“My turn, I think,” Sean said, rising.
As the bathroom door closed behind him I hovered uncomfortably near the bed. My Vicodin was in my travel bag and my leg was complaining hard enough after the cramped flight to warrant taking a dose, but I didn’t want to do so in front of anyone—least of all Madeleine.
“I realize you said no to a meal but can I at least make you some coffee?” she asked, gathering up her papers and sliding them into an attaché-case with neat, economical movements. “Or would you like me to order something from room service?”
I shook my head, shoved my hands into my pockets. “No—thank you. I just want to get this done,” I said.
She nodded, sympathetic. “It must be hard—getting back out there, I mean—after …”
I bristled. “I’m fine,” I said, with more snap than I’d been intending.
She regarded me for a moment and I painted pity into her eyes.
“I’m not trying to have a go at you, Charlie,” she said, her voice mild. “Don’t forget, I’ve seen firsthand what you can do. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
I forced my shoulders down, tried to let my guard go with them.
“I’m sorry,” I said with a small smile. “I’ve been feeling a bit under pressure since … well, since we moved.”
“Not from Sean, surely? You two look good together. Easy in one another’s company.” She smiled more fully than I had done, turning a pretty face beautiful. “It’s nice to see him looking so happy.”
“Happy?” I said blankly. There were many words I could have used to describe Sean, but that particular one hadn’t been high on the list. “You think he looks happy?”
“There’s a … lightness about him that wasn’t there before,” she said. “Oh, I can see he’s worried about all this, but it’s only surface worry, you know? Deep down, he knows he can face it. He can face anything, now that he’s got you.”
I shifted restlessly, uncomfortable with her frankness and her intrusive insights. And, if I’m honest, scared by the weight of the responsibility she’d just dumped on me.
“And Sean told you all this in the time I took to have a shower, did he?” I said, trying to hide behind a cynical edge. “Fast worker.”
Madeleine smiled again, not fooled for a moment. “He didn’t have to. He lights up when he’s with you. It’s awfully sweet, really.”
“Oh God,” I muttered. Is that why Parker doesn’t trust either of us to still have a clear mind? “I’ll have to get him fitted with a bloody dimmer switch.”
The bathroom door opened and Sean came out with just a towel draped around his hips, totally unself-conscious. Most people do not look good without their clothes on. Sean was not most people. I found myself mesmerized by the way the muscles moved under his skin as he reached for his shaving kit and clean gear. The action accentuated the slightly reddened starburst of the old bullet wound high in his left shoulder. On him it was not so much a blemish as a badge of honor, although I knew he would never have seen it that way.
He sensed the atmosphere between us instantly, like we were putting it out as some kind of scent, and his eyes skimmed over us. And there was, I realized, a distinct twinkle lurking in those moody depths.
“Play nice, girls,” he murmured, and disappeared again.
Madeleine grinned as though that proved her case. Her own overnight bag was lying open on the bed. She zipped it closed and set it down near the door.
A few moments later, we heard the water running in the bathroom.
“I really ought to take exception to that but somehow, from him, I don’t,” she commented with a small grimace. “Since I took over I’ve been constantly mistaken for the secretary. Old clients walk in and look round nervously for Sean, and new ones think I can’t possibly know anything other than typing and filing. Drives me mad. It must be even worse for you—at the sharp end.”
You don’t know the half of it.
“I cope,” I said.
“I’m sure you do,” she agreed equably. “I seem to remember that run-in you had last year with one of our guys—Kelso, wasn’t it? You broke his arm in two places, I believe.”
“Three, actually,” I said, my voice bland. “Whatever happened to him?”
“He left.” She pulled a face. “As you found out, he had a problem working with—or in this case, for—a woman.”
She smiled again, more ruefully this time. “I’m not wired the same way you are, Charlie. I can’t offer to take on the guys in a fight and have a hope of winning. I don’t have any combat experience. So I have to use a certain amount of psychological warfare to get my way instead.”
“What—feminine wiles?” I suggested, a little stung by the inference—entirely conjured by my own insecurities—that she was too clever to need to beat anyone up. Whereas I …
She offered a censorious little sideways glance at the acidic flippancy, but was still showing a gentle amusement.
“Not quite,” she said. The grin faded and a shadow of gravity crossed her features, revealing a steely core that belied her earlier good humor. Madeleine, I realized, would be a tough negotiator and no easy pushover as a boss.
“They know that if they keep me informed at every step, I’ll back their actions if I have to.” She shrugged, diffident. “I can’t afford to be caught on the hop because, ultimately, if I don’t give the guys the right information and they make a mistake, it’s my neck on the block. Meantime, I have their trust and, I think, their respect.” She glanced up, locked my gaze. “And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, Charlie? Gaining respect?”
Respect. I seemed to have been reaching for that rainbow’s end for half my life and never quite attained it. So, where did it all dawn? My childhood? My parents? Never delicate and feminine enough to satisfy my mother. Never the son my father so badly wanted, and had almost had … .
Just for a second I saw myself as a teenager again and imagined a different Tao line unfurling into the future like a high-speed link.
If I hadn’t wanted to prove that I was as good as—better than—the boys, I would probably never have gone on the activities weekend that had revealed my latent ability to shoot. Would never have joined the army. Would never have applied for Special Forces, got through the selection process, or tried so hard on the training course that I came to such particular, unwelcome attention.
The line divided, split into a hundred different possibilities from that single strand. I’d been bright. Could have gone to university, a degree, a job in the City. Neat little skirted suits and high heels, like half the women we’d seen rushing through the airport. Tired and stressed and headachy from banging against the glass ceiling of the corporate world.
I’d been into my horse riding as a kid, too, almost obsessed with junior three-day eventing. I’d had a pony with heart and spring, and the nerve to ride him fast at big fixed timber. Could have pursued that as a career—people did—and moved up to horses. Might have been at international level by now. Could have had a dusty Land Rover with straw on the seats, a couple of black Labradors milling round my heels, and a flat-capped young farmer with wind-raw cheeks and gentle callused hands waiting by the Aga.
Instead, I had a fractured career dogged by scandal; an ability to kill without hesitation that even I shied away from exploring; no relationship with my parents to speak of; and a lover who’d been at least as damaged by this life as I had.
I gave myself a mental shake, hard enough to snap me out of it, and found Madeleine watching me carefully. She took a breath to speak, but at that moment the bathroom door opened, and I was saved from whatever homily she was about to deliver.