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Smiling, she ordered her computer to continue. She wanted to see just how long it took the son of a bitch to rig her car.

chapter fourteen

Eve wasn’t in the mood for another marital bout, but she thought it best to get it over with. She needed Roarke’s eye, his contacts—and, since she was going to follow her commander’s request and travel to Ireland, his expertise in a foreign country.

Since Peabody and McNab had begun sniping at each other like longtime cohabitants, she’d separated them, shooing them off to different assignments in different locales. With their current competitive level, she hoped to have her answers from both of them by midday.

She paused outside Roarke’s office door, sucked in a bracing breath, and gave what she hoped was a brisk and somewhat wifely knock.

When she entered, he held up a finger, signaling her to wait while he continued to address two hologram images. “. . . Until I’m free to travel to the resort personally, I’ll trust you’ll handle these relatively minor details. I expect Olympus to be fully operational by the target date. Understood?”

When there was no response other than respectful nods, he leaned back. “End transmission.”

“Problem?” Eve asked when the holograms faded.

“A handful of minor ones.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but have you got a minute?”

Deliberately, he glanced at his wrist unit. “Or two. What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”

“I really hate when you use that tone.”

“Do you? Pity.” He leaned back, steepled his fingers. “Would you like to know what I hate?”

“Oh, I figure you’ll tell me, but right now I’m pressed. I’ve got McNab and Peabody in the field chasing leads. I’m locked in here because I planted a story through Nadine that I’m busted up and recuperating at home.”

“You’re getting good at that. Planting stories.”

She jammed her hands in her pockets. “Okay, we’ll run through it and clear the air. I made the statement, crossed the official line, to insult and challenge the killer to make a move on me. I’m supposed to serve and protect and I had to figure if he swung his aim in my direction, I’d buy time for whoever he’d targeted next. It worked, and as I’d calculated, he was pissed off enough to be sloppy, so we’ve got some leads we didn’t have twenty-four hours ago.”

Roarke let her finish. To give himself time he rose, walked to the window. Absently he adjusted the tint of the glass to let in more light. “When did you decide I was gullible, or simply stupid, or that I would be pleased to know that you had used yourself to shield me?”

So much for the cautious route, she decided. “Gullible and stupid are the last things I believe you are. And I wasn’t considering whether or not you’d be pleased that I deflected his attention from you to me. Having you alive’s enough—even pissed off and alive is fine by me.”

“You had no right. No right to stand in front of me.” He turned back now, his eyes vividly blue with temper that had gone from frigid to blaze. “No fucking right to risk yourself on my behalf.”

“Oh really. Is that so?” She stalked forward until they were toe to toe. “Okay, you tell me. You keep looking me dead in the eye and you tell me you wouldn’t have done the same if it was me in jeopardy.”

“That’s entirely different.”

“Why?” Her chin came up and her finger jabbed hard into his chest. “Because you have a penis?”

He opened his mouth, a dozen vile and furious words searing his tongue. It was the cool, utterly confident gleam in her eyes that stopped him. He turned away and braced both fists on the desk. “I don’t care for the fact that you have a point.”

“In that case I’ll just finish it out so you can swallow it all in one lump. I love you, and I need you every bit as much as you love and need me. Maybe I don’t say it as often or show it as smoothly, but that doesn’t make it any less true. If it pricks your ego to know that I’d protect you, that’s just too bad.”

He lifted his hands, dragged them up through his hair before he turned to her. “That’s a hell of a way to diffuse an argument.”

“Did I?”

“Since any argument I could attempt would make