The In Death Collection Books 16-20 - J. D. Robb [541]
“Thought about it, but the fact is I couldn’t do anymore. Maybe I needed a break from it. Maybe I’ve got to learn how to take a break from it.”
“That’s good. But we’ll make this an early evening.”
“We’ll see how it goes. You and Charles . . . things cruising there?”
“They are. He makes me awfully happy. No one has, in just that way, in a very long time.”
“You look happy. Both of you.”
“Funny, isn’t it, how you find someone when you’ve stopped looking.”
“I don’t know. I never looked.”
“Now that hurts.” With a laugh, Louise leaned back against the counter. “You don’t even bother to look, and you end up with Roarke.”
“He just got in my way. Couldn’t get around him, so I figured I might as well keep him.” And oddly, she realized, it wasn’t small talk when it was with a friend. It was just . . . talk.
“We’re thinking about taking a little holiday together, maybe next month. Go up to Maine or Vermont, look at the fall foliage and stay in some quaint little inn.”
“You’re going to go look at trees?”
Laughing, Louise brushed Eve aside to set up the salads. “People do, Dallas.”
“Yeah.” Eve drank. “Takes all kinds.”
Bitches. Whores.
All but consumed with rage, he stormed around the apartment. He had the screen on repeat, playing the Channel 75 interview and the media conference over and over and over.
He couldn’t help himself.
They’d sent women out after him. Women discussing him, analyzing him, condemning him. Did they think he was going to take that?
Look at them. Pretending to be so good, so clean, so righteous. But he knew better. He’d seen, and he knew. Underneath they were cheap and vicious. Weak and vile.
He was stronger. Look at him now. Just look.
He did, turning to one of the walls of mirrors to admire his body. The sheer shape and strength. The perfection he’d worked so hard to achieve. He was a man.
“Do you see? Do you see what I am?”
He turned, holding out his arms, and a dozen pairs of eyes stared back at him as they floated in their jars.
They could see him now. She could see him. She had no choice but to look at him. Forever.
“What do you think now, Mother? Who’s in charge now?”
They were all hers. All those staring eyes. But she was still out there, judging him, ready with her punishing hand, her slashing belt. Ready to lock him in the dark so he couldn’t see. So he wouldn’t know.
He’d take care of that. Oh, yes, he would. He’d fix her little red wagon. He’d show her who was boss. He’d show all of them.
They’d pay. This mother’s son would make them pay, he thought as he stared back at the screen. He’d show them what he could do.
These three. He moved closer to the screen, gritting his teeth as he looked at Eve, at Peabody, at Nadine. They’d have to be punished. Sometimes you had to deviate from the plan, that’s all. So they’d have to be punished. You were punished when you were bad. You were punished when you were good.
He’d save the top bitch for last, that’s what he’d do. He smiled fiercely at Eve.
It was always smart to save the best for last.
It was a good meal, with good company. For nearly two hours, murder didn’t play in her head. She enjoyed, particularly, watching Roarke relate. The way he slid, so smoothly, between Charles’s urbane sophisticate and McNab’s street-smart wiseass. How he mixed with the women, flattering without being oily, flirting without being obnoxious.
Effortlessly. Or it seemed effortless. But wouldn’t he have things on his mind, too? The big wheels and complex deals that made up his work and a large part of his life. He would’ve spent the day buying and selling God knew what, coordinating and supervising projects she couldn’t begin to imagine. Taking meetings, making decisions, contemplating the enormous chessboard of his empire.
Then he could sit, over coffee and dessert, telling a story about some bar fight from his youth to make McNab roll with laughter, or exchanging opinions about great art with Charles.
On the way home, he reached over, brushed a hand over hers. “That was a very nice evening.