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“I thought I might find you here.”
Eve Larson pulled her gaze reluctantly away from the rolling waves that stretched back toward the horizon. She hadn’t heard that voice in a year, but it only took a split second and a syllable to take her mind back to another time, twelve months ago, in front of these same waves.
“Spencer. What are you doing here?”
She took a minute to size him up. He stood on the sand in a most un-beach outfit of moss green wool sweater, wide wale dark brown corduroy pants, and soft cocoa leather moccasins. Neat, clean, sharp. Typical Spencer.
Eve felt a faint tug of awareness and shook her head slightly, trying to clear the quickening rhythm from her pulse. The last time they’d spoken, it hadn’t gone well.
“Eve? You okay?” The reflection of the waves showed in miniature in Spencer’s green eyes.
She wished she wouldn’t have looked up.
She wished she wouldn’t have noticed.
But more than anything, she wished she wouldn’t have cared.
“I’m fine. I’m just a little caught off guard.” Eve turned back toward the waves. “What are you doing here? You didn’t say.”
“Same thing you are. Taking a few days off for the new year.”
Eve’s pulse began to race again, this time with the quick kindling of anger, not conditioned awareness. “You never take days off. And you could go anywhere in the world. Don’t tell me that it’s coincidence that you’re standing in front of my mother’s beach house in Port Provident, Texas, just by chance. You’ve thrown me a lot of lines, Spencer, but this time I’m not biting.”
She squared her shoulders. No matter what he said, she would not turn her body, she would not turn her gaze. She would not give Spencer Canley another chance to tell her another tale.
Spencer took three steps, the sand giving a nearly soundless crunch under the soles of his expensive shoes. “I’m not trying to bait you.”
“So what are you doing here?” Her patience was wearing thin. Spencer had intruded on her few days of hoped-for solitude, the days she’d planned to spend with a quiet focus on her future.
Not a focus on the white dress she should have been wearing.
Not a focus on the aisle she should have been walking down.
Not a focus on Spencer’s brother, Mark, who should have been waiting there for her.
“It’s not really a vacation, Eve, but you already figured that out.”
She nodded. “So what is it?”
“I still work for Mark.” He paused. “He asked me to bring you this envelope.”
“A letter?” Eve turned, her disbelief overriding her resolve to stay still as a statue. “Mark and I are through. We’ve been through for a year. What more is there to do?”
Spencer reached in his back pocket and pulled out an envelope. A scowl pushed his brow into a furrow. He handed the paperwork to her slowly.
Eve reached her hand out, then hesitated. But there wasn’t really any point. Mark Canley got what he wanted, when he wanted it. There weren’t many people who would stand in his way. Not a brother. And certainly not the former love of his life.
Emphasis on former.
The paper felt cool and slightly damp to the touch. With a deep breath, she slid her finger in the gap on the envelope flap and tugged it open.
The letter was short and to the point. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for Eve’s eyes to scan the terse sentences Mark had scrawled in bold ink.
A lump like wet sand began to fill her throat. She tried to swallow it away, but her mouth had gone dry.
“He wants my ring back?” She almost didn’t recognize the scratchy whisper as her own voice.
Spencer nodded. “He didn’t let me see the contents of the letter first, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what was in there. He’s been talking about it for weeks.”
“But...why?” She struggled a bit for the words.
Spencer pushed his hands into his pocket, then squared his own shoulders in much the same way Eve herself had only moments before when she first heard the voice from her past. “He’s getting engaged. That’s a one-of-a-kind stone, and he decided he wanted to reset it.”
“But my mother helped him pick it out.” Memories of the mother she lost to breast cancer too soon flooded into a mind already jumbled with too many thoughts.
“It’s a stone that used to belong to the Russian imperial family. He doesn’t care about the rest of it.”
“He doesn’t care about anything,” Eve said into the wind. “Except himself.”
Spencer didn’t change position, just stood alongside Eve, as a brief gust kicked a wintry spray back on them both.
“I’ve known him my whole life, Eve. I used to idolize my older brother. But now? I’d say your assessment is correct.”
“Come on,” Eve said with a touch of resignation. “It’s getting cold out here. The wind’s picking up.”
She turned around and began to walk back across the damp sand. Spencer followed in her wake, amazed by the calmness she displayed to the outside world. Did Eve ever show emotion? After a moment’s shock, she seemed to just take it in stride, just like she did a year ago when Spencer was dispatched by Mark to break off the engagement between Eve and Mark.
Maybe being around Mark so long had hardened her heart to any emotion.
Spencer knew that had become true with him. And his recent understanding of that small, but damning fact helped him know he had to get out from under his brother’s shadow and self-centered life. It had been a hard realization, since he’d spent most of his years on Earth believing the Canley brothers were tied by a bond of blood that couldn’t be broken.
It had taken Spencer a while to figure out how to disengage without getting scorched by Mark’s fire. The woman in front of him had gotten burned badly. It was a lesson Spencer had quietly taken to heart.
After walking up the stairs that ran along the side of the deck of the house held high on stilts, Eve slowly turned the key in the lock and opened the weathered door. The whole house seemed to have seen better days. The green paint had faded to a light lichen shade and a shutter was missing from the left side of one of the front windows.
Eve never seemed like the type to let herself go—or for that matter, anything she controlled. But maybe Spencer had been wrong about her taking everything as a matter of course. Maybe this year had been harder on his former almost-sister-in-law than he’d initially thought.
“I have it in the back room,” she said without even turning around. “You can wait here if you’d like.”
She gestured toward a striped couch, faded in a motley pattern by where the sun’s rays had fallen through the window and sprayed across the fabric.
“You brought it with you for a weekend at the beach?” What woman carried her former engagement ring around when she traveled? Spencer’s curiosity was piqued.
Eve stopped at the start of the short hallway and turned around. “As you noted, it’s a unique stone.” She pursed her lips tightly, their thin outline turning a bloodless white under the pressure. Then, without another word, she stepped down the hall and softly closed the bedroom door behind her.
Spencer looked around the room, buffeted by the silence around him. Only the wind outside howled. This time last year, he’d stood in the same room.
It seemed very different now, colder. Less cheerful.
Maybe it was just the weather. Outside the windows, storm clouds collected on the edge of the horizon and bunched up like a mass of black cotton balls filling the dusk sky.
A rumble of thunder shook the small beach house on its pilings. Spencer felt the wobble beneath his feet. He wished he hadn’t put off coming down here to Eve’s end of the island so long. Now it looked like he would get caught in a downpour.
Maybe that’s what he needed, though, he thought dryly. Maybe a good, hard rain could wash away the guilt he felt about this trip and the last trip he’d made to Eve’s little bungalow. Time certainly hadn’t made the tightness in his throat go away.
Over the growl of the thunder and the splash of the oversized raindrops that landed with more force than a water balloon fight between children, he didn’t hear Eve walk back into the room.
She held a chain delicately between two fingertips. The picture froze in his mind. The curve of her thumbnail, the clean glossy finish of the delicate shade of rose nail polish, the subtle twinkle of the thread-thin chain as it caught the glow of the light overhead.
Even though he’d told Eve he was running an errand for his boss, Spencer told himself this was a personal matter between two ex-lovers. Eve seemed to be returning it willingly. There wouldn’t be conflict between her and Mark and that meant he wouldn’t have to take sides—because he knew in his heart and his mind, he wouldn’t be able to pick Mark’s side.
But if she just gave it back at Mark’s personal request, then, he could merely pretend to be nothing more than a courier between the two parties.
The diamond looked different than the last time Spencer saw it. A year ago, it rested snugly at the base of Eve’s left ring finger, flanked by a wedge of smaller diamonds on either side. Now, it dangled at the end of the thin chain, surrounded by three pavé-style rings of sapphires. It was completely different, and yet, completely unmistakable.
The Kiss of Kiev. A three-carat circle of light and ice, given as part of a brooch made for the Empress Consort Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, to honor the birth of the Russian Grand Duchess Alexandra Alexandrovna in 1842. After the pretty, curly-headed blond died of meningitis at age six and her bereaved mother was moved to tears at the mention of her daughter’s name, it was ordered packed away, where it was not recovered for several generations. Lost again after the death of the Russian imperial family at the hands of the Bolsheviks in 1917, it reappeared two years ago at Houston’s finest estate broker. It was then bought by Mark Canley and at the time, the society pages that wrote about the ring and the engagement declared it to be a demonstration of his royal-sized love for his fiancée.
Perhaps, thought Spencer, anything the diamond touched was doomed to a dark end. The little Grand Duchess. The Romanovs themselves.
Mark’s engagement to Eve.
Although this fool’s errand made Spencer feel as muddied and awkward as the storm-drenched shoreline outside the living room window, maybe he was doing Eve a favor by removing it from her life.
Who knew what destruction it would witness next.
“Well, then, I suppose this is yours.” Eve laid the stone on her palm and pushed it in Spencer’s direction.
Lightning cracked outside and the raindrops unleashed with more ferocity than Spencer had seen in years. He couldn’t help but feel this was some kind of sign that even Mother Nature disapproved of the deed he’d been put up to.
“Not mine. Mark’s.” Spencer didn’t want to be in this any deeper than he already was.
“One and the same. You’ve done your brother’s dirty work for years. You hide it behind that pretty title on your business card, but your hands are just as dirty as Mark’s are, Spencer. You’re cut from the same cloth.” Her gaze locked on him like the point of a laser sight on a gun. “A self-absorbed, ruthless lot, the Canley brothers. Thank goodness your mother stopped after your younger brother. Houston would be overrun with any more of you.”
Spencer stood still, too stunned to even put the precious stone into the tiny padded envelope he’d brought to keep it safe.
“You think I’m just like Mark?”
Eve gave a short, cutting laugh, then replied. “Of course I do. You’re like two peas in a pod. The CEO of Canley Communications thinks up ways to run over people and the Senior Vice President of Operations carries them out. The Canley brothers, always together. And always up to something.”
Spencer looked down at the stone in his hand. The facets twinkled like broken icicles in a sphere of perfect glass. “He didn’t ask for my advice or counsel beforehand. I’m just doing my job, Eve.”
“Really? Is that what you tell yourself, Spencer? Because that’s even worse. You do his dirty work and you don’t have enough of a backbone to tell him no. I used to think you were different. I used to think I could trust you, but then last year...”
She tucked a lock of dark blonde hair behind her ear, running her fingers softly through the strands. Eve looked like she would blow over in a strong wind—like the downpour and gale that whipped around outside—but she never broke eye contact, never gave the slightest hint that she wasn’t speaking with total conviction.
Except for that shy sweep of the hair. Taught to read the body language of others in a class he took for his MBA, Spencer knew exactly what that gesture meant.
He wanted to prove her wrong. And now he knew he could.
What he couldn’t figure out is why, suddenly, it mattered so much for him to do so.
“I’m quitting. This is my last act of ‘dirty work,’ as you call it.”
“Quitting? You’ve been your brother’s shadow for a decade.” Eve dropped her hand from her hair and cocked her head ever so slightly. “I don’t believe it.”
What Spencer didn’t believe is that she could honestly think that. For a decade, he’d struggled to rein his brother in, like a wrangler with an unbroken horse. “It’s just a job, Eve. You make it sound like I’m his partner in crime or something.”
She raised her eyebrows ever so slightly.
“Not that there is any crime going on,” Spencer gave a quick laugh, barely under his breath. “Just need to get that disclaimer out there.”
Eve smiled gently, the upward turn of her lips transforming her whole face. It made her skin seem softer, her cheeks seem rounder, and her eyes more vibrantly catch what little light hadn’t been overtaken by the storm.
Spencer couldn’t help but stare a bit, mystified by the total transformation that could be brought by the movement of a few muscles.
“What?” The corners of Eve’s smile dropped slightly lower.
He tried to wave it off. No way he wanted to tell Eve what he was really thinking. “Nothing.”
The smile returned, this time broadly. She knew she had him in a corner. He could see she relished the moment. “Nothing always means something. Maybe I’ve spent more time with your brother than I have with you, but I’ve seen this look before. It’s obviously genetic.”
Her words mentally took the negotiator in Spencer to a boardroom. It was as though the other party had just gotten an admission of some key point to blow the whole carefully choreographed business dealing wide open.
Spencer had been exposed.
He didn’t particularly like the feeling. It was...unusual.
But after tonight, he’d never see Eve again. He had what he came for, cool and slick in his hand. He fingered the stone. It felt as solid as the hardball Eve was playing right this second.
He’d never see her again. She’d been pushed out of his brother’s life, and once he got in the car and drove back down Provident Island’s main highway, Eve Larson would be out of Spencer’s life as well. So, it wouldn’t hurt to give her the answer she wanted. He’d already taken so much from her anyway.
“I was looking at your smile.” Spencer threw it out there, matter-of-factly, just to see what she’d do with the truth.
“My smile?” As he’d suspected, she didn’t see the truth coming. She probably expected some veiled sarcasm. That’s what Mark would have dished out.
“It’s the truth.”
Eve fiddled with a lock of her hair, self-confidence creeping in and stripping some of that sassiness that had filled her face only moments ago.
“The truth.” The short syllables came out soberly.
“Yes, the truth, Eve. You’re pretty when you smile. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that before?” Spencer could feel the crack and waver of her self-confidence, like the watery landscape outside after one of the lightning strikes made contact from the sky.
Eve didn’t know what to do with the compliment from him, that much was clear.
He couldn’t turn off the analytical side of his brain.
Couldn’t stop himself from going down a rabbit trail of wondering why.
Couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to still the movement as she tried to shake her head no, to help her understand he was right and her hesitance was misplaced.
Spencer’s hands fell on the gentle curve of Eve’s shoulders. His right hand connected with the simple cotton of her striped shirt. His left hand, still holding the diamond, landed on the soft skin exposed by the wide boatneck-style collar.
He’d known Eve for years. He’d shaken her hands in greeting, given her brotherly hugs goodbye at the end of dinner parties, and probably come in contact with her in a hundred other small, casual ways. But never had he touched her bare skin and lingered.
Never had he felt the softness of her pale, creamy skin under his fingers.
Never had he wanted more.
Eve raised her gaze to Spencer’s. She wasn’t smiling now.
Her lips parted, a hesitant breath floating between them.
“Do you need anything else?” Her words were barely louder than the steady pounding of the rain on the cottage roof and windows.
Yes, he did.
But how did Spencer tell her he needed her to understand that though he shared genetics and office space with his brother, he wasn’t cut from the same cloth as Mark—that her assumptions were wrong?
It seemed simple, and to want her to understand was probably silly.
But it was as real to him as the measured movements of his finger touching her collarbone, as her chest expanded and retreated with each inhale and exhale.
He thought about the diamond between them, clear and flawless. Fit for royalty.
And what was he?
Only fit to do his brother’s dirty work, according to the woman in front of him.
He needed to leave, before he tried even more to convince her otherwise.
So there was only one way to answer her softly-spoken question—did he need anything else?
“No. I don’t.”
Spencer slid his hands off Eve’s shoulders, allowing himself a few more undeserved seconds of silk and diamonds under his fingertips.
“Then I guess you’d better go.” Eve looked at Spencer with unsure eyes. Clearly, she didn’t know what to make of the touch or of the moment, either. “You have everything you need.”
He had the Kiss of Kiev, the diamond he needed.
But looking at Eve, remembering his touch on her skin and the slight sigh on her lips, he knew one thing for certain.
He didn’t have everything he wanted.
