“Honey.” Zana took his arms. “Don’t be sad. She wouldn’t want you to be sad. She’d be so proud. In fact, we’re going to celebrate. I mean it.” She gave him a little shake. “I’m going to order a bottle of champa
gne, and you’re going to take a little while to relax and be proud of yourself. Will you have some with us, Eve?”
“Thanks, but I’ve got to go.”
“I thought maybe you had some news, about my mother.”
“The investigation’s moving forward. That’s the best I can tell you now. I’ll check in with you tomorrow. If anything breaks beforehand, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. Thanks. I’m glad it’s you, Eve. It’s easier somehow because it’s you.”
* * *
She could go home, Eve thought, as she muscled her way into traffic. It was more than Bobby could do at this point. She could go home where things were normal, at least by her standards.
As traffic snarled, she studied one of the bright, animated billboards, touting cut rates for holiday trips to Aruba.
Everyone wanted to be somewhere else, she decided. People from Texas, and wherever, flocked to New York. New Yorkers crawled up the highway to the Hamptons, or got on a shuttle south for some island.
Where did people on the islands go? she wondered. Probably to some noisy, overcrowded city.
Why couldn’t people just stay put?
Because they didn’t, the streets and sidewalks were clogged, with the airways overhead little better. And still, there wasn’t anywhere she’d rather be.
She drove through the gates, finally, toward the lights.
Every window was lit, candles or festooned trees glittering. It looked like a painting, she thought. Dark sky, rising moon, and the fanciful shapes and shadows of the house, with all those windows glowing.
She could go home.
So why was she depressed? It dragged at the base of her skull, at the pit of her belly as she parked the car, pushed herself out. She wanted to lie down, she realized, and not because she was tired. She just wanted to shut her head down for five damn minutes.
Summerset was there, a dour skeleton amid the festive colors of the grand foyer.
“Roarke is in his office, attending to some of your business.”
In her current mood, the disapproval scraped over the weight in her belly. “Nobody held a stunner to his throat,” she snapped. “Which is what I dream of doing to you, night after night.”
She stomped upstairs without bothering to take off her coat.
She didn’t go to the office, which was petty and wrong. She knew it. But instead she went straight to the bedroom and, still in her coat, dropped facedown on the bed.
Five minutes, she thought. She was entitled to five damn minutes of solitude and quiet. If only she could shut off her head.
Seconds later, she heard the rapid pad of little feet, then the vibration of the bed as Galahad made his leap. She turned her head, stared into his bicolored eyes.
He stared back. Then did a couple of lazy circles, curled up by her head, and stared some more. She found herself trying to out-stare him, to make him blink first.
When she lost, she thought he smirked.
“Pal, if you were a cop, you’d crack suspects like walnuts.”
She shifted so she could scratch his ears. With the cat purring like a souped-up engine, she watched the lights glimmer on the bedroom tree.
It was a good deal she had here, she told herself. Big bed, pretty tree, nice cat. What was wrong with her?
She barely heard him come in, probably wouldn’t have if she hadn’t been listening for him.