by J. D. Robb
He merely cocked an eyebrow. “I have a box of your clothes that came with you into the household and haven’t been used as rags, as yet. In the event you want to trick-or-treat as a sidewalk sleeper.”
“A predictable home,” Roarke put in as he took Eve’s arm to pull her upstairs, “is a comfort to a man.”
“Did he mean that?” she demanded as the cat streaked up after them. “Or was he yanking my chain?”
“I have no idea.”
She shot a dark look behind her. “My clothes weren’t that bad.”
“No comment,” Roarke said when she turned the look on him. “Whatsoever.”
“All he wears is mortician black anyway. What does he know? Hey,” she objected when he continued to pilot her toward the bedroom. “I’ve got work.”
“Yes, and I’d be interested in helping with that. But I want to show you something first.”
“In the bedroom?” Now she narrowed her eyes, gave him an up and down. “I’ve seen it before. It’s nice. I can probably make time to play with it later.”
“You’re too good to me.”
He steered her straight in, and toward the box tied with a gold bow on the bed.
“Oh man. You got me something in Cleveland.” In reflex, her hands dove into her pockets. “You should put it away until Christmas.”
“It’s barely October, and you’ll want this before Christmas. It’s not from Cleveland.”
“I already have everything. You just keep buying stuff.”
“You don’t have this, which you’d see for yourself if you’d open the bloody thing.” He gave her a finger flick on the head.
“Okay, okay. It’s too big for jewelry, so I probably won’t lose it. It’s clothes because everything I used to have is rag fodder. It’s something nice.” She gave the ribbon a tug. “So I’ll probably destroy it at work, then Summerset’ll give me the hairy eyeball. Which is just one of the reasons I wish you wouldn’t—
“Oh …” There was a flavor to the sound she made, as a woman might make eating soft, creamy chocolate. “Nice.”
She had a weakness for leather and rich colors, which he knew very well. When she pulled the jacket out of the box, he saw the deep, burnished bronze suited her just as well as he’d hoped. It would hit her mid-thigh, and fall very straight. The deep, slash pockets—reinforced—would hold everything she needed to carry. The buttons on the front, and on the decorative belt in the back, were in the shape of her badge.
“It’s great.” She pushed her face against it, inhaling the scent. “Really great. I love the coat you got me last year.” Even as she spoke she rubbed her cheek against the leather. “I really don’t need—”
“Consider this one a transition. The other’s long and for colder weather. You can wear this now. Try it on.”
She saw the label. “Leonardo did it, so it’s going to fit—ha ha—like it was made for me. Look at the buttons!”
“We thought you’d like that.”
Yes, he thought, it fit her perfectly, suited her perfectly—the color, the cut, the subtle embellishments. When she turned toward him, the hem swirled around her thighs.
“It feels great, too. No pull in the shoulders because of my weapon harness.” She slid a hand inside, drew her weapon smoothly, and smoothly replaced it. “It doesn’t get in the way.”
“There’s a knife sheath worked into the lining—right side as you prefer the cross-draw, and use your right hand for your main weapon.”
“No shit.” She opened the jacket, checked. Mimed by crossing her arms, and drawing both gun and imaginary knife simultaneously. “Handy. Pretty damn handy. What’s with this lining? It feels sort of dense. It’s not heavy, but it doesn’t feel like coat lining.”
“Something we’ve been working on in R and D for a while.” He crossed to her, ran his fingers over the lining himself. “It’s body armor.”
“Get out.” Her forehead creased as she examined it more closely. “It’s too thin and light. Plus it moves.”
“Trust me, it’s been thoroughly tested. Leonardo was able to take the material and fashion it into the coat. It will block a stun on full, though you’ll feel the impact. It’ll protect from a blaster, though the leather would suffer. And it will block a blade—though again, pity about the leather.”
“Seriously?” She pulled her weapon again, offered it. “Try it.”
He had to laugh even as he thought: Typical. Just typical. “I will not.”
“Not very confident in your research and development.”
“I’m not firing a stunner at my wife in our bedroom.”
“We can go downstairs to the range.”
“Eve.” With a shake of his head, he guided her hand back until she holstered the weapon. “Trust me. It’s been tested. You have the prototype in a very flattering and fashionable form. We’ll be moving into production shortly, and negotiating with the NYPSD to be the first police force so equipped—not as fashionably, of course.”
“It’s like nothing else. And it really moves.” She tested by going into a crouch, a spin, trying a side kick. “Doesn’t hamper range of motion or—” It struck her then.
“You said you’ve been working on it awhile.”
“It takes time to develop something new, and one that fits specific requirements.”
“How long a while?”
He smiled a little. “Oh, I’d say about two and a half years. Since I fell for a cop.”
“For me.”
“For me as well. I want to keep you.” When she reached up, laid a hand on his cheek, he took her wrist, turned her palm to his lips. “We were close, but I pushed a bit in the last few weeks.”
“Since Dallas.”
“He hurt you. I realize you wouldn’t have been wearing body armor when McQueen attacked you in our hotel room, but all the same. He hurt you and I wasn’t there.”
“You were there when I needed you. I beat him, again, but I nearly lost myself.”
“You wouldn’t have.”
“All I know is you were there when I needed you. I don’t know if I could’ve gotten through any of it without you. I don’t ever want to go back there.” She closed her eyes briefly. “But if I have to, I know you’ll go with me.”
“You’ll never go back alone, Eve.”
“You’ve been careful with me since we got back. Nothing too obvious, but you’ve been careful. You don’t need to be.”
“I could say the same.”
“I guess we both went through the wringer, so we’ve been trying not to push the wrong buttons. One of us will forget, or get pissed, and push one. And that’s all right. We’re all right.”
“You haven’t had nightmares since. I thought you would, worried that … Eve,” he said, flatly, when she stepped back.
“Not nightmares. Not like that. Just …” She shrugged, then took off the coat, carefully laid it on the bed. “Dreams. Just dreams. Sometimes it’s just her—Stella—sometimes with McQueen or with my father. Sometimes all of them. But I can pull out of them before they get bad. Really bad.”
“Why haven’t you told me?”
“Maybe because we’re being careful with each other. I don’t know, Roarke. They’re dreams. I know they’re dreams, even when I’m having them. They’re nothing like on the level of what I had in Dallas. And I can stop them, before they get really bad, I can stop them. I need to.”
“You don’t need to do this alone.”
“I’m not.” She touched his face again. “You’re right there. If I need you, you’re right there.”
“Have you talked to Mira?”
“Not yet, not really. I will,” she promised. “I know I have to. I’m not ready, just not ready. I feel … good. Strong, normal. I know I need to talk to her, go through the process, and that during the process I won’t feel good, strong, I won’t feel normal. I’m not ready for that yet.”
“All right.”
She smiled again. “Still being careful.”
“Maybe, but I believe you’ll know when you’re ready. And that I’ll know. You’re not.” He laid his lips on her brow. “But you will be.”
She leaned into him, laid her head on his shoulder. “Thanks for the magic coat.”
“You’re welcome.”
She shifted, wrapped her arms around him for the kiss. Then sighed. “Okay, we’ll have to do this now.”
“What would that be?”
She stepped back. “As usual, you’re wearing too many clothes. Start fixing that.”
She stepped past him to take the coat and box off the bed.
“Is this a seduction?” he asked. “I’m all aquiver.”
“Here’s how it is.” She set the box and coat on the sofa, unhooked her weapon harness. “One of the things I have to do is watch Matthew and Marlo have sex—all the way through this time since Feeney and I aren’t reviewing it together and suffering the mortification from hell. After doing that having sex with you is just going to be weird. So we’ll do it now, before it gets weird.”
“Maybe I’m not in the mood.”
She let out a snort. “Yeah. As if.” She sat to pull off her boots, eyed him. “I’d buy you dinner first, but we already ate.”
“We didn’t have dessert.”
She sent him a wicked grin. “That’s what I’m saying.”
He laughed, then sat on the side of the bed and took off his shoes. “Well, since you’re so determined.”
“Oh.” She stood, took off her shirt, her pants. “I can take no for an answer.”
“Who said no?”
She crossed to him, long and lithe, and sat on his lap, facing him. Grabbing his hair, she crushed her mouth to his, drawing the kiss down, down, coloring it dark and dangerous. She slid her hand down between them, gave him one hard stroke. “Yeah, you seem to be in the mood now.”
She angled away, slithered onto the bed, then rolled, lifted her eyebrows at him. “About those clothes.”
It took him roughly ten seconds to get rid of them. “What clothes?” he asked, and tumbled down to her.
She was laughing when they rolled. The cat, who’d assumed it was nap time, leaped off the bed to stalk away in disgust.
She needed to play, Roarke thought, to offset the brief journey into bad dreams and hard memories. He played his fingertips down her ribs, made her squirm and gasp out what was close to a giggle.
“Foul!” She grabbed his ass in a hard squeeze.
“What, this?” He tickled her ribs again until she bucked, choking on a laugh.
“Keep that up, you won’t get laid.”
“Oh, I think I will as you’ll be too weak to fight me off.” He drilled his finger into her side, and when she squealed—a sound so rare and foreign for her—he dissolved into laughter of his own.
“Got you now,” he murmured, nipping lightly at her shoulder. “A bit of a tickle and you turn into a girl.”
“You’re looking for trouble.”
“Oh, that I am, and as you’re all naked with girlish squeals under me, I think I can find it.”
“We’ll see who squeals, pal.” She caught his earlobe, not so lightly, between her teeth.
“That was a yelp,” he claimed. “And a manly one.”
She levered up, so he used the momentum to roll again, once, twice, until they ended up in the same position but across the bed.
“You’re outweighed, Lieutenant. And outmuscled.” He gripped her hands, drew them over her head. “Might as well give it over.”
He lowered his mouth to take her, and the sound she made now was pure pleasure. Her body went soft beneath his while the sole of her foot slid up to stroke his leg.
The next he knew he was on his back, her knee at his balls, her elbow at his throat. Her eyes glinted down into his.
“Weight and muscle fall beneath agility.”
“You’re a slippery one, you are.”
“Damn right, so you might as well give it over.” Now she lowered her mouth, then stopped a teasing breath away, drew back, teased in for a sampling nip, then another before she covered his mouth with hers.
“Who’s a girl?”
“You’re mine.” His hands glided down her back, around and up to her breasts. “You’re my girl.”
“Sap,” she said, but in a little sigh as she gave him her lips again.
She’d never been anybody’s girl, had never wanted to be. It had always seemed a weak term to her, one of submission and vulnerability. But with him, it was sweet and foolish, and just exactly right.
With more affection than passion—passion would come—she dropped kisses on his face. Oh, how she loved his face, the angles of it, the planes of his cheekbones, the line of his jaw.
She felt that affection, the simplicity of it, the scope of it from him as he wrapped his arms around her.
For a moment they stayed quiet, body to body, her lips resting on his cheek.
When she pressed her face into the side of his throat, he thought it the most magnificent thing.
His girl, he thought as hands and lips began to stoke the first embers of passion. His strong, complicated, and resilient girl. He loved every corner of her mind, her heart, even when she maddened him. There was nothing he wanted or treasured more truly, nothing he had craved or dreamed of in those dark, often desperate years of youth that was as rich or as powerful as what she’d given him.
He’d believed in love despite the lack of it in those early years, or perhaps because of the lack. But it had taken her to show him what love meant, what it gifted, what it cost, what it risked.
Breath quickened as the fire built to a blaze. She moved over him, supple as silk, then under him when he turned her. When he filled her.
Once again he took her hands, once again their eyes met, then their lips. Joined, they let the fire take them.
Later in her office, her board set up, her computer on the hum, she studied the faces, the facts, the evidence, the time line.
And felt as if she studied a blank brick wall.
“I don’t understand them. Maybe that’s why I can’t get a good hold on this. Acting, producing, directing—and all that goes into it. It’s a business, an industry, but it’s based on pretending.”
“You’re equating pretending with pretense,” Roarke responded. “They’re not the same. Imagination’s essential to the healthy human condition, for progress, for art, even for police work.”
She started to disagree about the police work, then reconsidered. She had to imagine, to some extent, the victim, the killer, the events in order to find the reality.
Still.
“These people—the actors. They have to become someone else. They have to want to become someone else. Playacting, isn’t that a term for it? Play. But they have to make a living at it. So you get agents and managers, directors, producers.”
She circled the board. “The director. He has to see the big picture, right? The whole of it even while he separates it into sections, into scenes. He calls the shots, but he’s dependent on the actors taking his direction, and being able to …”
“Become,” Roarke finished. “As you said.”
“Yeah. The producer, he’s got the financial investment and the power. He’s the one who says yeah, he can have that, or no, you can’t. He has to see the big picture, too, but with dollars and cents attached. So he needs more than what the actors and director put on-screen. He needs them to cultivate image and generate media so the public can imagine the real lives—the glamour, the sex, the scandals—of the actors who make their living being someone else.”
She circled again. “So specifically, you’ve got Steinburger as producer—and I imagine the suits that line up with him, because suits always line up—seeing to it the public are fed Julian and Marlo as an item. Because they consider the public largely made up of morons—and I don’t disagree—who’ll buy into the fantasy. More, who want that fantasy and will fork over the ready for more tickets, more home discs. Because, back to busines
s, everybody wants a return on their investment.”
“What does that tell you?”
“For one thing, Julian, Marlo, and everyone involved went along with that angle. Most of their interviews are playful, flirtatious, without actual confirmation or denial. If one or both of them is asked if they’re involved romantically, they give clever varieties of the old ‘we’re just good friends’—with little teases about chemistry and heat. The same goes for Matthew and Harris.”
Eve stopped her pacing in front of the board. “That’s more low-key, as the investment in their fantasy isn’t as important. K.T. did more playing that up—chemistry again, how much she enjoys her scenes with Matthew. He talks more about the project as a whole, or the cast as a group. He’s careful, even in the interviews, not to connect himself too solidly with Harris. He doesn’t want that fantasy in his head, or the public’s. That’s strictly the work on the set. He’s careful,” she said again.
“And that tells you?”
“She wasn’t important to him, not really. People kill what—or who—isn’t important, but that’s not what we’ve got here. He and Marlo were upset, pissed off, but not murderous. If they’d argued, and it got physical, that would have been that. She was alive when she went in the water. She wasn’t important enough to either of them to kill, because over and above the invasion of privacy, some embarrassment, they’d both have gotten through that—and reaped public support—everybody loves a lover.”
“They’re happy,” Roarke added. “Happiness is exceptional revenge. If she’d played it through, she’d have looked the fool, not them. I agree, it doesn’t work.”
“There’s Andrea. K.T. threatened her godson, his hard-won peace, his reputation. Mothers kill to protect their young. She didn’t give me a buzz in Interview, but she’s a seasoned and talented pro. So she’s on. Then there’s Julian. If the relationship between Marlo and Matthew came out—now, before the end of the project, before he’d had any opportunity to walk back all that flirting and chemistry, some might see it as Marlo preferring the lesser star, the sidekick you could say, to the big guns. That could make him look like a fool, or less—chip that women-can’t-resist-me image he’s got going. Added, she embarrassed him at dinner. Added, he was drunk. A confrontation, a scuffle, temper, ego, pride, and alcohol. That’s got a solid ring.”