The In Death Collection Books 26-29 - J.D. Robb [479]
Not there, of course it’s not there. Just a dream, and not so bad. Not so bad. Closing her eyes she willed her heartbeat to slow, to steady. But she couldn’t will away the cold, and Roarke wasn’t there to warm her.
Her teeth wanted to chatter, so she gritted them as she got up, found a robe. She checked the time, saw it was just shy of five-thirty. Going to the house monitor, she cleared her throat.
“Where is Roarke?”
Good morning, darling Eve. Roarke is in his main office.
“What the hell for?” she wondered, and went off to find out.
Stupid, she told herself, just stupid to be too uneasy to go back to bed, catch the half hour she had left. But she couldn’t face it, not alone.
She heard him as she neared the office, but the words were strange, jumbled, foreign. She thought longingly of coffee, and thought she needed the zap of it to clear her brain because she’d have sworn Roarke was speaking in Chinese.
She walked, bleary-eyed, to his open office door. Maybe she was still dreaming, she thought, because Roarke damn well was speaking Chinese. Or possibly Korean.
On the wall screen an Asian held his end of the conversation in perfect English. Roarke stood, circling a holo-model of some sort of building. Every so often the structure changed, or opened into an interior view, as if he or the other man made some small adjustment.
Expanses of glass increased, openings that had been angled, arched.
Fascinated, she leaned on the doorjamb and watched him work.
He’d dressed for the day but hadn’t bothered, as yet, with a suit jacket or tie. That told her the man on screen was an employee rather than a business partner.
He studied the holo, shifted to pick up a mug of coffee from his desk. As he drank he listened to the other man talk of space and flow, ambient light.
Roarke interrupted with another spate of Chinese, indicated what looked to Eve to be the southeast corner of the building.
Moments later what had been solid became glass. The roof on that sector lifted, changed angles, then relaxed into a kind of soft curve.
And Roarke nodded.
She pushed off the jamb when the conversation ended. The screen went blank, and the holo poofed.
“Since when have you been fluent in Chinese? Or whatever that was.”
He turned toward her, surprise flickering over his face. “What are you doing up? You’ve barely had three hours down.”
“Pot, kettle. Was that Chinese?”
“It was. Mandarin. And I don’t speak above a handful of basic words. Comp translator, two-way.”
Her brow knit even as he crossed to the AutoChef. “I’ve never seen—heard—a translator that clear. It sounded like you, not comp-generated.”
“Something we’ve been working on for a while, and are selling in a few key markets.” He handed her the coffee he’d programmed for her. “It makes it easy to do business when it feels and sounds like a conversation rather than a translation.”
“What was the thing? The holo?”
“A complex we’re building outside of Beijing.” His eyes darkened as he studied her face. “You had a nightmare.”
“Sort of. It wasn’t bad. It’s okay.”
But she didn’t protest when he drew her in, held her. The warmth finally came back to her bones. “I’m sorry. I had to take care of this.”
“At five-thirty in the morning? Or earlier, since you looked to be way into it when I got here.”
“It’s twelve hours later in Beijing. I’d hoped to be done before you woke up.” He drew her back. “No point asking if you’d get a bit more sleep.”
“Pot, kettle,” she repeated. “I’m going to grab a swim. That and the coffee should set me up.”
“All right then. We’ll have breakfast when you’re done. I’ve got a few things I can see to.”
“It’s still shy of six in the morning.”
He smiled. “Not in London.”
“Huh. That always strikes me weird.” She stepped back. “How much of this stuff do you do when I’m conked?”
“It depends.”
“Strikes me weird,” she repeated, and used his elevator to ride down to the pool.
By seven, she was fueled, dressed, and ready for the briefing. It didn’t surprise her to find a buffet set up in her office. Roarke, she knew, insisted on feeding her and her cops as