He was thirty years her senior, by Eve’s gauge, looked prosperous and hale. And, she thought, slightly besotted.
“We’ll let you get back to your dinner.” Magdelana ran a hand down Roarke’s arm—a light, somehow intimate gesture. “I’m just thrilled to see you again.” And this time she brushed her lips against Roarke’s cheek. “We’ll have lunch, won’t we, and take a walk down Memory Lane. You won’t mind, will you, Eve?”
“The lunch or the walk?”
Magdelana laughed, a frothy gurgle. “We’ll have to have lunch ourselves, us girls. And tell secrets about Roarke. I’ll be in touch. So nice to meet you.”
Conversation picked up again, over food, and fishing. Though Roarke’s face betrayed nothing but interest in his companions, Eve knew him. So she knew while he ate, he drank, he spoke, his mind was across the elegant room where the stunning Magdelana sipped wine in her bold red dress.
When the evening was done, they put the Derricks in one of Roarke’s limos for the drive back to their hotel, then got into Eve’s vehicle.
“There have probably been a dozen murders committed due to the way you parked this thing.”
“Who is she?”
“I told you, she and Sam own not only a
very large portion of Montana, but one of the most successful resorts in the state.”
“Don’t play me that way. Lover.”
“An old friend.” He shifted, his eyes meeting Eve’s. “And yes, we were lovers. It was a long time ago.”
“That much I already know.”
He sighed. “She was in the game. We…competed for a while, then we worked together on a couple of jobs. Then we parted ways.”
“She’s a thief.”
“She was.” He said it with a shrug. “I wouldn’t know if she continues in that profession.” He reached out, and since Eve had gotten behind the wheel, flicked at her hair as she drove. “What does it matter to you?”
I saw something in your eyes, she wanted to say. “Curiosity,” she said instead. “She’s a looker.”
“She certainly is. Do you know what I thought when you walked into the restaurant?”
“Thank God she doesn’t have blood all over her shoes?”
“No, but good point. I thought, there is the most compelling woman in the room. And she belongs to me.” He laid a hand briefly over hers. “Thanks for tonight.”
“I was late.”
“I noticed. New case?”
“Yeah. Caught it this afternoon.”
“Tell me about it.”
She ordered herself to put old lovers out of her head, and gave him the basics.
4
SHE GRABBED A SHOWER TO WASH AWAY THE LONG day, and tried not to obsess when Roarke didn’t make his usual play to join her under the hot jets. A woman who got herself twisted up because her man—who’d led a very full and…adventurous life before they’d met—ran into a former lover was just asking for stomach spasms.
And she didn’t get herself twisted up, Eve reminded herself as she stepped out of the shower and into the drying tube. Or she never had before this.
She was making too much of a…of a glint, she decided. Of a fraction of a second. Whoever Roarke had bounced on more than a freaking decade before had nothing to do with now.
Nothing at all.