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“He . . . he’s certainly not the only idiot who bought that stationery. Leo was home last night.” She bit off the words so that each one was highlighted. “Lieutenant, he’s occasionally foolish, tends to be a bit of a show-off, but he’s not vicious or violent. And he
was home.”
She was going home herself, dissatisfied. She’d done all she could for Jacie Wooton in one day, but it wasn’t enough.
She needed to clear her mind. Take a couple hours’ downtime, then go back, read over the reports, the notes, juggle it around in her home office.
Fortney and Franklin just didn’t match for her. The guy was a putz, a braggart, a fake with a handsome face. Her impression of Franklin was that the woman was the real deal. Smart, strong, stable.
Then again, you never could tell why people ended up together.
She’d given up trying to figure out how she and Roarke had become a unit.
He was rich, gorgeous, sneaky, just a little dangerous. He’d been everywhere and had bought most of it. He’d done everything, and a great deal of what he’d done didn’t fall on her side of the law.
And she was a cop. Solitary, short-tempered, and unsociable.
He loved her anyway, she mused, as she drove through the iron gates of home.
Because he did, she’d ended up here, living in the huge stone palace draped in trees and flowers, surrounded by the stuff of fantasy. It was ridiculous, really, she thought, that someone who’d lived in reality, often the harshest wells of it, should end up in some sort of dreamscape.
She parked in front of the house. She’d leave her pea green cop issue there, as sort of an homage to Summerset, the gnome in her personal dreamscape.
He might’ve still been on holiday—sing hallelujah—but since he despised her habit of parking out front of the spectacular entrance, she saw no reason to stop.
She stepped inside, into the cool and rarified air of the house that Roarke built, and was immediately greeted by the cat. The pudgy and obviously irritated Galahad pranced up, batted his head against her ankle, and mewed shrilly.
“Hey, I’ve got to work for a living. I can’t help it if you’re alone all day with He Who Shall Not Be Named out of the country.” But she bent down, scooped the cat up. “You need a hobby. Or hey, maybe they make VR for pets. If not, Roarke will jump right on that.”
She scratched the cat as she headed out of the foyer and downstairs to the gym. “Little VR goggles for cats, with programs about war on mice, kicking a Doberman’s ass, that sort of thing.”
She dumped him on the floor of the gym, and knowing the true path to his heart, got a bowl of tuna from the AutoChef.
With the cat occupied, she stripped down, changed into workout gear, and set herself a twenty-minute run on the video track. She opted for a beach run, and set out at a light jog, feeling her feet slap sand.
By the time she was at full pace, she’d worked up a nice sweat and was enjoying the salty breeze of the sea, the sound of the surf.
You could keep your yoga, Eve thought. Give her a good, full-out run, then maybe a couple rounds with a workout droid, follow it with a good strong swim, and you’d have your mind, body, and spirit tuned right up.
When the machine blinked end of program, she grabbed a towel, scrubbed it over her sweaty face. With the intention of challenging the droid to a little hand-to-hand, she turned.
And there was Roarke, sitting on a weight bench with a cat in his lap, and his eyes on his wife.
Spectacular eyes, she thought. Violently blue in a face carved by clever angels. The dangerous poet, the poetic danger, whichever way you looked at it—at him—he was amazing.
“Hey.” She tunneled her fingers through her damp hair. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough to see you wanted a hard run. You’ve had a long day, Lieutenant.”
There was Ireland in his voice, dreamy wisps of it that could, unexpectedly, wind around her heart. He set the cat aside, and walked over to tip up her chin. Rubbed his thumb in the shallow dent in its center.
“I heard about what happened in Chinatown. That’s what pulled you out of bed so early this morning.”
“Yeah. She’s mine. Just clearing my head before I get back to it again.”
“All right.” He touched his lips to hers. “You want a swim, then?”
“Eventually.” She rolled her shoulders to loosen them up. “Hand-to-hand’s next up. I was going to use the droid, but since you’re here . . .”
