aThatas what consummated means. Itas when two people who love each other enough to get married make love for the first time. In the olden days, it sealed the marriage, made it even more binding. When I was fifteen, I thought I was old enough to marry this man because I loved him so much. But when our wedding night came, well, some people might think I chickened out, but I like to look at it as being brave enough to admit Iad made a rather large mistake. Of course, when my new husband found out how old I truly was, that Iad basically tricked him into marrying me, he was furious and . . .a Eve laughed softly. aIf Iam going to tell this story properly, I should start at the beginning, shouldnat I?a aBut did you save him?a Amy asked. aYour first husband? At Dunkirk?a The old woman sighed and shook her head. aNo,a she said quietly. aI didnat.a

Six.

ENSIGN STARRETT WORE only a pair of shorts.

Alyssa Locke tried to focus on the video monitor, but the well-muscled, too-damned-handsome-for-his-own-good SEAL had positioned himself directly beyond it, right smack in her line of sight.

Of course the shorts were a big improvement over the barely there towel head had wrapped around his waist when head first come out of the bathroom.

If head been surprised to step out of the shower to find that the hotel suite he was supposed to be sharing with Lt. John Nilsson had become command central for this op within an op, he hadnat let on. In fact, upon hearing the news that Meg Mooreas daughter and grandmother had been kidnapped by K-stani Extremists and that they had to keep all information about this from becoming public knowledge for their protection, Starrett had merely nodded and drawled, aThought it had to be something like that.a Locke was glad Nils had brought her over here. She was pleased to be part of this top secret operation, glad to be already in position when Max Bhagat was brought into the room and brought up to speed, glad to be working in a small team with Lt. Tom Paoletti again.

But she wasnat glad that Sam Starrett was part of the team, with his bimboy body, his redneck prejudices, and his smart mouth.

Sweet thing.

As if shead ever, in a million years, fall prey to his questionable charms. Sweet thing, pah. She wasnat sweet and she was no manas thing.

WildCard Karmody looked up from where he was figuring out how to create the equivalent of a digital tape loop with his computer.

aThe Welsh singing thing was very smart,a he said, taking a moment to stretch and run his fingers through his already messed, mad-scientist hair. aMegas using her brain. And it makes sense for her not to want to just stand there and have a whole conversation in Welsh with Nils. Anyone listening in would know right away that there was an exchange of information going down. But this folk song thing was brilliant. Have I mentioned that I think Iam in love with this woman?a aYes.a The answer came in unison from Starrett, Wolchonok, and another SEAL Locke had just met, a shiny young ensign with a pretty face named Mike Muldoon.

Without yet having had the chance to talk with her further, Nilsas theory was that Meg had created this entire hostage situation as a way to get the FBIas attention. This way, she could get their help without putting Amy at risk.

And as unlikely as some people might think it would be for the Extremists to have infiltrated the K-stani embassy in Washington, Nils seemed convinced that such a thing was possible. Locke suspected he was being overly cautious, but she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, head spent a considerable amount of time in the Pit.

Surveillance of the menas room would continue across the street at the makeshift FBI headquarters in the K-stani embassy. To the K-stani officials and anyone else there that might be listening in, it would appear as if the FBI and SEALs were continuing with their plan to sit and wait. To try to starve Meg out.

Meanwhile, over here at Troubleshooter Central, this new, secret team of SEALs and FBI agents were hard at work, devising a method of getting Nils into that menas room undetected so he could talk to Meg.

The plan was for Nils to deliver the handcuffs Meg had demanded, and somehow communicate to her that he would be coming back again, very soon, but not through the bathroom door this time.

The plan was then to jam the surveillance coming into the FBIas HQ over at the embassya"to replace the actual video and audio from the bathroom with a digital version of a tape loop.

The K-stani officials at the embassy would continue to see Meg and her hostages sitting in silencea"the footage from the tape. They wouldnat have a clue that in reality, Lieutenant Paolettias Troubleshooter squad would be covertly gaining access to that embassy menas room from the room directly above it. Theyad be dropping in, so to speak, on Meg Moore and her captives. And Nils would be able to talk to her and get the complete, nonspeculative version of her story. Head find out who exactly had taken Amy, and what were their demands.

Somewhere in the room a pager went off, and everyone checked their belts.

Locke herself nearly jumped out of her seat. On her recommendation, Jules Cassidy had been called in to assist, and she could feel his eyes on her now, from his seat in front of the other video monitor, across the room.

She glanced at him and shook her head, no. It wasnat her pager. Shead heard nothing from her sister all day. Which was just as good. If she got a page now, telling her to come to the hospital, she wasnat in a position to get up and go. Not without kissing her career good-bye.

aItas mine,a Senior Chief Wolchonok called out. aItas a heads up code from Lieutenant Paoletti. Johnnyas getting ready to go in.a As Locke watched on the video screena"surveillance footage pirated from the same signal being watched by the FBI and K-stani officials across the streeta"Meg lifted her head and glanced toward the door. She refreshed her grip on her handgun, aiming it at her hostages.

aCome in slowly.a Her voice was remarkably natural-sounding over the speakers. This was one expensive setup that Paoletti had managed to conjure at such short notice.

aLieutenant Nilsson is coming into the room,a Locke announced.

Starrett pushed himself up off the couch and came around to look over her shoulder.

Locke kept her eyes on the screen. aWould you mind putting on a shirt?a aActually, I would,a he said in that infuriating Texas drawl. aThis is my room and Iam still taking a break.a aI donat have any trouble with it,a Jules commented blandly.

Locke had to work to keep a smile from slipping out as Starrett turned abruptly and went into the other room to get a shirt. Thanks, she mouthed to Jules, who blew her a kiss.

On the video monitor, Nils was cuffing Megas hostages to the sinks. This was good. After he left, theyad get about fifteen minutes of footage of all of them sitting there. WildCard would make that digital loop from that video, and then theyad be on to phase two.

aTheyave been asking me a lot of questions.a Nilsas voice came over the speakers as she sensed Starrettas overwhelmingly large presence behind her again. At least now he was dressed. aAbout us. I mean, no one can quite believe we didnat have some kind of hot affair three years ago.a aOh, God.a Meg shook her head. aIam so sorry if Iave gotten you into trouble.a aYou havenat.a On the surface, they were having a simple conversation, but Lockea"because she knew what to look fora"could see that Meg and Nils were having an entirely different conversation with their eyes.

But were the hidden messages they were sending about this current situation? Or did it have more to do with the real truth about what went down between them three years ago? Locke smiled. She was one of the people who didnat quite believe Nils and Meg Moore had been ajust friends.a Look at the way he looked at her.

Of course, maybe that was just friendship she could see in his eyes, and she, Locke, was the twisted one. Maybe shead lived so long with men calling her sweet thing, she could no longer recognize genuine friendship between a man and a woman.

She glanced across the room at Jules. Unless, of course, the man was blatantly gay.

aI always hoped Iad see you again,a Nils said, abut this wasnat exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking of something more along the lines of a phone call. Like, aHow are you, John, how about we get together for dinner?a a He looked directly into Megas eyes. aAnd then Iad say, aGreat, Iall see you at eighteen hundred hoursa"at six oaclock sharp. Weall go out for drinks first and you can tell me all about how Amyas doing in school.a a Understand what Iam telling you, Meg. Youare going to see me at six oaclock.

She was wearing a watch, and as he gazed at her, she glanced at it. He knew it was just past 1640. She wasnat going to have to wait too long.

She was trying to hide her relief, and he also knew shead received his message.

Christ, she looked exhausted.

aAre you sure you canat tell me what this is all about?a Nils asked again because the K-stani officials watching would have expected him to ask again.

She shook her head.

aI know youare upset because I didnat bring a dead bolt with the handcuffs,a he said, feeding her the excuse she needed.

aYeah, I told you to bring a dead bolt, but you didnat, so . . . Iam not going to talk to you.a Thank you, Meg told him with her eyes.

Youare welcome. aWould you believe me if I told you we havenat been able to locate a Home Depot store?a John Nilsson wasnat a religious man, but right now he was praying that this would work out. God, what were the chances that Amy Moore was even still alive? Slim to none, if it really were the Extremists whoad taken her.

aNo.a Meg was looking at him hungrily, as if he were her lifeline. aNo dead bolt, no explanation. In fact, I think you better go. Find out whatas keeping my helicopter.a She didnat want him to leave. In fact, her lip actually trembled.

Nils went out the door before he did something really stupida"like promise her everything was going to be okay.

aIn 1938, I lived in Hollywood, California,a Eve told Amy and the Bear. Unlike her story of the part shead played in the evacuation at Dunkirk, this was a tale shead never told anyone before. Not her own daughter, Elizabeth, not her granddaughters, Meg, Bonnie, or Kiley, either.

Oh, shead told them the vague facts, sure, but never the details. Even now, she held some of it back.

Her childhood hadnat been a particularly happy one. Her mother, a screen actress, had gotten a divorce from her father, a well-known film director, when her little brother Nick was only three years old. Eve had been eight at the time. Eight going on thirty. Good thing, because from that moment on, she was Nickas . . . what did they call it today?

Primary caregiver.

Her beautiful mother was irresponsible. The fan magazines called her wild and said that she had a childlike qualitya"a description that always made Eve roll her eyes.

Not that Eve and Nick didnat love her. Because they did. They adored her. And she adored thema"whenever she happened to stumble across them.

In 1938, when Eve had just turned fifteen and Nick was ten, things went even further downhill, fast.

Both her mother and father were killed in a plane crash. Their divorce had been a friendly one, and they were working together on a movie when tragedy struck.

Eve and Nick went to live with Emily, their fatheras second wife and now widow, who gave them plenty of room to grieve as she went on about her life.

Which, in February of 1939, included getting remarried to James Hertford, a well-known and extremely wealthy English playwright.

Eve and Nick were dragged along and tossed onto Jamesas seaside estate in Ramsgate, in southeast England, while Em and James dashed about Europe on their honeymoon.

When they returned, they enrolled both Eve and Nick in the best English boarding schools Jamesas money could buy.

It was hell. The worst of it was being separated from her little brother. He hated his schoola"because it was there that something Eve had helped him hide for years was finally revealed.

Nick couldnat read.

Once it was known, everyone assumed his inability to decipher words came from neglect, but Eve knew better. Shead tried and tried for years to teach him to read, but to no avail.

He was miserable at the school. He was made to feel stupid, called lazy and carelessa"while none of those things were true. He ran away more times than Eve could count, and she knew she had to get him out of there before he disappeared for good.

She finagled her own escape from her schoola"no big deal, she simply slipped out the window and called the headmistress from the phone in the bookshop in town. She pretended to be her own American stepmother, asking the school to put Eve on the next train to London.

Which, of course, they did.

Shead been hoarding the spending money that James and Emily sent in extremely generous wads, and made a quick detour in Londonas fashion district. In a blink of an eyea"and the lightening of her purse by quite a few English poundsa"gone was the schoolgirl. In her place was a beautiful young sophisticate.

Thanks to a very mature figure, a great deal of poise and acting abilitya"all gifts from her late mothera"and some carefully applied makeup, Eve could easily look much older than she was. In fact, during her brief stay at Ramsgate, Eve had told the estatesa caretakers that she was twentya"and the middle-aged couple had swallowed it whole.

Dressed to the nines, Eve breezed into the headmasteras office at her brotheras school and withdrew him.

They, of course, were only too glad to see him go.

Free at last, and reading in the paper that James and his new bride were in London for the opening of his newest play, Eve and Nick returned to the estate in Ramsgate to regroup.

They didnat have enough funds to buy passage on an oceanliner back to the United States. Nick wanted to steal the silver, but Eve flatly refused. They may have been orphans and down on their luck, but they werenat thieves. And it might take a while, but shead get a job. She looked twenty. She could earn the money they needed. How hard could it be?

Her master plan was foiled when Emily and James came rushing back to Ramsgate. Who knew theyad actually bother to visit Eve and Nicky at school?

And instead of sending them back, Jamesa"a decent guy for an Englishmana"put them under the supervision of his Ramsgate caretakers for the rest of the spring and the coming summer. However, Nick had to spend at least part of the time studying with a special tutor James was hiring.

Eve agreed to the deal, despite the fact that she dreaded the arrival of the tutor. Head be dreary and old, with bad skin and teeth, big bushy eyebrows, and a long skinny face. Head talk in that stupid accent with long, slow, drawn out vowels, taking so endlessly long to make his point that Eve would long to grab him by his pencil neck and shake him. Head smell like mothballs and lye and the passed gas of the kidney pie head had for dinner last night and the night before.

And, Eve vowed, the first time he called Nick stupid would be the last.

By then, shead have gotten a job in town and earned the money she needed to get them back to California. Please, heavenly Father . . .

But there were no jobs in town. There were no jobs, period. England was in the throes of a depression as bad asa"or worse thana"the one going on back in the States.

One day, when Eve had been unable to get a job, when she was driving back from Ramsgatea"James kept three different cars in the garage of his estate and she saw no reason not to use them at her leisure despite her lack of driveras licensea"as she was pulling up to the main house, she first encountered her brotheras new tutor.

He had just ridden up on his bicycle and had accepted a drink from Mr. Johnson, the caretaker.

At first shead thought he was a traveler passing through, a young man on break from college, biking his way across the English countryside, stopping for a drink, ora"even more likelya"to ask if he could camp for the night in the nearby woods.

aYou can sleep up by the orchard if you promise not to light a fire,a Eve said to him as she slid out from the caras expensive leather seats.

The young man laugheda"his grin was infectious and his eyes actually twinkleda"and she realized he was older than shead first thought by about five years. aDo you always greet strangers with non sequiturs?a She looked at his bicyclea"old but well-kept; his clothesa"that of a traveler, jacket off and sleeves rolled up to beat the heat, one pant leg tucked into his sock to keep it from getting caught on the bikeas chain; his facea"damp with perspiration but still strikingly attractive, framed above his very English and somewhat patrician forehead and long elegant nose by thick, dark, wavy hair; his eyesa"hazel, with long, dark lashes, and still dancing with amusement.

aOf course, youare pretty enough to get away with just about anything, arenat you?a he added.

aArenat you looking for a place to spend the night?a she asked.

Something shifted in those hazel eyes as they skimmed her from the hat that went perfectly with her eggshell-colored suit, all the way down her silk-stocking-clad legs to her matching pumps. Shead seen that look in a manas eyes plenty of times before and knew what it meant.

If she were her mother, shead pull her shoulders back a little bit, throwing out her breasts, showing off her female attributes. But Eve was tired and her feet hurt. It had been a long, disappointing day and the last thing she needed was some stupid college boy drooling on her, no matter how pretty his eyes were.

She reached up to pull her hat pins free. She couldnat wait to get back to her room so she could change into her blue jeans, her cowboy boots, and one of her fatheras old shirts. Shead find Nicky and theyad take a walk over to the beach and . . .

aActually, no,a the young man said. Despite the heat, he rolled down his sleeves and slipped his arms into his jacket, the perfect gentleman. aIam here to see young Nicolas Linden. Iam his new tutor, Ralph Grayson.a He wiped his hand on his pants before holding it out to her. aI was told he had an older sister, but Iam afraid they didnat mention your name.a This was Nickas tutor.

His name was spelled Ralph, but he pronounced it the crazy English waya"Rafe.

He had a poetas or maybe a piano playeras hands, with long, graceful fingers. They should have been cool and otherworldly, but they werenat. He was hot to the touch.

aIam Eve,a she told him.

aEve,a he murmured, still holding onto her, his eyes at least as hot as his hand. aDelightful.a And Eve knew in a flash that she held the ultimate power. Ralph Grayson had no clue he was casting lustful looks at a fifteen-year-old girl. All she needed was for him to say or do something completely inappropriatea"one kiss was all it would takea"and shead control him. Then if he upset Nickya"which he would invariably doa"shead whisper the truth about how old she really was into his ear and tell him shead keep their little nasty secret, provided he resign immediately.

And then, poof, like magic, head be gone.

She pulled back her shoulders and gave him her motheras million dollar smile. aThe pleasureas completely mine, Ralph. May I call you Ralph?a aAbsolutely. I have to confess, I was looking forward to working with your brother and to spending the summer near the seaside, but now Iam completely ecstatic.a Cripes, he shoveled it on pretty thick. Eve pulled her hand free. aWhy donat we go inside? Iall get Nick and a pitcher of lemonade.a aExcellent idea.a Or maybe he was just stupidly enthusiastic about everything.

aThis house is gorgeous,a he proclaimed as they went inside. aDo you know its history?a She shook her head, and he regaled her with the duke of this and the lord of that all the way to the sitting room.

aNicky likes plays,a she interrupted him midsentence as he was saying something about visits to this estate a million years earlier from someone named Prinny. aOur mother was an actress.a The tutor nodded, suddenly serious. aThank you,a he said, as if shead presented him with the royal jewels. aAnything else I should know that might help?a aHe hates tutors.a The smile was back. aI assumed as much.a aIall send him right in,a she said, and hurried out of the room. Why had she told him even that much, instead of leaving him to face Nickas evil eye on his own?

She found her brother in the kitchen, telling one of his ridiculous tall tales to a giggling Mrs. Johnson. They were waiting for a chocolate cake to finish baking.

aYour tutoras arrived,a she told him, hating the surly, almost hunted-animal look that came into his eyes at the news. aHeas not old and smelly like we thought, Nick. Heas young and he seems nice.a She gave him a hug, whispering into his ear, aAnd if you donat like him, Iall make him leave, I promise.a Hope bloomed, banishing the desperate animal, and Nicky nodded. There wasnat much in this world that he could count on, but Eve had never broken a promise to him yet. Unlike their mother, shead never made him a promise she couldnat keep.

aHeas in the sitting room,a she told him now. aGo and meet him. Iall be there in a sec with lemonade.a Mrs. Johnson helped her find a tray, and Eve carried the pitcher and three glasses carefully back down the long hallway.

aRalph,a she heard the tutor say as she went into the room. aLike Ralph Rackstraw in HMS Pinafore.a Nothing. Nick didnat even blink. And James had given them tickets to see Pinafore when theyad first arrived in England. Nick had loved ita"head laughed his butt off.

Eve poured them each a tall glass of lemonade as Ralph, undaunted, tried again.