“Yes, sir. Thank you.” With obvious relief, Loreen fled, with the single-minded intensity of a woman fleeing a burning building.
“This isn’t a convenient time, Eve.”
“Then you’ll have to settle for an inconvenient time, because I have things to say, and I’m saying them now.” She peered past him. “Want me to say them in front of the representatives, attorneys, and financial backers of Green Space Agriculture Port and your trusty admin, Caro?”
He didn’t care for her mood or the position she put him in. And his hand stayed, a not particularly subtle warning, on her arm. “We’ll talk at home.”
“We haven’t been doing a lot of that lately. I say we talk now.” She lifted her chin. A not particularly subtle challenge. “And if you think you can call security and have them change my mind, I’ll haul you downtown on some trumped-up charge. In fact, I like the idea of that. I’m making time,” she said, quietly now. “You make it.”
He studied her face. If he’d seen only temper, he’d had met it with his own or dismissed it. But he saw something more. “Give me ten minutes. Caro?” When his hand ran down Eve’s arm like a caress, she felt the clutch in the gut that came with relief. “Would you show my wife to Conference Room C, please?”
“Of course. This way, Lieutenant. Shall I get you some coffee?”
“I got an offer of a pastry with that before, when I scared Loreen.”
Caro’s smile remained polite as she steered Eve through the corridors, but her eyes twinkled with humor. “I’ll make good on that offer. I’m sure you’ll be quite comfortable in here.” She opened one of a pair of double doors and escorted Eve into a pretty, almost homey room with two cozy seating areas, a gleaming wood bar, and a spectacular and lofty view of the city.
“Doesn’t look like any conference room I’ve ever seen.”
“Amazing, really, how much business can be done in comfortable surroundings. What kind of pastry would you like, Lieutenant?”
“Hmm? Oh, I don’t know. Whatever. Are you allowed to tell me what that meeting was about?”
“Certainly.” Placidly, Caro programmed the AutoChef behind the bar. “Green Space is floundering, though they claim otherwise. Their costs of maintaining the space port have steadily overrun their profits for the past three years. Their production level is down, though the quality of their produce remains very high. Transportation costs, in particular, are taking an enormous bite and causing their overhead to soar.”
She removed a china cup and saucer steaming with coffee and a pretty matching plate with a selection of flaky pastries.
“So, is he making them a deal on transpo?”
“Quite possibly. I imagine he’ll have done so, and have a controlling interest in the port, with his hand-selected team assigned to restructure Green Space from the ground up, so to speak, before he joins you.”
“Caro, do they want to sell him controlling interest?”
“They didn’t.” She set the tray on a table. “They will before it’s done. Is there anything else I can get you, Lieutenant?”
“No. Thanks. Does he always win?”
Caro’s smile didn’t shift by a single degree. She didn’t even blink. “Of course. Just ring Loreen if you need anything.” She walked to the door, then turned back, her smile warming a little. “You surprised him, Lieutenant. That’s not easy to do.”
“Yeah, well,” Eve muttered when Caro quietly closed the door, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
She was revved, edgy, and didn’t have any interest in the damn pastries. But she ate one anyway, decided the sugar rush could only help, and started on another.
She was licking flakes from her thumb when Roarke walked in. He aimed those eyes at her, closed the door at his back.
Pissed, she thought. Not just surprised but seriously pissed. Good. When you were dealing with the richest and potentially the most deadly man in the world, you needed every advantage you could get.
“I’m pressed for time, so let’s save some,” he began. “If you’re here for an apology regarding last night, you won’t get it. Now, is there something else you need to discuss with me? I’ve people waiting for me.”
That’s how he worked it, she mused. All those deals, all those wheels. Draw your line in cold, cold sand, then intimidate. He was good at it, but there were any number of cons doing time who could have vouched that Eve Dallas was a bitch in Interview.
“We’ll get to that, but since I’m pressed for time myself, let’s start right at the beginning and move along. Going to see Ricker was my job, and I’m not apologizing for that.”
He inclined his head. “That’s one each.”
“Okay. I don’t know if I’d have told you about it or not. Probably not, if I thought I could skate by it. And I didn’t intend to tell you about him sending his hammers after me because I dealt with it.”
He could feel temper fighting to get out of his belly and into his throat but said nothing. He merely walked to the bar and got himself a cup of coffee. “I have no dispute over your job, Lieutenant. But the fact is, Ricker and I were connected. You knew that going in. We discussed it.”