Memory in Death (In Death 22)

She wanted to say he was pushing himself too hard, physically. That his body hadn’t healed well enough as yet. But he’d snap her neck like a twig for that one. Deservedly so.

“I just need a minute to say I’m sorry. So sorry. I don’t know where it came from, I didn’t know that was in me. I’m ashamed that it was.” Her voice shook, but she’d finish it out, and she wouldn’t finish it wit

h tears. “Your family. I’m glad you found them, I swear I am. Realizing I could be small enough somewhere inside to be jealous of it, or resent it, or whatever the hell I was, it makes me sick. I hope, after a while, you can forgive me for it. That’s all.”

When she reached for the door, he cursed under his breath. “Wait. Just wait a minute.” He grabbed a towel, rubbed it roughly over his face, his hair. “You kick the legs out from under me, I swear, like no one else. Now I have to think, I have to ask myself, what would I feel, should that family situation have been reversed? And I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find some nasty little seed stuck in my belly over it.”

“It was ugly and awful that I said it. That I could say it. I wish I hadn’t. Oh Jesus, Roarke, I wish I hadn’t said it.”

“We’ve both said things at one time or another we wish we hadn’t. We can put that aside.” He tossed the towel on a bench. “As to the rest…”

“I was wrong.”

His brows shot up. “Either Christmas has come early, or this should be made another national holiday.”

“I know when I’ve been an idiot. When I’ve been stupid enough I wish I could kick my own ass.”

“You can always leave that one to me.”

She didn’t smile. “She came after your money, you slapped her back. It was just that simple. I made it complicated, I made it about me, and it never was.”

“That’s not entirely true. I slapped her a good deal harder than was necessary, because for me, it was all about you.”

Her eyes stung, her throat burned. “I hate that… I hate that— No, no don’t,” she said when he took a step toward her. “I have to figure out how to get this out. I hate that I didn’t stop this. Wasn’t even close to capable of stopping it. Because I didn’t, couldn’t, and you did, I stomped all over you.”

She sucked in a breath as the rest came to her. “Because I knew I could. Because I knew, somewhere in the stupidity, that you’d forgive me for it. You didn’t go behind my back or betray any trust, or any of the things I tried to convince myself you had. You just did what needed to be done.”

“Don’t give me too much credit.” Now he sat on the bench. “I’d like to have killed her. I think I’d have enjoyed it. But you wouldn’t have cared for that, not at all. So I settled for convincing her that’s just what I’d do, and very unpleasantly, should she try to put her sticky fingers on either of us again.”

“I sort of wish I could’ve seen it. How much did she figure I was worth ?”

“Does it matter?”

“I’d like to know.”

“Two million. A paltry sum considering, but then, she doesn’t know us, does she?” His eyes—a bold, impossible blue that saw everything she was—stayed on her face. “She doesn’t know we wouldn’t give her the first punt. She doesn’t know there’s no limit on your worth to me. It’s only money, Eve. There’s no price on what we have.”

She went to him then, dropping into his lap, wrapping arms and legs around him.

“There,” he murmured. “There we are.”

She turned her face, pressed it to his throat. “What’s a punt?”

“A what? Oh.” He gave a baffled laugh. “It’s an old word for an Irish pound.”

“How do you say ‘I’m sorry’ in Gaelic?”

“Ah… ta bron orm,” he said. “And so am I,” he added when she’d mangled it.

“Roarke. Is she still in New York?” When he said nothing, she leaned back, met his eyes. “You’d know where she is. It’s what you do. I made myself feel stupid. Don’t make me feel incapable on top of it.”

“As of the time I left the office, she hadn’t yet checked out of her hotel, nor had her son and his wife.”

“Okay, then tomorrow… No, tomorrow’s the thing. I’m not forgetting the thing, and I’m going to do… whatever.”

And whatever the whatever was that went into preparing for a major party would be her penance for bitchy idiocy.

“Somebody’ll have to tell me whatever it is I should do for the thing.” She framed his face with her hands, spoke urgently. “Please don’t let it be Summerset.”