Until You

Conor swallowed another mouthful of coffee. Of course he felt things. He enjoyed a crimson-and-gold sunset, a good bottle of wine, a concerto that could make your throat constrict and the feel of a woman in his arms.

That hadn't been enough for Jillian.

She'd wanted, she'd said, a man who would "communicate."

Christ, how he'd come to hate that word.

Share with me, Conor. Tell me what you 're thinking, Conor. Let me inside you, Conor.

One day, when he'd had all he could take, he'd said okay, if she really wanted to know what he was thinking, he'd tell her. What he was thinking, he'd said, was that he wanted her to stop trying to invade his space and his head.

Then he'd flown off on a brief assignment. When he got back, Jillian was gone. All she'd left waiting for him was a polite note, her attorney's phone number and a faint drift of perfume.

Conor had felt some loss but the truth was, he'd known the marriage had been over for a long time. The last months, they'd only been making each other miserable. It wasn't her fault or his; they just weren't right together.

But it had bothered him that, at the end, Jillian had accused him of being just like his father.

He knew better than that.

He was nothing like his old man. Hell, no. He'd lived his whole life making sure of that.

His father was a cop, with a cop's mentality. Things were good or they were bad; there was no in-between. He never smiled, never had a good word for anybody. He didn't read books or listen to music; he'd never been more than a couple of hundred miles from home and his idea of a good time was to sit around the house, drink beer and watch TV.

A cold breeze drifted up from the river. Conor shivered, stepped back into the room and closed the balcony door. He'd made damn certain his world was a hell of a lot bigger than his father's and if Jillian hadn't been able to see that, that was her problem. Anyway, he hadn't been cut out for marriage. There were too many things to do in this world besides tying yourself down to one woman.

As for Miranda Beckman—okay, his gonads had taken over last night, but it wouldn't happen again. A man was nothing if he didn't have control of his emotions.

He had a job to do and he'd do it. He needed to figure out what was going on. Was Eva Winthrop being threatened? Was her daughter? And if so, were the two incidents connected?

First things first. He shot back his sleeve, glanced at his watch. Cochran would be just about finished installing the new lock on Miranda's door. He'd check it out, ask her a few more questions and tell her she was to keep close to home until she heard from him.

Conor smiled. He had the feeling he knew exactly how she was going to take that bit of news.

Whistling softly, he headed out of the hotel.

* * *

Cochran had said changing the lock would take thirty, forty minutes. "An hour, max."

Conor had told him to make sure it took an hour. He got to Miranda's with five minutes to spare but either his timing or Cochran's was off. Whichever it was, by the time he got to the apartment building off the Rue de Rivoli, the locksmith was gone—and so was Miranda.

The concierge, who bore more than a passing resemblance to one of the gargoyles that looked down from the roof of Notre Dame, looked at him coldly and said she was sorry but she could tell him nothing of Mademoiselle Beckman's whereabouts. Mademoiselle, she said, looking at him down her classic Gallic nose, was out. No, she did not know where she had gone. No, she had no idea when she would return.

Pressed, she finally agreed that Monsieur might, if he truly wished, leave a note.

Conor truly wished. He scrawled his telephone number on a sheet of paper yanked from his address book, added a terse line which was not quite "Where the hell did you go?" but a close equivalent, tucked it into an envelope Madame ungraciously provided, sealed it and handed it over. Then he went out onto the street, fished his cell phone from his pocket and put in a call to Cochran.

"Yeah," the redhead said, "I did the babe's locks." He made a wheezing sound Conor figured was supposed to be a "just between us guys" chuckle. "Tell the truth, I'd sooner have done her. Man, that is some piece of ass! You gettin' it on with her or what?"

Conor felt his stomach knot. An image shot into his head, his fist connecting with Pete Cochran's grinning face and turning it into hamburger.

"How's that parole arrangement of yours going?" he asked pleasantly. "The Surete still sending reports back to D.C., assuring them you're living a righteous existence?"

"Hey," Cochran said in the tones of a man who's been grievously misjudged, "what'd I say? Since when is it a crime to notice that a babe looks hot?"

Conor took a deep breath, then let it out.

"It isn't."