J Robb - Imitation in Death

“By practice run, I don’t guess you mean you’re going to drive it somewhere.” She gave one of its big, sturdy wheels a quick, testing kick.

“Totally under control.” He crouched, opened one of the doors. “Refrigerator unit. We’ve got steaks, potatoes, some vegetables we’ll put on these skewers.”

“We will?”

“It’s just a matter of shoving them on.” He assumed. “And a bottle of champagne, to christen it. Though I thought we’d drink it rather than whack the unit with the bottle.”

“I can get behind that part. Have you ever cooked a steak?”

He sent her a mild look as he opened the champagne. “I read the tutorial and I watched how it was done at the Miras’. It’s hardly rocket science, Eve. Meat, heat.”

“Okay.” She took the glass he’d poured for her. “What happens first?”

“I turn it on, then according to the timetable in the tutorial, the potatoes would go first. They take the longest. While they’re cooking, we’ll sit in the shade.”

The idea of him turning on the monster unit had her taking a cautious step back. “Yeah, well, I’ll just get started on the sitting-in-the-shade part.” Several buffering feet away.

Still, she loved him, so she prepared to leap to his defense if the machine got testy. She watched Roarke arrange two potatoes on some of the smaller sections of grill, fiddle with controls.

Whatever he did had a red light, like a single, unfriendly eye, beam on. Apparently this pleased him, as he closed the lid, patted it, then pulled a little tray of crackers and cheese out of the lower compartment.

He looked pretty cute, she had to admit, carrying the tray, crossing the sunny patio in his bare feet, with his hair tied back as he often did for serious work.

She grinned at him, popped a cube of cheese in her mouth. “You put all this together.”

“I did. Very gratifying, too.” He stretched out his legs, sipped champagne. “I don’t know why I haven’t fiddled about in the kitchen before this.”

The umbrella over the table broke the blast of the sun, and the champagne was ice-cold. Not, she decided, such a bad deal after a long day. “So, how do you know when the potatoes are done?”

“There’s a timer. It also suggested we might want to jab them with a fork.”

“Why?”

“Something to do with doneness. I assume it’ll be self-evident. What did you do to your knee?”

Never missed a trick, she thought. “Some jerk in uniform let an asshole get away from him. I used my knee to discourage said asshole from ramming me down the glide. Now he’s crying because his jaw was dislocated, and he has a mild concussion.”

“Knee to jaw. Sensible. How’d he get the concussion?”

“He says it was from the tube of Pepsi I pitched at him, but that’s bogus. I figure he got it when a bunch of cops landed on him.”

“You threw your Pepsi at him.”

“It was handy.”

“Darling Eve.” He picked up her free hand, kissed it. “Ever resourceful.”

“That may be, but I had to waste time on more paperwork. Officer Cullin is going to rue this day.”

“No doubt.”

He poured more champagne, and they drank it in the shade. When she heard the distant rumble of thunder, she lifted her eyebrows, glanced toward the grill. “You may be rained out.”

“There’s time yet. I’ll just turn it up a bit, and put on the steaks.”

Fifteen minutes later,Eve sipped champagne and watched a little burst of flame erupt from one end of the grill. Since it wasn’t the first, she was no longer alarmed by it.

Instead, she watched Roarke fight his new toy, curse it in two languages, and eye it with frustration.

When jabbed, the potatoes proved to be hard as stone inside their blackened skin. The skewered vegetables were burned to a crisp, and had been on fire twice.

The steaks were a sickly gray on one side, and black on the other.

“This isn’t right,” he muttered. “It must be defective.”

He stabbed one of the steaks, lifting it off the grill to scowl at it. “This doesn’t appear to be medium rare.”

When the juice dripping from it sparked another pocket of flame, he tossed it back on the bars.

More fire spurted, and the machine, as it had a number of times before, issued a dour warning:

ACTIVE FIRE IS NEITHER ADVISABLE NOR RECOMMENDED. PLEASE REPROGRAM WITHIN THIRTY SECONDS, OR THIS UNIT WILL GO INTO SAFETY MODE AS EXPLAINED IN THE TUTORIAL, AND SHUT DOWN.

“Bugger it, you bloody bitch, how many times do you need to be reprogrammed?”

Evetook another hit of champagne, and decided not to point out that bitch was inappropriate as the unit’s voice mode was distinctly male.

Men, she’d observed, habitually termed the inanimate objects they cursed by uncomplimentary female names. Hell, she did the same herself.

A couple of lightning bolts popped in the sky, and the thunder rolled closer in one long, menacing growl.Eve felt the first splat of rain in the rising wind.

She walked over to rescue the bottle of champagne while Roarke stared at the grill.

“I’m thinking pizza,” she said and started into the house.

“It’s just a glitch.” Roarke scraped what was left of the food into the unit’s garbage disposal feature. “This isn’t finished,” he grumbled to it, and followedEve into the house. “I’ll have another look at it tomorrow,” he told her.

“You know…” She crossed to the AutoChef, which was, in her opinion, the sensible way to cook. “… it’s sort of nice to see that you can screw up like the rest of us mortals. Get all sweaty and frustrated and curse out inanimate objects. Though I’m not convinced that thing outside is inanimate.”

“A factory defect, no doubt.” But he was grinning now. “I’ll see to it tomorrow.”

“Bet you will. You want to eat in here?”

“That’s fine. We won’t likely eat in the kitchen much after tonight, with Summerset due home tomorrow.”

She stopped dead, the glass halfway to her lips. “Tomorrow? That can’t be right. He just left five minutes ago.”

“Tomorrow,noon.” He walked over to flick a finger over the dent in her chin. “It’s been considerably longer than five minutes.”

“Make him extend it. Tell him to… he should take a trip around the world. In a boat. One of those boats you row by hand. It’ll be good for him.”

“I offered him more time. He’s ready to come home.”

“Well, I’m not ready.” She threw up her hands.

He only smiled, leaned in, and kissed her forehead as he might a child’s.

She huffed out a breath. “Okay then. Okay. But now we have to have sex on the kitchen floor.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s on my to-do list, and we didn’t get to it yet, so we’ll have to go for it now. Pizza can wait.”

“You have a to-do list?”

“It was supposed to be spontaneous, and uncontrolled, but we’ll have to go with what we’ve got.”

She drained the glass of champagne, set it down, then released her weapon harness. “Go on, strip it off, pal.”

“A sexual to-do list?” Amused, fascinated, he watched her dump her harness on the counter, then start on her boots. “Was that bout we had last week on the dining room table, and the floor, on your list?”

“That’s right.” She pried off a boot, kicked it aside.

“Let me see the list.” He held out a hand, wiggled his fingers.

Bent over for the second boot, she lifted her head. “It’s what you’d call a mental list.” She tapped her head. “All up here. You’re not stripping.”

“I love your mind.”

“Yeah, well, let’s just get this little chore ticked off, then we can-”

She broke off when he swooped her up, then dumped her butt-first on the kitchen counter. Taking her hair in two fists, he yanked her mouth to his, and ravished.