Wincing, Magdelana turned around, stood framed by the energy and towers of the city. “She told you. I was afraid of that. I don’t know what I was thinking-well, yes, I do. I was just so curious about her, and wanted to get to know her a little. It didn’t go well.”
“Didn’t it?”
“I bungled it, no question. She disliked me before I walked in the door, and when I’d calmed down and licked my wounds, I understood that perfectly. Here, I was…” Smiling easily, she spread her arms. “…a former inamorata of her husband’s, sauntering in, offering to buy her a drink, all smiles and friendly overtures. She must have wanted to slap me.”
“She rarely slaps. A good bare-knuckled punch is more her style.”
“I’m so sorry. I was completely wrong. And she was so…harsh, it put my back up. I don’t know how to make amends for it. Did I cause you trouble at home?”
“I told you that you wouldn’t like her.”
“And you were right, as usual. It’s odd, isn’t it, when you cared for us both. In any case, I am sorry. I suppose, in a way, I was looking for contacts, connections. Friends. I’d hoped she and I would get along. After all, what we had, you and I, is ancient history.”
The invitation came back into her eyes, and her voice went soft, alluring. “Isn’t it, Roarke?”
“It is.”
“Well. Oh, well. I suppose she might be thinking history repeats, and I admit I was hoping it would. I don’t suppose I should apologize to her?”
“It wouldn’t be necessary. Or wise. I wish you well, Maggie, of course, but if you’re looking for contacts, connections, and friendships through me, I’ll have to disappoint you. It annoys my wife.”
“Oh.” Her eyebrows shot up, and her lips trembled into a faint smirk before she controlled it. “If you were anyone else I’d have to say she’s certainly tamed you.”
“Rather than rise to that, or sink to it, I’ll just say she makes me happy. I’m on my way out, Maggie.”
“Yes, so you said. I’ll just apologize again for causing trouble, thank you again for helping me on a business level.” Her voice trembled, just a little. “I shouldn’t keep you.”
She walked over to pick up her coat. “If you’re really on your way out, maybe I could walk down with you.”
“Of course.” When she held out her coat, he helped her into it, then retrieved his own. “Do you have a car, or do you need one?”
“I have one, thanks. Roarke…” She shook her head. “I guess I just want to say, again, that I’m sorry. And admit, just here, before we go down and that’s the end, that I can’t help being sorry it’s never going to be me again.”
She squeezed his hand, stepped away.
He used his office ’link, told his admin he was leaving for the day and escorting Ms. Percell out of the building. Then he moved to the side of the room, pressed a mechanism concealed in the molding with his thumb. The wall opened into his private elevator.
“Handy.” Magdelana laughed, as a woman does when she’s fighting to be careless. “Gadgets, they were one of your things. I’ve heard your home here is spectacular.”
“We’re very comfortable there. Ground floor,” he ordered, and the elevator slid smoothly down.
“I’m sure you are. Your wife must enjoy the…comfort.”
“Actually, it’s taken some adjusting for her.” The warmth shifted over his face. “And sometimes yet, it embarrasses her a little.”
“I’ve heard of an embarrassment of riches, but can’t imagine being embarrassed by them.”
“Money doesn’t mean to her what it does to either of us.”
“Really?” She looked up at him, liquid eyes. “And what does it mean to us?”
“Freedom, of course, and power and that comfort. But under it all”-he looked down at her, smiled a little-“it’s the game, isn’t it?”
She smiled back, her face mirroring regret. “We always understood each other.”
“That we didn’t, no.” He stepped out, automatically taking her arm to lead her across the marble expanse of the lobby with its moving maps, its busy shops, its banks of live flowers.
Outside his limo, then hers, slid smoothly to the curb. When he walked her to her car, she turned. The dampness in her eyes shone now in the sunlight. “Maybe we didn’t understand each other. Maybe that’s true. But there were good times for us, weren’t there? There were good times.”
“There were.”
She lifted her hands to his cheeks. He curled his fingers gently around her wrists so they stood a moment in the cold and the wind. “Good-bye, Maggie.”
“Good-bye, Roarke.” Tears glimmered on her lashes as she slipped into the warmth of the limo.
He watched it pull away, a sleek white whip through the ocean of traffic.
Then he got into his own car to go to his wife.
11
EVE WAS DRAGGED THROUGH THE STATION BY A peppy little assistant named Mercy. Eve decided she had none as she bounced along the corridors, whipping Eve through checkpoints and keeping up a rapid-fire monologue as she all but skipped along in zippy black skids.
“Everyone’s positively juiced to extreme about tonight’s premiere. Nadine’s about the biggest thing in media right now, and the station’s totally gone that she opted to stay with us and do this show. And having you as the first guest is beyond mag. I mean, the two of you are, like, so extremely scorching.”
Mercy had pink hair tailed up in little butterfly pins, with what seemed to be their tiny progeny flying out of the arch of her left eyebrow.
It was disconcerting.
“You need to meet the producer and the director and the exec tech, then we’re going to head straight to makeup and wardrobe. I can get you anything you want. I’m totally yours for the show-coffee, tea, water-we got flat and fizzy-soft drinks. Nadine says you go for coffee. We’re going to pop in on the director, real quick.”
“I don’t want to-”
But she was almost shoved into an office, had her hand pumped, before she was corralled into another office, with another hand pump.
The air was vibrating so fast it made her head ache.
Then, with Mercy still yapping like a Pomeranian on Zeus, Eve was dragged into makeup where the brightly lit mirrors gleamed over the long, long counter crowded with a dizzying array of pots and tubes and brushes and strange instruments that looked like some wicked tools designed for torture.
Worse-worse than the idea she was pressured by the brass and by friendship to appear on screen, worse than the yapping in her ear, worse than the knowledge that some or all of those instruments and pots and tubes would be used on her-was the woman who stood behind a high-backed black chair grinning a toothy grin.
“Oh, Mother of God.”
“You two know each other, right?” Mercy babbled on. “Trina, I’m going to leave Lieutenant Dallas in your magic hands, go get her coffee. Nadine stocked some special for her. Anything you want?”
Trina, her hair a black-and-white fountain on top of her head, her eyes an unearthly green, whipped a bright blue cape from a hook. “Water’d be good. Flat.”
“Be right back!”
“You look like dog shit, Dallas,” Trina commented.
“This is a recurring nightmare. I’m just going to punch myself in the face until I wake up.”
“You’ve got enough bruising under your eyes, you look like you’ve already been decked a few times today. I’ll fix it.”
“Why are you here? Why is it you?”
“First, because I’m the best and Nadine knows it. She can get the best. Second, because of you. If it wasn’t for you, I’d never have worked on Nadine at your place.”
Trina snapped the cape like a matador at a bull. “Appreciate it.”
“So, somehow, I brought this on myself.”
“You’re lucky it’s me. Because I’m the best, and because I know you, and I can-thousands couldn’t-make you look like yourself.”
“I already look like myself.”