“And to state of the art wine coolers.” She hadn’t missed the fact that he had one. As a highly trained FBI agent, she knew that people who invested in them tended to have very good taste in wine, and she wasn’t disappointed when she sipped hers. The cabernet he’d selected was dark and rich and smooth.
“I forgot something,” he murmured, setting his glass down. To her surprise, he located two candles and lit them. Then he moved to a wall and pressed a button. The muted sound of a bluesy sax floated into the room.
At her look, he said, “Just because I don’t cook doesn’t mean I don’t know the elements of fine dining.”
She laughed then. And though she couldn’t explain it, some of the fear and anger that she’d been tamping down ever since she’d kicked in the door of her apartment eased.
She owed that to Gabe Wilder. He was taking care of her. Not in the hovering way that her parents often had. No, his technique was much more subtle. Back at the apartment, he’d never left her side while she’d called the police and reported the break-in. Earlier, when they’d first stepped out of the elevator on her floor, he hadn’t tried to push her aside or go all protective male on her. She liked his style.
She wasn’t used to it, but she was sure she could adjust to it. Quite easily.
And why did that scare her? Why did thinking about it tighten the knots in her stomach that had twisted there when she’d talked with her stepmother earlier?
“What is it, Curls?”
He’d reached to cover her hand with his just as the microwave binged. If it hadn’t, she just might have told him. She might have simply asked the question. Where were they headed? She’d always known before. Sure, she might have taken some detours to please her parents. But with Gabe the territory was uncharted. Fear bubbled up again.
It wasn’t the time to think about that. They needed to focus their attention on the case.
Mental list time. Once they’d caught the thieves and put them away, she’d deal with Gabe. She took another sip of her wine. She simply couldn’t think about what she was going to do about him right now.
“I hope you like your chili hot.”
“As long as it stops just short of cauterizing my vocal chords.”
“You’re my kind of girl.” He was laughing when he turned back to her, but the moment he saw her, his laughter died. And he simply stared. There she was, sitting at his counter, sipping wine. And what he’d just said was true. As the realization struck him, he nearly dropped one of the bowls. She was exactly his kind of girl. It was that simple.
That terrifying.
He managed to get the chili to the counter and find spoons, napkins. When he sat on the stool across from hers, she met his eyes. There was a question in them, and he was pretty sure it was the same question that was hovering in his. He also saw a trace of fear. And he wanted more than anything to soothe it.
“You’ve got something on your mind. Why don’t you just spill it, Curls?”
She frowned at him. “I wasn’t looking for this. For you.”
“Same goes,” he said.
“And we don’t have time for it. We have a thief to catch.”
“I agree. But right this minute all we have to do is eat this chili and enjoy our wine.”
She studied him for a moment. “Okay.” Then she dug in. So did he.
He broke off a chunk of bread and handed it to her. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” She dunked a crust into the chili.
“For what happened to your things. I should have foreseen it.”
She set the bread down and studied him. “Are you seriously thinking that you’re somehow to blame for what happened at my apartment?”
He shrugged. “I should have put a guard on the place.”
“You have two men guarding the St. Francis.” She ticked that off on a finger. “Another one looking after Claire Forlani. And you’re possibly running short of people who work for you that you can fully trust right now.”
He picked her spoon up and handed it to her. “I have friends who don’t work for me.”
“Yeah.” She shook the spoon at him. “One of them is digging up more information on Dee Atherton and Claire while we stuff our faces. And I imagine the air force intrudes on the other one’s time.”
“Besides Jonah and Nash.”
She shook her head. “You have a problem, Wilder.”
News bulletin there, he thought as he took another bite of chili.
“You’re hung up on taking care of people.”
He nearly choked.
“You’ve arranged things so that Father Mike can work in your Boys and Girls Club for as long as he wants. You’ve made sure that your Uncle Ben’s social life is buzzing right along.”
Gabe held up a hand. “Not guilty on that one. He does pretty well on his own.”
“I don’t doubt it. But besides a bevy of females surrounding him, he still has a poker night with the guys. And that’s thanks to you.”
“I like playing poker.”
“And now you’ve taken me on. You persuaded my father to put me in the field by convincing him that I needed protection.”
Gabe left that one alone. “From what I can see, you take pretty good care of yourself.” He lifted his wine and sipped it. “This whole thing started with you saving my life. So in the taking-care-of department, I think we’re even. Are you finished with that?”
“No.” She dug into her chili again as he took his bowl to the sink and rinsed it.
“I’m right about this. Your whole business, your career is devoted to protecting people and the things they love. I’d say that the prayer you said to St. Francis all those years ago was answered.”
He sat down again at the counter and sipped his wine. “Any caregiver genes that I inherited came from my mom. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she kept us together as a family. She made it so easy for my father to enter into our life when he came home on holidays. We used to mark off the days on the calendar until the next one. Then he’d arrive a few days ahead of time with presents and plans. We had celebration dinners. After a week or two, he’d leave.”
“He came every holiday?”
“All of the major ones. Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas. On Valentine’s Day he always had a special dinner with my mom to celebrate their wedding anniversary.”
She felt a tingle. “I’ve thought all along that there has to be a reason that this thief only strikes on holidays. There has to be a connection to your father. And he never worked on a holiday because he was always visiting you.”
“What are you thinking?”
“The glitch in security in the San Francisco museum when they thought the Matisse might have been stolen. It was on a holiday weekend, wasn’t it?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Easter.”
“If that’s when the Matisse was stolen, it could very well mean that your father would have had an alibi for that robbery. He would have been with you. It’s one more piece of evidence that we can look into.”
“We’ll do that,” he said as he circled around the counter to join her. “But not right now.”
He took her hands and lifted them one by one to kiss her palms. “You’re not bad in the caregiving department yourself. I wanted fresh eyes on this case. Your eyes. You’re helping me to think about things, to see things that I hadn’t before.”
“It’s a two-way street.”
“But I also wanted you, Nicola. I had very selfish motives when I convinced your father to assign you to me twenty-four-seven.”
He leaned forward and brushed his lips across hers.
“I still want you.” Just you.
Slipping her hands from his, she looped her arms around his neck. “I want you, too.”
Forever? That was the question that hovered in the back of his mind, the question that he hadn’t been able to acknowledge earlier.
They had now, he told himself as he took his mouth on a journey along her jaw to the soft skin beneath her ear. Now had always been enough for him. For a long time, it had been all that he had.
“Now,” he murmured as he drew back.
“Now.” She drew his mouth back to hers. But his lips remained soft and teasing on hers, sampling first one angle and then another. Her mouth offered darker riches, but he took his time. They hadn’t had enough time yet, not nearly enough.
When she sighed, he slipped his tongue between her lips and sampled. There was the mellow flavor of the wine, the punch of the chili, and the heady, intoxicating taste of her. Gripping her hips, he lifted her off the stool and she wrapped arms and legs around him.
Heat flared immediately, and with it came the intense desire to lower her to the floor and take her right there. It would be so easy and it would finally ease the ache that was with him constantly now. But he wanted more this time. Tamping down on the need, he broke off the kiss and headed toward the stairs.
“Kiss me again,” she murmured.
“First, I want you in my bed.”
She nipped at his earlobe. “We haven’t needed one yet.”
“I need it.”
“And I need a kiss.”
“Be my guest.”
She accepted his invitation, brushing her mouth over his and then tracing the shape of his lips with her tongue. He nearly stumbled when she nipped his bottom lip.