“I got a scarf for the mama be perfect, and I got a baby girl cap, a pink one shaped like that horse with the horn.”
“Jesus, Tiko, you’re killing me. Sold.”
Forty minutes after she’d parked, Eve loaded shopping bags in her car, then got behind the wheel.
Then just sat there until her head stopped spinning.
God, she wanted a drink. Two drinks.
Telling herself to be grateful Christmas only hit once a year, she pulled back into traffic and fought the holiday rage of it all the way to the gates of home.
Diamond white lights twinkled in the trees along the drive, lending a fanciful air to the grounds. And the house rose, all gorgeous gray stone and shining glass, a fancy itself with its towers and turrets.
Lights glimmered, gleamed, outlining home against the night sky. Greenery draped and dripped, adding warmth to elegance. Candles glowed in every window, and that was welcome.
She, the lost child, had grown used to its beauty—that was love. But she would never take a single inch of it for granted. That was gratitude.
At the moment, some eighteen hours after she’d walked out its doors, the prospect of walking in again mainly brought relief.
She got out of the car, into the cold where the wind kicked at her like a bad-tempered child. She dragged the shopping bags out of the back. How had she bought so damn much? The entire event seemed like some kind of fever dream now, leaving her exhausted and with a low-level headache.
She dragged, pulled, lifted. How did she even know so many people in the first damn place? How had it happened?
Tissue flicked, threatened to fly, boxes clunked. She told herself if the bags ripped she’d leave the whole stupid lot wherever it fell.
With bags thumping against her legs she hauled everything to the door, fought it open, staggered in.
He was there, of course, lurking—the scarecrow in a black suit that was Summerset. Roarke’s majordomo stood in the brilliantly lit foyer, a smirk on his pale, bony face, and the fat cat Galahad squatting like a furry Buddha at his feet.
“Is this the Ghost of Christmas Present?” Summerset wondered aloud.
Eve narrowed her eyes. She wanted to fling something back, some sharp-edged retort about cadavers on holiday, but . . .
She dumped everything where she stood. “I’ll pay you a thousand dollars to wrap everything in here.”
His stone-gray eyebrows winged up. “I can’t be bought. However,” he said as the cat padded over to sniff at bags and tissue. “I could be persuaded.”
“What do you want?”
“You’re hosting a party night after next.”
“I know that. Of course I know that.” Night after next took it down to one day, didn’t it? She didn’t want to think about it.
“Preparations for welcoming two hundred and fifty-six people into your home begin at eight A.M.”
She thought: Two hundred and fifty-six people? Jesus Christ. Why? But she said, “Okay.”
“Participate.”
“But what if . . .” She looked down at the pile of bags, at the ass-end of the cat as he tried to burrow into one. Surrendered. “Done.”
She shed her coat, tossed it over the newel post—a small defiance.
There was no shame in retreat, Eve told herself as she bolted up the stairs. There would be other battles, other wars. She aimed straight for the bedroom, and on a moan flung herself on the glorious blue lake of the bed.
Ten minutes, she vowed. She’d take ten minutes to recover from shopping trauma and Summerset negotiations. Then she’d go to her office, set up her board there. Clear her head and start working on who killed Trey Ziegler.
Asshole or not, he deserved the best she had.
Ten minutes, she thought again, and dropped into sleep like an anchor into the sea.
She drifted out again. There was a weight on her ass she recognized as the cat. Fingers twined with hers—Roarke’s.
She opened her eyes, looked into the impossible blue of his.
The bedroom tree twinkled. He’d lit the fire, so the flames simmered low and red. All things being equal, she’d have curled up against him and gone right under again.
But all things were rarely equal for a cop.
“I shopped,” she said.
“Dear God! Are you all right? Should I call for the MTs?”
“Smart-ass. I hooked the kid—you remember the kid. Tiko.”
“Ah, yeah, the young entrepreneur. I remember, fondly, the pie his grandmother baked us.”
“He’s got two other kids working for him for the holidays. Expanded his stock, too. He dragged me over to this place I busted. New tenants. They sort of look