J. Robb - Innocent In Death

“It doesn’t.”

“I wanted the more, for different reasons, I suppose, but I wanted the more.” He studied the wine before he drank. “I wanted respect and power and the shields and walls and weapons that ensured I’d never be nothing again. You know.”

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t. Couldn’t. That was the crack in the jewel, I imagine.” The flaw, he thought, he’d seen even then. “And still, it was shiny enough that we worked together, played together, stayed together. Until Nice. The mark had an exceptional art collection, with two Renoirs, among others. It was the Renoirs we wanted, had a buyer set for them. We spent weeks on it, with Maggie moving to the inside by seducing the mark.”

To stop him, Eve held up a hand. “She slept with him? That didn’t bother you? Knowing she was with another guy?”

“It was work, and he was more than twice her age. And the Renoirs? They were worth a great deal.”

“She wasn’t yours,” Eve murmured, and something inside her un-knotted. “You never thought of her as yours.”

“Did you think otherwise?”

“Yes.”

“Not altogether right,” he repeated and eased down to sit on the edge of her desk. “I had complicated feelings for her, and I believed she had them for me. I thought because of those feelings, and that wave we rode, I could trust her. And there I was altogether wrong.”

As he drank, Eve could see he was looking back. “The night before we were to make the score, she didn’t come back to the villa where we were staying. Nor did she come in the morning. I was afraid something had gone wrong, she’d done something foolish and been caught. Then I got word she’d run off with the mark. Left me for him. Not only that, but if I’d gone through with the job that night, as planned, there would have been a number of gendarmes waiting to scoop me up.”

“She ratted you out.”

“As I said, she was capricious. I was angry, I was hurt. My pride was battered. She’d played me, as we’d played so many others.”

“Why didn’t you go after her?”

He studied his wife-those tired brown eyes-sipped his wine. “I never considered it. She’d done to me, and that was that. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of it. I should add here, leaping forward a number of years, that I’d planned to hunt you down if you didn’t come home within another hour. Hunt you down, drag you back. I never considered not going after you.”

She took a breath to steady her voice. “Did you ever get the Renoirs?”

“I did.” His lips curved. “Of course I did. Three years later. And in those years and the ones after, I had a lot of women as well. I enjoyed them, and I never, not purposely, hurt one of them. I gave them what I had to give, and took what they were willing to give back. But there was nothing there.”

“But you didn’t forget her.”

“Not altogether wrong,” he acknowledged. “No, I didn’t forget her. She left a hole in me, Eve, one I didn’t want filled. Why risk that?”

“She…” Once again she hunted for the words, the right ones. “She had a major influence on you. That’s, maybe, that’s part of what I feel. Part of what I see.”

“I can’t, won’t, deny that what she did, what I gave her the power to do, had some influence on the way I approached relationships. I said I didn’t forget her, but neither did I actively think of her after the first weeks had gone by. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah. I get it.”

“I had work. I like work. I had money, then more of it. And the power, the respect. I built this place, and a great deal more. I cared for the women I was with, but they were never more than momentary pleasure.”

“She hurt you a lot.”

“She did, and seeing her again, I remember it, and in fact, those complicated feelings that made her able to hurt me.”

“It helps,” Eve managed, “for you to tell me that. For you to lay it out instead of brushing it off.”

“Difficult to admit-to myself, to you. But I didn’t lie when I told you it was done. And still…I’ll lay this out as well. I remember, too, the beautiful young woman in the red dress gliding into a crowded club. The moment of it, the vibrancy of it. It may be that’s what I saw, for that second, the memory of that might be what I was looking at. I can’t erase what was from mind and memory, Eve.”

“No. Okay. Okay. Let’s just-”

“We’re not done here. You’ll hear me out.” As if to hold her in place, he laid a hand over hers. “I had that hole in me, that empty space. I could have lived my life with it, content enough. I wasn’t an unhappy man.”

He kept his eyes on hers as his thumb brushed lightly over the back of her hand. “Then, one day I felt something-a prickle at the back of my neck, a heat at the base of my spine. And standing at a memorial for the dead, I turned, and there you were.”

He turned her hand over, interlocking fingers. “There you were, and it all shifted under my feet. You were everything I shouldn’t have, shouldn’t want or need. A cop for Jesus’ sake, with eyes that looked right into me.”

He reached out, just a whisper of fingers on her face. And the quiet touch was somehow wildly passionate, desperately intimate.

“A cop wearing a bad gray suit and a coat that didn’t even fit. From that moment, the hole inside me began to fill. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop what rooted there, or what grew.

“She put it in me, you filled it. Can you understand that’s part of this-the connection you worry about? Can you understand that whatever it was I felt for her it’s nothing. It’s so pale, so thin and weak compared to what I feel for you.”

The tears came now. He watched them drip down her cheeks, wondered if she were even aware they leaked out of her. “She was part of my life. You are my life. If I have a regret, it’s that even for an instant you could think otherwise. Or that I allowed you to.”

“When I saw you with her on screen-”

“I was saying good-bye to the girl I’d once fancied, and I think, to the man I’d been who’d fancied her. Only that. Don’t cry. Here now.” He brushed her tears away with his thumbs. “Don’t cry.”

“I feel stupid.”

“Good. So do I.”

“I love you. Scary.” She pushed up again, and this time into his arms. “So fucking scary.”

“I know.” She felt him tremble when he pressed his face to her neck. “Don’t leave me again. God. God. Don’t leave me again.”

“I didn’t.”

“Part of you did.” He moved her back, and his eyes swarmed with emotion. “Part of you left me, and I couldn’t stand it.”

“I’m not going anywhere. We’re not going anywhere.” Needing to soothe, she worked up a smile. “Besides, you’d just drag me back again.”

“Damn right.”

“Or try.” She closed her hands over his, and felt the abraded skin on his knuckles. Lowering them, she studied. “Wow. Beat the hell out of someone?”

“Just a droid. It seems to work so well for you when you’re pissed at me.”

“You should get your R-and-D department to come up with one that regenerates or something.” She touched her lips to them. “You should put something on them.”

“You just did. Look how tired you are,” he said, stroking her cheek. “My Eve. Worn to the bone. And I wager you didn’t eat at all today.”

“I couldn’t. Morris even had homemade brownies. Fudge brownies.”

“We’ll have some soup.”

“I’m too tired to eat.”

“All right, then. No soup, no work. Just sleep.” He slid his arm around her waist, and she slid hers around his as they started out of the room. “Will you let me back in there? Into the work?”

She’d shut him out there, she realized. They’d shut each other out here and there. Little doors closing. “Yeah. I could use some help. Questions about a security system to start.”