Visions in Death (In Death #19)(69)

It was going to be, Eve decided, a really weird evening.

The wine Roarke brought was welcomed, and opened. Conversation, Eve realized after ten minutes, wasn't stilted or sparse. Everyone appeared to be in a party mood. She'd just have to tuck the case into another area of the brain and get into the personal game for a few hours.

There was Louise, looking happy and picture-pretty perched on the arm of Charles's chair, and wearing the casual gear of a dark pink sweater and black pants. Bare feet with pink toenails. And to Eve's considerable surprise, a little gold toe ring.

Charles kept touching her in that absent and intimate way a man touched a woman who was his focus. A brush on the arm, a stroke on the knee.

Didn't she wonder about the women who paid him to touch them and a hell of a lot more? Apparently not, Eve decided, by the gooey looks they sent each other every five minutes.

And there were McNab and Peabody, snuggled together on the cushy leather couch laughing and talking without any sign of awkwardness. Just one big happy family.

As a trained observer, she could safely say she was the only one weirded out.

Even as she thought it, Roarke leaned toward her, laid his lips close to her ear. "Relax."

"Working on it," she mumbled.

"Louise has been fussing half the day," Charles commented.

"I have." Louise shook back her cloud of hair. "It's the first time we've entertained friends together. And I like to fuss."

Fussing, Eve concluded, ran to putting small arrangements of color-coordinated flowers in little clear vases and positioning them in strategic spots throughout the apartment, and marrying the flowers with lots of white candles in different shapes and sizes so the light was subtle and gold.

She'd probably selected the background music, too. Something muted and bluesy that suited the lighting. The table was already set with lots of candles and flowers there, too. And glassware that glinted.

Put it all together with the wine and pre-dinner finger food, and you had a cozy, relaxing atmosphere for an intimate gathering of friends.

How did people know how to put it together? she wondered. Did they take classes? Punt and hope for the best? Buy instruction discs?

"It was worth it," Peabody commented. "Everything looks mag."

"I'm just glad we're all here." Louise sent her smile around the room. "I wasn't sure you'd be able to make it—you particularly, Dallas. I've been following the case in the media reports."

"People keep telling me I need an actual life outside the job." Eve shrugged. "I figure if you get away from it for a little while, maybe you'll come back fresh."

"A healthy attitude," Louise said.

"Yeah, that's me." Eve leaned over and plucked one of the colorfully topped crackers from a canapé tray. "My ' tude'salways healthy."

"Especially when she's kicking your ass." With a grin, McNab ate a tiny stuffed shrimp.

"Skinny as yours is, pal, it doesn't take much."

"Do you ever get your skinny ass back to Scotland?" Louise asked him.

"Not really. I was born here and all that. Went back and forth a lot when I was a kid. My parents decided to roost back there, outside Edinburgh about five years ago, I guess. I was thinking, maybe next time Peabody and I have some real time, we could go check it out."

"Scotland?" She goggled at him. "Really?"

"They've got to meet my girl."

Her cheeks pinked. "I always wanted to go over and see Europe. You know, the countryside. Tromp around in fields and gawk at ruins."

Conversation turned to travel.

"Dallas," Louise said in an aside. "Give me a hand in the kitchen?"

"The kitchen? Me?"

"For a minute."

"Ah. Okay."

Eve followed her in, looked around. "We're not going to actually cook or anything?"

"What, do I look simple? Everything's stocked from a very nice restaurant around the corner. It's just a matter of putting it together for the table, which I'll take care of in a minute."

Louise sipped her wine, studying Eve over the rim. "Are you taking care of yourself?"

"What? Why?"

"Because you look tired."

"Well, shit. I spent a good five minutes slapping goop on my face. What's the point?"

"Your eyes look tired. I'm a doctor, I know these things. And I would've understood if you'd needed to cancel tonight."

"Thought about it, but the fact is I couldn't do any more. Maybe I needed a break from it. Maybe I've got to learn how to take a break from it."

"That's good. But we'll make this an early evening."

"We'll see how it goes. You and Charles... things cruising there?"

"They are. He makes me awfully happy. No one has, in just that way, in a very long time."

"You look happy. Both of you."

"Funny, isn't it, how you find someone when you've stopped looking."

"I don't know. I never looked."

"Now that hurts." With a laugh, Louise leaned back against the counter. "You don't even bother to look, and you end up with Roarke."