Chapter Seven
Eva
I was devastated the next morning when the enormity of what I’d said and done the night before really hit me.
I sat up in bed, unrested, and tossed my unruly hair from my face.
“Oh, God,” I moaned as I ran a hand down my face.
I told Trace about my past after the most earth shattering moments of my life.
Everything he’d done to me and to my body had felt so damn perfect, every minute surreal. Why had I gone and destroyed it?
“Because there’s something about him that won’t let me lie,” I whispered to myself.
At some point during the night, I’d moved from the floor, undressed and donned a pair of pajamas. The tears had finally dried up, the sobs subsided. I felt worn out, raw and more vulnerable than I ever had in my entire life.
Trace had knocked on the door last night, but I’d stifled my painful cries while he was in the hallway, made myself not utter a sound. He’d finally left, probably assuming I was asleep. Unfortunately, I hadn’t slept much, and I’d been very much awake when he’d been hammering on my door. I’d just been too afraid to answer.
“It’s Thanksgiving. How am I going to face him?” I flopped onto my back and covered my face with a pillow. I was going to have to face him and live with the fact that he knew my history, and he hadn’t accepted it well. There had been anger in his voice last night when he’d come to my bedroom door, and really, could I blame him? I hadn’t been honest before he’d laid his hands on me, and he’d unknowingly been intimate with a felon, somebody he shouldn’t even know, much less screw.
“Eva!”
I jackknifed into a sitting position as I heard his low baritone outside my door. “I know you’re in there. I left last night to give you time, but I’m not leaving again. Answer the door or I break it in.” His fist pounded hard on the heavy wood barrier.
Resigned, I scooted out of bed and went to the door, unlocking it and turning around to walk back to the bed and sit.
He entered almost immediately, and I was certain he had been listening for the lock on the door to click. Of course, I was going to unlock it. Number one: there was no way I was going to let him destroy such a beautiful polished wood door. Number two: I couldn’t run away from the truth forever. There was no point in putting it off any longer.
I lowered my head and focused on the elegant pattern of the cream-colored carpet on the floor, not wanting to make eye contact with him. My crazy hair hid my face, and I waited.
And waited.
And then, continued to wait.
Every muscle in my body was tense, and I knew he was in the room. Not only had I heard him enter, but I could feel him. Trace Walker emitted such a compelling force of energy just by entering a room that he couldn’t be ignored.
Just when I was about to give in and look up, I found myself suddenly on my back, pinned by the significant weight of his body. “What are you doing?” My voice was tremulous as he pinned my hands over my head.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he demanded in a husky voice.
“Do what?” I couldn’t avoid looking at him as he swiped my hair from my face.
“Leave,” he growled. “Run away from me. Don’t do it again. I fucking hated it.”
My heart skittered as I stared at his grim expression. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and I wondered if he’d slept. “You look tired.”
“I didn’t sleep much. It was hard to fall asleep after I found out I’d screwed a virgin without knowing I was her first. And I damn well knew you were crying.”
How had he known? I’d tried not to make a sound. The last thing I wanted was his sympathy.
“I wasn’t crying,” I told him stubbornly.
“Bullshit!” He frowned and traced what I thought was an invisible line of tears. “Your makeup is smeared.”
Shit! Shit! Shit! Damn Claudette and her magic mascara wand.
I was guessing that the telltale sign of my tears was now smeared down my cheeks in a black line of makeup that used to be on my eyelashes. I was going to nix the mascara from now on.
“I did cry, okay. I admit it. I was upset. It’s no big deal.” I tried to minimize the river of tears I cried the night before, and the release of the sorrow I’d bottled up inside me for years.
As I noticed his expression go from irritation to downright furious, I wondered if he had violent tendencies. He had seemed so in control, so sure of himself. This was a side of Trace that scared me just a little.
“It is a big deal. I hurt you. I’m sorry.” His expression was still angry, but his eyes were full of remorse.
“You didn’t hurt me. Not really.” I didn’t struggle in his hold. The weight of his body holding me prisoner was strangely warm and comforting, and his grip on my wrists was only tight enough to keep me from running away…again.
I didn’t deserve his guilt over taking my virginity. I’d given it to him willingly because I wanted that experience greedily. Desperately. I wanted someone to cling to for a short time. I wanted to feel like somebody cared. And most of all, I wanted the pleasure he could offer me.
“Then why in the hell did you take off like that?”
I took a deep breath. “I told you that I’m an ex-con. You were disgusted that you’d slept with me. Admit it.” I didn’t want to hear him say the words, but I needed to hear them. My moments of pleasure were over and it was time to face reality.
“I wasn’t disgusted with you. I was mad at myself, Eva. I should have known, should have recognized that you were inexperienced. I didn’t. I wanted you, and I couldn’t think past that. Yes, you surprised me. I was angry, but not at you.” He paused for a minute before continuing, “Who set you up? It was your mother, wasn’t it?”
I gaped at him. “You think I was innocent?”
He lifted an arrogant brow. “Weren’t you?”
“Yes.” My chest ached as I realized that he assumed I wasn’t guilty of committing the crime that had put me away for most of my adult life.
He shrugged. “I believe you.”
Just like that? That easily? He believed I was innocent? “Why?”
He slowly released his grip on my wrists, as though he was reassured I wasn’t going anywhere. “Because you’ve given me no reason to doubt it. You’ve worked most of your life, and you came to me begging for a job so you could make a living. You were honest when you didn’t have to be. I don’t think you’re capable of whatever crime you supposedly committed.”
He helped me sit up, but he kept a supporting hand behind my back.
“You barely know me,” I argued, stunned that he didn’t appear to have any doubts.
No one had ever believed me, not even a jury of my peers.
“What happened?”
Tears sprang to my eyes again, and I clasped my hands together because I was trembling. Trace was the first person to doubt my guilt, and his exoneration touched my soul. “I don’t understand why you believe me.”
“Believe it. You don’t have to understand why. Just tell me what happened, Eva.”
His voice was low and soothing now, and I felt my body finally relax.
One of his large hands reached out and covered my conjoined fingers. “Stop fidgeting. If you did nothing wrong, you have no reason to feel guilty.”
It wasn’t all guilt that was making me nervous. It was him. Trace made me uneasy, but not in a frightening kind of way. “Nobody has ever believed me. And I don’t like to talk about it.”
I hated remembering how terrified I was, how I’d been duped by a mother who hadn’t given a shit about me. She had known what had happened to me. I’d called her, and she had denied that she’d had anything to do with the crime, but I could tell she’d deliberately left me to take the blame if the theft had been discovered.
“Tell me,” Trace said insistently.
I swallowed hard, knowing I owed him an explanation. “My mother didn’t work much, but she got a temporary position with a Mrs. Mitchell as an assistant and companion right before she met your father. In fact, she met your dad because she worked for the Mitchell family. They were rich. Probably not as rich as your family, but well-to-do.” What I really meant was that the Mitchell family probably had only millions instead of billions, but they were still incredibly rich. “Mrs. Mitchell introduced your father to my mother during a party.”
I turned my head and saw him nod, but he was silent, waiting for me to go on.
“My mother stole some very pricey jewelry from her employer right before her temporary job ended, during an event Mrs. Mitchell was having to celebrate her son’s birthday. I came to the festivities to work with my mother - Mrs. Mitchell offered me decent money to come work that night as hired help. I was serving food, and on the cleanup crew. I couldn’t turn down the extra income for one night’s work. It was a decision I eventually regretted.”
“How did you get blamed?” Trace asked curiously.
I shrugged. “My mother left the jewelry in our apartment when she realized your father was going to get serious very quickly. She wasn’t going to risk being caught with the goods, so she left them when she went to Texas to be with your father. By the time Mrs. Mitchell raised the alarm and the theft was being investigated, my mother was gone. They found the items in our apartment and I was the only one living there.”
“That isn’t enough—”
I interrupted before he could say anything more. “Mrs. Mitchell swore my mother would never steal from her. It didn’t hurt that your father had already proposed to my mother, and she’d left to live her happily ever after in Texas.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “I don’t think Mrs. Mitchell wanted to believe that she’d set your dad up with a thief, and she didn’t want something like that to go public. There was also video evidence.”
“You were caught on video?”
I shook my head. “Not me. It had to be my mother. We both started out wearing the same uniform that afternoon, but she changed shortly after arriving at the mansion because your father was attending the party. She didn’t want to be seen as one of the workers. I don’t think the Mitchell family ever saw her in the uniform. They weren’t around while we were setting up.”
“Did she do it on purpose?” Trace’s voice was getting irritated.
“Probably.”
“So she planned to pin it on you?”
“I really don’t think she planned on getting caught. She didn’t try to sell the items right away. They were hidden in her room at the apartment. She’d stolen before, and had never gotten caught. Little stuff. Shoplifting and petty theft. She went big this time, but I think she was too afraid to take the jewelry with her when she went to Texas to be with your dad.”
“How in the hell did they mistake her for you in the video?”
“No one remembered seeing her in uniform, and the quality of the video was bad. They could only tell the approximate weight, height and hair color of the person taking the jewelry. That description fit…me. It also fit my mother. Which one do you think they suspected when I had the goods and my estranged mother was marrying a very rich man?”
“Did you confront your mother?”
I nodded. “Only on the phone. She swore she knew nothing about it, and she told me that I needed to pay for my crimes right before she told me that she never wanted to talk to me again and hung up.”
My supposed crimes weren’t stealing jewelry; I was guilty of just one crime: being born.
“Bitch!” Trace exploded.
I couldn’t argue with him. My mother was pure evil. It wasn’t something I didn’t already know. “The jury unanimously convicted me. I was caught with the goods, I was poor, I was there and wearing the uniform, and I fit the video description of the perp. I was sentenced to four years. I was out in three for good behavior, but I spent time on parole.”
“Jesus, Eva. How the hell does a mistake like that happen?” His voice was perplexed, but mostly he sounded angry.
“I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.” I’d pretty much come to grips with what had happened in the past. I couldn’t change my past or my fate. I could only hope I had a future.
“How did you survive?”
I knew what he meant. He wanted to know how I’d endured being in prison. “It was difficult at first. But I started working in the kitchen at the facility. I kept quiet and stayed out of trouble. I didn’t really talk to anyone. I read a lot whenever I could get my hands on books. Time passed.” I didn’t want to admit that every moment I was in prison seemed like forever, and that staying to myself caused tension with the other women. When I finally left incarceration, I swore I’d never go back. I’d die first.
“And when you got out?” he prompted.
“I got any job I could find. I lied on my job applications, or I stretched the truth. I lost plenty of positions because they found out I was a felon one way or another. When I could, I worked under the table. I did whatever I could to survive.”
He gripped my shoulders and turned me toward him. “Why didn’t you contact us, Eva? Christ! We would have helped you.”
I met his eyes and asked bluntly, “Would you? Would you really? You didn’t even know you had a stepsister, and the last thing that would have occurred to me is that you’d actually believe me. Nobody else ever has. My mother and your father were dead by the time my trial started. Why would you want to help me? I’m nobody to any of you, and you were dealing with grief and losing your dad. Do you know how hard it was just to get into your office, just to have the chance to talk to you? If you hadn’t mistaken me for someone else, I wouldn’t have been able to get a conversation with you at all.”
He stood and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “There had to be a way to take care of this, keep you out of prison for a crime you didn’t commit.”
I smiled as I saw his frustration, his concern over the fact that justice hadn’t been done in my case. “You want to think the justice system is infallible. I wanted to think that, too.” Unfortunately, I’d learned just how unpredictable it could really be. “My illusions were shattered the minute the verdict was read.”
“You were only seventeen, right?”
“I was when the jewelry was stolen, but they found the stolen items in the apartment on the day after my eighteenth birthday. My mother died with your father not long after I was arrested, so I was on my own. I was tried as an adult.”
“Fuck!” Trace ran a frustrated hand through his hair, making him look even more gorgeous in a mussed up kind of way. I knew he was trying to make sense out of a situation that was completely unfair.
I knew that look, but he couldn’t change what had happened, even if he was a Walker.
“It’s Thanksgiving. Let me get dressed and I’ll cook us an incredible meal. We can forget about what happened for a little while,” I suggested, standing up to go take a shower.
Although I was touched that Trace had faith in me, I still didn’t have any faith in myself. I didn’t want to talk about my past.
Trace grabbed my upper arm as I past and swung me around. “I’ll never forget, Eva. I swear I’ll make this right.”
Looking at his enraged expression, I almost believed him. But after so many years and so many failures, I knew I couldn’t outrun my past. “It doesn’t matter.”
He let go of my arm reluctantly. “The hell it doesn’t,” he grumbled.
I smiled at him as I shrugged out of his grasp. He couldn’t change my past, but I wish I could make him understand how much his belief that I was innocent really meant. Since it was impossible to explain, I simply kept smiling at him weakly and headed for the shower.