“It’s a flower?”
“From your wedding bouquet. I had it treated.”
“A petunia.” She found herself sentimentally teary-eyed as she picked it out of the box. Simple, basic, ordinary, one that might grow in any garden. The petals felt soft, dewy, and fresh.
“It’s a new process one of my companies has been working on. It preserves without changing the basic texture. I wanted you to have it.” He closed a hand over hers. “I wanted both of us to have it, so we could be reminded that some things last.”
She raised her eyes to his. They had both come from misery, she thought, and survived it. They had been drawn together through violence and tragedy, and had overcome it. They walked different paths and had found a mutual route.
Some things last, she thought. Some ordinary things. Like love.
chapter three
Three weeks hadn’t changed Cop Central. The coffee was still poisonous, the noise abominable, and the view out of her stingy window was still miserable.
She was thrilled to be back.
The cops in her unit had arranged for a message to await her. Since it was blinking slyly on her monitor when she walked in, she figured she had her old pal Feeney, the electronics whiz, to thank for bypassing her code.
WELCOME BACK, LIEUTENANT LOVEJOY
Hubba-hubba
Hubba-hubba? She snorted out a laugh. Sophomoric humor, maybe, but it made her feel at home.
She glanced over the mess on her desk. She hadn’t had time to clear anything up between the unexpected closing of a case during her bachelor party and her wedding day. But she noted the neatly sealed disc, competently labeled, sitting atop her stack of old work.
That would be Peabody’s doing, Eve concluded. Sliding the disc into her desk unit, she cursed once and slapped the drive to cure the razzing hiccups it emitted, and saw that the ever-reliable Peabody had indeed written the arrest report, filed it, and logged it.
It couldn’t, Eve mused, have been easy on her. Not when she’d been sharing a bed with the accused.
Eve glanced at the old work again, grimaced. She could see she had court dates stuffed and layered together over the next few days. The schedule juggling she’d had to do to accommodate Roarke’s demand for three weeks away had had a price. It was time to pay up.
Well, he’d done plenty of juggling as well, she reminded herself. And now it was back to work and reality. Rather than review the cases she would soon give testimony for, she bumped up her ’link and put out a search for Officer Peabody.
The familiar, serious face with its dark helmet of hair fizzed onto her monitor. “Sir.
Welcome back.”
“Thank you, Peabody. My office, please. ASAP.”
Without waiting for a reply, Eve switched off the unit and smiled to herself. She’d seen to it that Peabody had been transferred to the homicide division. Now she intended to take it a bit further. She engaged the ’link again.
“Lieutenant Dallas. Is the commander free?”
“Lieutenant.” The commander’s secretary beamed at her. “How was your honeymoon?”
“It was very nice.” She felt a quick flush of heat at the gleam in the woman’s eye. Hubba-hubba had amused her. This dreamy look made her want to squirm. “Thank you.”
“You were a lovely bride, Lieutenant. I saw the pictures and there were several news runs on the event and the gossip channels were full of it. We saw clips of you in Paris, too. It looked so romantic.”
“Yeah.” The price of fame, Eve thought. And Roarke. “It was . . . nice. Ah, the commander?”
“Oh, of course. One moment please.”
As the unit buzzed, Eve rolled her eyes. She could accept being in the spotlight, but she was never going to enjoy it.
“Dallas.” Commander Whitney’s grin was an acre wide, and he had an odd look on his hard, dark face. “You look . . . well.”