“If you want an apple, you’d pick it before it fell.” She shimmied into her underwear. “Otherwise it’ll just lie there and rot.”
“Not if you pick it up. That’s why they call them windfalls.”
She frowned at him as she buttoned on her shirt. “They call apples windfalls?”
“It’s the concept of something falling at your feet, often unexpectedly.”
“Somebody tossed off a roof can fall unexpectedly at your feet. How’s that a windfall?”
He watched her pull on her pants. “We’ll clarify by something worthwhile falling at your feet.”
“The body might have a solid-gold wrist unit and pockets full of cash, so pretty worthwhile.”
“Only you,” he murmured. “And I obviously haven’t yet had enough coffee to sort this out.”
“Anyway.” She strapped on her weapon harness, which Roarke thought added another brilliant contrast to the sleek and elegant cut of the shirt and pants. “One line, a parent might still be pissed about the way their precious got spanked when Rufty came on. Second line, parents who protect fuckhead kids from fuckhead behavior often promote fuckhead adults.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
“I’ve seen it go both ways. A good, solid, caring family produces a vicious killer. Vicious, violent people produce…” She looked over at him as she slipped into the jacket. “Cops and gazillionaires. So you could say the apple that falls from the tree might be full of worms, or it can end up making a damn good pie.”
“Which ends up, quite remarkably, making an absolute truth.”
She shrugged. “I could write a book of sayings that should actually be sayings if people didn’t keep killing each other.”
Sitting on the side of the bed, she pulled on her boots.
“Earrings,” Roarke reminded her before she could rush out and pretend she’d forgotten about them.
“Okay, okay.” She had to walk to the mirror to put them on, and wondered, as she often did, how she’d let Mavis talk her into getting holes poked in her ears.
Then she frowned at her reflection because, damn it, she could see exactly what Roarke meant. She looked competent and powerful, but not in-your-face. So when she got in somebody’s face—and she suspected she would—surprise!
Of course, if she had to get physical, which happened, she’d mess up a really good suit.
“Okay, it works.”
“It does, absolutely. It needs just one more thing,” he added as he rose to go into his own closet.
“I’m not going to wear any more glitters.” She already had the fat diamond he’d given her on a chain under her shirt—but that was sentiment. Plus the wedding ring, which was, well, sentiment and a Marriage Rule.
The earrings were enough.
But he came out not with some shiny bracelet, but a jacket—coat. Which was it? Longer than the one she wore in spring and fall, and the exact same shade of gray as the suit.
She could smell the leather before he crossed to her.
“I’ve already got a…”
Her knee-jerk protest died because, hell, she could smell the leather. He knew she had a weakness for leather.
“You don’t, but now do, have a magic topper. It’s lined and treated, as your jacket and coat are.”
A topper. Figured there’d be an actual word for it.
It wasn’t fancy—he’d have known she’d balk at fancy. Just a simple smoke-colored deal, with pockets slit into the sides, that would probably hit about mid-thigh. The dark silver buttons—not shiny—bore the same Celtic design as her wedding ring.
So he had her on all fronts. Leather, simple, sentiment.