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He lay awake a long time, listening to her breathe, watching the stars. When he was certain she slept without scars, he let himself follow.
* * *
She was awakened at seven by a communiqué from Commander Whitney’s office. She’d been expecting the summons. She had two hours to prep for the face-to-face report.
It didn’t surprise her that Roarke was already up, dressed, and sipping coffee while he scanned the stock reports on his monitor. She grunted at him, her usual morning greeting, and took coffee into the shower with her.
He was on the ’link when she came back. His broker, she imagined from the bits and pieces of conversation she caught. She snagged a muffin, intending to stuff it into her mouth as she dressed, but Roarke grabbed her hand, pulled her down on the sofa.
“I’ll get back to you by noon,” he told his broker, then ended transmission. “What’s your hurry?” he asked Eve.
“I’ve got to meet Whitney in an hour and a half and convince him there’s a link between three unrelated victims, talk him into letting me pursue the matter, and to accept data I accessed illegally. Then I’m due in court, again, to testify so that a lowlife pimp, who ran an unlicensed stable of minors and beat one of them to death with his hands, goes into a cage and stays there.”
He kissed her lightly. “Just another day at the office. Have some strawberries.”
She had a weakness for them and plucked one out of the bowl. “We don’t have any—you know—thing scheduled for tonight, do we?”
“No. What did you have in mind?”
“I was thinking we could just hang.” She moved her shoulders. “Unless I’m in Interview being kicked because of breaching government security.”
“You should have let me do it for you.” He grinned at her. “A little time, and I could have accessed the data from here.”
She closed her eyes. “Don’t tell me that. I really don’t want to know that.”
“What do you say to watching some old videos, eating popcorn, and necking on the sofa?”
“I say, thank you, God.”
“It’s a date then.” He topped off their coffee. “Maybe we’ll even manage to have dinner together. This case—or these cases—are troubling you.”
“I can’t get a hook, a focal point. There’s no why, there’s no how. Other than Fitzhugh’s spouse and his associate, no one’s been even one step out of line. And they’re both just idiots.” She moved her shoulders. “It’s not homicide when it’s self-termination, but it feels like homicide.” She huffed out a disgusted breath. “And if that’s all I’ve got to convince Whitney, I’m going to be dragging my ass out of his office after he stomps it.”
“You trust your instincts. He strikes me as a man who’s smart enough to trust them as well.”
“We’ll soon see.”
“If they arrest you, darling, I’ll wait for you.”
“Ha ha.”
“Summerset said you had visitors last night,” Roarke added as she rose to go to the closet.
“Oh, shit, I forgot.” Dumping the robe on the floor, she pawed naked through her clothes. It was a process Roarke never failed to enjoy. She found a shirt of plain blue cotton, shrugged it on. “I had a couple of guys over for a quick orgy after work.”
“Did you take pictures?”
She chuckled and found some jeans, remembered court, and switched to tailored slacks. “It was Leonardo and Jess. They’re looking for a favor. From you.”
Roarke watched as Eve started to pull on the slacks, remembered underwear, and yanked open a drawer. “Oh-oh. Will it hurt?”
“I don’t think so. And actually, I’m kind of for it. They were thinking you could throw a party for Mavis here. Let her perform. The demo disc is done. I watched it myself last night and it’s really good. It would give her a chance to, like, premiere it before they start hawking it.”
“All right. We could probably do it in a week or two. I’ll check my schedule.”
Half dressed, she turned to him. “Just like that?”
“Why not? It’s not a problem.”
