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“Yeah, yeah, I—” The itch grew maddening, and his heart began to hammer. “Help me out, will you? Right along the hip. I can’t reach. Ahhhh.”
“I have to call Summerset.”
“Stop scratching and I’ll kill you.”
“Can you move your fingers, toes, anything?”
“I don’t know.” He bore down, tried to ignore the sensation in his biceps, in his thigh that was like being pricked with a thousand hot needles. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you feel this?” She pressed her thumb against his thigh, and thought she felt a muscle quiver.
“Yeah.” He fought back the hot flood of emotion that gushed into his throat. “Why don’t you shift that grip a few inches to the left? Distract me before I start screaming from this itching.”
“Your dick never went numb.”
A tear spilled off her cheek, plopped on his hand. And he knew the sweetest sensation he would ever feel was that warm, wet tear against his awakening hand.
“I love you, Peabody.”
She looked up at him, with surprise. “Look, don’t get crazy—”
“I love you.” He laid his good hand on her cheek. “I figured I’d lost my chance to tell you that. I’m not going to risk missing it again. Don’t say anything, okay? Maybe you could just give it a chance to settle in.”
She moistened her lips. “I could do that. I need to get Summerset up here. He should . . . do something. Probably.” When she straightened, her knees wobbled. And she turned and cracked her shin smartly on the bed. “Shit. Shit. Wow.”
She limped to the house ’link while McNab scratched his throbbing arm and grinned after her.
By seven-thirty, Eve was pumping in the caffeine again. Second cup in hand, she headed for the lab for a quick check-in with Roarke before the rest of the team poured into her office.
She was nearly through the door when she heard his voice.
She’d heard that icy tone before—the kind that sliced straight through the belly, spilling out the guts before the victim registered the pain.
Though the victim in this case was a minor, nobody was going to call Child Services.
“Is there something about the rules of this household and your current position in it that’s eluded you?” Roarke posed the question the way a cat lurks outside a mouse-hole. With lethal patience and the gleam of fangs.
“Look, what’s the BFD?”
And the kid, Eve thought with a shake of her head, was responding like the mouse stupid enough to think it could outwait or outwit the cat. Foolish, foolish boy, she mused. You are dead meat already.
“You’ll mind your tone when you speak to me, James. I’ll tolerate a certain amount of idiocy from you due to your age, but I’ll tolerate no sass whatsoever. Are we clear on that particular point?”
“Yeah, okay, but I j
ust don’t—”
Eve couldn’t see Roarke’s face, but she could clearly envision the look in his eye. One that had Jamie swallowing back whatever he’d been about to say, and revising it.
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s good. Saves time and heartache. Now, I’ll explain the big fucking deal to you, in words that should be easily understood. Because I gave you a specific order, and when I give specific orders, they’re to be followed. And that’s the end of it. Any part of that hazy for you?”
“People are supposed to think for themselves.”
“That they are. And people who work for me are to do as I tell them. Or they don’t work for me any longer. If you’re going to sulk over it, take yourself off elsewhere so I don’t have to look at you.”
“I’m almost eighteen.”
