Loyalty in Death (In Death #9)(6)

A year ago, she realized. Only a year ago, when their lives had collided. And irrevocably changed.

Now, though she’d made no sound, came no closer, he turned his head. His eyes met hers. And he smiled. Her heart did the long, slow roll in her chest that continued to baffle and embarrass her.

“Hello, Lieutenant.” He held out a hand in welcome.

She crossed to him, let their fingers link. “Hi. What are you watching?”

“Dark Victory. Bette Davis. She goes blind and dies in the end.”

“Well, that sucks.”

“But she does it so courageously.” He gave her hand a little tug and urged her down on the sofa with him.

When she stretched out, when her body curved easily, naturally against his, he smiled. It had taken a great deal of time and a great deal of trust between them to persuade her to relax this way. To accept him and what he needed to give her.

His cop, he thought as he toyed with her hair, with her dark corners and terrifying courage. His wife, with her nerves and her needs.

He shifted slightly, content when she settled her head on his shoulder.

Since she’d gone that far, Eve decided it would be a pretty good idea to pull off her boots and to take a sip from his glass of wine. “How come you’re watching an old video like this if you already know how it ends?”

“It’s the getting there that counts. Did you have dinner?”

She made a negative sound, passed him back his wine. “I’ll get something in a bit. I got hung up on a case that came in right before end of shift. Woman screwed a guy to the wall with his own drill.”

Roarke swallowed wine, hard. “Literally, or metaphorically?”

She chuckled a little, enjoying the wine as they passed the glass back and forth. “Literally. Branson 8000.”

“Ouch.”

“You betcha.”

“How do you know it was a woman?”

“Because after she pinned him to the wall, she called it in, then waited for us. They were lovers, he was playing around, so she drilled a two-foot steel rod through his cheating heart.”

“Well, that’ll teach him.” Ireland cruised through his voice like whiskey and had her tilting her head to look up at him.

“She went for the heart. Me, I’d’ve screwed it through his balls. More to the point, don’t you think?”

“Darling Eve, you’re a very direct woman.” He lowered his head to touch his lips to hers — one brush, then two.

It was her mouth that heated, her hands that reached up to fist in his thick, black hair and drag him closer. Take him deeper. Before he could shift to set the wine aside, she flipped over, knocking the glass to the floor as she straddled him.

He lifted a brow, eyes glinting, as he used his nimble fingers to unbutton her shirt. “I’d say we know how this one ends, too.”

“Yeah.” Grinning, she bent down to bite his bottom lip. “Let’s see how we get there this time.”

CHAPTER TWO

Eve scowled at her desk-link after she’d finished her conversation with the PA’s office. They’d accepted a plea of man two on Lisbeth Cooke.

Second-degree manslaughter, she thought in disgust, for a woman who had cool-headedly, cold-bloodedly ended a life because a man couldn’t control his dick.

She’d do a year at best in a minimum-security facility where she’d paint her nails and brush up on her f**king tennis serve. She’d very likely sign a disc and video deal on the story for a tidy sum, retire, and move to Martinique.

Eve knew she’d told Peabody to take what you could get, but even she hadn’t expected it to be so little.

She damn well let the APA — and she’d told the spineless little prick in short, pithy terms — inform the next of kin why justice was too overworked to bother — why it had been in such a f**king hurry to deal it hadn’t even waited to settle until she’d finished her report.

Setting her teeth, she rapped a fist against her computer in anticipation of its vagaries and called up the ME’s report on Branson.

He’d been a healthy male of fifty-one, with no medical conditions. There were no marks or injuries to the body other than the nasty hole made by a whirling drill bit.

No drugs or alcohol in the system, she noted. No indication of recent sexual activity. Stomach contents indicated a simple last meal of carrot pasta and peas in a light cream sauce, cracked wheat bread, and herbal tea ingested less than an hour before time of death.

Pretty boring meal, she decided, for such a sneaky ladies’ man.

And who, she asked herself, said he was a ladies’ man but the women who’d killed him? In their damn rush to clear the dockets, they hadn’t given her time to verify the motive for the pissy man two.

When it hit the media, and it would, she imagined a lot of dissatisfied sexual partners were going to be eyeing the tool closet.

Lover piss you off? she thought. Well, see how he likes a taste of the Branson 8000 — the choice of professionals and serious hobbyists. Oh yeah, she thought Lisbeth Cooke could work up a pretty jazzy ad campaign using that angle. Sales would shoot right up.

Relationships had to be society’s most baffling and brutal form of entertainment. Most could make an arena ball playoff game look like a ballroom dance. Still, lonely souls continued to seek them out, cling to them, fret and fight over them, and mourn the loss of them.