by J. D. Robb
Eve tuned them out on the drive. Obviously her partner and the e-geek were off the clock, too. Their conversation was primarily about a vid they both wanted to see, and if they should go for pizza or Chinese.
“We’ll give you a hand with this, Dallas.” Peabody climbed out in Central’s garage. “We’re thinking of going for pot stickers, moo goo, and Chinese beer after. Our treat.”
God, was all Eve could think. She must look pathetic. “I got it, go on. I want to put a couple hours in while I’m here. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“It’ll take you three trips, at least.” McNab pulled out his communicator. “I’ll tag a couple of uniforms for the hauling.”
Eve started to object, then shrugged. It would take her three trips, and that was a waste of time and energy.
“Sure you don’t want to grab a bite?” Peabody asked. “You didn’t even snag a brownie today.”
“I’ll grab something here.”
Peabody’s hesitation told Eve she wanted to push, but she backed off. “If you change your mind, the place we’re going’s only a couple blocks down. Beijing South.”
She wasn’t going to change her mind, but Eve found, after the evidence was logged, she wasn’t going to put in a couple hours either. She was done, finished, out of steam.
But neither could she face going home.
So she went where she supposed she’d known she’d end up. She went to Mavis.
It had been her apartment building once, and one Roarke owned. Just one more of the links between them, she supposed. Not long after she’d moved in with Roarke, Mavis and Leonardo had set up house in Eve’s old apartment. They’d worked a deal with Roarke months before, and had expanded their unit by renting the one next to it, and taking out walls, building more.
With Mavis a hot-ticket music star, and Leonardo a major fashion designer, they could have lived in any exclusive building, bought any trendy house. But this was where they wanted to be, with Peabody and McNab as their neighbors.
She’d never been attached to the apartment, Eve thought as she headed up to it. She’d never been attached to any place she’d lived. Just a place to dress and sleep between shifts.
She’d tried not to become attached to the warm and magnificent glamour of Roarke’s home, but she’d lost the battle. She loved it, every room, probably even those she hadn’t been in yet. She loved the sweep of the lawn, the trees, the way he used the space.
Now, here she was, back at the start, dragging her heels about going back to the house she loved. And the man.
Leonardo answered. She saw it in his eyes, those big, liquid eyes of his, the sympathy. Then he simply enfolded her. The gesture had tears rushing to her throat that had to be brutally swallowed down.
“I’m so glad to see you.” Those enormous hands rubbed, gently as bird wings, up and down Eve’s back. “Mavis is just changing Belle. Come in.” He laid his wide hands on her cheeks and kissed her. “How about some wine?”
She started to refuse. Wine, empty stomach, stress. Then she shrugged. Fuck it. “That’d be good.”
He took her coat, and bless him, didn’t ask how she was or where Roarke might be. “Why don’t you go back and see Mavis and Belle? I’ll bring you the wine.”
“Back? Back to…”
“The nursery.” He beamed a smile. His face was big, like the rest of him, the color of burnished copper. His at-home wear was a pair of brilliantly blue pants with legs as wide as Utah and a silky sweater in snow-blind white.
When she hesitated, he gave her a little nudge. “Go on. To the right through the archway, then left. Mavis will be thrilled.”
The apartment looked nothing like it had under her style. There was so much color it was dizzying, and yet it was cheerful. So much clutter it was impossible to see it all, and yet it was happy.
She passed under an archway that struck her as probably Moroccan in style, then turned into the nursery.
She thought of Rayleen Straffo’s pink and white and frothy bedroom. There was pink here, too, and some white. And there was blue and yellow and green and purple in flashes and streaks, rivers and pools. There was everything.
It was Mavis’s rainbow.
The crib was swirled with color, as was the rocker system chair Eve had given Mavis for her baby shower. There were dolls and stuffed animals and pretty lights. On the walls fairies danced under more rainbows or around fanciful trees bursting with glossy fruit or flowers.
And Eve saw stars sparkling on the ceiling.
Under them Mavis stood, bent over a kind of high, padded table, singing in the squeaky voice millions loved, to a wriggling baby.
“No more poopie for Bella Eve. You have the prettiest poopie in the history of poopies, but my beautiful Belle’s butt is all clean, all shiny. My beautiful, beautiful Belle. Mommy loves her beautiful Bellarina.”
She lifted the baby now, who wore some sort of dress in pale pink that fell in soft folds and flounces. There were bows in the shape of flowers in the baby’s soft crop of dark hair.
Mavis nestled and swayed, then did a little dancing turn.
And saw Eve.
Her face, soft with mother love, went bright and happy, and told Eve everyone had been exactly right. She should have come here before.
“Poopie?” Eve commented. “You say poopie now?”
“Dallas!” Mavis rushed over in green slippers that were made to look like grinning frogs. With the baby cradled in one arm, she hugged Eve hard with the other. She smelled of powder and lotion. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Just got here.” Eve made the effort, and found it wasn’t as hard as she imagined. She took a good look at the baby. “She’s bigger,” she observed. “Looks more…”
Mavis lifted a glossy black brow. “You were going to say human.”
“Okay, yeah, because she does. She also looks like some of you, some of Leonardo. How do you feel?”
“Tired, happy, weepy, thrilled. Want to hold her?”
“No.”
“For one minute,” Mavis insisted. “You can time it.”
“I could break her.”
“You won’t break her. Sit down first, if you’re nervous about it.”
Trapped, Eve avoided the rainbow chair and took the traditional rocker in neon pink. She braced herself when Mavis leaned over and laid the baby in her arms.
No poopie, at least, Eve reminded herself, and stared down as Belle stared up. “I don’t like the way she’s looking at me. Like she’s planning something.”
“She’s figuring you out, that’s all.” Mavis turned and beamed as Leonardo came in with drinks.
Where he was big—redwood big—Mavis was a pixie. A little ball of energy with an explosion of hair currently the color of ripe apricots. She wore a lounge suit with more frogs hopping over her legs and a crowned one in the middle of her chest.
“You can rock her,” Mavis suggested.
“I’m not moving. Something may happen.” And at that moment, Belle poked out her bottom lip, then scrunched up her pretty face. Then let out a pitiful wail.
“Okay, time’s up,” Eve decided, absolutely. “Come and get her, Mavis.”
“She’s just hungry. I was going to feed her before, but she needed changing first.”
To Eve’s relief, Mavis took the baby and sat in the rainbow chair. Then to Eve’s astonishment, Mavis tugged at the frog prince. Her breast popped out, and Belle’s mouth latched on like a hungry leech.
“Wow.”
“There you are, my baby. There you go. Mommy’s milk train is in the station.”
“You both really got the hang of that.”
“We’re a mag team. Leonardo, would you mind if we had a little all-girl time?”
“Absolutely not.” But he bent first to kiss his wife, then his daughter. “My beauties. My angels. I’ll be right out in my studio if you need me.”
He set something frothy in the holder of the system chair, then gave Eve her wine.
In the ensuing silence all Eve could hear was an active sucking sound.
“So…” Mavis nursed and rocked, nursed and rocked. “Why haven’t I heard any media dirt about a blonde fuckhead found floating in the East River?”
Eve lifted her wine, set it down. And did what she’d needed to do all day. She cried like a baby.
“Sorry. Sorry.” When she had herself under some control, she scrubbed her face. “That was bottled up, I guess.” She saw Mavis had tears of sympathy on her cheeks, and had shifted Belle to the other breast. “I shouldn’t be here like this. It probably screws up the milk or something.”
“My milk’s completely uptown. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. He’s…she’s…Fuck, Mavis. Fuck.”
“You’re not going to tell me Roarke’s doing her, because NPW—no possible way. He wouldn’t. All guys have the small jerk gene, it makes them guys. But only some have the big jerk gene. He doesn’t.”
“No, he’s not doing her. But he used to.”
“I used to pick pockets. You used to arrest me.”
“It’s different.”
“Yeah.”
Eve told her some of it. The red dress, the look she’d caught in Roarke’s eyes, the meeting in her office, and so on.
“Uber bitch came there to flip you.”
“Yeah, she did.” Knowing it, Eve thought, didn’t make it better. “Mission accomplished.”
“Give me, like, a rundown on her. What kind are we dealing with?”
“She’s kick-your-dick-up gorgeous, smart, sexy, sophisticated. Multilingual, rich, slick, and polished.” Eve pushed out of the chair to pace. “She’s a custom fit for him.”
“Bullpoopie.”
“You know what I mean, Mavis. The image. She’s everything I’m not.” Eve threw up her hands. “She’s the anti-me.”
“That’s good. That’s completely mag.”
“Good? Mag? How?”
“Because if you two had solid common, it could be said—I wouldn’t, but it could be said—that Roarke hooked on you because you reminded him of her. That you were the type he went for. But, see, you’re not. He went for you, not for a type. I bet that burns her surgically shaped ass.”
“It…oh.” Eve dragged a hand through her hair. “I don’t get this female business. Or it takes me awhile. It would burn her ass that I’m the anti-her? That he didn’t keep looking for her, so to speak.”
“We have a winner.” Mavis slid the baby up over her shoulder and began to rub and pat Belle’s back. “Bet the bitch goes frothy at the mouth every time she thinks about it. Right, Belle-issimo?”
In answer, Belle burped firmly. “There’s my girl. That’s why she set up that vid.”
“Set up the vid?”
Mavis’s frog-green eyes popped. “Jesus, Dallas, you must be knotted up like last week’s hairdo if you missed that. I may have been out of the game a few years, but I know a con when it smacks my adorable, post-pregnancy ass. Did you look at it?”
“I got—I guess I got knotted up.”
“Hold on. I’m going to put Belle down. Get your wine. We’re going to view the evidence.”
She didn’t want to watch it again, but there was too much curiosity in her to refuse. In the living area, Mavis turned on the screen, hit the replay for previous programming, and cued up the piece from that morning.
“Now, watch like a cop instead of the injured wife.” Even as she said it, Mavis slid a comforting arm around Eve’s waist. “He’s looking down at her, yeah, because she’s talking to him, angling up at him. Making sure he’s looking at her while the camera rolls. Now catch it? The way she shifts so they’re both turned just enough for the camera to zoom onto both their faces. Then she even cheats hers out.”
“She what?”
“Cheats her face—turns it a little more, so the camera can catch that soulful expression she’s plastered on for it. Slick, but obvious if you pay attention. She’s playing you. Both of you.”
Mavis drew back. “Go kick her ass.”
“There’s a problem with that. If I kick her ass, it gives her weight.”
“Shit.” Mavis puffed out a breath. “It does.”
“Another problem is, he feels something for her. That already gives her weight. She knows it.”
“You’re on the other side of the scale, Dallas. Head to head, she doesn’t have a ice-fizzy’s chance in hell.”
“Maybe not. But she’s drawn all the blood so far. I’m bleeding, Mavis, and he doesn’t see it.”
“Go make him.” Even as Eve shook her head, Mavis walked over to get Eve’s coat. “Time to stop letting her run the game, Dallas. And FYI?” She shoved the coat into Eve’s hands. “Roarke called here about a half an hour before you showed up.”
“He did?”
“Real casual like. Asked about the baby, like that. I may not have seen it if I hadn’t been looking, because he’s just that good. But you’re not the only one bleeding tonight.”
15
ROARKE REACHED FOR THE ’LINK AGAIN, CURSED himself for a fool, then turned away from it. He wasn’t going to keep calling her, her friends, her haunts, hoping for a scrap.
Bugger that.
She’d be home when she came home. Or she wouldn’t.
Christ Jesus, where was she?
Why the hell was she putting him through this? He’d done nothing to earn it. God knew he’d done plenty along the way to earn her wrath, but not this time. Not this way.
Still, that look on her face that morning had etched itself in his head, on his heart, into his guts. He couldn’t burn it out.
He’d seen that look once or twice before, but not on his account.
He’d seen it when they’d gone to that fucking room in Dallas where she’d once suffered beyond reason. He’d seen it when she tore out of a nightmare.
Didn’t she know he’d cut off his own hand before he’d put that look on her face?
She bloody well should know it. Should know him.
This was her own doing, and she’d best get her stubborn ass home right quick so they could have this out as they were supposed to have things out. She could kick something. Punch something. Punch him if that would put an end to it. A good rage, that’s what was needed here, he told himself, then they’d be done with this nonsense once and for all.
Where the fucking hell was she?
He considered his own rage righteous, deserved—and struggled not to acknowledge it hid a sick panic that she didn’t mean to come back to him.
She’d damn well come back, he thought furiously. If she thought she could do otherwise, he had a bulletin for her. He’d hunt her down, by Christ, he would, and he’d drag her back where she belonged.
Goddamn it all, he needed her back where she belonged.
He paced the parlor like a cat in a cage, praying as he rarely prayed, for the remote in his pocket to beep, signaling the gates had opened. And she was coming home.
“Shall I bring you something to eat?” Summerset asked from the doorway.
“No.”
“No word from her, then?”
“No. And don’t you saddle your high horse and think to ride it here. I did nothing to cause this.”
The hurled ball of fury merely bounced off Summerset’s composure. “And nothing to prevent it.”
“Prevent what?” Roarke whirled. Here, at least, was a target for the rage. “My wife’s sudden turn into an unreasonable, jealous mass of moods?”
“Your wife’s astute reaction to the manipulations of a clever woman. Which you’d recognize if you weren’t so hellbent on being right.”
“Bollocks. There’s nothing astute about thinking I’d prefer Maggie over her. And manipulation be damned.”
“The video was well timed.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Perfectly timed, perfectly executed,” Summerset said coolly. “She was always good.”
“Staged it, did s
he? For what possible purpose?”
“You’re here, alone, angry, worried about your wife, your marriage.” Summerset ignored the cat who skulked in to wind through his legs like a bloated ribbon. “I imagine the lieutenant is somewhere in exactly the same position. That, Roarke, is pinpoint accuracy.”
“That’s bloody nonsense.” But it pushed a very small seed into his mind. “There’s no profit in it for her, no point.”
“Retribution and entertainment.”
“Retribution for what?” At that moment, Roarke felt he might very well be going mad. “You may have forgotten, but she left me. She betrayed me and left me hanging by the balls.”
“No, I haven’t forgotten. I’m glad to know you haven’t either.”
“There’s been enough talk of Magdelana in this house, and I’m not the one who keeps bringing her in.” He strode out, and riding on temper went down to pummel a sparring droid to broken bits.
He wore himself out, but it didn’t help, it didn’t reach the rawness in his gut.
He showered off the sweat, and the blood on his knuckles. He changed and ordered himself up to his office. He’d work, he told himself. He’d just work, and if she wasn’t home in another hour, he’d…
He hadn’t a clue.
And when he saw the light was on in her office, the relief made him so weak it seemed the world tipped and shuddered for a moment before going solid again.
And the weakness refired his temper on all circuits. He stalked in, his mind already flexing its fists for battle.
She was at her desk, comp humming, data scrolling on screen. Her eyes were closed, and the shadows under them etched fatigue against pallor.
It nearly stopped him, perhaps that unhappy weariness would have. But then her eyes flashed open.
“Lieutenant.”
“I’m working.”
“It’ll have to wait. Computer off.”
“Hey.”
“Is this how you handle things? How you punish me for crimes you’ve decided I’ve committed? I’m not even granted an interview?”
“Look, I’m tired. I need—”
“So the bloody hell am I.”
He looked it, she realized, as he so rarely did. “Then go to bed. I’m going to—”