In the corner of the living area that doubled for his kitchen, he pulled out the bottle of wine he'd bought the day before when he'd been thinking of her. He thought about her just often enough to be demoralized. If he could keep her in bed, they'd be fine. He didn't have to think about his moves there, they just happened.
He flipped on his 'link. The pizza joint was keyed in on memory, in the primo position due to frequency of transmissions. He ordered a mongo pie, loaded, then dug out a corkscrew.
The damn wine had cost him twice what he usually spent. But when a guy was competing with a slick, experienced LC, he needed to hold his own. He didn't doubt Charles Monroe knew all about fine wines. He and Peabody probably took baths in champagne.
Since the image infuriated him, he glugged down half a glass of wine. Then he turned as Peabody came out of the bedroom. She was wearing her uniform pants with her shirt open at the throat. He wanted to lick her there, just there where the stiff cotton gave way to soft flesh.
Goddamn it.
"What's the matter?" She asked, noticing the scowl on his face. "They run out of pepperoni?"
"No, it's coming." He held out her glass of wine. "I was thinking… about work."
"Mmm." She sipped the wine, pursed her lips at its smooth and subtle fruity taste. "This is pretty good. You're running backgrounds on the Draco case, right?"
"Already done. Dallas should have them by now."
"Quick work."
He answered with a shrug. He didn't have to tell her Roarke had dropped the data in his lap. "We in EDD aim to please. Even after eliminations and probability scans, it's going to take days to shift the list down to a workable number. Guy gets his heart jabbed in front of a couple thousand people, it's complicated."
"Yeah." Peabody sipped again, then wandered off to drop into a chair. Without being aware of it on a conscious level, she was as comfortable in McNab's mess of an apartment as she was in her own tidy one. "Something's going on."
"Something's always going on."
"No, not the usual." She struggled with herself, brooded into her wine. If she didn't talk to someone, she'd explode. And hell, he was here. "Look, this is confidential."
"Okay." Since the pizza wouldn't arrive for a good ten minutes more, McNab snagged an open bag of soy chips. He settled on the arm of Peabody 's chair. "What's the deal?"
"I don't know. Nadine Furst tagged the lieutenant today, and she was razzed. Nadine, I mean." Absently, Peabody reached into the bag. "You don't see Nadine razzed very often. She makes a meet with Dallas – a personal meet. It was serious. They stashed me across the room, but I could tell. And after, Dallas didn't say a word about it."
"Maybe it was just personal shit."
"No, Nadine's not going to ask for a meet like that unless there's trouble." Nadine was her friend, too, and part of Peabody was bruised that she'd been brushed aside. "I think it ties to the case. Dallas should've told me." Peabody crunched on chips. "She should trust me."
"Want me to poke around?"
"I can do my own poking. I don't need an E Division hotshot running plays for me."
"Suit yourself, She-Body."
"Just lay off. I don't even know why I told you. It's just sitting in my gut. Nadine's a friend. She's supposed to be a friend."
"You're jealous."
"Bullshit."
"Yeah, you are." He was beginning to have an intimate relationship with the feeling. "Dallas and Nadine are playing without you, so you're jealous. Girl Dynamics one oh one."
She shoved him off the arm of the chair. "You're an asshole."
"And there," he said as his security bell rang, "is the pizza."
CHAPTER SIX
"Don't touch anything, and stay out of the way."
"Darling." Roarke watched Eve slip her master into the security lock on Penthouse A. "You're repeating yourself."
"That's because you never listen." Before she opened the door, she turned, met his eyes. "Why does a man whose primary residence is New York, whose main source of work is New York, opt to live in a hotel rather than a private residence?"
"First the panache. 'Mr. Draco keeps the penthouse at The Palace when in the city.' Next, the convenience. At the crook of a finger, whatever you need or want done for you can be. Is. And lastly, perhaps most tellingly, the utter lack of commitment. Everything around you is someone else's problem and responsibility."
"From what I've learned of Draco so far, that's the one I go for." She opened the door, stepped inside.
It belonged to Roarke, she thought, therefore it was plush and lush and perfect. If you went for that kind of thing.
The living area was enormous and elegantly furnished with walls of silky rose. The ceiling was arched and decorated with a complicated design of fruit and flowers around a huge glass and gold chandelier.
Three sofas, all in deep, cushy red were piled with pillows bright as jewels. Tables – and she suspected they were genuine wood and quite old – were polished like mirrors, as was the floor. The rug was an inch thick and matched the ceiling pattern grape for grape.
One wall was glass, the privacy screen drawn so that New York exploded with light and shape outside but couldn't intrude. There was a stone terrace beyond, and as the flowers decked in big stone pots were thriving, she assumed it was heated.
A glossy white piano stood at one end of the room, and at the other, carved wood panels hid what she assumed was a full entertainment unit. There were plants of thick and glossy foliage, glass displays holding pretty dust catchers she concluded were art, and no discernable sign of life.
"Housekeeping would have come in after he left for the theater," Roarke told her. "I can ask the team on duty that evening to come up and let you know the condition of the rooms at that time."
"Yeah." She thought of Nadine. If she knew the reporter, the condition of the rooms had been something approaching the wake of a tornado. She walked over to the panels, opened them, and studied the entertainment unit. "Unit on," she commanded, and the screen flickered to soft blue. "Play back last program."
With barely a hiccup, the unit burst into color and sound. Eve watched two figures slide and slither over a pool of black sheets. "Why do guys always get off watching other people fuck?"
"We're sick, disgusting, and weak. Pity us."
She started to laugh. Then the couple on the bed rolled. The woman's face, soft with pleasure, turned toward the camera. "Goddamn it. That's Nadine. Nadine and Draco."
In support, Roarke laid a hand on Eve's shoulder. "It wasn't taped here. That's not the bedroom. Her hair's different. I don't think it's recent."
"I'm going to have to take it in, prove it isn't. And I've got a damn sex tape of one of the media's cream as evidence on a murder case." She stopped the play, ejected the disc, and sealed it in an evidence bag from her field kit.
"Damn it. Damn it."
She began to pace, to struggle with herself. All this relationship stuff was so complicated and still so foreign to her. Nadine had told her what she'd told her as a friend. In confidence. The man currently, and patiently, watching her from across the room was her husband.
Love, honor, and all the rest of it.
If she told him about Nadine and Draco, was she breaching a confidence and the trust of a friend? Or was she just doing the marriage thing?
How the hell, she wondered, did people get through life juggling all this stuff?
"Darling Eve." Sympathizing, Roarke waited until she'd stopped prowling the room and turned to face him. "You're giving yourself a headache. I can make it easier on you. Don't feel you have to tell me something that makes you uncomfortable."
She frowned at him, narrowed her eyes. "I hear a but at the end of that sentence."
"You have very sharp ears. But," he continued, crossing to her, "I can deduce that Nadine and Draco were involved at one time, and given your current concern, that something happened between them a great deal more recently."