“Stop it!” she said before she could stop herself.
“You want me to be more romantic about it? I took you back to the hotel and seduced you, made love to you until you were so infatuated you couldn’t see straight? Is that more accurate?”
She gritted her teeth. “You fucked the shit out of me,” she said. “Why?”
“Obvious answer, babe. You were hot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. The woman you were with was gorgeous, and there we
re any number of other, much prettier, women who would have happily fallen at your feet. The reason you took me to bed had something to do with the murder.”
“Claudia isn’t exactly my type,” he said obliquely. “The reason I took you . . . not to bed, but in the shower, in case you’ve forgotten . . . was to find out exactly what you’d seen. I kept you away from newspapers reporting Corsini’s death, I distracted you from the sound of the police sirens, and I fucked you until you were incapable of telling me anything but the truth. If you’d seen anything, suspected anything, you’d have hardly let me go down on you with such enthusiasm.”
She sat there like stone, determined not to react. His deliberately coarse words were like blows, hammering away at something she’d still been fool enough to treasure, like someone taking a sledgehammer to a classic marble statue. She hadn’t realized she still kept even an ounce of emotion about that entire time once he’d betrayed her, and that was another wound. She wasn’t the strong, iron lady she’d envisioned herself to be.
She wasn’t going to let him know. She could keep that much to herself. And she had to keep him talking. He could shut down at any time—he’d answered more than five questions and he was hardly the soul of cooperation.
“All right, so we’ve established we had a night of sex. That was never under debate. You knew I’d seen nothing. Why didn’t you just dump me the next day? Why worry about me?”
“Because Corsini’s death was splashed all over the papers, and you’d seen both of us up there at the hillside chapel and could identify us. I needed to distract you until the big rush of publicity had gone by and Corsini was no longer front-page news. Your Italian wasn’t that good, and you’d have no reason to pick up a local newspaper and try to read it. The Corsini family is a big deal in Italy, but the family is not well-known out of the country. Corsini’s death barely made a paragraph in the English newspapers.”
“Okay, I can understand that. I can even understand the Danieli—anyone who could go to the best hotel in Venice on an expense account shouldn’t hesitate. But why bother with that sham marriage?”
He hesitated, and she was afraid he was going to stop talking. His eyes were straight ahead on the wide, endless highway in front of them, and he didn’t even glance at her. “I had my reasons.”
“And they were . . . ?”
“A question I’m not about to answer.”
She wasn’t ready to give up. “Okay, then tell me this. Why didn’t you just kill me in the first place? It would have been tidier, and I don’t get the sense that your organization is worried about collateral damage.”
“You know shit about my organization. I don’t happen to like ‘collateral damage,’ as you put it so professionally. I didn’t want to kill you. Not if I didn’t have to.”
As a declaration of love, it left a lot to be desired, but it still thawed some of the cold that had filled her as he deliberately broke down their relationship in the crudest possible terms.
“Why not?” Her voice was softer than she wanted.
He shot her a glance, and then that slow, lazy grin resurfaced, telling her that honesty was over. “I’m afraid that’s all you’re going to get out of me right now, Angel. Unless you want me to remind you of everything we did in the shower, and then in your bed, in exact detail. Or what we did in the Danieli, or in that bathtub, or even . . .”
“Why do you remember?”
That wiped the smile off his face, she thought smugly, so she pushed it. “Why would you remember a few days from five years ago in such painstaking detail? You obviously were very experienced, knowing just how to turn me from an intelligent woman into a lovesick idiot, so it couldn’t have been that unusual a way to spend a few days. You must have had tons of mindless sex before and since then. Why do you remember the time with me? Why the fuck am I here? How did I happen to get mixed up with you all over again when you should have been out of my life for good?”
She hadn’t noticed they were nearing an exit, but all of a sudden he jerked the wheel and they headed off the highway with a squealing of tires. “That’s a discussion for another time,” he said amiably as he pulled up at a truck stop, one that didn’t look all that different from the first one. “Time to feed you.”
Refusing to go with him until he gave her answers would be a total waste of time, and she was starving. The cooking facilities in the Winnebago were limited, and she had a craving for pancakes, comfort food at its finest, slathered in butter and nothing else. No fake sweet syrups to ruin the taste—if she couldn’t have Vermont maple syrup, then butter was an admirable substitute. And she’d eat meats full of nitrates and not give a damn. She’d work on him once she was finished.
Chapter Fourteen
Dealing with Evangeline was really quite simple, Bishop thought as he headed down the highway, a mammoth cup of strong, bitter coffee between his legs. All he had to do was feed her—preferably carbs—and fuck her, and she wore herself out. She’d slept for hours in the back of the camper after threatening him that she wanted more answers or else, and he had watched her in one of the rearview mirrors, curled up on the smaller bunk, sleeping like a baby. He would have given ten years off his life to park this sleekly reconfigured bucket of bolts and climb into bed with her, but the landscape was so spare and unforgiving that he hadn’t seen much more than a short bush in a hundred miles. There was no way they would get any privacy, and besides, he was going to keep it in his pants, wasn’t he?
Having sex with her last night had ended up being a very smart thing to do, even if his brain hadn’t been working at the time. It had unsettled and confused her, left part of her both aroused and compliant, even though she was fighting that effect, and she’d go out of her way not to let him get close enough to pull her into bed again. As long as she kept her distance, he’d be able to concentrate on business, and they just might make it through the next few days safely. By late tomorrow they’d be in New Orleans, she’d be safe in someone else’s hands, and he and Ryder could do what they had to do without any distractions.
He was going to need to answer some of her questions. She had to understand why she was in danger, or she wouldn’t be able to keep herself safe. Even with the divorce and approaching execution of His Eminence, her safety wasn’t guaranteed—he had too damned many enemies. It had never bothered him one way or another, but when it came to endangering Evangeline, it was another matter entirely. It would be better if he stopped keeping tabs on her—better for her, a hell of a lot better for him. He would have had no trouble forgetting all about her if he hadn’t felt it necessary to keep an eye on her.
He let out a low, mirthless laugh. Yeah, sure. If only it were that simple. For some ridiculous reason Evangeline Morrissey had gotten under his skin, in his blood like some fucking plague, and he couldn’t get rid of her. Even when he went months without checking on her, he couldn’t keep from thinking about her.
There must be some kind of unfinished business between them, but he didn’t know what it was. Not that he’d been thinking last night, but he’d kind of hoped that taking her to bed again would get her out of his system. That hadn’t happened. And if he didn’t get his shit together, they were all going to be in trouble.