Naked in Death (In Death, #1)(69)

He drew her back so that he could study her face. "Why?"

"It's complicated. I have to get dressed. I have to get to work."

"Give me something." His fingers tightened on her shoulders. "I don't know what you are, either."

"I'm a cop," she blurted out. "That's all I am. I'm thirty years old and I've only been close to two people in my entire life. And even with them, it's easy to hold back."

"Hold back what?"

"Letting it matter too much. If it matters too much, it can grind you down until you're nothing. I've been nothing. I can't be nothing ever again."

"Who hurt you?"

"I don't know." But she did. She did. "I don't remember, and I don't want to remember. I've been a victim, and once you have, you need to do whatever it takes not to be one again. That's all I was before I got into the academy. A victim, with other people pushing the buttons, making the decisions, pushing me one way, pulling me another."

"Is that what you think I'm doing?"

"That's what's happening."

There were questions he needed to ask. Questions, he could see by her face, that needed to wait. Perhaps it was time he took a risk. He dipped a hand into his pocket, drew out what he carried there.

Baffled, Eve stared down at the simple gray button in his palm. "That's off my suit."

"Yes. Not a particularly flattering suit – you need stronger colors. I found it in my limo. I meant to give it back to you."

"Oh." But when she reached out, he closed his fingers over the button.

"A very smooth lie." Amused, he laughed at himself. "I had no intention of giving it back to you."

"You got a button fetish, Roarke?"

"I've been carrying this around like a schoolboy carries a lock of his sweetheart's hair."

Her eyes came back to his, and something sweet moved through her. Sweeter yet as she could see he was embarrassed. "That's weird."

"I thought so, myself." But he slipped the button back in his pocket. "Do you know what else I think, Eve?"

"I don't have a clue."

"I think I'm in love with you."

She felt the color drain out of her cheeks, felt her muscles go lax, even as her heart shot like a missile to her throat. "That's… "

"Yes, difficult to come up with the proper word, isn't it?" He slid his hands down her back, up again, but brought her no closer. "I've been giving it a lot of thought and haven't hit on one myself. But I should circle back to my point."

She moistened her lips. "There's a point?"

"A very interesting and important point. I'm every bit as much in your hands as you are in mine. Every bit as uncomfortable, though perhaps not as resistant, to finding myself in that position. I'm not going to let you walk away until we've figured out what to do about it."

"It, ah, complicates things."

"Outrageously," he agreed.

"Roarke, we don't even know each other. Outside of the bedroom."

"Yes, we do. Two lost souls. We've both turned away from something and made ourselves something else. It's hardly a wonder that fate decided to throw a curve into what had been, for both of us, a straight path. We have to decide how far we want to follow the curve."

"I have to concentrate on the investigation. It has to be my priority."

"I understand. But you're entitled to a personal life."

"My personal life, this part of it, grew out of the investigation. And the killer's making it more personal. Planting that gun so that suspicion would swing toward you was a direct response to my involvement with you. He's focused on me."

Roarke's hand jerked up to the lapels of her robe. "What do you mean?"

Rules, she reminded herself. There were rules. And she was about to break them. "I'll tell you what I can while I'm getting dressed."

Eve went to the bedroom with the cat sliding and weaving in front of her. "Do you remember that night you were here when I got home? The package that you'd found on the floor?"

"Yes, it upset you."

With a half laugh she peeled out of her robe. "I've got a rep for having the best poker face in the station."

"I made my first million gambling."

"Really?" She tugged a sweater over her head, reminded herself not to be distracted. "It was a recording of Lola Starr's murder. He sent me Sharon DeBlass's as well."

A cold lance of fear stabbed. "He was in your apartment."

She was busy discovering she had no clean underwear and didn't notice the iced edge of his voice. "Maybe, maybe not. I think not. No signs of forced entry. He could have shoved it under the door. That's what he did the first time. He mailed Georgie's disc. We had the building under surveillance."

Resigned, she pulled slacks over bare skin. "He either knew it or smelled it. But he saw I got the discs, all three of them. He knew I was primary almost before I did."

She searched for socks, got lucky, and found a pair that matched. "He called me, transmitted the video of Georgie Castle 's murder scene minutes after he'd whacked her." She sat on the edge of the bed, pulled on the socks. "He planted a weapon, made sure it was traceable. To you. Not to knock how inconvenient a murder charge would have made your life, Roarke, if I hadn't had the commander behind me on this, I'd have been off the case, and out of the department in a blink. He knows what goes on inside Cop Central. He knows what's going on in my life."