His eyes, feral in their light, fired at her before he sniffed her arm. His back arched like a Halloween cat.
“What the hell … Jesus, the dog? Are you kidding me? It was hours ago. I was wearing my coat. You can’t possibly …” She sniffed her own arm. “I absolutely do not smell like big, sloppy dog. Besides, it wasn’t my fault. He had the crazy eyes.”
Galahad snarled, sniffed her leg. Let out a bitter, throaty sound.
“He leaned on me. It was line of duty, so get over it.”
He turned his back on her, tubby body rigid, angry eyes focused on a wall of books.
“How come you don’t act this way when I come home with blood on me, or street thief stench?”
She could ignore his jealous ass, she thought, but …
It was, in its weird way, sort of flattering.
So, reaching over, she stroked a hand from his head to his tail. Twice. “Don’t be an asshole.”
She went back to the book, to the scene. The cat hel
d out for nearly two minutes, then curled up against her. Absently, she scratched between his ears as she backtracked to study the plot, and tried to put herself in the mind of the killer.
Fictional and real.
Deciding she needed a more solid sense of the characters, she went back to the beginning, pulled out her notebook. Made notes as she read, and wished she’d hunted up the AutoChef—there had to be one in here—before she’d settled in. Before she’d ended up with a cat sprawled over her lap.
A little annoyed, somewhat frustrated, Roarke walked into the foyer. Unlike Eve—or what Eve wouldn’t admit even under threat of death—he actually enjoyed being met by Summerset and the cat after a workday.
Especially a workday that had been largely a pisser.
He’d spent far too much of it untangling a snafu before it could roll into a full-blown clusterfuck. And the fact that he’d eventually tracked the initial mistake back to one of his most valuable and reliable people in R&D only added to it.
A tiny miscalculation, really, he thought as he tossed his coat over Eve’s because he just didn’t feel like hanging it up. And that tiny miscalculation had led to another, and another, building like a bloody snowball rolling downhill.
He’d caught it, so a stroke of luck there, before it cost serious money or damaging PR. And his valued and reliable mechanical engineer had been so appalled and apologetic, had offered no excuses, Roarke hadn’t been able to relieve frustration with a verbal ass-kicking.
He considered heading down to the gym, taking Eve’s tack and ass-kicking the sparring droid.
Maybe Eve was down there, he thought. Or maybe he could talk her into going a round or two in the dojo. And capping it off with sex.
There’s a room we haven’t hit yet, he thought as he went to the house comm. She’d appreciate the thought.
“Where is Eve?”
Good evening, Roarke. Darling Eve is in the library.
“What? Where? Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, is in the library?”
Affirmative, that is her current location.
Baffled, fascinated, he wound his way through the house, came to the open doors of one of his favorite rooms.
There sat his wife, her boots up on the long bench table, the cat lengthwise across her lap, and a book in her hand.
A fire snapped and sizzled cheerfully. The cat snored.
“Well now, this looks cozy.”
She looked up—hard, flat cop’s eyes clearing slowly. She said, “Hey.”