by J. D. Robb
“He was still stuffing his face. You also have strawberry shortcake. Don’t make me go get him. I’m weak, and it looked really mag.”
Eve turned to her ’link. She’d never used the house intercom, but now seemed like a good time to start. She flipped it to full open. “McNab! Get your bony ass up here. Now.”
“It’s not bony so much as tight,” Peabody offered and earned a killing look from Eve.
“I’ve told you about that.”
“Just saying,” Peabody muttered. “Do you want me to start a search for ancestors?”
“Let McNab do it. He’s faster than both of us.”
And delegating, she thought, would give her time to balance those scales. She rose.
“I want him to do the run, then the two of you split the names. Look for current accounts. If the names crap out, go for numbers. DOBs, DODs, IDs, driver’s license, and anything else that comes to you. All combinations. I’m taking an hour personal time.”
She headed out as McNab rushed in. “Man, Dallas, it was like hearing the voice of God. You nearly scared me to death.”
“You’ve got strawberry gunk on your lip. Clean up and get to work.”
“Where’s she going?” McNab demanded when Eve breezed out.
“An hour personal time.”
“Dallas? Personal time? Maybe it was the voice of God and this is the end of the world.”
That got a smirk out of Peabody, but she told herself she’d been too nice to him lately and refused to let the laugh loose. “She’s entitled to a life like everybody else. And if you don’t get that bony ass in gear, she’s going to kick it to New Jersey when she gets back.”
“I didn’t get my coffee.” But he wandered to the desk on his way to the kitchen. “What’s she running?”
“This guy. She wants a financial search.”
“Hey, I know him. Vernon.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember him. I got called on-scene, backup for an illegals bust, when I was in uniform. He’s an asshole.”
“Why’s that? Wasn’t he properly awed by the brilliance of your mind?”
He gave her a sour look. “He’s a strutter. Preening around. Hitting on the LCs we hauled in during the bust. Made a big deal out of himself, and it was a penny-ante bust, too. Bunch of street hookers, couple of johns, and a couple kilos of Exotica. Acted like he’d just taken down some major cartel, and he treated the uniforms like slaves. I heard one of the LCs yelled sexual harassment and he got called in on it. Took a knuckle rap.”
“Nice guy.”
“Yeah, a prince. Seems I heard a rumor that he liked to bust the hookers for Exotica because he could skim a couple ounces for personal use. Well, Jerry old pal, what goes around comes around.”
He forgot the coffee, dramatically flexed his fingers, and got to work.
chapter thirteen
Roarke’s midtown offices were in his own sleek black tower that speared up from the street like a shaft into the blue belly of the sky. That sheer ebony lance was a favorite image on the tourists’ postcards and holocubes.
Inside, it was just as sleek, with edges of the lush, in banks and pools of stunning flowers, tropical trees, acres of animated maps, and an ocean of glossy tile.
Not all the businesses housed in the tower were his. But he owned a piece of most that were, including the shops, restaurants, and chic salons.
He worked on the top floor, which Eve could access through a private elevator. She arrived, unannounced and unexpected, and with a chip the size of a meteor on her shoulder.
The receptionist beamed at her. Because she was a clever and experienced woman, that welcoming smile stayed in place even when she caught the combative expression on Eve’s face.
“Lieutenant Dallas, how nice to see you again. I’m afraid Roarke’s in a meeting at the moment and can’t be disturbed. Is there anything I can do to—”
“Is he back there?”
“Yes, but—Oh, Lieutenant.” She scrambled up from her post as Eve marched past her. “Please. You really can’t—”
“Watch me.”
“It’s an extremely important meeting.” The receptionist risked her very attractive face by throwing herself in Eve’s path. “If you could just wait, possibly ten minutes. They should be breaking for the lunch portion very shortly. Perhaps I can get you some coffee. A pastry.”
Eve gave her a considering look. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Loreen, Lieutenant.”
“Well, Loreen, I don’t want coffee or a pastry, but thanks. And I’ll be sure to tell Roarke you tried. Now move.”
“But I—”
“Tried really hard,” Eve added, then simply shouldered Loreen aside and yanked open the door.
Roarke was in front of his desk, leaning back against it, looking cool, casual, and completely in control with the staggering view of the city behind him. He was listening with polite interest to something one of the six people, all sober-suited and seated, said to him. But his gaze shifted to the door as it burst open, and Eve had the pleasure of seeing surprise flash into his eyes.
He recovered instantly. “Ladies, gentlemen.” With lazy grace, he straightened. “My wife, Lieutenant Dallas. Eve, the representatives, attorneys, and financial advisers of Green Space Agricultural Port. You know Caro, my admin.”
“Yeah, hi. How’s it going? We have to talk.”
“Excuse me a moment.” He walked to the door, took her arm firmly, and pulled her through.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Loreen began, nearly stuttering. “I couldn’t stop her.”
“Don’t worry about it, Loreen. No one can. It’s all right. Go back to your desk.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.” With obvious relief, Loreen fled, with the single-minded intensity of a woman fleeing a burning building.
“This isn’t a convenient time, Eve.”
“Then you’ll have to settle for an inconvenient time, because I have things to say, and I’m saying them now.” She peered past him. “Want me to say them in front of the representatives, attorneys, and financial backers of Green Space Agriculture Port and your trusty admin, Caro?”
He didn’t care for her mood or the position she put him in. And his hand stayed, a not particularly subtle warning, on her arm. “We’ll talk at home.”
“We haven’t been doing a lot of that lately. I say we talk now.” She lifted her chin. A not particularly subtle challenge. “And if you think you can call security and have them change my mind, I’ll haul you downtown on some trumped-up charge. In fact, I like the idea of that. I’m making time,” she said, quietly now. “You make it.”
He studied her face. If he’d seen only temper, he’d had met it with his own or dismissed it. But he saw something more. “Give me ten minutes. Caro?” When his hand ran down Eve’s arm like a caress, she felt the clutch in the gut that came with relief. “Would you show my wife to Conference Room C, please?”
“Of course. This way, Lieutenant. Shall I get you some coffee?”
“I got an offer of a pastry with that before, when I scared Loreen.”
Caro’s smile remained polite as she steered Eve through the corridors, but her eyes twinkled with humor. “I’ll make good on that offer. I’m sure you’ll be quite comfortable in here.” She opened one of a pair of double doors and escorted Eve into a pretty, almost homey room with two cozy seating areas, a gleaming wood bar, and a spectacular and lofty view of the city.
“Doesn’t look like any conference room I’ve ever seen.”
“Amazing, really, how much business can be done in comfortable surroundings. What kind of pastry would you like, Lieutenant?”
“Hmm? Oh, I don’t know. Whatever. Are you allowed to tell me what that meeting was about?”
“Certainly.” Placidly, Caro programmed the AutoChef behind the bar. “Green Space is floundering, though they claim otherwise. Their costs of maintaining the space port have steadily overrun their profits for the past thr
ee years. Their production level is down, though the quality of their produce remains very high. Transportation costs, in particular, are taking an enormous bite and causing their overhead to soar.”
She removed a china cup and saucer steaming with coffee and a pretty matching plate with a selection of flaky pastries.
“So, is he making them a deal on transpo?”
“Quite possibly. I imagine he’ll have done so, and have a controlling interest in the port, with his hand-selected team assigned to restructure Green Space from the ground up, so to speak, before he joins you.”
“Caro, do they want to sell him controlling interest?”
“They didn’t.” She set the tray on a table. “They will before it’s done. Is there anything else I can get you, Lieutenant?”
“No. Thanks. Does he always win?”
Caro’s smile didn’t shift by a single degree. She didn’t even blink. “Of course. Just ring Loreen if you need anything.” She walked to the door, then turned back, her smile warming a little. “You surprised him, Lieutenant. That’s not easy to do.”
“Yeah, well,” Eve muttered when Caro quietly closed the door, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
She was revved, edgy, and didn’t have any interest in the damn pastries. But she ate one anyway, decided the sugar rush could only help, and started on another.
She was licking flakes from her thumb when Roarke walked in. He aimed those eyes at her, closed the door at his back.
Pissed, she thought. Not just surprised but seriously pissed. Good. When you were dealing with the richest and potentially the most deadly man in the world, you needed every advantage you could get.
“I’m pressed for time, so let’s save some,” he began. “If you’re here for an apology regarding last night, you won’t get it. Now, is there something else you need to discuss with me? I’ve people waiting for me.”
That’s how he worked it, she mused. All those deals, all those wheels. Draw your line in cold, cold sand, then intimidate. He was good at it, but there were any number of cons doing time who could have vouched that Eve Dallas was a bitch in Interview.
“We’ll get to that, but since I’m pressed for time myself, let’s start right at the beginning and move along. Going to see Ricker was my job, and I’m not apologizing for that.”
He inclined his head. “That’s one each.”
“Okay. I don’t know if I’d have told you about it or not. Probably not, if I thought I could skate by it. And I didn’t intend to tell you about him sending his hammers after me because I dealt with it.”
He could feel temper fighting to get out of his belly and into his throat but said nothing. He merely walked to the bar and got himself a cup of coffee. “I have no dispute over your job, Lieutenant. But the fact is, Ricker and I were connected. You knew that going in. We discussed it.”
“That’s right. That’s right exactly. And we discussed the fact that I would set up a meet.”
“You didn’t indicate you’d move on that intention immediately, without preparation.”
“I don’t have to indicate anything when it comes to my work. I just have to do the job. And I was prepared. I knew after five minutes with him that his fondest wish was to get to you. Using me to do that wasn’t going to be an option I tossed in his lap.”
He studied the pretty pattern on his china cup, even as he fantasized about hurling it against the wall. “I’m quite able to take care of myself.”
“Yeah, well, me, too. So what? Did you tell me about your plans to corner the market on broccoli?”
He shot her a look of mild interest. “Excuse me?”
Oh, she hated when he used that formal, adult-to-idiot-child tone on her. And he knew it. “This deal with the Green Space people. Did you bring me in on it?”
“Why would I? Have you developed a stirring interest in fresh produce?”
“It’s a big deal, taking them over. It’s what you do. You didn’t consult me about it. I don’t have to consult you about what I do.”
“It’s an entirely different matter.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“The representatives of Green Space aren’t likely to put out a contract on my life.”
“The way you work, they may want to. But yeah, that’s a point. On the other hand, dealing with the criminal element is part of the package with me. You married a cop. Live with it.”
“I do. This is different. It’s my head he wants. Taking yours would simply be a bonus.”
“Oh, I got that. I got that as soon as I saw the flowers. Why do you think I panicked?” She strode over, slapped her hands on the bar. “Okay, I panicked, and I don’t like knowing it. When I read the card, I was annoyed. And then, it hit me, hit hard what you might do. What he was hoping you’d do, and all I could think was to get rid of them. To make them go away so you wouldn’t see them or know about them. Maybe I wasn’t thinking at all but just reacting. I was afraid for you. Why isn’t that allowed?”
He had no answer for that and, setting the coffee aside, struggled to put his own thoughts in order. “You lied to me.”
“I know it, and I said I was sorry. But I’d do it again. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I don’t care if it put your dick in a twist.”
He stared at her now, torn between annoyance and amusement. “Do you really think this is about my ego?”
“You’re a man, aren’t you? I have it on good authority that what I did put a big dent in your ego, which is the same as a kick in the groin to a man.”
“And who,” he said with deceptive sweetness, “is this authority?”
“I talked to Mavis.” She caught the glint in his eye and narrowed her own. “She made sense, and so did Mira. I had a right to talk to somebody since you were freezing me out.”
He had to take a minute, had to walk it off. He paced to the window, stared out until reason could make its way through the haze of temper. “All right. You had every right, and every reason to talk to friends. But whether or not some of my reaction had to do with ego isn’t the sticking point, Eve. You didn’t trust me.”
“You’re wrong.” And if the kick to his ego had made him believe that, she had to fix it. “Altogether wrong. I’ve never trusted anyone the way I trust you. Don’t turn away from me again, damn it. Don’t do that. I was afraid,” she said when he turned back to her. “I don’t deal well with fear. I don’t let it in, but it snuck up on me. I wasn’t wrong, and neither were you. We were just right on different levels.”
“That’s an amazing and accurate analysis. One I’d nearly reached myself before I happened upon that little scene last night.” He walked to her then, until they were face-to-face. “Do you expect me to take two kicks in the groin, Eve, then just sit meekly, like a puppy when ordered?”
Another time she might have laughed at that image. The man in front of her would never be meek. He would do as he pleased when he pleased, and hang the consequences.
“That was about work.”
He took her chin in his hand, fingers strong and firm. “Don’t insult me.”
“It started out that way, I don’t know how it got where it did. Webster had information, confidential, the kind that could get his ass burned for passing it to me. We were going around about it, arguing, then . . . I don’t know what the hell got into him.”
“No,” Roarke murmured, not particularly surprised. “I see you don’t.” She was refreshingly, sometimes frustratingly, oblivious to her own appeal.
“He caught me off balance,” she continued, “but I’d’ve dealt with it. Next thing I know, there you are. And the two of you are like a couple of rabid dogs fighting over a bone. Talk about insulting.”
“You pulled your weapon on me.” He couldn’t get over that one. Wasn’t sure he ever would.
“That’s right.” She shoved his hand away from her chin. “You think I’m stupid enough to jump physically between two crazy men trying to break each other’s faces? I had it on stun.”
“Oh, well then, what am I whining about? You had it on stun.” He had to laugh. “Christ, Eve.”
“I wouldn’t have used it on you. Probably. And if I had, I’d’ve been really sorry.” She tried a smile, thought she saw the hint of one in return. It made her decide to give him the rest of it.
“Then you were standing there, sweaty and messed up and mad as hell. And so fucking sexy. I wanted to jump you, bite you right . . . there,” she said, tracing a finger on the side of his neck. “It wasn’t a reaction I was expecting. Before I could work it out, you had me against the wall.”
“Slugging you seemed like the less enjoyable of the two options.”
“Why weren’t you there this morning? Why have you only touched me twice since I’ve been here?”
“I said I wouldn’t apologize for what happened between us last night. I won’t. I can’t. Still . . . Still,” he repeated and touched her now, just a brush of his fingers on the ends of her hair. “I took your choice away. If not physically,” he said before she could argue, “then emotionally. I meant to. It’s given me some bad moments since, some concern that it might have reminded you of your childhood.”
“My childhood?”
She could have no idea what her confused expression did to him. How it cooled and smoothed every hot and ragged edge inside him. “Your father, Eve.”
Now confusion turned to shock. “No. How could you think that? I wanted you. You knew I wanted you. There’s nothing between us that would make me . . .” It stirred hideous images to think of it, but she faced them. “There was no love there, no passion, not even need. He raped me because he could. He raped a child, his own child, because he was a monster. He can’t hurt me when I’m with you. Don’t let him hurt you.”
“I won’t say I’m sorry.” He lifted his hand, skimmed his fingers over her cheek. “I wouldn’t mean it. But I will say I love you. I’ve never meant anything more.”
He drew her into his arms. She pressed her face to his shoulder and held on. “I’ve been so messed up.”
“So have I.” He brushed his lips over her hair, felt his world balance again. “I’ve missed you, Eve.”