9
" Damn it all to hell and back again, you know very well that was a setup. You bloody well know I couldn't put my hands on her."
"Yeah, yeah, sure, sure." Eve shrugged off her coat, tossed it aside. "I know a setup when I see it, and I know your face, ace. I didn't see desire on it, I saw annoyance."
"Is that so? Is that bloody well so? Well, if you knew it was just what it was, why did you sucker punch me?"
"Mostly?" She turned, cocked a hip. "Because you're a man."
Eyes narrowed on her face, he tried to stanch the blood with the back of his hand. "And do you have any sort of idea just how often I might expect your fist in my goddamn face because of my bleeding DNA? "
― J.D. Robb , Innocent in Death (In Death, #24)
10
" She stepped forward as if to pick up the fur she'd tossed over a chair. Smoothly, she turned to hand it to him. And with perfect timing, flung herself into his arms.
The sable fell as he took her shoulders to shove her back.
Eve stepped to the doorway to see Magdelana with her arms locked around Roarke's neck, his hands on her bare shoulders--one of the ivory straps sliding to her elbow.
"Son of a bitch," she said.
On cue, Magdelana spun around, her face full of passion and shock. "Oh, God. Oh...it's not what it looks like."
"Bet." Eve strode in.
Actually, Roarke thought, it was more of a swagger. He had a moment to admire it, before Eve rammed her fist in his face.
"Fuck me." His head snapped back, and he tasted blood.
Magdelana cried out, but even the deaf would have caught the suppressed laughter in the sound. "Roarke! Oh, my God, you're bleeding. Please, let me just--"
"Don't look now," Eve said cheerfully. "But he's not the only one." She decked Magdelana with a straight-armed jab. "Bitch," Eve added as Magdelana's eyes rolled back and she fell, unconscious, to the floor.
Roarke looked down. "Well, now, fuck us all. "
― J.D. Robb , Innocent in Death (In Death, #24)
11
" She would be a sparkling accent on his arm. She speaks flawless French and Italian, and has a limitless supply of charm when she wishes to dispense it. And'd she'll use him. She'll take, take more. If it was necessary, or if she simply had the whim, she'd toss him to the wolves to see who'd win."
He finished the whiskey. "You, Lieutenant, are often crude, you are certainly rude, and have very little sense of how to be the wife--in public--of a man in Roarke's position. And you would do anything, no matter what the personal risk, to keep him from harm. She will never love him. You will never do anything but. "
― J.D. Robb , Innocent in Death (In Death, #24)
17
" I had that hole in me, that empty space. I could have lived my life with it, content enough. I wasn’t an unhappy man.” He kept his eyes on hers as his thumb brushed lightly over the back of her hand. “Then, one day I felt something—a prickle at the back of my neck, a heat at the base of my spine. And standing at a memorial for the dead, I turned, and there you were.” He turned her hand over, interlocking fingers. “There you were, and it all shifted under my feet. You were everything I shouldn’t have, shouldn’t want or need. A cop for Jesus’ sake, with eyes that looked right into me.” He reached out, just a whisper of fingers on her face. And the quiet touch was somehow wildly passionate, desperately intimate. “A cop wearing a bad gray suit and a coat that didn’t even fit. From that moment, the hole inside me began to fill. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop what rooted there, or what grew.
The tears came now. He watched them drip down her cheeks, wondered if she were even aware they leaked out of her. “She was part of my life. You are my life. If I have a regret, it’s that even for an instant you could think otherwise. Or that I allowed you to. "
― J.D. Robb , Innocent in Death (In Death, #24)
18
" Roark reached for the 'link again, cursed himself for a fool, then turned away from it.
He wasn’t going to keep calling her, her friends, her haunts, hoping for a scrap.
Bugger that.
She’d be home when she came home. Or she wouldn’t.
Christ Jesus, where was she?
Why the hell was she putting him through this? He’d done nothing to earn it. God knew he’d done plenty along the way to earn her wrath, but not this time. Not this way.
Still, that look on her face that morning had etched itself in his head, on his heart, into his guts. He couldn’t burn it out.
He’d seen that look once or twice before, but not on his account.
He’d seen it when they’d gone to that fucking room in Dallas where she’d once suffered beyond reason. He’d seen it when she tore out of a nightmare.
Didn’t she know he’d cut off his own hand before he’d put that look on her face?
She bloody well should know it. Should know him.
This was her own doing, and she’d best get her stubborn ass home right quick so they could have this out as they were supposed to have things out. She could kick something. Punch something. Punch him if that would put an end to it. A good rage, that’s what was needed here, he told himself, then they’d be done with this nonsense once and for all.
Where the fucking hell was she?
He considered his own rage righteous, deserved—and struggled not to acknowledge it hid a sick panic that she didn’t mean to come back to him.
She’d damn well come back, he thought furiously. If she thought she could do otherwise, he had a bulletin for her. He’d hunt her down, by Christ, he would, and he’d drag her back where she belonged.
Goddamn it all, he needed her back where she belonged.
He paced the parlor like a cat in a cage, praying as he rarely prayed, for the remote in his pocket to beep, signaling the gates had opened. And she was coming home. "
― J.D. Robb , Innocent in Death (In Death, #24)
19
" She knew bullshit when it was being tossed at her by the shovelful. "You know, Ms Purcell, I'm at absolute capacity in the friend department. You'll have to apply elsewhere. As for Roarke and his business, that's his deal. As for you, let's get this straight: You don't look stupid, so I don't believe you think you're the first of Roarke's discarded skirts to swing back this way. You don't worry me. In fact, you don't much interest me. So if that's all?"
Slowly Magdelana slid off the desk. "The man is just never wrong is he? I don't like you."
"Aw."
She moved to the door, then stopped, leaned on the jamb as she looked over at Eve again. "Just one thing? He didn't discard me. I discarded him. And since you don't look stupid either, you know that makes all the difference. "
― J.D. Robb , Innocent in Death (In Death, #24)
