She blinked, and immediately edged back. It made him smile, this habitual reaction of hers to gifts. Just as the uneasy look she gave the long, narrow box in his hand made him grin.
“It won’t bite you,” he promised.
“You weren’t even gone two days. There has to be some sort of time requirement for bringing back presents.”
“I missed you after two minutes.”
“You’re saying that to soften me up.”
“Doesn’t make it less true. Open the box, Eve, then say: ‘Thank you, Roarke.’ ”
She rolled her eyes, but she opened the box.
It was a bracelet, a kind of cuff with a pattern of minute diamond shapes etched into the gold to give it sparkle. In the center was a stone—and as it was bloodred, she assumed it was a ruby—big as her thumb and smooth to the touch.
It looked old, and important, in that priceless antique way that made her stomach jitter.
“Roarke—”
“You forgot the thank-you part.”
“Roarke,” she said again. “You’re going to tell me this once belonged to some Italian countess or—”
“Princess,” he supplied, and took the bracelet from her to slip it onto her wrist. “Sixteenth century. Now it belongs to a queen.”
“Oh, please.”
“Okay, that was laying it on a bit thick. Looks good on you, though.”
“It’d look good on a tree stump.” She wasn’t much on glitters, despite the fact that the man heaped them on her at every opportunity. But this one had . . . something, she thought as she lifted her arm and turned her wrist so the stone and etching caught and scattered light. “What if I lose it, or break it?”
“That would be a shame. But until you do, I enjoy seeing it on you. If it makes you feel any better, my aunt Sinead seemed equally flustered by the necklace I bought her.”
“She struck me as a sensible woman.”
He tugged a lock of Eve’s hair. “The women in my life are sensible, enough to indulge me as giving them gifts brings me such pleasure.”
“That’s a slick way to box it in. It’s beautiful.” And she had to admit, at least privately, that she liked the way it slid fluidly over her skin. “I can’t wear this to work.”
“I don’t suppose so. Then again, I like the way it looks on you now. When you’re wearing nothing else.”
“Don’t get any ideas, ace. I’m on shift in—six hours,” she calculated after a glance at the time.
Because she recognized the gleam in his eye, she narrowed her own. But the token protest she intended to give was interrupted by the bedside ’link.
“That’s your signal.” She nodded toward the ’link, then rolled off the bed. “At least when somebody calls you at two in the morning, nobody’s dead.”
She wandered off into the bathroom as she heard him block video, and answer.
She took her time, then as an afterthought snagged the robe off the back of the door in case he’d reinstated the video on the ’link.
She was belting it as she went back in, and saw he was up and at his closet. “Who was it?”
“Caro.”
“You’ve got to go now? At two in the morning?” His tone, just the way he’d said his admin’s name, had the skin on her neck prickling. “What is it?”
“Eve.” He pulled out a shirt to go with the trousers he’d hastily put on. “I need a favor. A very large favor.”