Ice Blue - Anne Stuart [43]
“What committee?”
“That’s it. All you need to know. More than you need to know.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
He had no answer.
She needed food even more than she needed the answers he refused to give her. She went straight to the refrigerator, opening the freezer compartment. “Ben & Jerry’s ice cream,” she breathed, leaning against the open door. “I may cry.”
“You’d cry over ice cream and not over a friend being killed?”
He sounded no more than casually curious, and she shouldn’t have felt the need to defend herself. “Tears don’t help,” she said tightly.
“True enough.”
“Ice cream, on the other hand, does wonders.” She reached for the container, pulled off the top and went searching for a spoon. Mission accomplished, she started to eat straight out of the container. She glanced up at him. “I’m not sharing,” she said, sitting down at the perfect little table in the perfect little breakfast nook.
“I didn’t think you were.” He went over to the fridge, and emerged with a Sapporo beer and a small black platter. He sat down opposite her, like the perfect husband in the perfect house.
The black platter had sushi and a pair of chopsticks. She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you think you’re taking a chance with raw fish? Who knows how long that’s been in there.”
“Less than six hours,” he replied. “I’d offer you some but it doesn’t go well with ice cream.”
She wasn’t about to tell him that she had an indecent craving for good sashimi, and she almost would have given up the ice cream for it. She didn’t need anything that would bring her closer to him. “I don’t suppose there’s any Diet Coke in the fridge.”
“Diet Coke with ice cream?”
She could be enigmatic as well. “Yes.”
To her surprise he rose, went back to the refrigerator and emerged with a fuchsia-colored can. “No Diet Coke, but this looks close.”
She dropped her spoon. Tab was almost impossible to find in southern California—she only knew of one place to buy her supply, and she was used to accepting Diet Coke as a substitute. On rare occasions she’d even tolerate Diet Pepsi.
No one could have gotten Tab by accident. Whoever had stocked this house knew exactly what she liked, down to something as minor as her favorite kind of ice cream and her preferred soft drink. She had no doubt at all there’d be a complete wardrobe in her size, all in black and white and gray, probably from the same stores she patronized. They seemed to know everything about her, whereas she didn’t even know who “they” were.
Just the man sitting across from her, eating his nigiri with calm dedication, his distant, elegant face giving nothing away. She could thank him for the food and the clothes she knew she’d find. He would have told them.
She pushed back from the table, suddenly sick. “I’m going to bed,” she said, putting the lid back on the half-eaten quart of ice cream.
“Aren’t you going to eat anything else?”
She didn’t want to ask what else there was. There would be her favorite foods, the kind of yogurt she liked, her favorite wine, all the arcane little peculiarities she’d developed over the years. She didn’t want to see. They knew too much about her.
“I’m not hungry,” she said, only half a lie. She wasn’t too shaken to leave the Tab behind—right now she needed all the comfort and normalcy she could get. “Any bedroom?”
“Take your pick. Just don’t lock the door.”
“The doors have locks? I’m amazed. Are you planning on making a surprise visit?” She could have kicked herself. Why did she keep bringing up sex when that was the last thing she wanted to think about.
He just looked at her. “I’m trying to protect you,” he said. “Not that you’re making it any easier. Leave the door unlocked in case we have to get out of here quickly.”
She was too exhausted to argue. She found the room with the right clothes, including duplicates of things she’d had in her own closet. The sky was starting to lighten, and she pulled the miniblinds, shutting out the deceptive ordinary world of the suburbs, stripped off her clothes, down to her underwear, and crawled into