"One step behind. After she gets over being pissed at having her little holiday interrupted, she's going to feel really good about it. She took another battle, riding off unscathed while I eat her dust."
"You were right about her, what she would do. What she would need. What she had here, Lieutenant, was sheer luck. Not to discount the value of luck, but I'll wager on the side of brains and grit any day of the week."
"I wouldn't mind a little of that luck to go with them. I'm going to zone out for a while here."
"That's fine." He tapped the release on the table in front of him and brought the data center into position.
"How come I didn't know you could speak Italian?"
"Hmm? I don't, at least not fluently. Enough to handle basic business and employee relations. And, of course, I have a working knowledge of all the more colorful obscenities and sexual come-ons."
She could hear the faint click of him working the computer manually. "Everything in Italian sounds like a sexual come-on or colorful obscenity. Say something."
"Silenzio."
"Nuh-uh, I can figure that one out. Say something in the sexual come-on division."
He glanced over. Her eyes were still closed, but her lips were curved upward. Apparently she'd run out of her mad, he thought, and was ready to recharge. One way or the other.
He shut the computer down, pressed the lever to have the table swing away. Leaning close, he whispered a silky stream of Italian in her ear, while his fingers roamed possessively up her thigh.
"Yeah, that sounds pretty hot." She opened one eye. "What does it mean?"
"I believe it loses something in the translation. Why don't I demonstrate?"
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Julianna stormed into her townhouse, heaved her travel bag aside. The hours on the run hadn't chilled her anger, but instead had bottled it up under the rigid cork of control. Now that she was back, alone, unobserved, that cork popped.
She grabbed the first thing in range, a tall vase of delicate English bone china, threw it and its contents of white roses against the wall. The crash echoed in the empty house and set her on a rampage of temper and destruction. She batted lamps to the floor, pitched a large crystal egg into an antique mirror, stomped the already bruised roses into dust.
She upended chairs, tables, spilling precious crockery onto rug and wood until her foyer and living area resembled a war zone.
Then she threw herself down on the sofa and, pounding her fists onto the pillows, wept like a baby.
She'd wanted those few lovely days at the villa. She'd needed it. She was tired, tired, tired of fixing her own hair, of going without the simple necessities of facials and manicures.
And that bitch had ruined it all.
She'd had to leave a brand-new gown and shoes behind, as well as several other lovely outfits. And she'd missed her seaweed plunge and mud wrap.
Well, there would be payment made.
Sniffling, she rolled onto her back. If that little Italian twit in reservations hadn't come through, she might have found herself hauled out of bed by the police. Infuriating. Humiliating.
But that hadn't happened. To calm herself, Julianna breathed deeply and quietly as she'd taught herself in prison. It hadn't happened because she was always prepared, always ahead. And it had been Eve Dallas who'd lost this battle, as she'd lost the others in this newly waged war.
That was enough comfort to give Julianna a slight lift. Imagine, racing all the way to Italy only to find an empty suite. And that clever little message. Yes, that had been a stylish touch.
In any case, she'd come back to New York to work specifically to pit herself against Eve Dallas. So it was foolish to become so upset and overwrought when the woman proved herself to be a skilled foe.
So skilled, Julianna mused, that it might be best to back off a bit. At least temporarily. This last skirmish had unnerved her. And yet...
It was all so exciting. She'd missed this blood rush, this adrenaline spike when she'd been inside. The only way to bring it all to peak was to finish what she'd planned to do.
Destroy Eve Dallas, once and for all.
What better way to do that than by killing the man she was weak enough to love? With the added bonus of going down in history as the woman who murdered the invulnerable Roarke.