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“Sorry,” he quipped, “I left the turkey at home.”
“You could do in a pinch,” she told him. “All you’d have to do is hold up a few feathers in your hand and I can shoot those.”
“Tempting, but I’ll pass,” Bowie told her. “My luck can only hold out for so long,” he added, doing a quick survey of her immediate living space. “I don’t intend to push it.”
Once inside her condo, and with her weapon tucked away back in its place, Bowie sighed audibly.
“You look different,” he told her.
“Nothing gets by you, does it?” Marlowe quipped. “Do you want something to drink?” she asked. “I’ve got a fully stocked bar.”
Marlowe was still waiting for him to answer her. “Robertson, you’re staring,” she said.
“Sorry. I’ve never seen you look like a civilian before,” he told her. His face softened a little. “You look nice.”
That surprised her. She had never been complimented before when she looked like this, and she had no idea how to respond, so she didn’t. Instead, she went back to her original question.
“I asked you if you wanted something to drink.”
He shrugged. “Sure. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
“I’m not having anything,” she told him. “I’m pregnant, remember?”
And the reason he was here, the attempts on his life and all that entailed—including an unknown source, now that Marlowe denied having anything to do with it—instantly came crowding back into his brain.
“Oh, right,” Bowie murmured. “For a second, I just forgot.” And was trying to forget, despite everything, just how much he still wanted her.
Chapter 6
“All right, let’s get down to business,” Marlowe said, sitting down on her sofa and approaching this new problem logically. “Who would want you dead?”
Her blunt question threw Bowie. He’d thought that she had asked him here to talk about what they were going to do about the condition she suddenly found herself in. That and perhaps even touch on the night they had spent together, when he had gotten to see a completely different Marlowe Colton than the one the rest of the world—including him, up until then—was acquainted with.
But since she was asking about the attempts on his life, he was willing to address that first. Bowie sat down on the other end of the sofa. He had been giving his own dilemma a great deal of thought since he had confronted Marlowe in her office earlier. As a result, he had come to a new conclusion about it, a totally different one from the one that Marlowe was suggesting.
He started out treading lightly. “While it’s true that I have made some enemies in my energy dealings, so have you,” he pointed out.
“No argument there,” Marlowe acknowledged.
But before she could continue, Bowie advanced his theory a little further, getting to the heart of what he believed.
“I think that this would-be killer is somehow connected to you or maybe to Colton Oil.”
Marlowe’s face clouded up. “So we’re back to you thinking I hired someone to kill you? Is that what you’re saying?” she asked incredulously.
“No,” he corrected her, “what I’m saying is that these attempts on my life somehow have something to do with you, because someone started targeting me only after I spent the night with you.”
“You mean you think that someone’s watching me?” Marlowe demanded, clearly doing her best not to show Bowie how much the very idea of what he was suggesting unnerved her.
Bowie shrugged. “I honestly don’t know,” he admitted. “But it does make sense in a way. All I do know is
that no one took a shot at me or tried to run me over before you and I spent the night together.”
Marlowe thought of the anonymous email that had been sent to all six members of the board. Was that somehow connected to these attempts that had been made on Bowie’s life?
Maybe Bowie was onto something, she thought, although she was not about to tell him about that. She had absolutely no intention of divulging anything about what was going on in the company unless it turned out to be absolutely necessary.
For now, she just shrugged, doing her best to seem casual. “Maybe you were just lucky before.”
