“I can see the bloody empty bowl right there. I’ve eyes. And no doubt if I lowered myself to take a whiff, I’d smell tuna or salmon on your breath.”
“Salmon,” Eve confirmed.
The cat glanced over, obviously concluded the jig was up. He strolled toward the fire, sat, and began to wash.
“You didn’t feed him before, right?”
“I didn’t,” Roarke confirmed, “as he was both sprawled out and snoring, and I knew I wouldn’t be more than forty minutes or so.”
“He woke me up, sitting his tonnage on my chest and staring holes through my brain.”
“If we put a micro AC on his level, he might learn to operate it.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Eve pointed out. “He operates us.”
“Entirely too true.”
Eve went back to the AutoChef, put herself in charge of breakfast. Which meant a Summerset-and oatmeal-free day.
While she contemplated her choices, Roarke switched on the financial reports, muted the sound. He stood a moment, studying what would always remain incomprehensible to her, while she settled on berries, bacon, and mmm pancakes.
She topped it off with a pot of coffee.
“Did you add a planet to your collection?” she asked as she carried plates to the table of the sitting area.
“Not this morning. I’ll get the rest.”
She sat, drenching her pancakes with syrup while he brought over the berries and coffee. “So, what’s on your plate today?” she asked him. “Besides breakfast.”
“As it happens, I just agreed to pay a quick visit to an ag complex I have an interest in. In Bristol.”
“Where’s Bristol?”
“England. Since that requires considerable shuffling of the day’s schedule in any case, I’ll likely check on the rehab in Italy before heading back. A pity you have a case,” he added as he poured coffee for both of them. “Or we could take a day or two.”
To the bone, Eve knew she’d never take to the idea of casually shuttling off to Europe. “Do you need a day or two? For the work, I mean.”
“No, a few hours. It’s more for public relations than work in Bristol. For Italy, I think it’s time for an unexpected drop-in. I expect you’ll be in the field quite a bit today.”
“Starting with the morgue.”
“Lovely. My best to Morris, of course.”
Considering, Eve ate more pancakes. “You go to Europe, I go to the morgue. That about sums it, right?”
“And yet here we are.” Roarke patted her leg. “Sitting here having breakfast while our cat calculates if he can manage to snag some bacon.”
“He can’t.” Lifting a slice, Eve gave the cat the same quality of stare he’d given her. And crunched in.
Once she’d hit her limit on pancakes, she went to her closet to dress, and to line up her morning agenda.
Morgue, then Cop Central to put her board together there, check any reports, update. Schedule a consult with Mira—get Mira the data. A visit to the victim’s apartment, Eve added. See how she lived, fill in some blanks. A talk with the people in charge of the auditions, the casting. Another talk with the vet assistant who took the bogus emergency.
As she planned it out, she pulled on black trousers, a white shirt, yanked a gray V-neck sweater over that when she remembered the temperature. Shifted to grab a black jacket at random, but Roarke beat her to it.
He stepped in, took another—a sort of tweed, maybe—of deep forest green with touches of gray and black woven through.
“There’s an undertone of green in the sweater,” he pointed out.