Prohibited (Tulsa City Sinners #1)

23. Evie

Chapter twenty-three

Evie

When Evie walked out onto the landing, she was expecting Ryan to be hovering nearby. But he was nowhere to be seen. The creamy carpet under foot was plush and deliciously luxurious under her bare feet. She walked carefully down across the landing, hoping not to draw attention from anyone. She was enjoying the illusion of freedom that she had, of being a guest in someone else’s home.

The house itself was magnificent, though she wasn’t at all surprised. Alexander Laurent had only ever demonstrated a propensity for the most exceptional taste. She trailed her fingers along the balustrade, marveling at how beautifully it gleamed. Though her house–or rather her husband’s house–was even more luxurious and beautifully appointed, she had always taken it for granted. She had grown up in a wealthy household, and she had married into one. But it had been weeks since she had been anywhere except for being locked in small, dim places with dirt floors .

The back of the truck was an exception with gravel biting into her back and her hips. Lindsay’s gorgeously skilled mouth and fingers had erased all of it, if only for a few moments…

The memory made her shiver and smile a touch with pleasure. The touch of his hand and the way he had just tenderly kissed her knuckles filled her with a heady giddiness that nearly floated her the next few steps across the landing.

She stood there, caressing the polished mahogany, staring at the wallpaper and feeling that tug again of, what now? The apprehension of not knowing, the ambiguity of her circumstances, caused her more anxiety than when she’d been kept under lock and key. Last night, the housekeeper had shown her to a room where she’d found a white cotton nightgown laid out for her. She’d only discovered that she wasn’t entirely free to come and go as she pleased when she’d walked out of the room in the middle of the night and nearly ran smack into Ryan, sleeping in a chair in front of her bedroom door on the carpeted landing.

It was a vast improvement over the dirt floor cell, but it filled her with an acute apprehension. Every minute that passed, she expected someone to come and take her again, to lead her to the basement and lock her in there.

The most rational part of her was evaluating a potential escape plan. Right now, for instance, she was free. There was also a lovely little pair of French doors in her bedroom that opened up onto a balconette. She could tie the linens together in her room and climb down into the garden below.

And then she would be free.

Free?

Free to do what? Run right back to Walter Stanley? Unless he was dead, she would never escape him. The idea filled her with more dread than staying at the mercy of Alex and Ryan.

And even if Walter Stanley suddenly disappeared, she was stuck with Linus.

A thought that caused her to feel even sicker.

Evie wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold though the house was warm from the summer heat blazing outside.

And how could she leave Lindsay now? What if something terrible happened to him?

And the look on Ryan’s face, the shock and the… gratitude. The shape of his mouth as he formed the words, “You came back.” A prickle went over her skin, traveled into her cheeks. Was she blushing a little? She pressed her hands to her face. Laughing at herself would have been the appropriate response if she didn’t feel so lost.

Why was she enamored with him? So they’d shared a tryst in a gardening shed all those years ago. So she’d loved him once. He was a prick with a bad temper. And while she couldn’t hold it against him that he hated her for being an accessory to his brother’s murder, however inadvertent, that didn’t make it any less real that he was a professional criminal who wasn’t above abducting a woman to torment his enemies.

He was no good and she had no business thinking about him or getting flustered by him. After the mess that Walter Stanley made of her life, she should be sick to death of criminals and wayward men. After the way she’d been carrying on, she ought to be sick to death of men, period.

Her husband was right–she had been making a fool of herself. And a fool of him. She didn’t care so much about his reputation, but it weighed on her that she had spent her time doing nothing but plummeting toward self-destruction since Etian died. Ever since she’d woken up to find herself in a small cell in the basement of a building in downtown Tulsa, she’d been racked with terror that she was going to die having never recovered her life after the war. Before the abduction, no matter how much she told herself she wished she were dead, she had discovered that this was most assuredly not true. She wanted to live. And she didn’t know what would happen now, but she knew that things would be different for her. Forever.

Leaving the banister behind, she wandered to the door of a room she hadn’t seen yet and poked her head inside. It was a richly appointed bedroom, like the one she’d been given to sleep in. Like the one Lindsay was napping in just now.

How strange to be in Alex Laurent’s house. He was an enigma of a person, lacking a warmth at his core that she had taken for granted in almost every other person she had ever met. Every other person except for Walter Stanley, of course. The chill behind his smile reminded her very much of Walter Stanley, though of course that’s where the resemblance ended.

The fact that he felt some type of ownership over her brought her comfort, however disconcerting, where initially she had found it demeaning and infuriating. The regard he had for Lindsay, no matter that it seemed to arise from possession rather than love, was a practical demonstration of how one could benefit from that sense of ownership.

Evie bit her lip and clasped her hands under her chin, staring at the wainscoting on the wall in front of her, where she’d drifted to a stop. Lost in thought. The house was quiet. So quiet. Not the disconcerting quiet of the basement where she’d been locked in the cell. No, this was a peaceful quiet. A pause before the next breath.

But what did it mean that they were allowing her to wander by herself through the corridors, house quiet? Lindsay fast asleep?

There had been no discussion. No acknowledgement, outside of Ryan making a vague and threatening statement about the storm cellar.

Ryan, who had spent all night in her room, sitting against the door. Obviously keeping her from leaving, but why didn’t he lock her in the storm cellar?

She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and turned toward the stairs. They had rushed her through the foyer of the house last night and straight up the stairs. This had afforded her barely a glimpse of the rest of the house. And she couldn’t help but be curious about its contents.

On feet light as air, she took the stairs one at a time. One of her hands trailed along the polished banister, marveling at how smooth it was. A soft rustle made her pause and she looked around, searching for the source of the noise.

Finding nothing, she proceeded a little further and a little more cautiously.

“Going somewhere?”

The deep rumble of Ryan’s voice, drifting at her from nowhere caused her to nearly jump out of her skin.

“Jesus,” she said, clutching her hand over the green silk and cotton dress that lay over her chest. She turned her head and found him seated on a gossip bench next to the telephone. A paperback novel with yellowing pages and a broken spine lay open on his lap. Though she tried to look anywhere but his eyes, she couldn’t help it. As always, they were so bright that they seemed to glow. The color of the Mediterranean, where her husband had taken her for their honeymoon. And they filled her immediately with a sharp, forking heat that she hated and craved all at once.

The expression on his face was unreadable, but it pinned her to the spot, nonetheless.

He still looked tired, but he had washed his face, combed his hair. There was still the shadow of a beard on his fine jaw, but it only added to the soft halo of danger that seemed to radiate around him. There was a cup of coffee on a cork coaster next to the telephone. Some of his fingers were loosely curled around it.

Just looking at his hands made her cheeks sting and she hoped to God he didn’t notice.

She stood there in her bare feet, not sure what to say to him. He, for his part, also remained silent. The silence stretched on until impatience began to replace whatever stupidity was gluing her mouth shut.

“What if I was?” she said, suddenly remembering that he had actually asked her a question.

He huffed a little, a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. It certainly didn’t touch his eyes.

“You aren’t.” Flat. Final.

“Why didn’t you lock me in the storm cellar?” The question was driving her mad and she would go crazy if he didn’t lift the ambiguity of her situation.

“Anyone ever tell you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?” His expression didn’t change, but his hand shifted slowly, closing the paperback with his finger holding the pages apart. He tapped the book against his leg. The fingers of his other hand turned the coffee cup.

Watching them made her mouth go slightly dry.

“I just want to know what’s going on.” She made her voice as flat as his, careful not to give him a hint of her anxiety. Her vulnerability.

“I haven’t decided,” he said at last.

Evie let out a puff of air. “I don’t understand. One minute, I’m being held prisoner in a cell. The next, I’m being given a room with a bed to sleep in, clothes to wear. The staff are fussing over me. I’m being treated like a guest. I can’t be blamed for feeling totally and completely bewildered, Ryan.”

“Why did you do it?”

She didn’t have to ask him what he meant.

The question rang through her like a heavy iron bell, a feeling so intense that it swallowed her voice.

On some level, she had never expected to have this conversation with him because he’d wanted nothing to do with her. But on the other hand, she should have expected it eventually.

After all this time, the fact that he was looking directly at her. Speaking directly to her like a person. It was almost too much. It took everything she had not to clasp her hands together and curl in on herself. Instead, she stood tall and straight and laced her fingers together, looking back at him and trying to summon an answer to his question.

He didn’t ask her again. Just went on staring at her with a cold but otherwise unreadable expression.

“I–” she began, but she had to clear her throat. “I told you, I didn’t know what he was going to do.”

A slight sneer on his face put a feeling of panic through her.

“He– He was upset with me,” she said, twisting her right hand in her left, fingers catching on her absurd wedding ring. “I left with my husband for three weeks. He was angry that I was gone for so long. He demanded that I ‘help him out’ to make it up to him. And he said it was just a little thing. Just a robbery.”

Evelyn looked down at her hands because suddenly the weight of his gaze was too much. Ripples of grief were starting in her chest.

“I figured, what difference does it make? These guys are always fucking each other over. It’s just a robbery. Right?”

He put the book aside entirely now and his other hand abandoned its attentions to the white porcelain of his coffee cup. He folded his hands in front of him, never taking his eyes off of her face.

“He said I just needed to pose as a new client. One of your guys–S-Sandy, I think–he’d put the whole thing together. Walter was paying him to set the whole thing up.” Evie bit her lip, backs of her eyes stinging. “I guess he probably just wanted you out of the way.”

“I guess he did,” Ryan said, coldly.

Evie cleared her throat. “So he told me that when the guys arrived, I was supposed to get out of the car like I was coming to greet them. To put them off their guard. I–” Her voice trembled slightly. “I didn’t know that man–T-Tommy–I didn’t know he was your brother. I didn’t know anything except for what Walter told me. And I did what he told me to do. I was a fool for trusting him. I’ve always been a fool for trusting him.”

A tremor went through her lower lip, so she bit down on it. Try as she might to prevent it, a single tear escaped her eye. She swept it away quickly, no hope of Ryan offering her sympathy. She expected none .

“You have to understand that I–” She hesitated. “I– He frightens me. I’ve been trying to think of how to escape from him but there’s nothing I can do. There is nowhere I can go. He’ll find me.” The despair that went rippling through her made her body heavy.

“He hurt you?” Ryan asked suddenly, watching her with guarded but angry eyes.

“Sometimes,” she said, sighing. “He tells me that if I leave him he’ll kill me. I didn’t know what sort of man he was when I…” She laughed, a sardonic sound. “I knew he was a criminal. But I– I don’t know what I thought. I thought he’d grow tired of me. Men like him, I thought, they can’t be kept down.” She shook her head. “It’s the opposite. He’s obsessed.” She said the last word in a low, heavy voice. “And I think… I think one of these days he will kill me.”

Clear as day, she could picture his eyes, boring into hers. Pinning her down. Keeping her trapped as he took everything from her and more. So strangely like Ryan’s, but the fire in Ryan’s was warm. Walter’s eyes, they were cold enough to freeze blood.

Ryan stayed silent, watching. Suddenly, she felt self-conscious. Stupid.

“I–” She swallowed the lump in her throat, still twisting her hands. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “I want you to know that I’m sorry. If I could take it back, I would. I know that I can’t. But I would. I’d trade places with him if it meant that you had your brother back.” She took a breath and huffed it out. “I know that’s nonsense. There’s no going back. I just– I’m sorry. I don’t blame you for being angry with me. For wanting to k-kill me. For doing what you did.”

God, now she was just babbling. She wanted him to say something, do something, even if it meant that he screamed at her and berated her for her stupidity.

But he did nothing. Said nothing.

The silence was so heavy, it made her eardrums throb.

“I, um–” she turned away from him. “I want to help you. Get Walter. For what he did. I don’t know how much help I can be, but I want to help you.” Her voice dropped. “I’ve done wrong. But he’s… he’s done evil.”

A creak and then the sound of footsteps startled her.

The full weight of his beauty hit her like a hammer in the chest as he walked toward her. It pressed down on her, rooting her to the spot. She forgot to breathe. The look on his face was enough to nearly kill her. Grief, anger, and maybe even remorse flickering through his expression, though he was clearly trying to control himself.

She opened her mouth to say something to him, but without warning, he bent at the waist, threw his shoulder against her hip and stood up again with her hanging down the back of his body before she could even register her surprise.

“He- Wh- Ryan!” Evie pressed her hands against his lower back, trying to gain enough purchase to get upright enough to see where she was being taken, though this was quite difficult because her short hair was falling down around her eyes. “I’m not a sack of vegetables!” she said .

He ignored her. Gritting her teeth, she began to slap at his back.

“I’d advise you to stop that,” he rumbled.

“Or what?” she said, hand raised to deliver another blow. “You’ll spank me?”

She kicked her legs and tried to shimmy free, but his hands grabbed her by the backs of the thighs and locked them into a vice-like grip.

The sudden explosion of pain on her backside caught her by surprise and she let out a small wail of pain.

“How dare–”

“That’s a spanking,” he said as he took the stairs one at a time. “What I do to you if you don’t stop thrashing like a fish will not be a spanking.”

She swallowed hard, but ceased her assault.

“Where are you taking me?” she said, swiveling her head around. It seemed an awful lot like they were going to her bedroom. A fact that made her stomach do a very awkward flip flop, hanging over his shoulder as she was.

He didn’t answer. They reached the landing and went to the door of the room she had been given by the housekeeper the night before. Down at the other end of the hall, through her curtain of short hair, she saw Lindsay watching them, propped up on his elbow with a distinct look of disapproval on his face.

She almost said, “Help me!” But what could Lindsay possibly do, injured as he was? Instead, she dug both of her elbows into Ryan’s back and gritted her teeth together .

Suddenly, she was tumbling backwards, and with a very undignified grunt, she landed on the soft duvet cover of her bed. Though she was quick to swipe her hair out of her eyes and scramble to her feet, Ryan was already at the door again, closing it behind him.

“Wh- What are you–”

“Don’t cause a fuss,” he said. Beautiful mouth pressed into a firm line, he gave her a stern, cold look. “The staff will not let you out and they don’t deserve to be bothered by a bunch of hollering from you.”

“Wait!” she said, her heart surging into her throat. Fear was overcoming her suddenly. The caged animal inside of her was suddenly mad to escape. She rushed toward him. “You’re not locking me in here?”

“I’ll let you out when I come back.” He looked away and resumed closing the door.

Not to be deterred, she grabbed the door and tried to pull it open. “But what about Lindsay?”

“He’ll be looked after.” He looked at her again, a look that sent a shiver down her spine. Whether it was a good or a bad thing was unclear. “Let go of the door. Wouldn’t want to take your fingers off.”

“You wouldn’t–”

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing to send one of them to your husband.” Ryan smiled at her, a cold smile that felt like a knife in her ribcage. “Alex wanted to, but I told him we should refrain from cutting bits off of you. For now.”

“What if I need to use the lavatory?” Now she was grasping at straws–practical as they may be .

“There’s a chamber pot under the bed. Let go of the door.” He gave her a look of warning that was so intense, she couldn’t help but drop her hand at once. And she immediately hated him for it.

“You- You terrible– You hypocrite,” was all she could think to say.

Without so much as a final look, he closed the door and immediately turned the lock.

Though she knew it was futile, she immediately ran to the door and yanked on the handle. Then she pounded the door with her fist and shrieked once before she slammed her teeth together and forced herself to calm down.

Stupid, stupid men.