by J. D. Robb
“I’m a cop. I can’t afford to overlook anything, to assume anything.”
“To trust,” he interrupted. “Anything. Or anyone. If it had leaned a little the other way, would you have locked me up? Would you have put me in a cage, Eve?”
“Back off.” Eyes blazing, Feeney strode down the corridor. “Back fucking off.”
“Leave us alone, Feeney.”
“Hell I will.” Ignoring Eve, he shoved against Roarke. “Don’t you come down on her, big shot. She went to bat for you. And the way things stand, it could have cost her the job. Simpson’s already prepping her as sacrificial lamb because she was dumb enough to sleep with you.”
“Shut up, Feeney.”
“Goddamn it, Dallas.”
“I said shut up.” Calm again, detached, she looked at Roarke. “The department appreciates your cooperation,” she said to Roarke and, prying his hand from her shirt, turned and hurried off.
“What the hell did you mean by that?” Roarke demanded.
Feeney only snorted. “I got better things to do than waste my time on you.”
Roarke backed him into a wall. “You’re going to be free to book me for assaulting an officer in about two breaths, Feeney. Tell me what you meant about Simpson?”
“You want to know, big shot?” Feeney looked around for a place of comparative privacy, jerked a head toward the door of a men’s room. “Come into my office, and I’ll tell you.”
She had the cat for company. Eve was already regretting the fact that she’d have to turn the useless, overweight feline over to Georgie’s family. She should have done so already, but found solace in even a pitiful furball’s worth of companionship.
Nonetheless, she was nothing but irritated by the beep of her intercom. Human company was not welcomed. Particularly, as she checked her viewing screen, Roarke.
She was raw enough to take the coward’s way. Leaving the summons unanswered, she walked back to the couch, curled up with the cat. If she’d had a blanket handy, she’d have pulled it over her head.
The sound of her locks disengaging moments later had her springing to her feet. “You son of a bitch,” she said when Roarke walked in. “You cross too many lines.”
He simply tucked his master code back in his pocket. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t want to see you.” She hated that her voice sounded desperate rather than angry. “Take a hint.”
“I don’t like being used to hurt you.”
“You do fine on your own.”
“You expect me to have no reaction when you accuse me of murder? When you believe it?”
“I never believed it.” It came out in a hiss, a passionate whisper. “I never believed it,” she repeated. “But I put my personal feelings aside and did my job. Now get out.”
She headed for the door. When he grabbed her, she swung out, fast and hard. He didn’t even attempt to block the blow. Calmly he wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand while she stood rigid, her breathing fast and audible.
“Go ahead,” he invited. “Take another shot. You needn’t worry. I don’t hit women—or murder them.”
“Just leave me alone.” She turned away, gripped the back of the sofa where the cat sat eyeing her coolly. The emotions were welling up, threatening to fill her chest to bursting. “You’re not going to make me feel guilty for doing what I had to do.”
“You sliced me in two, Eve.” It infuriated him anew to admit it, to know she could so easily devastate him. “Couldn’t you have told me you believe in me?”
“No.” She squeezed her eyes tight. “God, don’t you realize it would have been worse if I had? If Whitney couldn’t believe I’d be objective, if Simpson even got a whiff that I showed you any degree of preferential treatment, it would have been worse. I couldn’t have moved on the psych profile so fast. Couldn’t have put Feeney on a priority basis to check the trail of the weapon to eliminate probable cause.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said quietly. “I hadn’t thought.” When he laid a hand on her shoulder, she shrugged it off, turned on him with blazing eyes.
“Goddamn it, I told you to bring an attorney. I told you. If Feeney hadn’t hit the right buttons, they could have held you. You’re only out because he did, and the profile didn’t fit.”
He touched her again; she jerked back again. “It appears I didn’t need an attorney. All I needed was you.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She battled control back into place. “It’s done. The fact that you have an unassailable alibi for the time of the murder, and that the gun was an obvious plant shifts the focus away from you.” She felt sick, unbearably tired. “It may not eliminate you completely, but Dr. Mira’s profiles are gold. Nobody overturns her diagnostics. She’s eliminated you, and that carries a lot of weight with the department and the PA.”
“I wasn’t worried about the department or the PA.”
“You should have been.”
“It seems you’ve worried enough for me. I’m very sorry.”
“Forget it.”
“I’ve seen shadows under your eyes too often since I’ve known you.” He traced a thumb along them. “I don’t like being responsible for the ones I see now.”
“I’m responsible for myself.”
“And I had nothing to do with putting your job in jeopardy?”
Damn Feeney, she thought viciously. “I make my own decisions. I pay my own consequences.”
Not this time, he thought. Not alone. “The night after we’d been together, I called. I could see you were worried, but you brushed it off. Feeney told me exactly why you were worried that night. Your angry friend wanted to pay me back for making you unhappy. He did.”
“Feeney had no right—”
“Perhaps not. He wouldn’t have had to if you’d confided in me.” He took both her arms to stop her quick movement. “Don’t turn away from me,” he warned, his voice low. “You’re good at shutting people out, Eve. But it won’t work with me.”
“What did you expect, that I’d come crying to you? ‘Roarke, you seduced me, and now I’m in trouble. Help.’ The hell with that, you didn’t seduce me. I went to bed with you because I wanted to. Wanted to enough that I didn’t think about ethics. I got slammed for it, and I’m handling it. I don’t need help.”
“Don’t want it, certainly.”
“Don’t need it.” She wouldn’t humiliate herself by struggling away now, but stood passive. “The commander’s satisfied that you’re not involved in the murders. You’re clear, so other than what the department will officially term an error in judgment on my part, so am I. If I’d been wrong about you, it’d be different.”
“If you’d been wrong about me, it would have cost you your badge.”
“Yes. I’d have lost my badge. I’d have lost everything. I’d have deserved to. But it didn’t happen, so it’s over. Move on.”
“Do you really think I’m going to walk away?”
It weakened her, that soft, gentle lilt that came into his voice. “I can’t afford you, Roarke. I can’t afford to get involved.”
He stepped forward, laid his hands on the back of the couch, caged her in. “I can’t afford you, either. It doesn’t seem to matter.”
“Look—”
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he murmured. “Very sorry that I didn’t trust you, then accused you of not trusting me.”
“I didn’t expect you to think any differently. To act any differently.”
That stung more than the blow to the face. “No. I’m sorry for that, too. You risked a great deal for me. Why?”
There were no easy answers. “I believed you.”
He pressed his lips to her brow. “Thank you.”
“It was a judgment call,” she began, letting out a shaky breath when he touched his mouth to her cheek.
“I’m going to stay with you tonight.” Then to her temple. “I’m going to see that you sleep.”
“Sex as a sedative?”<
br />
He frowned, but brushed his lips lightly over hers. “If you like.” He lifted her off her feet, flustering her. “Let’s see if we can find the right dosage.”
Later, with the lights still on low, he watched her. She slept facedown, a limp sprawl of exhaustion. To please himself, he stroked a hand down her back—smooth skin, slim bones, lean muscle. She didn’t stir.
Experimentally, he let his fingers comb through her hair. Thick as mink pelt, shades of aged brandy and old gold, poorly cut. It made him smile as he traced those fingers over her lips. Full, firm, fiercely responsive.
However surprised he was that he’d been able to take her beyond what she’d experienced before, he was overwhelmed by the knowledge that had, unknowingly, taken him.
How much farther, he wondered, would they go?
He knew it had ripped him when he’d believed she’d thought him guilty. The sense of betrayal, disillusionment was huge, weakening, and something he hadn’t felt in too many years to count.
She’d taken him back to a point of vulnerability he’d escaped from. She could hurt him. They could hurt each other. That was something he would have to consider carefully.
But at the moment, the pressing question was who wanted to hurt them both. And why.
He was still gnawing at the problem when he took her hand, linked fingers, and let himself slide into sleep with her.
chapter fifteen
He was gone when she woke. It was better that way. Mornings after carried a casual intimacy that made her nervous. She was already more involved with him than she had ever been with anyone. That click between them had the potential, she knew, to reverberate through the rest of her life.
She took a quick shower, bundled into a robe, then headed into the kitchen. There was Roarke, in trousers and a shirt he’d yet to button, scanning the morning paper on her monitor.
Looking, she realized with a quick tug-of-war of delight and dismay, very much at home.
“What are you doing?”
“Hmmm?” He glanced up, reached behind him to open the AutoChef. “Making you coffee.”
“Making me coffee?”
“I heard you moving around.” He took the cups out, carried them to where she was still hovering in the doorway. “You don’t do that often enough.”
“Move around?”
“No.” He chuckled and touched her lips to hers. “Smile at me. Just smile at me.”
Was she smiling? She hadn’t realized. “I thought you’d left.” She walked around the small table, glanced at the monitor. The stock reports. Naturally. “You must have gotten up early.”
“I had some calls to make.” He watched her, enjoying the way she raked her fingers through her damp hair. A nervous habit he was certain she was unaware of. He picked up the portalink he’d left on the table, slipped it back into his pocket. “I had a conference call scheduled with the station—five A.M. our time.”
“Oh.” She sipped her coffee, wondering how she had ever lived without the zip of the real thing in the morning. “I know those meetings were important. I’m sorry.”
“We’d managed to hammer down most of the details. I can handle the rest from here.”
“You’re not going back?”
“No.”
She turned to the AutoChef, fiddled with her rather limited menu. “I’m out of most everything. Want a bagel or something?”
“Eve.” Roarke set his coffee down, laid his hands on her shoulders. “Why don’t you want me to know you’re pleased I’m staying?”
“Your alibi holds. It’s none of my business if you—” She broke off when he turned her to face him. He was angry. She could see it in his eyes and prepared for the argument to come. She hadn’t prepared for the kiss, the way his mouth closed firmly over hers, the way her heart rolled over slow and dreamy in her chest.
So she let herself be held, let her head nestle in the curve of his shoulder. “I don’t know how to handle this,” she murmured. “I don’t have any precedent here. I need rules, Roarke. Solid rules.”
“I’m not a case you need to solve.”
“I don’t know what you are. But I know this is going too fast. It shouldn’t have even started. I shouldn’t have been able to get started with you.”
He drew her back so that he could study her face. “Why?”
“It’s complicated. I have to get dressed. I have to get to work.”
“Give me something.” His fingers tightened on her shoulders. “I don’t know what you are, either.”
“I’m a cop,” she blurted out. “That’s all I am. I’m thirty years old and I’ve only been close to two people in my entire life. And even with them, it’s easy to hold back.”
“Hold back what?”
“Letting it matter too much. If it matters too much, it can grind you down until you’re nothing. I’ve been nothing. I can’t be nothing ever again.”
“Who hurt you?”
“I don’t know.” But she did. She did. “I don’t remember, and I don’t want to remember. I’ve been a victim, and once you have, you need to do whatever it takes not to be one again. That’s all I was before I got into the academy. A victim, with other people pushing the buttons, making the decisions, pushing me one way, pulling me another.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“That’s what’s happening.”
There were questions he needed to ask. Questions, he could see by her face, that needed to wait. Perhaps it was time he took a risk. He dipped a hand into his pocket, drew out what he carried there.
Baffled, Eve stared down at the simple gray button in his palm. “That’s off my suit.”
“Yes. Not a particularly flattering suit—you need stronger colors. I found it in my limo. I meant to give it back to you.”
“Oh.” But when she reached out, he closed his fingers over the button.
“A very smooth lie.” Amused, he laughed at himself. “I had no intention of giving it back to you.”
“You got a button fetish, Roarke?”
“I’ve been carrying this around like a schoolboy carries a lock of his sweetheart’s hair.”
Her eyes came back to his, and something sweet moved through her. Sweeter yet as she could see he was embarrassed. “That’s weird.”
“I thought so, myself.” But he slipped the button back in his pocket. “Do you know what else I think, Eve?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“I think I’m in love with you.”
She felt the color drain out of her cheeks, felt her muscles go lax, even as her heart shot like a missile to her throat. “That’s . . .”
“Yes, difficult to come up with the proper word, isn’t it?” He slid his hands down her back, up again, but brought her no closer. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and haven’t hit on one myself. But I should circle back to my point.”
She moistened her lips. “There’s a point?”
“A very interesting and important point. I’m every bit as much in your hands as you are in mine. Every bit as uncomfortable, though perhaps not as resistant, to finding myself in that position. I’m not going to let you walk away until we’ve figured out what to do about it.”
“It, ah, complicates things.”
“Outrageously,” he agreed.
“Roarke, we don’t even know each other. Outside of the bedroom.”
“Yes, we do. Two lost souls. We’ve both turned away from something and made ourselves something else. It’s hardly a wonder that fate decided to throw a curve into what had been, for both of us, a straight path. We have to decide how far we want to follow the curve.”
“I have to concentrate on the investigation. It has to be my priority.”
“I understand. But you’re entitled to a personal life.”
“My personal life, this part of it, grew out of the investigation. And the killer’s making it more personal. Planting that gun so that suspicion would swing toward you was a direct response to my
involvement with you. He’s focused on me.”
Roarke’s hand jerked up to the lapels of her robe. “What do you mean?”
Rules, she reminded herself. There were rules. And she was about to break them. “I’ll tell you what I can while I’m getting dressed.”
Eve went to the bedroom with the cat sliding and weaving in front of her. “Do you remember that night you were here when I got home? The package that you’d found on the floor?”
“Yes, it upset you.”
With a half laugh she peeled out of her robe. “I’ve got a rep for having the best poker face in the station.”
“I made my first million gambling.”
“Really?” She tugged a sweater over her head, reminded herself not to be distracted. “It was a recording of Lola Starr’s murder. He sent me Sharon DeBlass’s as well.”
A cold lance of fear stabbed. “He was in your apartment.”
She was busy discovering she had no clean underwear and didn’t notice the iced edge of his voice. “Maybe, maybe not. I think not. No signs of forced entry. He could have shoved it under the door. That’s what he did the first time. He mailed Georgie’s disc. We had the building under surveillance.”
Resigned, she pulled slacks over bare skin. “He either knew it or smelled it. But he saw I got the discs, all three of them. He knew I was primary almost before I did.”
She searched for socks, got lucky, and found a pair that matched. “He called me, transmitted the video of Georgie Castle’s murder scene minutes after he’d whacked her.” She sat on the edge of the bed, pulled on the socks. “He planted a weapon, made sure it was traceable. To you. Not to knock how inconvenient a murder charge would have made your life, Roarke, if I hadn’t had the commander behind me on this, I’d have been off the case, and out of the department in a blink. He knows what goes on inside Cop Central. He knows what’s going on in my life.”
“Fortunately, he didn’t know that I wasn’t even on the planet.”
“That was a break for both of us.” She located her boots, tugged them on. “But it’s not going to stop him.” She rose, picked up her holster. “He’s still going to try to get to me, and you’re his best bet.”