J. Robb - Innocent In Death

He scooped a hand through his hair, glanced around his office. A long way from what once had been, he thought. In every possible way.

Time to find a way, he supposed, to make it crystal clear to the women currently squeezing him from both sides that there was no going back to what had been and no desire at all to take the trip.

She came in, a golden fur tossed over her arm, her hair sexy and tumbled, her face glowing with energy. And yes, she reminded him of what once had been. There was no way to avoid it.

“Look at you! Look at this!” After tossing her coat over a chair, Magdelana turned a circle.

Roarke met Caro’s eyes, nodded, and she backed quietly out of the room. Closed the doors.

“The den of the global mogul, both sleek and plush, tasteful and absolutely male. Well, it’s all you, isn’t it?” She moved toward him, both hands extended.

He took them, briefly. There was no way to avoid that either, without making them both look like idiots. “How are you, Maggie?”

“Right now? How I am is incredibly impressed.” She glanced at the desk. “What exactly do you do here?”

“Quite a bit of what needs to be done, with a healthy portion of what I choose. What can I do for you?”

“Offer me a drink.” She sat on the arm of one of his chairs, crossed her long legs. Tossed her long hair. “I’ve been shopping, and I’m worn to the bone.”

“Sorry. You caught me on my way out.”

“Oh.” Her lips pouted. “Business, I suppose. You always were one for business. I could never understand that you actually liked to work. Still…” She uncrossed her legs to rise, then wandered toward his window where New York spread and speared. “Lovely benefits.” She looked back at him, over her shoulder. “I suppose I always pictured you in Europe, though, carving your way through the Old World.”

“New York suits me.”

“Apparently, it does. I wanted to thank you. I’ve had some meetings already with the money people you suggested. It’s early to say, but I think this is going to work out very nicely. I’d never have known where to start without your help.”

“I think you’d have found your way well enough. You’ve been busy,” he added. “Shopping, taking meetings, visiting my wife at Central.”

Wincing, Magdelana turned around, stood framed by the energy and towers of the city. “She told you. I was afraid of that. I don’t know what I was thinking-well, yes, I do. I was just so curious about her, and wanted to get to know her a little. It didn’t go well.”

“Didn’t it?”

“I bungled it, no question. She disliked me before I walked in the door, and when I’d calmed down and licked my wounds, I understood that perfectly. Here, I was…” Smiling easily, she spread her arms. “…a former inamorata of her husband’s, sauntering in, offering to buy her a drink, all smiles and friendly overtures. She must have wanted to slap me.”

“She rarely slaps. A good bare-knuckled punch is more her style.”

“I’m so sorry. I was completely wrong. And she was so…harsh, it put my back up. I don’t know how to make amends for it. Did I cause you trouble at home?”

“I told you that you wouldn’t like her.”

“And you were right, as usual. It’s odd, isn’t it, when you cared for us both. In any case, I am sorry. I suppose, in a way, I was looking for contacts, connections. Friends. I’d hoped she and I would get along. After all, what we had, you and I, is ancient history.”

The invitation came back into her eyes, and her voice went soft, alluring. “Isn’t it, Roarke?”

“It is.”

“Well. Oh, well. I suppose she might be thinking history repeats, and I admit I was hoping it would. I don’t suppose I should apologize to her?”

“It wouldn’t be necessary. Or wise. I wish you well, Maggie, of course, but if you’re looking for contacts, connections, and friendships through me, I’ll have to disappoint you. It annoys my wife.”

“Oh.” Her eyebrows shot up, and her lips trembled into a faint smirk before she controlled it. “If you were anyone else I’d have to say she’s certainly tamed you.”

“Rather than rise to that, or sink to it, I’ll just say she makes me happy. I’m on my way out, Maggie.”

“Yes, so you said. I’ll just apologize again for causing trouble, thank you again for helping me on a business level.” Her voice trembled, just a little. “I shouldn’t keep you.”

She walked over to pick up her coat. “If you’re really on your way out, maybe I could walk down with you.”

“Of course.” When she held out her coat, he helped her into it, then retrieved his own. “Do you have a car, or do you need one?”

“I have one, thanks. Roarke…” She shook her head. “I guess I just want to say, again, that I’m sorry. And admit, just here, before we go down and that’s the end, that I can’t help being sorry it’s never going to be me again.”

She squeezed his hand, stepped away.

He used his office ’link, told his admin he was leaving for the day and escorting Ms. Percell out of the building. Then he moved to the side of the room, pressed a mechanism concealed in the molding with his thumb. The wall opened into his private elevator.

“Handy.” Magdelana laughed, as a woman does when she’s fighting to be careless. “Gadgets, they were one of your things. I’ve heard your home here is spectacular.”

“We’re very comfortable there. Ground floor,” he ordered, and the elevator slid smoothly down.

“I’m sure you are. Your wife must enjoy the…comfort.”

“Actually, it’s taken some adjusting for her.” The warmth shifted over his face. “And sometimes yet, it embarrasses her a little.”

“I’ve heard of an embarrassment of riches, but can’t imagine being embarrassed by them.”

“Money doesn’t mean to her what it does to either of us.”

“Really?” She looked up at him, liquid eyes. “And what does it mean to us?”

“Freedom, of course, and power and that comfort. But under it all”-he looked down at her, smiled a little-“it’s the game, isn’t it?”

She smiled back, her face mirroring regret. “We always understood each other.”

“That we didn’t, no.” He stepped out, automatically taking her arm to lead her across the marble expanse of the lobby with its moving maps, its busy shops, its banks of live flowers.

Outside his limo, then hers, slid smoothly to the curb. When he walked her to her car, she turned. The dampness in her eyes shone now in the sunlight. “Maybe we didn’t understand each other. Maybe that’s true. But there were good times for us, weren’t there? There were good times.”

“There were.”

She lifted her hands to his cheeks. He curled his fingers gently around her wrists so they stood a moment in the cold and the wind. “Good-bye, Maggie.”

“Good-bye, Roarke.” Tears glimmered on her lashes as she slipped into the warmth of the limo.

He watched it pull away, a sleek white whip through the ocean of traffic.

Then he got into his own car to go to his wife.

EVE WAS DRAGGED THROUGH THE STATION BY A peppy little assistant named Mercy. Eve decided she had none as she bounced along the corridors, whipping Eve through checkpoints and keeping up a rapid-fire monologue as she all but skipped along in zippy black skids.

“Everyone’s positively juiced to extreme about tonight’s premiere. Nadine’s about the biggest thing in media right now, and the station’s totally gone that she opted to stay with us and do this show. And having you as the first guest is beyond mag. I mean, the two of you are, like, so extremely scorching.”

Mercy had pink hair tailed up in little butterfly pins, with what seemed to be their tiny progeny flying out of the arch of her left eyebrow.