Until You

"You gave me little choice in the matter. You brought the girl home and announced that you were signing off."

"I didn't bring her home," Conor said, even more coolly, "I set it up so she had no choice but to decide to go home."

"Look, if you want to split hairs—"

"I'm not splitting hairs, I'm simply being accurate." Conor got to his feet, crossed the room and exchanged his empty ale bottle for a full one. "And," he said, wrenching off the cap, "there's nothing about Miranda Beckman for us to talk about."

Harry cleared his throat. "I'm afraid there is."

Something in Thurston's voice made the hair lift on the back of Conor's neck. He swung around, his face suddenly pale.

"Has something happened to her? Goddammit, Harry—"

"No, no, it's nothing like that. The girl is fine... so far."

"So far?" Conor stomped towards the older man and glared down at him. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"Take it easy, please."

"Take it easy? You shanghai me, drag me to the middle of nowhere—"

"I did no such thing," Thurston said with righteous indignation. "I invited you to learn about the fine art of angling, and this is hardly the middle of nowhere."

"Save that crap for somebody else, dammit! Tell me what's going down and what it's got to do with me."

"This is—was—your assignment, Conor."

"Yeah. It was. That's past tense, in case you hadn't noticed. I haven't so much as thought of the Beckman broad since I got back from Paris."

There was a hiss from the fireplace. Thurston turned, saw flames dancing beneath the skillet and muttered something under his breath. He plucked the skillet from the embers, picked up a spatula and began rearranging the fillets.

Conor watched him, his eyes and mouth hard.

What was this shit? Whatever was going on with Miranda didn't have a thing to do with him. As he'd just told the old man, he hadn't even thought of her since...

Oh, what a liar you are, O 'Neil.

Hadn't thought of her? Hell, he hadn't been able to stop thinking of her. Day after day, night after night, Miranda was in his head. He couldn't get her face and that mysterious smile out of his mind. Not that she'd been smiling the last time he'd seen her, when she'd confronted him at his hotel in Paris.

"I hate you, O'Neil," she'd said, her eyes flashing fire. "And if I ever see you anywhere near me again, I swear to God, I'll kill you! You got that?"

Yeah. Oh yeah, he'd gotten that. And he didn't much care. She wanted no part of him; he wanted no part of her. End of story. What had happened in her bedroom that night hadn't meant a thing to either of them, it had been nothing but what she'd called it, a good fuck...

"Conor?"

... and there wasn't a damn thing extraordinary in that. The world was full of women who felt right in a man's arms, whose kisses tasted of honey, who could sigh his name in a way that made him feel, if just for a second, that he was the only man who'd ever mattered.

"Conor?"

Conor looked up. Harry was standing beside the table, the skillet in his hand. The fish were done to a soft, golden hue; the air in the cabin smelled delicately of spices and frying bacon—and crackled with electricity.

"The girl is a problem, Conor."

"Tell me something new," Conor said coldly.

"She's modeling for her mother's cosmetics firm—"

"How nice for them both."