Completely (New York 3)

When he stopped talking, she said, “I was going to phone you as soon as I made it out here. I suppose I can cross that off my list.”

He started speaking again.

She couldn’t seem to focus. Everything he said was the same thing, one version or another of, You’re taken care of. We’ll take care of you.

Her eyes were drawn back to Kal, and she wanted him with a sudden ferocity that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with what they’d been through together. She wanted to get into a yellow taxi with him beside her, and find a hotel where they could dim the lights, close the curtains, and sleep.

But she had obligations, as Winston’s presence made abundantly clear. She had to submit to being taken care of, at least for a while. Then it would be time to start putting the pieces of her plan back in order again.

Adventure awaited.

“So.” Rosemary made her voice as bright and cheerful as she could manage. “Where to next?”

Chapter 9

Every time Kal thought it might be about time for him to hit the road, Allie handed him something else to eat.

Chinese takeout, pizza boxes, and trays of cheesy rotini and ravioli crowded the coffee table in front of him. When Allie wasn’t leaping up to answer the door, she sat cross-legged next to him with Rosemary’s laptop open on her crossed legs and a brand-new smartphone attached by USB cord, emitting a stream-of-consciousness monologue about whatever tech magic she was working to get the data off Rosemary’s dead phone and asking him questions he couldn’t answer about where Rosemary stored her passwords, whether she had an Apple ID, whether she had any social media accounts that needed to be looked at.

Kal had no idea. He was just swimming along in the jet stream of the conversation, checking out the other fish. Not to mention the sweet-ass apartment in the Village where Rosemary would be staying.

Winston had bought it for the daughter, Beatrice, but apparently she never stayed here. Kal couldn’t figure out why. It had the marble lobby, the doorman, a good eight hundred square feet of space decked out to the nines. If someone had handed him this apartment when he’d been in college, he’d have been made.

Rosemary was forty minutes deep into a whispered argument with Winston in the kitchen, and Kal was getting itchy. It was a big apartment, but not big enough to keep their voices from drifting through the open doorway into the living area.

I respect that you had to make an independent decision, Rosemary said. I’m just not sure why you made that one.

What is it that you’d have had me do?

I don’t know, anything else?

That’s easy for you to say. You were in Nepal at the time.

Allie whistled, low and long. “Things are getting heated in there.”

“They know we can hear them, right?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out.”

“How’re you leaning?”

“I’m leaning toward no.”

“Does it bug you?” he asked. She didn’t look bugged. She looked relaxed, her minidress falling off one shoulder, her fingers flying over the keyboard.

“Nah. I figure they’ve been fighting a long time, so they have lots of practice. If this is how they want to get after it, I’m okay with it.” She cocked her head as Rosemary nailed Winston with a particularly vicious bit of passive aggression. “Though I have to say, it’s weird that they’re so polite.”

“Right? They’re like those politics TV channels where they show the debates in Parliament.”

“Yes. Where it’s all, like, ‘I beg your pardon, Lord Featherington, but I have to defer, crumpets crumpets,’ and then the commentator’s like, ‘Damn, burn,’ and you can’t figure out where the insult was, but Lord Featherington’s stroking out with rage.”

She was funny. Kal thought he’d probably like Allie, if he could keep his attention on her for more than ten seconds at a time.

He glanced toward the doorway of the kitchen, willing Rosemary to come back. He needed to leave, but there was stuff he needed to say first, and just…to see her.

Allie handed him a carton of fried rice. “Eat this. It’s getting cold.”

He was about to say he wasn’t hungry, but it smelled good. So he ate the rice, wondering if his mom was missing him yet. She knew what time he was supposed to get in. He doubted she’d be worried. They were like house cats most of the time. They did their own thing, left the occasional dead bird of love on each other’s doormats.