by J. D. Robb
“You’re wrong.”
“I’m not!” She shoved up now so they were eye to eye. “I’m a fucking trained observer, and I know your face, I know your eyes. I know what I saw.”
“And your police training tells you that this look I gave her, for a second you say, is cause for this irrational bout of jealousy?”
“It’s not jealousy. I wish it were. I wish it were that stupid, that shallow, that definitive. But it’s not jealousy. It’s fear.” She dropped down in her chair again as her voice began to crumble. “It’s fear.”
That stopped him, had him straightening again. “Can you really believe this? Believe that I’d regret what we are, what we have? That I’d regret it was you and not her? Haven’t I told you enough, shown you enough, that you’re everything to me?”
She struggled for calm, fought for the words. “She’s not like the others. The connection, it matters. You know it, and I know it. And maybe worse, she knows it. The connection, this history, they show. Show enough that people looked at me with pity today. That I was humiliated walking through my own bull pen to my own office.”
“And what of our connection, Eve, our history?”
Her eyes were swimming. She would never use tears as some did, he knew, and was battling them back even now. Her struggle not to give in to them made it all the worse.
He walked over to her window, stared out at nothing. So they wouldn’t rage at each other until it was burned away, he realized. They would pick their way through it, uncover it. Then they’d see.
“You need to know, is it, what it was, how it was, and how and what it is now?”
“I know—”
“You think you do,” he corrected. “And maybe you’re not altogether wrong, or altogether right. Do you want it?”
“No.” God, no, she thought. “But I need it.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you. I was, what, three and twenty or thereabouts, doing business as it were in Barcelona. I’d had considerable success in the game, and in business by that time. Always, I’d enjoyed keeping a foot on either side of the line. Light and shadow, you could say. Such an interesting mix.”
He said nothing for a moment, then went on. “And it was there, in Barcelona, she and I crossed paths, with the same job in mind.”
He could see it now, as he looked through the dark window. The noisy club, the colored lights. It had been sultry in September, and the music had been a pulse in the blood.
“She came in where I was watching the mark for a time. Walked in, a red dress, an attitude. She flipped me a look, then moved straight in on my mark. Within minutes he was buying her a drink. She was good. I barely saw her pinch his passkey.”
He turned from the window. “It was rubies—bloody red rubies, you see. The star display of a gallery. Three passkeys required, and I had two of them already. What she did, she pinched his, then slid off to the loo, made a copy, and slipped it right back to him with him none the wiser. Neither of us could get to the damn jewels now, and it pissed me off.”
“Sure.”
“I waited for her to come to me, which she did the next day. We did the job together in the end, and stayed together for a time. She was young and fearless, passionate. We liked living fast, traveling, riding the wave, you could say.”
“Did you love her?”
He crossed over to get them both a glass of wine. “I fancied I did. She was capricious, unpredictable. She kept me on my toes. The legitimate bits I was involved in bored her.” He set a glass of wine on Eve’s desk. “She could never understand why I bothered, why I wanted what I wanted. What she understood was the game, and the thirst for money, for the shine. She didn’t understand what it was to come from nothing, as she’d come from a decent family, a decent home. What she wanted was more, then to move on and pick up more somewhere else.”
“What did you want?”
“Her, of course. I don’t mean that to hurt you.”
“It doesn’t.”
“I wanted the more, for different reasons, I suppose, but I wanted the more.” He studied the wine before he drank. “I wanted respect and power and the shields and walls and weapons that ensured I’d never be nothing again. You know.”
“Yeah.”
“She didn’t. Couldn’t. That was the crack in the jewel, I imagine.” The flaw, he thought, he’d seen even then. “And still, it was shiny enough that we worked together, played together, stayed together. Until Nice. The mark had an exceptional art collection, with two Renoirs, among others. It was the Renoirs we wanted, had a buyer set for them. We spent weeks on it, with Maggie moving to the inside by seducing the mark.”
To stop him, Eve held up a hand. “She slept with him? That didn’t bother you? Knowing she was with another guy?”
“It was work, and he was more than twice her age. And the Renoirs? They were worth a great deal.”
“She wasn’t yours,” Eve murmured, and something inside her un-knotted. “You never thought of her as yours.”
“Did you think otherwise?”
“Yes.”
“Not altogether right,” he repeated and eased down to sit on the edge of her desk. “I had complicated feelings for her, and I believed she had them for me. I thought because of those feelings, and that wave we rode, I could trust her. And there I was altogether wrong.”
As he drank, Eve could see he was looking back. “The night before we were to make the score, she didn’t come back to the villa where we were staying. Nor did she come in the morning. I was afraid something had gone wrong, she’d done something foolish and been caught. Then I got word she’d run off with the mark. Left me for him. Not only that, but if I’d gone through with the job that night, as planned, there would have been a number of gendarmes waiting to scoop me up.”
“She ratted you out.”
“As I said, she was capricious. I was angry, I was hurt. My pride was battered. She’d played me, as we’d played so many others.”
“Why didn’t you go after her?”
He studied his wife—those tired brown eyes—sipped his wine. “I never considered it. She’d done to me, and that was that. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of it. I should add here, leaping forward a number of years, that I’d planned to hunt you down if you didn’t come home within another hour. Hunt you down, drag you back. I never considered not going after you.”
She took a breath to steady her voice. “Did you ever get the Renoirs?”
“I did.” His lips curved. “Of course I did. Three years later. And in those years and the ones after, I had a lot of women as well. I enjoyed them, and I never, not purposely, hurt one of them. I gave them what I had to give, and took what they were willing to give back. But there was nothing there.”
“But you didn’t forget her.”
“Not altogether wrong,” he acknowledged. “No, I didn’t forget her. She left a hole in me, Eve, one I didn’t want filled. Why risk that?”
“She…” Once again she hunted for the words, the right ones. “She had a major influence on you. That’s, maybe, that’s part of what I feel. Part of what I see.”
“I can’t, won’t, deny that what she did, what I gave her the power to do, had some influence on the way I approached relationships. I said I didn’t forget her, but neither did I actively think of her after the first weeks had gone by. Do you understand that?”
“Yeah. I get it.”
“I had work. I like work. I had money, then more of it. And the power, the respect. I built this place, and a great deal more. I cared for the women I was with, but they were never more than momentary pleasure.”
“She hurt you a lot.”
“She did, and seeing her again, I remember it, and in fact, those complicated feelings that made her able to hurt me.”
“It helps,” Eve managed, “for you to tell me that. For you to lay it out instead of brushing it off.”
“Difficult to admit—to myself, to you. But I didn’t lie when I told you it was done. And still…I’ll lay this o
ut as well. I remember, too, the beautiful young woman in the red dress gliding into a crowded club. The moment of it, the vibrancy of it. It may be that’s what I saw, for that second, the memory of that might be what I was looking at. I can’t erase what was from mind and memory, Eve.”
“No. Okay. Okay. Let’s just—”
“We’re not done here. You’ll hear me out.” As if to hold her in place, he laid a hand over hers. “I had that hole in me, that empty space. I could have lived my life with it, content enough. I wasn’t an unhappy man.”
He kept his eyes on hers as his thumb brushed lightly over the back of her hand. “Then, one day I felt something—a prickle at the back of my neck, a heat at the base of my spine. And standing at a memorial for the dead, I turned, and there you were.”
He turned her hand over, interlocking fingers. “There you were, and it all shifted under my feet. You were everything I shouldn’t have, shouldn’t want or need. A cop for Jesus’ sake, with eyes that looked right into me.”
He reached out, just a whisper of fingers on her face. And the quiet touch was somehow wildly passionate, desperately intimate.
“A cop wearing a bad gray suit and a coat that didn’t even fit. From that moment, the hole inside me began to fill. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop what rooted there, or what grew.
“She put it in me, you filled it. Can you understand that’s part of this—the connection you worry about? Can you understand that whatever it was I felt for her it’s nothing. It’s so pale, so thin and weak compared to what I feel for you.”
The tears came now. He watched them drip down her cheeks, wondered if she were even aware they leaked out of her. “She was part of my life. You are my life. If I have a regret, it’s that even for an instant you could think otherwise. Or that I allowed you to.”
“When I saw you with her on screen—”
“I was saying good-bye to the girl I’d once fancied, and I think, to the man I’d been who’d fancied her. Only that. Don’t cry. Here now.” He brushed her tears away with his thumbs. “Don’t cry.”
“I feel stupid.”
“Good. So do I.”
“I love you. Scary.” She pushed up again, and this time into his arms. “So fucking scary.”
“I know.” She felt him tremble when he pressed his face to her neck. “Don’t leave me again. God. God. Don’t leave me again.”
“I didn’t.”
“Part of you did.” He moved her back, and his eyes swarmed with emotion. “Part of you left me, and I couldn’t stand it.”
“I’m not going anywhere. We’re not going anywhere.” Needing to soothe, she worked up a smile. “Besides, you’d just drag me back again.”
“Damn right.”
“Or try.” She closed her hands over his, and felt the abraded skin on his knuckles. Lowering them, she studied. “Wow. Beat the hell out of someone?”
“Just a droid. It seems to work so well for you when you’re pissed at me.”
“You should get your R-and-D department to come up with one that regenerates or something.” She touched her lips to them. “You should put something on them.”
“You just did. Look how tired you are,” he said, stroking her cheek. “My Eve. Worn to the bone. And I wager you didn’t eat at all today.”
“I couldn’t. Morris even had homemade brownies. Fudge brownies.”
“We’ll have some soup.”
“I’m too tired to eat.”
“All right, then. No soup, no work. Just sleep.” He slid his arm around her waist, and she slid hers around his as they started out of the room. “Will you let me back in there? Into the work?”
She’d shut him out there, she realized. They’d shut each other out here and there. Little doors closing. “Yeah. I could use some help. Questions about a security system to start.”
“I’m your man.”
She looked over at him, smiled. “Yeah, you are.”
She slid into sleep, then before dawn lightened the sky, slid into love. His mouth woke her, warm on hers. Sweet and warm and welcoming. And steeped in his taste, hers answered. His hands stirred her, so that her heart seemed to sigh. Feeling the beat of his against her, she opened.
In the utter quiet, in the soft, soothing dark, they moved together.
Comfort was sought, and found. Pledges were remade without words. And everything needed was given.
She lay, tucked in the curve of his arm. Drifting.
“I should’ve let you sleep.”
“The way I feel right now, you did just fine. Pretty damn perfect.” So perfect, she thought, she could curl there for the next millennium. “What time is it anyway?”
“Nearly six.”
“You probably have to get up.”
“I’m liking where I am at the moment.”
She smiled in the dark. “I’m starving.”
“Are you now?”
“Seriously starving. I wish I had a damn fudge brownie.”
“It isn’t fudge your system needs.”
“You want to bang again, ace, I need coffee first.”
And, he thought, We’re back. “The cat got the best part of two full Irish breakfasts yesterday. Why don’t we try that again, and eat them ourselves.”
“You didn’t eat either?”
“I didn’t, no.”
She smiled again. It was nice to know he’d suffered along with her. But she rolled, bracing on her elbows to look down at him. “Let’s eat. A lot.”
They ate in bed, sitting crosslegged, the plates between them. She shoveled in eggs as if they were going to be banned within the hour.
There was color back in her face, he noted. And those shadows, those hints of wounds behind her eyes were gone. Then she aimed them at him, and he saw there was something else in them.
“What?”
“I don’t want to screw things up, but I want to mention something that’s bugging me.”
“All right, then.”
“Red dress.”
“Fuck.”
“No, no.” She waggled her fork, determined to get through this part without a fight or an emotional crisis. “Just hear me out, okay? You said that when you first saw her she was wearing a red dress. Are you going to buy the coincidence that she was wearing a red dress when you saw her again out of the blue?”
“Well, I doubt she’s worn red all these years, in case we crossed paths again.”
“You’re not thinking. You’ve still got blinders on when it comes to her. Don’t get pissed.”
“It’s hard work not to.” Somewhat irritably, he stabbed a fried potato. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, she set it up. She didn’t just happen to be in that restaurant, at that time, in a red fucking dress, Roarke. She knew you’d be there, and wanted to give you the jolt. Remember, lover? Remember me?”
“Well, how would she know where…” He trailed off, and she saw the blinders fall away.
It took considerable strength of will—and she congratulated herself on it—not to leap up and do a dance of joy and victory on the bed.
“You said she was good, and you probably taught her more. You knew the guy she was with that night, you do business with him. Not that hard, if you want to take some time, to pin down where Roarke has a dinner reservation.”
“No, she could work that.”
“Tags you at home, early morning, then it’s lunch—give me some advice, some help for old times’ sake. I bet she was full of apologies and shame for what she did to you all those years ago.”
She paused a moment, then decided it would fester if she just didn’t say it. “And you’re not going to tell me she didn’t make a move on you. At least test the waters.”
“The waters,” he said, “were not receptive.”
“If they had been, I’d have drowned her in them already.”
“Darling, that’s so…you.”
“Keep that in mind,” she warned, and since she’d finished her bacon,
stole a slice of his. “That had to chap her thighs. Then there’s the fact she’s the anti-me.”
“Sorry? The what again?”
Shaking her head, Eve ate the bacon. “That’s too complicated to explain. Forget that. But after you turned down the offer to see her tits—”
“She has very nice ones, as I recall.”
“You’d better shut up.” And when he grinned, Eve felt warm all over. “So, when you turned down her generous offer, what did she do?”
“Stanched her bitter disappointment with a vodka martini.”
“No. Jesus. She bounced to me, gave me a couple of good jabs. Ended with the vid. Mavis said—”
“Mavis?”
Eve toyed with what was left of her eggs. “I went by there last night. I forgot the teddy bear deal.”
“Forgot me as well.”
“No, I didn’t. I needed to see Mavis. I needed to talk to her.”
“All right.” He reached over to touch a hand to Eve’s knee. “That’s fair enough.”
“Mavis ran grifts for a long time. She wasn’t half bad either. She spotted what Magdelana was doing, where I missed it. But when Mavis pushed it in my face, I saw it, too. She set up that vid, Roarke. If you look at it again, you’ll see it. She angled toward the camera, she—Mavis called it cheating—she cheated her face so it caught her just right. It wasn’t just some wild coincidence that some schmuck caught the two of you on camera and got it on screen. She produced it.”
“Summerset said the same, and I blew him off. Even though a part of me thought, Well and sure she did. I blew him off.”
“She wants you back.” Eve took a vicious stab at her eggs because even knowing what she knew, having what she had, that was a pisser. “She’s been through a couple of rich guys, got herself a nice cushion. But you. You’re the grand prize, and she miscalculated before. Ditched you for the bird in the hand. Now you’re…What’s a really big bird?”
“An ostrich?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t sound right. Anyway, you’re the bird in the big-ass shiny gold nest, and she wants to cozy in with you. Just got to get me out of the way. Maybe see if you can pick up where you left off first…”
“As I said, she may have intimated that possibility, which I, being a faithful husband, nipped even before the bud. And yes,” he added with a nod, “after which, she went to see you, test the ground, make you wonder. It was well played all in all, and caused considerable trouble and grief. Still, I’d made it very clear, I promise you, that you and I were a unit. And committed to being one.”
