When she came out, he’d laid what she needed on the bed. A thin sweater caught somewhere between gray and blue, dark gray trousers, boots of the exact same hue, a gray jacket with hints of that between color threaded through.
She looked at him, his dark suit, perfectly knotted tie. “You’re dressed to go take a meeting or something.”
“It can wait.”
“What was it about?”
“This? The villa hotel in Italy. It’s near to done.”
“Oh.” She started to dress, watched him contemplate the choices on the AutoChef. Something, she imagined, they could eat on the go, because he wouldn’t want her to go without.
Because he thought of her.
“I have to shut this down, shut her down.”
“You do, yes. And so,” he said, so matter-of-factly it swelled in her heart, “you will.”
“I can’t imagine now, just can’t, why I used to fight, why I used to resent you helping, you being a part of what I do.”
He settled on pocket omelets. She could smell the bacon he’d programmed in them. “Might be my criminal past.”
He said it as a joke, but she felt emotion squeeze her throat. “Roarke.”
“Hmm?” He glanced back, saw her face. “Now, what’s this?”
“You make everything better, even when you don’t. That’s not exactly what I mean, either. I said before I’d never get over you, but it’s more than that. I’ve been trying so damn hard not to let what happened to me, what’s part of me because it did, get into this case. I think I’m doing pretty well with that, but I couldn’t be, I wouldn’t be if you weren’t with me on it.”
“A ghrá.” He crossed to her, touched her face. “I’m with you on this, on all. Whether you like it or not.”
He made her laugh, a relief. “I know it. Like now, for instance, when I don’t want that damn egg thing, which I know has spinach in it, but you’ll just keep at me until I eat it.”
So she snatched it up, took a bite. “See?” she said around it. “Spinach.”
“Ah, and how well we know each other.”
“Yeah, yeah. I have to shut this down,” she said as she dressed. “Once I do, why don’t we go check out that hotel thing?”
He paused as he poured more coffee. “You want to go to Italy?”
Yeah, they knew each other, she thought. So well, she heard his surprise, felt it.
“Here’s the thing. Okay, two things. After I shut this down, I need a couple days. I need to just clear it out, and Italy would work. Which is something I’d never have said a few years ago like, oh, sure, Italy would work. Second thing, I know you haven’t been as hands-on with this project as maybe you’d like to be. So you could be that, I could clear it out. A couple of days.”
He held up four fingers.
And damn, her heart just swelled again.
“See, I knew you’d do that, which is why I figured on three, because you’d have to compromise. Three days, once I shut this down.”
“Three days it is.”
“Solid.” She grabbed her badge, ’link, comm, the rest of her pocket debris. “I’m going to pull Baxter and Trueheart in to go talk to Ruzaki, make sure she and Fassley don’t have fresh blood on them, and so on.”
“You don’t believe that for a moment.”
“No, but you gotta cover the bases.”
Before she could walk out, he picked up the egg pocket, smiled. “You do, don’t you?”