“Early,” she grumbled to herself as she went up the stairs. “Damn right I’m home early. I made a point of it so I could catch you crawling out of your coffin. That would’ve been a pretty good one. Now it’s wasted.”
She started to head for the bedroom, changed her mind, aimed for her office. She’d dump everything there, take the time to update her board. Then she could let things simmer in the back of her brain while she pounded out a few miles, swam a few laps.
She was still steps away from her office when she heard the humming. Female humming.
What the hell? One of the house droids she rarely, if ever, saw? Did they hum happy tunes?
She stepped into the doorway.
Not a droid, but a glam-type redhead with a tablet, prowling around her personal space humming that fucking happy tune.
And where was her board?
Who the hell was the woman in crotch-high stiletto boots walking around . . . and sitting her skinny ass on HER desk.
Eve flipped back her coat, laid her hand on the butt of her weapon.
“Who the hell are you?”
The redhead let out a quick squeal, bounced her skinny ass off the corner of the desk. She slapped a hand between her perky breasts and goggled at Eve.
“Oh God! You scared me.”
“Yeah?” Hand on her weapon, Eve stepped into the room. “Want to get really scared? You will be if I don’t have your name and how you got in here in ten seconds.”
“I’m Charmaine. You must be Lieutenant Dallas. It’s just lovely to meet you. I was just finishing up the measurements.”
“What measurements?”
“For the . . . I’m so flustered. You really did give me a scare. I’m not really supposed to say. Roarke’s just—”
And he walked in from his office. “Sorry about the interruption. If you’d . . . Eve.”
He noted her stance, the position of her hand, the look in her eye. And sighed. “You’re home early.”
“Yeah, how about that? Who’s this, what’s she doing in my office?”
“Charmaine Delacroix, Lieutenant Dallas. Charmaine’s an interior designer I’ve worked with on a number of projects. Including the dojo.”
“Wonderfully minimalistic,” Charmaine said, “yet far from rigid or Spartan.”
Roarke subtly angled himself between her and Eve. “Do you have everything you need?”
“Absolutely. I can’t wait to get started. I’ll have some options for you by next week. Wonderful to meet you,” she said to Eve. “I know the way out.”
Eve gave her five seconds to beat feet, then rounded on Roarke. “You let somebody prowl around my office.”
“I had a designer come in, get a feel for it, measure, and would have been in here with her the entire time—though she’s perfectly trustworthy—but there was a call I had to take.”
“Why does some designer have to get a feel for my office? It’s my office, isn’t it? And where’s my goddamn murder board?”
“I put it away, as you wouldn’t want anyone not involved to see it. And if you hadn’t come home unexpectedly, it would’ve been back in place.”
Outrage wanted to blow the top of her skull through the ceiling. “So it’s okay if I don’t know the difference? It’s okay if I go into your office, take things and put them somewhere else, tell somebody to come right on in, as long as you don’t know about it?”
“If you had a reason to, as I did.”
“What possible reason did you have for moving my murder board, for letting some humming woman into my space?”
“‘Humming’?”
“She was humming. For Christ’s sake.”
“I suppose she has a cheerful disposition. The reason was to surprise you with some ideas for redoing your space.”
Another round of outrage wanted to blow flames out of her ears.
“Why do I need ideas for redoing it? It’s fine. It was just fine for you, too, when you put it together so I’d move in here. What, now it’s not good enough? Not fancy enough?”
His eyes chilled to blue ice. “If you’re going to deliberately be an ass, if you insist on raving over something this simple, we can talk about it when you’re not.”
“I’m an ass? You start messing with my space, and I’m an ass?”
“People change, Eve. They change their minds, their attitudes, their look, and often the look of their spaces. I thought, after this amount of time, you might be ready for a change here, in this space, to have it reflect what’s now rather than the past. Obviously, you’re not. But that’s not why you’re an ass. You’re an ass for being so pathetically insecure you’d react as if you’d walked in on the two of us naked and banging each other on your precious desk.
“I still have work.”
She set her teeth as he walked back toward his office. “If I’d walked in on that, you better believe I’d have used my weapon. On both of you.”
“That’s something, I suppose,” he said, and shut his office door.
9
Oh, she hated when he did that. Hated when she was primed for a good, bloody fight and he just iced over and walked away from it.
And he knew she hated it.
Her instinct was to bang right through that door and battle on, but . . . He’d probably like that, wouldn’t he? She paced and prowled around her office. Her space! He’d just love it if she went barging in, raging on, while he sat there with his scary Roarke iced calm.
She knew how to get through the ice, oh yeah, she did. She knew which buttons to push to bring on the heat. But he’d probably like that, too. He’d just love being able to think he’d been reasonable while she barged and raged and bitched.
She wouldn’t give him the fucking satisfaction.
Screw it. She’d come home to take an hour to clear her head, she’d take the damn hour.
She stalked out of her office, snarled all the way to the bedroom, where the cat’s full, pudgy length was sprawled across the center of the bed.
“Don’t even start on me,” she warned as he opened his bicolored eyes to stare at her. “How would he like it if I had somebody come in here?” She yanked off her coat, tossed it on the bed. “If I just decided, Hey, I’m going to change everything in the bedroom. Yeah, a decorating bug crawled up my ass, so I’m going to toss this all out and haul in something else.
“How do you like that?”
She dragged off her weapon harness, pulled out her ’link, her communicator, her badge, tossed them and the other pocket debris on the dresser.
Galahad, who knew something about moods and timing, kept his own counsel while Eve stripped out of her street clothes, pulled on workout gear.
“You could be next,” she warned Galahad as she strode onto the elevator. “He could get another bug up his ass and dye you pink and dress you in a tux.”
She fumed all the way down to the gym. Definitely not the time for a holo-session with Master Wu. She considered beating the crap out of one of the sparring droids, but thought Roarke would probably enjoy that, so she opted for the tread, programmed it for a hard urban run, with obstacles.
A beach run would have relaxed her, but she wasn’t ready to relax. Instead she pounded the city streets, kicked a little street-thief ass, climbed, leaped, rolled over barriers until she had a solid five miles in.
She switched to weights, pumped until her muscles burned, then finished up with some ab-searing crunches before she stretched it out.
Sweaty, winded, she headed to the tropical wonder of the pool house, stripped off. Dived into the cool, blue water.
Five double laps later, her body begged for a break. And her thoughts snuck back.
Her space. Hers. He didn’t have any business pushing her to change her space, bringing in some fancy redhead because it wasn’t all . . . fancy.