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“Was what the sex or the soother?”

“That put you in a domestic frame of mind?”

“A smart mouth won’t get you dinner.”

Smart mouth or not, he figured he was probably getting pizza.

She hooked a robe out of her closet then, while he watched her with some surprise, took one out of his and brought it to him. “And a smart mouth isn’t always verbal. I can see sarcastic thoughts in your head.”

“Why don’t I shut up and get us some wine?”

“Why don’t you?”

He left her contemplating the AutoChef and opened the panel to the wine rack. He assumed she needed to keep busy, keep the nightmare at bay. Thinking pizza, he selected a bottle of chianti, opened it, and set it aside to breathe.

“You’ll be working tonight.”

“Yeah. I have to do some stuff. I’ve got Mira’s profile, and I want to walk through that again. Put together a progress report. I haven’t done any probabilities yet either. Plus I have to scan the eye banks, transplant facilities, that sort of thing. A time waster since he didn’t take them to sell them. But it’s got to be eliminated.”

She brought two plates over to the sitting area, set them down on the table.

“What’ve you got there?” he asked her.

“Food. What does it look like?”

He cocked his head. “It doesn’t look like pizza.”

“My culinary programming skills run beyond pizza.”

She’d chosen chicken sautéed in wine and rosemary, with wild rice and asparagus.

“Well fancy that,” he murmured, flummoxed. “I’ve opened entirely the wrong wine.”

“We’ll live with it.”

She went back for a basket of bread. “Let’s eat.”

“No, this won’t do.” He opened the wine rack again, found a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé in the chilled section. He opened it, brought bottle and glasses to the table. “Looks lovely. Thanks.”

She sampled a bite. “Pretty good. Doesn’t quite measure up to the soy fries I had at lunch, but it’s not bad.” When he winced, as she’d intended, she laughed.

“Hopefully you’ll be able to choke down whatever Charles and Louise serve when we go to dinner.”

She stabbed more chicken. “Don’t you think it’s weird? You know, Charles and Louise, Peabody and McNab, all having a cozy dinner at Charles’s place. I’m pretty sure the last time, the only time, McNab was ever over there was when he and Charles punched each other out.”

“I doubt it’ll come to that again, but if it does, you’ll be there to break it up. And not weird, darling, no. People find each other. Charles and our Peabody were, and are, friends.”

“Yeah, but McNab thinks they did the mattress rhumba.”

“Whatever he thinks, he knows they’re not dancing now.”

“I still say it’s going to be weird.”

“A few awkward moments, perhaps. Charles and Louise love each other.”

“Yeah, about that. How can they cruise along this way? He’s out there boinking other women professionally, then boinking her for love. What’s with that?”

An amused smile curving his lips, Roarke sipped his wine. “You’re such a moral creature, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, we’d see how open-minded and sophisticated you are if I decided to turn in my badge and become a licensed companion. I’d have a hard time working up a client list because you’d smash all their faces in.”

He merely inclined his head, in agreement. “But you weren’t an LC when I met and fell for you, were you? A cop, and that took some considerable adjusting on my part.”

“Guess it did.” And that, she thought, was as good a segue as she could ask for, considering what she wanted to say. “I know it did. But I think, under all that, you’d already done considerable adjusting. Meaning you weren’t just after the main chance, however you could get it. I don’t think you ever were.”

“In my misspent youth, Lieutenant, you’d have hunted me down like a dog. Not that you’d have caught me, but you’d have tried.”

“If I’d been hunting . . .” She trailed off, waved it away. “Not where I was going.” She picked up her wine, took a long sip, set it down. “I went to Dochas today.”

“Oh?” His gaze sharpened on her face. “I wish you’d contacted me. I’d have made time to go with you.”

“It was work related. I needed to talk to Louise about this psychic