She kissed Eve’s cheek, then made a fuss over the flowers Peabody offered.
“Lieutenant Sugar.” Charles went for the hello kiss as well, but he aimed for the mouth. There was a twinkle in his eye shot in McNab’s direction, as he gave Peabody the same greeting.
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 predinner 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’s always 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.