Was this why Quinn had many women, not one woman? So he could just leave them at will, before they left him? And was this why he and Annie were so close? Why Michael sometimes felt like an outsider and why, at this moment, he was getting convincingly drunk?
“So, Evie, excuse me,
Mom
, how long are you staying?” Michael was talking again. “And where?” He hiccoughed. “Maybe you can just move in with us, or has Annie already invited you?” He leaned over, pointed a finger at his fiancé. “You see, sometimes she forgets to tell me things . . . important things.”
“Michael, you’re ruining this whole evening. Stop it, now!”
He swung toward Annie so fast, Eve gasped, certain he was going to slap Annie’s face, or punch her jaw. He did neither. Instead, he settled back, ran both hands through his hair and mumbled, “God, I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
Annie touched his cheek, stroked her fingers along his jaw. “Come on, let’s get some fresh air.”
“I’m sorry baby.” He pushed back his chair and wobbled to a stand. “I just want to be a part of you.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Michael.” She leaned up to kiss him on the mouth. “It’s okay.” Annie slung her arm around his waist and said, “You know you can’t drink, I don’t know what came over you.”
“Stupidity, I guess.”
“I love you, Michael. Okay?”
“Me, too. Let’s skip the fresh air. I am going to throw up.”
When they disappeared into the men’s bathroom, Quinn forced a laugh and said, “Welcome to Family Life 101.”
“If you’ll excuse me, I think I need a cigarette.” Evie Burnes grabbed her purse and headed for the door.
“A little too much honest emotion I’d say,” Quinn murmured. “So now you know more about me than most of the women I’ve slept with.”
“Should I feel privileged?” Quinn Burnes was big on shock value or maybe just very drunk.
He shrugged. “Not necessarily.”
She was dying to ask him the question that had plagued her all night. “Your mother’s really not much different than me, is she?”
“You mean the disappearing act?”
She nodded.
His gaze narrowed on her. “If you’re wondering if you’ve got an eighteen year run before anybody finds you, quite possibly. I doubt there were many who looked harder than my father.”
“She changed her name?”
“Pass the champagne.”
Eve refilled Quinn’s glass and waited for him to take a drink. “Do you think,” she paused, reworked the words, “I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, but do you think I could talk to her and maybe find out how she did it?”
“Sure. Talk to her about how she did it. Every mother should know how to go undercover from her family.”
Eve spotted the vulnerability there, an open wound smoldering under layer after layer of hurt and denial. She reached out to comfort him, but there were too many walls, too many years, and she pulled her hand away.
Chapter 11
They were sitting in a restaurant two doors down from
The Silver Strand
. It was close. Safe. Dark. Eve selected this location for all of the above reasons. It was still too soon to venture past the perimeter she’d formulated in her brain as safe. Alexander might be dead but the fallout from his death still lurked. What if Ernesto decided to track her down? What if Alexander Sr. sent his minions after her? What if.
What if they discovered she was carrying Alexander’s child?
They would drag her back and force her to remain Eve Maldonando, widow to their dead son. They would lay claim to the unborn child, the solitary heir of Alexander Maldonando, Jr. Eve clutched her still flat stomach. They’d never find out. If she had to live in basements for the rest of her life, move from city to city, change her name time and again, they would never find out.
No one knew except the doctor who had examined her two days before she fled. Alexander’s family would never suspect a pregnancy, not when she’d been estranged from him for sixth months. Of course, they would never believe their son capable of raping his own wife. They had no idea what Alexander was capable of, the brutality of what he’d done to her.
She must find a way to continue this new life she’d created, to forge a believable existence that voided any connection with the Maldonando’s. Evie Burnes knew how to make it work. She’d done it for years, which was why Eve invited her to lunch, why she dared risk venturing into the open so soon, in the daylight no less. She glanced at the wide windows in the front of the restaurant. They were covered with three inch wooden blinds, slatted to half-closed. More protection. Eve stirred her tea, settled into the cramped booth and chose her approach. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me today.”
Quinn’s mother nodded her cropped head. Today she wore a lavender scarf around her neck that lightened her eyes to liquid silver. Like Quinn’s. “I gather we share something in common. Other than Quinn, that is.”
“Quinn and I . . . there’s nothing there. He helped me out of a rough spot.” Eve shifted her gaze to the sugar settling in the bottom of her glass. There was nothing between them and yet, she couldn’t deny the pull of attraction when he was near.
Evie Burnes ignored the comment. “You mentioned on the phone you were running from your estranged husband.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t want him to find you.”
“He can’t find me. He’s dead.”
“I see.” There was a long pause. “Are you a suspect?”
Eve shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s just . . . I can’t go back. I have to start over, give myself and my,” she caught herself and finished with, “give myself a fresh start.”
Another pause. “How can I help you?”
“Tell me how you did it. Quinn said you disappeared and no one was able to find you. How did you erase yourself so permanently?”
The laugh splattered against the dark, dingy walls like a cold, hollow memory. “I made a choice and stayed with it.”
“Annie said you kept away to protect your family. In a way, I’m doing the same thing.”
I’m protecting my unborn child.
“Well then, you have to make a decision. Right here, right now.” Her pale eyes burned into Eve. “Do not dwell on the life or the people you left behind. No matter how much you want to be free of that life, it will seep into your existence and pull you back. If you let it.” The next words were a command. “Don’t let it. You’ll need identification.” Her voice dipped and she looked away. “When you take someone else’s identity, you’re taking their whole past, good and bad. It can backfire.”
“Did you have a problem?”
“You could say that.” She didn’t offer more. “Start with the obvious. Change your hairstyle, maybe the color, though that’s a beautiful black, and your clothes, too.” She stirred her drink and added, “You sound too West Coast. Work on developing a Philly twang. Pay everything with cash. And your handwriting, change that, too.”
“Okay. I can do those things.”
“I assume Danielle isn’t your real name?”
“No.”
“Good. Maybe it makes more sense to take your chances with a fictitious name than someone else’s. You won’t have a social security number, but at least you’re under the radar.” She studied Eve. “Do these things and you’ll have a chance. If no one’s looking for you, better yet.” She clasped her glass between her hands with fingers that were long, graceful, void of rings. “What does Quinn say about you talking to me?”
“He said it was okay.”
“But he didn’t like it, did he?”
“I don’t think so.”
She nodded. “Of course not. Did he mention he used to paint? Oils. I doubt he’s touched a brush in years, but he’d still have the talent if he’d let himself.”
“Quinn paints?”
“Quinn painted. And he was wonderful.”
“I thought Annie was the one who painted.”
“Ah, Annie.” She blinked hard, and murmured, “She wants it so badly but it’s not there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Quinn had a gift, has it still, I’m sure, if he’d only let himself feel it again. But Annie will always be a beginner.”
“Then how do you explain the ten thousand dollar sale?”
Her silver blue gaze met Eve’s. “I can’t.”
***
Quinn pulled on a pale blue shirt and adjusted the color. It was Annie’s favorite. She said it matched his eyes. Why did women always make statements like that, as if their brains were mini fashion transmitters that coordinated and accessorized subconsciously, without purpose or regard? He wore the blue shirt because it was comfortable. Period. No hidden agenda. Nothing but the obvious, so unlike a woman.
And the reason he was wearing the damn shirt at all was because of his sister. When she found out today was Danielle’s birthday, damn if she didn’t call and beg him to take the woman to dinner.
I’d do it myself but I promised Michael I’d go listen to him speak tonight. Please, Quinn. She’s got no one.
When he finally arrived at
The Silver Strand
, he was twenty-five minutes late and in a mood. Why did the water main have to break right near his exit? And why did the detour have to loop the entire city? And why had he let his sister talk him into doing something he had absolutely no desire to do?
He’d just backed the Audi into a parking space when Danielle raced out of the boutique and slid into the seat beside him. “Hi.”
Quinn blinked and did a double take. “What in God’s name did you do to your hair?”
“I got it cut.”
“That’s an understatement.” All that gorgeous hair, whacked off to just below her chin. “Why?”
She shrugged, touched her hair as though she weren’t sure it was really hers. “Evie thought it would be better if I disguised myself in some way, a camouflage of sorts.”
“Like a female robin.”
“I guess.”
“Beautiful birds that make themselves ugly to protect their young. You’ve got no young and no reason to continue with the camouflage.” He wasn’t going to tell her that his man, Butch Cooker, called this morning to tell him somebody had used Alexander Maldonando’s Mastercard twice in the past week; Arizona and Texas. Credit card theft happened all the time. Still, he had Cooker rechecking his report but Danielle didn’t need to know that.
She touched her hair again and said, “I needed a change.”
Damn his mother.
Quinn threw the car into drive and pulled onto the street. “No, you didn’t.”
“I almost dyed it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“Don’t.”
She looked away, her fingers sifting through the folds of her dress. It was a wispy lavender concoction that made her pale skin glisten. The fabric hugged her small breasts and he wondered for one insane second if the skin there would be even whiter than the rest of her. This thought annoyed him so he said, “You’re too skinny to wear your hair so short. It makes you look like a giraffe.”
She bit her lip and said, “Annie bribed you to take me to dinner, didn’t she?”
“No.” But the denial fell out rushed and insincere.
“Please take me back to Arianna’s.”
He ignored her and flicked the signal for the entrance to the highway. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You said what you meant.”
“No, I didn’t.” He really could be a jerk sometimes. “It doesn’t matter what you do to your hair, long, short, bald, you’d still be beautiful.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“I’m just partial to long hair.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Can we start over?”
“Okay.” She turned to him.
“Hi, I’m Eve Maldonando.”
“No, you’re Danielle.”
“Well, I’m really Eve.”
“No, you aren’t. If you want to make a convincing disappearance, you’ve got to do it one hundred percent. You can’t slip in and out of character like you’re on stage.”
“Okay. Hello, I’m Danielle.”
“Hello, Danielle, nice to meet you. Quinn Burnes.” He reached for her hand and shook it. Her skin felt soft and silky against his. Her name was Danielle.
Not Eve.
Who was he protecting, himself or her? From what? A woman named Eve or a fabrication named Danielle? And why did this woman bother him so much? Quinn popped in a CD and let the symphonic Rolling Stones fill the rest of the fifteen minute trip. Danielle sat back and closed her eyes, probably as thankful as he that no further talking was required.
When they reached
El Charro’s
, Quinn escorted her into the Mexican restaurant that boasted 2 for 1 Margarita’s and an extra hot secret salsa dip that the owner’s grandfather, Manuel Rodriguez, created thirty years ago when he opened the restaurant’s doors. The host stuffed them into a corner booth in a 12x14 room crammed with tables, chairs, red plastic jalapeno pepper tablecloths, and an assortment of parrot piñatas dangling from the rafters. The relaxed, festive atmosphere calmed Quinn and by the time the waiter returned with their drinks, a Corona for him, an iced tea for her, he was in an almost pleasant mood. “So, how old are you today? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?”