Vivi laughed with delight. “Sweet. I like your style, Duncan.”
He shrugged. “It’s a perfect way to get you out of their sights.”
“Not really,” Liam said quietly. “It’s the first place they’d expect her to go. She’d be noticed there and watched.”
Duncan was somewhat deflated by that acute observation, but even so, he couldn’t let it go. He tracked with part of his mind, taking in data while they brainstormed about the letter, the safe, Marco, the attackers, the map. The rest of him played with the Italy fantasy, like a dog with a bone. Gnawing it, licking it, loving it.
Nell began rubbing her eyes at about one-thirty in the morning, and Duncan took her hand. “We should get back, get some sleep,” he told her. “We promised Bruce you’d be at the office tomorrow.”
She stifled a yawn and smiled her agreement.
“Give them your new cell phone number,” he reminded her.
Nancy and Vivi looked at each other, mouths theatrically agape. “A cell phone? Nell? Do our ears deceive us?” Vivi breathed. “No!”
“Oh, shut up, Viv,” Nell grumbled. “He bullied me into it.”
“We’ve been trying to bully you for years!” Nancy said, aggrieved.
Nell scribbled the number twice on a cocktail napkin and ripped it into two pieces, handing one to each sister. Hugs and giggles, jokes and teasing admonitions followed among the three sisters, while Duncan and Liam eyed each other. Liam’s face was grim.
“Stay sharp,” he said. “Those fuckers are motivated.”
Duncan nodded. “I’m on it.”
“Good.” Liam looked cautiously relieved. “Let us know what your friend in Oregon says. When Vivi’s on the road, we don’t sleep nights.”
“I hear you.” They shook hands and made their way out.
Duncan and Nell were silent on the way home. He was so heavy into his Italian-vacation-with-Nell fantasy, it took him by surprise him when she spoke.
“They liked you,” she said.
That gave him a rush of pleasure. “How do you figure?”
“They said so,” she said. “But even if they hadn’t, I could tell, the way they talked about our private problems. Like it was a given that you were part of it. They would never have done that if they didn’t like you.”
“So I don’t have to worry about being disemboweled?”
Nell stifled a giggle. “Not for the moment,” she said. “You sure did throw your weight around, though. Your bank account, too.”
He glanced at her profile. “I’m sorry if that was offensive to you.”
“It seemed like you were trying to communicate to them that you’ve got money. I think they got the message loud and clear.”
He took a few seconds to breathe down the surge of anger and frustration. “You’re hung up on the money thing, Nell,” he said. “I was communicating to them that I’m willing and able to protect you. Money is protection, too, whether you like it or not. And they know it. In fact, I didn’t hear anyone objecting to it but you.”
She was silent for a moment. “Sorry if I’m oversensitive,” she said finally, her voice subdued. “And thanks for making that offer to Vivi, about your friend in Oregon. I hope that works out. She needs a break.”
“I got that sense, too,” he said. “I’ll get right on it.”
The silence that followed was an invisible wall between them. She was lost in her thoughts behind it, hidden from him. It made him anxious and lonely. He wanted to break through, get inside.
He needed more info. More intel. She was so complex, so goddamn much going on in her head. He wanted her exact specs, a manual of her operating systems. He wanted to study her, absorb her. Master her, as if she were a math problem, an insanely complicated puzzle. And she’d have his ass barbecued if he ever said anything like that to her. He had to watch his metaphors with this woman.
“Talk to me,” he blurted.
She looked at him, startled out of her reverie. “About what?”
“About yourself. I want to know more. You’re incredible. Unique.”
She harrumphed. “Yeah. I’m so unique, I’m practically extinct.”
He ignored that. “Tell me about your childhood, your mother, your sisters,” he urged. “Tell me anything. I don’t care what.”
Her big eyes were wary of the need she felt emanating from him, a vibration he could do nothing to hide. “Duncan…”
“You make me feel so alive. Just…please, Nell. Just tell me how it is to be the way you are.”
His appeal touched her, and she gave him a tremulous smile. Something relaxed inside him. Excellent. By sheer chance he’d hit upon the exact trick to calm her down. Some judicious pity mongering, a small, tasteful glimpse of desperation, and she’d melted. He hadn’t calculated that strategy, either. It had simply come to him. Instinct.
Maybe this convoluted emotional shit could be learned, after all.
Chapter
9
The look on his face, that note in his voice, it released the floodgates. Nell talked so much, she embarrassed herself. She told him things she hadn’t let herself think about in years, things she’d pretended to forget. The lonely boarding schools, the bad foster homes. Her mother’s death. And that solitary afternoon in the funeral home, alone with her mother’s coffin.
The endless, terrible afternoon that still haunted her.
She had no idea there was so much to say about her childhood, but it tumbled out, charged with raw emotion. She told him about Lucia finding her. About Nancy and Vivi, and discovering that she could have a family after all. She talked about stories, poetry. Her magical refuge.
Duncan had listened intently. His rapt attention was flattering, but the car clock said it was after three a.m., and she looked up at the street numbers and realized that he’d been driving in big, aimless circles around his neighborhood for the better part of an hour.
“Why aren’t you going home?” she asked.
“I wanted to hear you talk.”
“We could talk at your apartment,” she pointed out.
“What I want when we get home doesn’t involve much talking.”
She crossed her legs with a shiver at the sensual promise in his voice. “Well. Be that as it may. I’m about talked out for now.”
He turned the car at the next block and started back toward his condo. “This morning you told me that you’ve got plans for your life,” he said. “Ambitions. Do those include a man? Or any room for one?”
She hesitated. There was a peculiar tone in his voice when he asked the loaded question. Something that made her vaguely nervous.
“You know, Duncan, I’ve babbled for over an hour, but you haven’t volunteered one single thing about your own life,” she said.
“You’re evading my question.”
“Why, what a coincidence. You’re evading mine, too.”
“I asked first,” he said stubbornly. “And? So?”
She twisted her hands together. “Well, my plan is to finish my thesis, get my doctorate, and find a teaching job. At which point, I guess I will attempt to have a normal life. The Fiend permitting, and all that.”
“Let me rephrase,” he said softly. “By normal life, do you mean marriage, kids?”
Nell stared at him. Her heart had started to thud quickly, and her palms felt damp.
He simply waited.
Nell stared at the streetlights swooping by. “Of course I dream about love,” she said quietly. “After all those novels and all that poetry, how could I not? But I know better than to take anything for granted. There are no guarantees. I’ll do the best I can. Try to get over my baggage. Hope that I get lucky.” With you was the real ending of that phrase, but her lips and throat trembled too much to say it.
He was quiet as he pulled into his parking garage and drove down two ramps to his own slot. He parked, killed the engine, and stared at the concrete wall in front of them.