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So, on to the next part!

Chapter Four: And You Shall Take Me Strongly In Your Arms

And you shall take me strongly

In your arms again

And I will not remember

That I ever felt the pain

- Van Morrison, Sweet Thing

The drive home was less than pleasant.

Neither Rick nor Evelyn uttered a word between the Embassy and the hotel. Jonathan, in an effort to fill the silence, kept up a steady stream of small talk. His inane prattle had the unfortunate side-effect of making both his companions want to strangle him. A unifying experience, but not quite in the way that anyone - least of Jonathan - would have wished. By the time they arrived at the hotel, Jonathan had run out of conversation and was escorted up the stairs, none too gently, by Rick. Evelyn watched for a moment as Rick attempted to open the door to their room and keep Jonathan upright at the same time. Any thoughts she may have had about helping him were dismissed and she swept down the hall to her own suite.

She closed her door behind her and then leaned against it, indulging in the luxury of feeling deeply sorry for herself.

'Bloody men,' she thought and stomped across the room. 'Typical. I didn't do anything wrong, but just blame the woman for everything! And Rick, of all people...'

Evelyn kicked the foot of the sofa and let out a little yelp. Her feet were already in agony due to her new and extremely constricting shoes - nearly breaking her toes into the bargain did nothing to improve the pain nor her temper.

A peremptory knock sounded on her door.

She already knew which of the two men in her life it would be. Hopefully, he was about to apologise profusely.

'Come in,' she called, trying to sound as though it made no difference to her whether he came in or not.

Rick entered, closing the door and hovering near it.

'I just wanted to make sure you're okay,' he announced stiffly.

'I'm fine,' she replied, attempting to maintain as much dignity as possible. 'Where's Jonathan?'

Rick grimaced. 'Passed out on his bed.'

'Oh.' Evelyn stepped around the sofa, intending to arrange herself haughtily - but alluringly - on it. The effect was marred somewhat when she couldn't stop herself from wincing at the pain in her feet.

'What's wrong?' His concern was immediate.

'Nothing. I'm fine.' She sat down heavily, gingerly raising one foot and starting to ease a shoe off.

Rick watched her for a moment and then silently crossed the room, dropping to one knee beside her.

'C'mere. Let me have a look.'

He ignored her half-hearted protests and took one small foot in his hands. For a man who could send someone halfway across a room with one punch, he was capable of enormous gentleness when necessary. Evelyn's shoe was removed painlessly and deposited on the floor.

'You've got some blisters.'

'I could have told you that.'

He looked up at her, drawing his breath in softly.

'Fine.'

He dropped her foot and stood up, marching across the room.

Evelyn felt a pain rise in her chest and a familiar pressure behind her eyes. She blinked furiously. She was not going to cry and she was certainly not going to call him back. He could just go, and if he never came back, that was fine.

'Rick!'

He turned back.

Misery and anger warred for domination in her expression. Misery won. 'I hate this.' Her voice was thick and she cleared her throat. 'I didn't do anything wrong, Rick. He's just someone I used to know, back in Oxford. I wasn't even listening to what he was saying and the next thing I knew he was right there, grabbing at me. And then you came in.' After everything they had been through, how could he think that she would hurt him like that? If he had so little faith in her, what hope was there for them? He stood before her, not quite meeting her eyes. 'I don't go around kissing strange men. Especially when I'm engaged to - to a man I'm in love with. I wouldn't have let him do anything to me.'

'I know that.' He dropped onto the sofa and stared moodily at a spot on the floor. The winged collar had been undone and his tie now hung loose. He actually looked even better now, slightly dishevelled, she thought, than he had earlier. Without looking at her, he stooped, raised both of her feet into his lap and started to remove her other shoe. His strong fingers started to work over the tender spots on her aching feet. 'I know you wouldn't...'

'Well if you knew that,' she said trying to sound indignant, but failing under the sensation of the delicious pressure on her aching feet, ' then why on earth have you been making us both miserable for the past hour?'

'Because I-' He sighed, burning blues eyes suddenly turning to her. 'Dammit, Evelyn, I'm no good at this! I just... You're the most amazing thing that's happened to me. Ever. I never used to care that my life was going nowhere, but then I met you and all that changed. I tried to pretend I was a better person and hoped it would take. I wanted to be ... worthy, I guess, of the way you looked at me. And now... Half of me is afraid that one morning you'll wake up and realise you're too good for me. And I wouldn't blame you.'

He dropped his head again, unruly hair falling across his eyes. 'I already know you're too good for me. But I'm crazy about you, Evy.'

Evelyn became aware that her heart was beating a very unusual rhythm in her chest.

'I ... I thought you'd like Selina,' said suddenly.

Rick looked back up at her, puzzled.

'She's very... Well, a lot of men find her very attractive.'

'Yeah, well, she's a-' he stopped himself abruptly, trying to think of a more polite word than the one he'd been thinking of.

'Man-eater?' Evy offered.

'Yeah, I guess that kinda covers it. Why would you think that I'd...' His eyes widened, part disbelief, part amusement 'You were jealous? Of her?'

'I was not jealous!' she answered, a little too loudly. 'But ... she has ... sex appeal. And I'm...'

'Evelyn, listen to me. Selina is the kind of girl - well, she 'd go with any guy, and I mean any guy, as long as she thought she'd get something out of it. Why the hell would I want that when I've got you? I, er, have still got you, haven't I?'

She gave him one of those slow, slightly crooked smiles that made the rest of the world fall away. 'Of course you do. As long as I still have you.'

He grinned at her, unable to stop himself. 'Baby, you can have me anytime you want.'

'How about now?' she thought. Over the course of their conversation, his hands had slowly moved further up and were now massaging her ankles, occasionally straying to her lower calves. The hammering in her chest had now been replaced by a different, thrumming sensation. It was slowly spreading through her body and any thoughts about the inappropriateness of having a man in her room at this hour of night were evaporating.

Rick watched her, mesmerised. A few stray curls had worked themselves loose from their pins and fluttered around her face. Her eyes drifted closed momentarily and she made a low noise at the back of her throat when his thumbs hit a particularly sensitive spot. She shifted languorously on the sofa, her tongue darting to out to wet her lower lip before her eyes, dark and smoky, met his again. He swallowed hard. Whoever had given her the impression that she lacked sex appeal needed their head examined, Then again, if anyone looked at her with the thoughts he was having right now, he'd have to kill them.

'I really do hate it when we fight,' she said softly.

'Yeah.' He sounded a little unsteady. 'But we can have a lot of fun apologising to each other.'

'Apol-?' She didn't finish the word before she had been pulled towards him and found herself enveloped in his arms. His mouth captured hers and he kissed her, thoroughly. Evelyn wrapped her arms around his neck, settling herself closer against him.

There was nothing chaste in that kiss. Nothing decorous about the hand that slid up her thigh, the fingers running along the top of her stocking.

'Isn't this the part where you tell me I have to go back to my own room?' His voice sounded hoarse, his lips only millimetres from hers.

She gazed at him dazedly, her face flushed. 'No. Yes. I...'

Evelyn disengaged herself from him, somehow managing to stand up. 'I should get changed. Yes. I'll get changed, in there.' She pointed vaguely, in the direction of her bedroom and started toward it.

His face registered disappointment and frustration.

'Right. I guess I'll say goodnight.'

'No!'

Rick turned back eagerly and grinned when he saw her blushing.

She lowered her eyes from his, biting her lower lip.

'Talk to me while I'm changing.'

'Er... Ok-ay.' He followed her into her bedroom, trying to force his thoughts onto something that was not, in anyway, indecent. 'What do you want to talk about?'

Evelyn disappeared behind a large screen, which stood in one corner of the room. 'Tell me something.'

He thought for a moment.

'What?'

A sigh of exasperation escaped from behind the screen. 'Anything. Tell me... What do want more than anything else in the world?'

'For that damn screen to become invisible,' he thought, remembering the way her wet night-gown had clung to her after her immersion in the Nile. A stocking suddenly appeared over the screen; a moment later its partner was draped next to it.

'Rick?' Her voice was accompanied by the soft rustlings of clothes dropping to the floor. 'Are you still there?'

'Yeah.' His own voice sounded peculiarly strangled.

'Well?'

He dragged his eyes away from the items that were appearing next to her stockings and tried to force his thoughts onto any subject that did not include a naked Evelyn.

'A house,' he said suddenly.

'Pardon?'

'I said a house. I'd like a house.'

More rustling. He kept his eyes resolutely on a pile of books.

'Why a house?'

He shrugged. 'Dunno, really. Guess I'd like somewhere that's mine that I could actually call home. Somewhere we could go back to after you've woken up every other mummy in Egypt...'

'Ooh!'

'...A big house, with a garden. No, not a garden...' He was warming to his theme now, conjuring up his fictitious home in his mind's eye. 'A house with grounds. Yeah, that's it.'

Evelyn laughed slightly. 'Grounds? That's not a house, Rick, that's a stately home.'

'Why not? I never had a house before. May as well get a proper one. Anyway, it'd have to be big enough for Jonathan to have his own wing. That way it would almost be like he's not actually there,' the last part was muttered under his breath.

There was silence.

'You - you want Jonathan to live with us?'

'Not so much want, as assumed he would be. I mean, you two are pretty much inseparable, right? I'm not gonna get you without Jonathan being there. Two Carnahans for the price of one. In some parts of the world, that could be considered a deal. Not necessarily a good deal, but still a deal.'

Light footsteps told him that Evelyn had emerged and he turned to her. He caught his breath slightly, staring with undisguised admiration at the slip of black silk that hugged her curves.

Evelyn, in return, was gazing at him, amazed.

'That's really what you want?' she asked softly.

'Hell yeah.'

'I didn't mean that,' she replied, experiencing a twinge of pleasure at the effect her appearance had on her fiancé. 'I meant, what you said just now - you really want that?'

He dragged his eyes up to hers, taking a moment to recall exactly what it was he had been talking about.

'Oh that. Well, yeah, I meant it.'

She smiled slowly - that sultry, slightly crooked smile of hers - and beckoned to him, her eyes glowing. Rick didn't need asking twice and closed the distance between them in two strides.

Her hair was loose around her shoulders, a silky curtain playing against his face. He kissed her hungrily, enjoying the feeling of her skin and black silk under his hands. It was so tempting, would be so easy, just to slip the straps down her shoulders, he thought.

Evelyn pulled away from him slightly, her eyes smoky and heavy lidded. 'Rick...'

She yawned suddenly - and loudly - and gazed at him guiltily, one hand pressed over her mouth.

Rick laughed. 'Okay, tough stuff, time to call it a night.'

He scooped her up in his arms before she could say anything else. It was becoming a familiar sensation, carrying her like this.

'Just don't think you're getting this service every night.'

She quirked an eyebrow at him sleepily. 'Oh yeah?'

He grinned at her dreadful approximation of his accent. 'Yeah.'

'We'll see about that,' she murmured as he deposited her on the bed.

He watched her arrange herself under the covers, longing to slide in next to her. But the thought of lying with Evelyn in his arms and not actually...

He didn't fool himself that his self-control was that strong.

'Aren't you going to kiss me goodnight?'

She was doing it deliberately now, he was certain of it. Her smile was inviting, but the sheets were pulled up chastely, almost to her chin.

He bent down, capturing her mouth. It was not, he thought smugly, a kiss she would forget in a hurry. Evelyn let out a little moan of frustration as he pulled away.

He was almost out of the door before her voice followed him. Low and sensual.

'Good night, Darling.'

Rick congratulated himself that he managed to sound nonchalant (almost) when he answered, 'Night, Evy.'

He could have sworn he heard her laughing softly as he closed the door.

Down the hall, he was greeted with a far less appealing spectacle in his own room. Rick entered and glared at the recumbent form of his roommate.

Jonathan was sleeping the sleep of the not-so-just. His lusty snores were punctuated by loud, incoherent exhortations to some invisible person.

Rick briefly considered throwing something at his head.

Upon reflection, however, he decided that no good could come of such an action and so peeled off the rest of his evening clothes and flung himself onto his bed.

Evelyn.

Trouble, he was quite sure, had never come with a more beguiling face. He thought back over the assorted near-fatal incidents he had survived in the course of his career and groaned. No matter what else he had escaped from intact, he thought wryly, Evelyn Carnahan would probably be the death of him before they even made it down the aisle.