“The man who hit you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I didn’t need to kill the man who hit you. He was talking, Taka was going to tie him up and leave him there for his employer to find.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“Because he hit you.” He rose, moving over toward the shuttered window. It was growing light, another day with time turned on its head. “I almost got my head blown off tonight.”
“I know.”
He shook his head. “I mean later. Up on the hill. I’d caught the sniper, and I was holding him for Madsen. I was thinking I didn’t need to kill him, didn’t have to have anyone else’s blood on my hands tonight, and I thought that would make you happy.”
“And?” She wasn’t sure if she was going to like what was coming next.
“And I got sloppy. Just as I did at the restaurant. You cried out and I dropped my guard and nearly got us all killed. I started thinking about you tonight and the old man got the drop on me. If it weren’t for Madsen I’d be dead. And he was an old man. Ancient.”
She tried to figure out what he was telling her, and it wasn’t sounding good. “What you’re saying is I’m a danger to you, right? That because of me you kill when you don’t need to, you make mistakes that you can’t afford to make.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re telling me you’re kicking me out rather than end up dead.”
He turned then, faint surprise on his grim face. “No.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m going to need a new job.”
For a moment the words didn’t penetrate, when they did she began to tremble, afraid that he might not mean what she thought he meant.
He turned and leaned against the wall, instinctively out of range of the window even when there was no danger left. “I don’t need your money – I’ve got more than enough to support me for years to come while I decide what I want to do. So you don’t need to worry that I’m marrying you for your money.”
Okay, that stopped her heart cold. She struggled to pull her hard-won calm back around her. “Maybe I’ll marry you for your money then.”
Some of the grimness left his face, and she realized he’d been worried. Uncertain. “You could do,” he said. “I don’t care why.”
“Don’t you?”
“These things tend to work better when people are in love.” He looked at her, his eyes sliding over her bare shoulders, the covers clutched in her suddenly nerveless hands.
“Do you even believe in love?”
“Yes. I do.”
She sighed. “For a brilliant man you can be awfully stupid at times. You know I’m desperately, hopelessly in love with you.”
He smiled then, a sweet, heart-breaking smile. “No, love. Not hopelessly at all.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Peter Madsen stretched back in his chair, staring at the paper thin computer screen absently. He was tired. The boys had been up half the ni
ght playing video games, and he’d been the only one kept awake.
Genevieve had welcomed a new lost boy into her heart immediately, and little Isobel was as enchanted with Dylan as she was with Mahmoud. His house, once so big and empty, was now bursting at the seams, and he was going to have to put an addition and at least one more bathroom in at this rate.
Sooner or later MacGowan and Beth were going to return from their honeymoon, though he wasn’t in any hurry to have them back. The only true love he was interested in was the light shining from Genevieve’s eyes, even as she tore a strip off his hide for taking off. Her rage had been a joyous relief, rather than the cold rejection he’d been afraid of. And making up had been such delicious fun, even if it meant sneaking around so they wouldn’t be caught by teenage boys or demanding toddlers.