As she spoke, she added brown sugar, berries to the small bowl of oatmeal. Her mind definitely elsewhere, Roarke noted, as the look that clearly said, Crap, oatmeal, didn’t appear.
“Your subconscious must have been busy in the night.”
“Maybe, but I’m right, aren’t I? She can replicate, with some creative fiddling, the murders. But she can’t replicate the investigation. She can’t rewrite me or the investigative team, because we’re not in the books.”
“She’s delusional, Eve.”
“Yeah, but that could work for us. I bet she follows the crime beat. If she didn’t before, she’s following it now. And I happen to know the reigning queen of the crime beat, and just how much she loves an exclusive.”
“Which you’d give her.”
“I put it out there we’ve connected these two murders, and we’re looking for a single individual, one suspect. Then I spin the whole following leads, unable to divulge. I can play that out.”
“Writing yourself into the book?”
“No, no, just the opposite. I’m outside it. I’m the reality, but now I’m a face, a voice—visual and auditory, right? And she has to figure out what to do about it.”
“You’ll try to shift her focus to you.”
Her back went up, instantly. “If you don’t think I can handle some whiny wannabe—”
“I don’t doubt you can, but I’d hardly be as I’m written, would I, if I didn’t have some concerns.”
“Okay, and anyway, it’s not about shifting her focus to me. Going after me? That’s a whole new book, and she’s got to finish what she’s already lined up. It’s about shaking things up, giving her something to worry about in the real world. It’s a slap on her writing on one level. She wasn’t good enough to convince me two different people committed two murders.”
“It’s a bad review,” Roarke added, finding the angle inspired. “And quite a bit brilliant. Wear black.”
“You’re telling me to wear black?”
“Suggesting,” he corrected. “And, though I enjoy you in strong colors, you’ll be projecting that visual. Dangerous black. Uncompromising. In fact, I have something in mind.”
When it came to projecting an image, she thought, who had a better handle? “Have at it,” she invited.
Roarke rubbed a hand on her leg, rose, then wandered off into her closet.
As he did, the cat began a slow, silky bellying toward the table.
Eve forked up a bite of omelet. “Do you really think because he went in there, I’d let you get away with it?”
Galahad blinked at her, rolled over, and went back to his sprawl in front of the fire.
Roarke came back with a mock turtleneck, body-hugging pants in a combination of leather and some sort of stretchy material, and a leather jacket with dull silver zippers on slash pockets on the sleeves.
He’d added a pair of chunky boots that would hit well above the ankle and had that same dull silver in buckles over a series of tough-looking straps.
All in dangerous black.
With a nod, Eve polished off her eggs. “I’m good with that.”
She rose to dress as he sat again—noting he’d brought her underwear, too. Black.
Not just the man who had everything, she thought as she started to dress, but the man who thought of everything.
“I’m going to work here for an hour,” Eve told him. “Get that list of potential third victims hashed out. I want to talk to DeLano again, and her mother, and I’d rather do that in my house this time. And Nadine. I need to see if Mira’s on board with my assessment. Or ours,” she corrected, “as you’ve had a lot of insight on this.”
“I wouldn’t wish for another murder,” he said as she crossed over to hitch on her weapon harness. “But I did enjoy the time with you in the library. All of it.”
“I’m pretty fond of that room now myself.” She shrugged into her jacket. “Dangerous?”