For a time, she’d dwelled in the upper echelon of entertainers—so successful she didn’t require a last name. The world knew her simply as Eva.
Then she was cast aside, adrift and alone, with no voice.
“There you are,” he murmured, as if afraid to be overheard and determined to keep things between them very private. “I’d started to think you’d flown away.”
She laughed, surprising herself. Laughter didn’t come easily, not lately. “The wings only work after midnight.”
“I’d better move fast, then.” The eyes on her were beautiful, an almost colorless, crystalline blue that contrasted with the black border of the mask. “My name is—”
“No.” She touched a finger to his lips. “No names. Not yet.”
As he looked very much like he wanted to suck her fingertip into his mouth, she dropped it before she let him. This stranger was exciting, no doubt, but she had a healthy survival instinct. Vincenzo’s friends were a little on the wild side. Even for her.
Yet she’d been following Vincenzo around Europe for a couple of months and couldn’t seem to find anything better to do. She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. But what?
“Are you seeking your fortune, then?” He nodded to Madam Wong and the crowd parted.
Madam Wong shuffled her cards. “Come. Sit.”
Tall, Blond and Gorgeous pulled the brocade chair away from the draped table. Evangeline couldn’t see a way to gracefully refuse without drawing unwanted attention, so she sat, extremely aware of the capable hand resting on the back of the chair inches from her neck.
When Madam Wong shoved the deck across the table, Evangeline cut it about a third of the way down and let the fortune-teller restack the cards.
After that quack doctor butchered her vocal cords, Evangeline had spent three months searching for a cure, eventually landing on the doorstep of every Romanian gypsy, every Asian acupuncturist and every Nepalese faith healer she could find.
No one had a way to restore her damaged voice. Or her damaged soul. In short, this wasn’t her first tarot reading, and she had little hope it would be any more helpful than all the other mumbo jumbo.
The only positive from the nightmare of the past six months came from winning the lawsuit against the quack doctor, who no longer had a license to practice medicine, thanks to her.
The costumed crowd pressed closer as Madam Wong began laying out the spread. Her brow furrowed. “You have a great conflict, yes?”
Oh, however did you guess? Evangeline waited for the rest of the hokey wisdom.
The withered old woman twirled one of the many rings on her fingers as she contemplated the cards. “You have been cut deeply and lost something precious.”
The capable hand of the masked stranger brushed her hair. Evangeline sat up straighter and frowned.
Cut.
She had been, in more ways than one.
“This card...” Madam Wong tapped it. “It confuses me. Are you trying to conceive?”
“A baby?” Evangeline spit out the phrase on a heavy exhale and took another breath to calm her racing pulse. “Not even close.”
“Conception comes in many forms and is simply a beginning. It is the step after inspiration. You have been inspired. Now you must go forth and shape something from it.”
Inspiration. That was in short supply. Evangeline’s throat convulsed unexpectedly. The music in her veins had been abruptly silenced and she hadn’t been inspired to write one single note since the surgery from hell.
Madam Wong swept the cards into a pile and began shuffling. “I must do a second spread.”
Speechless and frozen, Evangeline tried to shake her head. Her eyes began to burn, a sure sign she’d start bawling uncontrollably very soon. It was the wrong time of the month for this sort of emotional roller coaster.
She needed a code word to get her out of this situation. Her manager had always given her one, so if the press asked a sensitive question, she’d say it and he’d rescue her.
Except she had no manager and no code word. She had nothing. She’d been rejected by everyone—music, the industry, fans. Her father.
“I believe you promised me a dance.”
Tall, Blond and Gorgeous clasped her hand and pulled her out of the chair in one graceful move.
“Thank you,” he said to Madam Wong, “but we’ve taken enough of your time. Good evening.”
And like that, he whirled her away from the table, away from the prying eyes.
By the time he stopped in an alcove between the main dance floor and the back room, her pulse had slowed. She blinked away the worst of the burn and stared up at her savior. “How did you know?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “You were so tense, the chair was vibrating. I take it you don’t care for tarot.”
“Not especially. Thanks.” After a beat, when it became apparent he wasn’t going to ask any questions—which almost made her weep in gratitude—she made a show of scouting around for a nonexistent waiter. “I could go for a glass of champagne. You?”
The thought of alcohol almost made her nauseous, but she needed a minute alone.
“Sure. Unless you’d rather dance?”
“Not right now.”
Actually, she was thinking seriously about ditching the party and going to her room. A headache had bloomed behind her eyes. Except her room was right above the dance floor and Vincenzo’s other guests had taken the rest of the rooms.
“Be right back. Stay here.” Her stranger vanished into the crowd.
Maybe she could quietly gather her things and check into Hotel Danieli, with no one the wiser.... She groaned. As if. She had a better chance of finding solid gold bars on the street than an empty hotel room in Venice during Carnevale.
The stranger returned quickly with two champagne flutes, and she smiled brightly, clinking her rim to his in a false show of bravado. Yes, he was gorgeous and intuitive, but she wasn’t going to be good company tonight. She nursed the drink and tried to think of an exit strategy when over his shoulder, she caught sight of her worst nightmare.
It was Rory. With Sara Lear.
Of course he was with Sara Lear. Sara’s debut album full of bubblegum pop and saccharine love songs had burned up the charts and was still solidly at number one. The little upstart hadn’t worn a mask, preferring to bask in the glow of stardom. Rory was also unmasked, no doubt to make doubly sure everyone knew who was with Sara. He was nothing if not savvy about his own career and his band Reaper made few bones about their desire to headline one of the major summer concert series. Hitching his wagon to a star was an old pattern.
Evangeline had flushed his engagement ring down the toilet after he dumped her and gladly told him to go to hell when he asked for it back.
Rory and Sara strolled through the main room as if they owned it, and why wouldn’t they? Both of them had functional vocal cords and long, vital careers ahead of them. Six months ago, Evangeline would have been on Rory Cartman’s arm, blissfully in love, blissfully at the top of her career and still blind to the cruelty of a world that loved a success but shunned a has-been.