the always gregarious David Taverner?”

She nodded, only a little impressed by his rapid deduction. “How’d you guess?”

“Once you remove Ethan from the equation—and the Justice Department has beautifully—he was next in line,” he explained. “I believe all your other coworkers were reasonably well behaved, although there was some woman named Deborah, I think, who claimed you hoarded packets of sugar from the kitchen. Obviously a charge like that isn’t deserving of such an extreme reprisal.”

Eva wasn’t sure she agreed. “Her name’s Devorah and I don’t recall reading that.”

“That’s probably because after a while I disconnected the WiFi,” he reminded her. “It was a post on Buzzfeed.”

“A wise man. But, yes, it was David. First I threw some week-old coffee at him, then a hot cup of latte. I would have stopped with the week-old coffee, but I was egged on by my boss,” she said. “I’m hoping that two weeks’ vacation will temper my desire to throw coffee on my colleagues.”

Cole glanced up. This was precisely the opening he’d been looking for. “Two weeks?” he asked.

Eva decided on pumpkin soup and peppered skirt steak before closing the menu. “Yeah, two whole weeks,” she said with a sigh, as if freedom and time were twin albatrosses around her neck. “Elliot Wyndham forced them on me. He claims I’ve been through an ordeal and need time to rest. Like sitting in my apartment staring at the cracks in the walls is going to be restful. It’s just going to remind me that I have to have my walls painted and who can deal with that? The management company will send over someone who doesn’t know how to spread a drop cloth, and he’ll get white paint all over my beautiful wood floors. It will probably take me the whole two weeks to get the floors clean again, which just goes to show—”

“Eva,” Cole said, interrupting her rant. She looked up. “You’re babbling.”

She smiled deprecatingly. “See? I’ve been on vacation for”—she checked her watch—“twenty minutes and already I’m as tense as a violin. If I were a smart girl, I’d go down to a travel agent and tell her to book me on the next flight to Borneo or Bora Bora or Bali or some other fabulous place with a B, but I’m not. I’ll just stop by your apartment, pick up my stuff, go home and start staring at the wall cracks. I should probably pick up a can of turpentine on the way home.”

The excitement Cole felt at the mention of several warm, sandy vacation spots was promptly superseded by dread. Stop by his apartment and pick up her stuff? It sounded like she was moving out. Cole didn’t want her to move out. He loved having Eva around. And there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he wanted her around forever. With a sinking heart, he realized Eva was too cautious a woman to have reached the same conclusion so quickly.

“You don’t
have
to pick up your stuff,” he said sullenly. He wanted to ask her to marry him, but he was afraid of scaring her off. The entire history of their relationship consisted of him trying to get near Eva and her pushing him away.

The objection was so half hearted Eva thought he’d made it only out of a sense of obligation. He obviously wanted to have the whole place to himself again. And that’s all right, she thought, fighting the keen disappointment that she felt
—
that she had no right to feel.
We can do this slowly.
“It’s not a problem. Like I said, I’ve got nothing else to do.”

This conversation wasn’t going the way Cole wanted it to, and he tried to get it back on track. “So what’s wrong with going away? Two weeks off is the perfect excuse to go to Borneo or Bora Bora or Bali.” If the choice were up to him, it would be Bali. Hammond Communications owned a villa there.

Eva shook her head and debated whether or not to tell him the truth. She had an understandable reluctance to confessing the depth of her feelings but then decided if they were going to have a relationship, it would be a completely honest one—at least on her part. “I’d miss you too much,” she said, looking him in the eyes and trying not to blush. Somehow saying that was harder than admitting she loved him.

Cole heard this and made a decision. To hell with being cautious. It wasn’t his style anyway. One didn’t get to be a captain of industry by playing it safe. “Marry me.”

Eva, who had been taking a sip of red wine, started coughing. Cole assumed she was choking and got up to help, but she stopped him with a shake of her head. It was no big deal. She had just swallowed wrong. And no wonder!

Cole tried to wait patiently as she cleared her throat, but it was the first time he’d proposed and he wanted a speedy and positive answer. Eva kept him waiting.

“What?” she asked, gasping for air.

“Marry me.”

There, he said it again, and still Eva couldn’t believe it. She put down the wineglass, which she’d been holding tightly in her grasp, and considered asking him to repeat it. But no, she thought, she couldn’t make him propose a third time. And he
was
proposing! So much for their taking it slowly.

“Marry me,” he said again, more out of nerves than anything else. He knew she understood him—he could see it in her eyes—but he was too nervous to remain quiet for long. “Marry me right now.”

So this is how it happens, she thought. This is how you wind up calling your friends in the middle of the day and telling them to screw work and come down to the Municipal Building for a wedding. Oh, my God. “All right,” she said, smiling brightly. There was none of the fear she’d expected to feel, none of the indecision she’d anticipated. Just a glowing happiness and an excitement for what came next. “I’m not exactly dressed for it, but I’d be happy to marry you right now. I suppose this means I don’t have to go back to my apartment and stare at the cracks in my wall. What am I going to do for my vacation then?”

She sounded so vexed by this problem that Cole laughed out loud. Several patrons and a few waiters turned to look at the source of the happy sound. Cole ignored their interested glances and kept his eyes trained on Eva. Then he stood up, pulled her into his arms, and, thinking of their two naked bodies on a deserted beach, assured her in dulcet tones, before his lips captured hers, that he’d be happy to keep her busy.

About the Author

Jacqui Moreau
lives in Kansas City with her three cats, two dogs and an insomniac goldfish called Sleepy. By turns, she’s been a waitress, a hairdresser, a newspaper delivery boy, an event planner, a store clerk, a dog walker and a janitor (one day but still!).
Winner Takes All
is her first novel.