His lips thinned—if, she thought, it was possible for what passed as his lips to compress in an even tighter line. “I assumed as you no longer appear to live here, you’d need the proper forms.”
She pulled off her coat, tossed it on the newel post. “Yeah, get those forms, I’ll fill them out.” She started up the stairs. “How many M’s in Summerset anyway?”
She left him behind in the grand foyer. Roarke was probably home, she decided, but she’d wait until she was out of the hearing of those demon ears before she checked on one of the house scanners.
She was tempted to go straight into the bedroom, fall flat on the bed for twenty minutes. But with the case weighing on her, she continued up to her office.
He was there, pouring wine.
“Long day for you, Lieutenant. Thought you could use this.”
“Couldn’t hurt.” Either the man was psychic or she was pretty damn predictable. “Been home long?”
“A couple of hours.”
She frowned, checked the time. “It’s later than I thought. Sorry. I should have done the call home thing, probably.”
“Couldn’t have hurt.” But he moved to her, handed her the glass. Then he took her chin in his free hand, studied her face before he touched his lips to hers. “Long, hard day.”
“I’ve had shorter and easier.”
“And from the look of you, you’re going to make it longer. Red meat?”
“Why is everyone speaking in code around here?”
He smiled, ran his fingertip along the dent in her chin. “You could use a steak. Yes, pizza would be easier to eat at your desk,” he continued, anticipating her. “Consider having a meal that requires utensils payment for not checking in.”
“I guess that’s fair.”
“We’ll have it up in the conservatory.” To avoid protest, he simply took her arm and led her to the elevator. “It’ll clear your head.”
He was probably right, and in Roarke’s world it was a simple matter to order real meat and all the trimmings, have a meal with wine, even candles, in a lush setting where the lights of the city twinkled and gleamed beyond black glass, and a cheerful fire crackled away.
There were times she wondered that she didn’t get whiplash from the culture shock.
“Nice,” she said and tried to adjust her mind, her mood.
“Tell me about the victim.”
“Victims. It can wait.”
“They’re in your head. We’ll both do better if you talk it through.”
“So, you don’t want to chat about politics, the weather, the latest celebrity gossip over dinner?”
He smiled, sat back, gestured with his glass.
She told him, going step by step through both murders, the timing, the method, the background.
“Listening to them talk to each other? It just hit. They had something. It went beyond the surface, you get me? Beyond that gooey first stage of attraction.”
“The potential they had…It’s not just one or even two people being snuffed out, but the potential of what they might have made together.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s it.” She stared through that black glass to the lights of a city that offered the very best, and the very worst. “Pisses me off.”
“You’re rarely anything but pissed at murderers.”
“That’s a given. I mean they piss me off, the vics. What the hell were they thinking?” Frustration rippled through her, into her eyes, her voice. “Why didn’t they go to the cops? They’re dead not only because somebody wanted them dead, but because they were playing at something they couldn’t possibly win.”