Page 43 of Prohibited

“No,” Lindsay said. “They shared a brother. Tommy was their half-brother. Ryan and Tommy shared a father. Tommy and Alex shared a mother.”

“Strange,” she said softly. “It never occurred to me that you could share a sibling and not be related. And you aren’t? Related to either of them?”

“I am, actually,” Lindsay said. “Ryan and I are cousins. Our mothers were sisters.”

“One happy little family,” she said, voice shaking.

He gently lifted her leg in one hand and drew the washcloth along her skin with the other. Then, he gently lowered her leg back into the water and drew the other one out. Began to clean it reverently before lowering it again. Then they sat looking at each other for a long moment.

“Do you want to get out now?” Lindsay asked in his soft, patient voice.

“What happened to your leg?” The curiosity had finally overcome her. She’d wanted to know since she laid eyes on him, but hadn’t felt in any way in a position to ask him. “Bullet? Shrapnel?”

“I didn’t scurry fast enough,” he said, an unhappy smile touching his lips. “A hand bomb that wiped out two of my friends and left me less than functional, as you see. Courtesy of my time in France.”

“You were in France?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Lindsay, pouring another pitcher of water over her. “First Oklahoma Infantry via the 142nd Infantry, at your service. We all were. Except for Alex, anyway.”

“You were at St. Etienne.” Evie put her hand on his arm before she could stop herself. Voice breathless.

Lindsay’s eyes grew dark and he dipped his head once. “Huge losses for all of us.”

“You wouldn’t have perhaps met a Frenchman, Etian Dupont? He was in the French 7th.” Why it mattered so much whether or not this man, this stranger had met Etian, she didn’t know. Perhaps it would make her feel less alone under the burden of carrying his memory through a world that seemed to have forgotten him.

Lindsay caught her hand in his and held it between his warm palms. “I’m sorry, I never did.” He studied her face for a moment. “You love him?”

“Yes,” she said. A coldness coming over her body that had nothing at all to do with the water droplets dripping slowly down her skin. “Very much.” She looked away from him and pressed her lips together, swallowed down the thick knot in her throat. “I was Red Cross. I pulled shrapnel out of his face. He asked me to marry him. But he died. At St. Etienne.”

“Red Cross, hm.” There was something else in Lindsay’s expression now. Amusement? Perhaps even admiration. “A rich girl like you?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t sit around in New York City and do nothing.”

“I felt the same way,” Lindsay said. He smiled at her and then slowly lowered himself to skim the water off of her bottom and her legs. A comfortable silence settled between them, but the reality of her present circumstances began to seep into the feeling of warmth that had settled over her.

“What happens now?” she said quietly when he straightened.

He set his mouth into a grim line. “Just take it one day at a time.”

They stood looking at each other for a long time. And then slowly, she exhaled.

“Okay,” she said.

“But first,” he said, a crooked smile slowly growing on his face. “Let’s do something about this hair.”

Chapter fifteen

Roberts

“I’ve been having him followed at your insistence. You’ve been having him followed. Stanley, he’s not the guy!” Roberts was tired of having this conversation with Walter Stanley.

Stanley, for his part, had been as tenacious as a vicious hunting hound with a rabbit, doggedly pursuing Linus to the point where the man simply did not appear to leave his house anymore.

“You give too much benefit to doubt that man,” Stanley said. “He still doesn’t want her disappearance made public, and you think he has nothing to hide.” He was sitting on the couch in his parlor, smoking a cigar. There was a glass of whisky on the coffee table in front of him, placed neatly on a coaster. This attention to aesthetic detail was frankly so absurd that it made Roberts want to laugh.

He was smoking a cigar, too, courtesy of Stanley, and on his third whisky. On his way out of the police station, Stanley had called him and asked him to stop by his house on the way home so they could haveanother conversation about Linus. The cigar and the whisky were nice enough, but he wanted to be home in his pajamas, reading the paper and maybe fucking his wife.

“I just think that we’re wasting too much time and energy on him,” Roberts countered, going on with his pacing, pausing only when he drained his glass and smacked it down onto the coffee table, no coaster.

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