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I shake my head. “No. Nothing personal.”
After several seconds of silence, the woman asks me about the weather. It is so cliché I almost laugh, but I can’t muster it. Not when Eve is being hit on by every man in the room.
I talk to the woman for several minutes, letting her do most of the talking while I watch Eve move around the room.
Finally, she is standing back near the bar, and I can’t resist her for another moment.
“You must excuse me,” I say to the blonde woman, interrupting her in the middle of a sentence.
I weave through people, raising my glass in the air as I squeeze around the bodies, and then Eve is right in front of me. Mere feet away.
Her hair shines gold in the overhead lights, and she turns her head to register me in the corner of her vision, but quickly goes back to making her drink.
My heart is pounding as I approach her.
I don’t know how to do this. I don’t want to surprise her and blow the mission before it has even begun, so I can’t just walk up and tell her who I am. I have to let her figure it out slowly.
So, as I pass her from behind, I curl my fingers around her waist and then drag them across her lower back.
She starts at the touch, but when I tug softly at the ends of her hair, she turns to look at me.
I look into her caramel eyes for only a second, but it is long enough to see the question she is asking.
Is that…
I nod slowly, answering it for her, and immediately her eyes fill with tears.
Then, she bites her pouty lower lip and turns to keep making her drink, but her fingers are trembling.
She knows it is me.
9
Eve
Ithink I’m imagining it when I smell Luka.
The spicy scent of his cologne mingles with the woodsy smell of his skin.
I’ve been seeing him everywhere. Every time I close my eyes, he is there.
Surrounded by these horrible men and women who are studying me like a dog at a kennel show, I want nothing more than the familiar comfort of my husband.
Then, I feel a hand on my waist.
My instinct is to pull away and slap whichever disgusting man has put his hands on me, but then I feel the pressure of the fingertips along my back.
The touch is tender and intimate.
And so, so familiar.
Before this moment, I would have said there is no way I’d recognize Luka by nothing more than the brush of his fingers, but in the instant his body touches mine, I feel relief.
It feels like arriving home after a long time away.
I turn to my left and see a tall, broad man wrapped in a deliciously tailored suit. A black mask covers his face, but I can see the tense line of his upper lip and his clenched jaw. Usually, there is a dark beard there, but I’ve seen my husband with a clean-shaven face often enough to recognize the square line of his jaw.
It is Luka. It has to be.
