Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [98]
She considered wearing nothing but the sheet, but then she’d really enjoyed the way he’d taken off her clothes, and she was perfectly willing to experience that again. She pulled her damp hair back and looked at her reflection in the mirror, and laughed. Last night she’d looked like a pale, drowned rat. Today she looked vibrant, alive. And happy.
How could a man like Peter Madsen make her happy? It made no sense. But it was true.
She strolled out of the steamy bathroom and stopped short. Peter had returned—there were two cardboard mugs of coffee on top of the television. Starbucks. She knew she loved that man.
Except that she didn’t know what to say. He didn’t even glance at her—he was busy with something that looked like a space age BlackBerry, and she knew his gorgeous body well enough to see the tension radiating through him. Wasn’t she the one who was supposed to have postcoital regrets?
“Which of these is mine?” she asked when he still didn’t lift his head.
“The one on the left. It has soy milk instead of cream in it,” he said, staring down at the machine.
“Soy milk?”
He looked up at that. “You’re lactose intolerant,” he said. “I figured you couldn’t handle real milk but you needed some extra sustenance.”
How could he have remembered such a tiny detail? “Thank you,” she said, reaching for the cup. In fact, she hated soy milk—she preferred her coffee black if she couldn’t find lactose-free milk—but she drank it anyway, testing the taste against her tongue. There were all sorts of new things she was getting used to, she thought.
She wanted to sit down on the bed next to him. Hell, she wanted to take the BlackBerry out of his hand, fling it across the room and push him down on the bed. She’d been thinking about that ever since she got in the shower. It no longer seemed like such a good idea.
She sat down on her own rumpled bed, trying to shove the images out of her mind of the two of them, moving, entwined, breathing, kissing…
“So when do we leave for Canada?” she asked brightly.
He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he closed the machine and turned to look at her, his ice-blue eyes hooded and unreadable. “There’s been a change in plans.”
“What do you mean?” Genevieve said. She’d finished the coffee, choking on the soy milk, and it was hitting her stomach like a bomb. “We aren’t going to Canada?”
He rose. “Harry knows you’re alive.”
She’d already thrown up in front of him once, she wasn’t about to do it again. Besides, except for a few crackers there wasn’t anything in her stomach to throw up. By the time she made it home those fifteen pounds would be well and truly gone. If she made it home.
And then the ramifications hit. “What about Takashi?”
She’d managed to surprise him by her question, enough so that he looked at her. The mask was in place, last night might never have happened. She let go of it, because she had no other choice.
“We assume he’s dead. No one’s found a body yet, but Harry’s good at covering his tracks.” His voice was totally without expression.
Another man dead, this time one of the good guys. All for her sake. “Are you sure?” Her voice was rough with grief and guilt.
“We’re not sure of anything. Except that Harry has got us over a barrel. He wants something bad enough and he knows how to put the screws to us. Problem is, the Committee doesn’t negotiate.”
“And?”
“We’ll give him what he wants, but there’ll be backup. He won’t get away with it.”
She knew what was coming. The ice-cold veil settled down around her, freezing the blood in her veins, freezing her heart and soul. Ice everywhere.
But she had to hear the words. “What are you going to give him?”
She thought he wouldn’t meet her gaze, that he’d be too ashamed. But his cold blue eyes met hers,