A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(120)

“Telephonic generally works better,” she replied. “What’re you eating?”

“Chocolate croissant. Want some?” He extended it to her. She covered his hand with hers and held it steady. “Fresh, as well. How lovely.” She munched.

He extended the cup from which the fragrance of hot coffee plumed. She sipped. He smiled. “Excellent.”

“What?”

“What just happened right here.”

“Which was?”

“Our marriage. In some of the most primitive Amazon tribes, you would’ve just become my woman.”

“What would that entail?”

“Come to the Amazon with me and find out.” He took a bite of croissant and observed her closely. “I don’t know what was going on with me back then. I never realised how hot you are. It must’ve been because you were taken.”

“I’m still taken,” Deborah pointed out.

“Married women don’t count.”

“Why?”

“It’s pretty tough to explain.”

She joined him in leaning against the wall, took his coffee from him, and indulged in another sip. “Try.”

“It’s a guy thing. Pretty basic rules. You can make a move on a woman if she’s single or married. Single because she’s available and, let’s face it, she’s generally looking for someone to give her a thumbs-up about how she looks, so she’ll accept a move. Married because her husband’s probably ignored her one time too many, and if he hasn’t, she’ll let you know right up front so you don’t have to waste your time. But the woman who’s at-tached to some guy but not married to him is totally off limits. She’s immune to your moves, and if you try one on her, you’re going to hear from her man eventually.”

“That sounds like the voice of experience,” Deborah observed.

He gave a quirky grin.

“China thought you were out scamming after women last night.”

“She said you came over. I wondered why.”

“Things were touchy over here last evening.”

“Which makes you available for a move. Touchy is very good news for moves. Have some more croissant. Have some more coffee.”

“To seal our Amazon marriage?”

“See? You’re thinking like a South American already.”

They laughed together companionably.

Cherokee said, “You should’ve come to Orange County more often. It would’ve been nice.”

“So you could have scammed on me?”

“Nah. That’s what I’m doing now.”

Deborah chuckled. He was teasing, of course. He no more wanted her than he wanted his own sister. But the undercurrent between them—that man-woman charge—was pleasurable, she had to admit. She wondered how long it had been missing from her marriage. She wondered if it was missing. She merely wondered.

Cherokee said, “I wanted your advice. I couldn’t sleep worth horse dung last night trying to decide what to do.”

“About?”

“Calling Mom. China doesn’t want her involved. She doesn’t want her to know anything about it. But I’m thinking she has the right. This is our mom we’re talking about. China says there’s nothing she can do here and that’s true. But she could be here, couldn’t she? Anyway, I was thinking I’d call her. What d’you say?”

Deborah considered this. At its best, China’s relationship with her mother had been more like an armed truce between armies engaged in an internecine struggle. At its worst, it had been a pitched battle. China’s loathing of her mother had deep roots in a childhood of deprivation, which itself had grown from Andromeda River’s passionate devotion to social and environmental issues that had caused her to disregard the social and environmental issues directly affecting her own children. As a result, she’d had very little time for Cherokee and China, whose formative years had been spent in thin-walled motels where the only luxury was an ice maker next to the proprietor’s office. As long as Deborah had known China, she’d possessed a deep reservoir of anger against her mother for the conditions in which she’d raised her children while all the time waving placards of protest for endangered animals, endangered plants, and children endangered by conditions not unlike those her own two children endured.

“Perhaps you ought to wait a few days,” Deborah suggested. “China’s on edge...well, who wouldn’t be? If she doesn’t want her here, it might be best to respect her wishes. For now, at least.”

“You think it’s going to get worse, don’t you?”

She sighed. “There is this business with the ring. I wish she hadn’t bought it.”

“You and me both.”

“Cherokee, what happened between her and Matt Whitecomb?”

Cherokee looked at the hotel and appeared to be studying the windows on the first floor, where curtains were still drawn against the morning. “It was going nowhere. She couldn’t see that. It was what it was, which wasn’t much, and she wanted it to be more so that’s how she made herself see it.”

“It wasn’t much after thirteen years?” Deborah asked. “How can that be?”

“It can be because men are *s.” Cherokee drank down the rest of his coffee and went on. “I’d better get back to her, okay?”