Page 65 of Devil's Bargain

Borden had the good sense to look embarrassed as he shrugged. It might have been the wine, or the marinara sauce, but she felt a surge of warmth toward him, entirely unconnected to the undeniable surge of—what the hell had that been? Lust?—she’d felt in her office, when she’d had him up against the wall. That was unsettling. She preferred lust. Lust was simple—it had a beginning, middle and end to it. You could shut lust up by giving it what it wanted.

This feeling … it had more of a feeling of sticking around.

He was watching her. She realized she’d been staring back, felt a rush of blood heat up her face and turned back to the cheesecake she was not really eating.

“How’s Lucia?” he asked. Which was completely the wrong thing to ask at that moment.

“Don’t you know? I mean, don’t you guys know everything?” She heard the edge in her voice.

“Yeah, sorry, I don’t actually sit around and monitor your lives on a daily basis.”

“Who does?”

He changed the subject. “I take it that she’s okay.”

“She’s fine. Better than fine, actually. She’s happy as a clam. That girl reallylikesundercover work. It’s a little scary, how good she is at it, for somebody who wears a lot of—you know—designer clothes.”

“What’s she doing now?” he asked around a mouthful of brandy-soaked ladyfingers.

“Right now? Probably emptying trash from the sixth floor restrooms.” Jazz glanced at her watch. “Actually, I take it back. She’s on her break, sitting in the lunchroom, watching Spanish-language soap operas.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I told you. She likes undercover work. You’re not going to do anything stupid like follow me to L.A., are you?” she asked, without any transition, and watched him scramble to keep up with the conversational left turn.

“Do you need me to?” he asked. Not, she noticed,Do youwantme to.

“No,” she said. “I don’t need you there. And it would probably be easier if you stayed out of my hair. Having somebody around with a personal stake in things is distracting.”

“It’s just that he’s—like family.” Borden shrugged, but it didn’t look casual. “I don’t have a lot of that.”

“Family? Hell, sometimes I have too much. Want a sister?”

She’d said something wrong. She saw the flinch. Unless he already knew Molly.

“I had one,” he finally said, and met her eyes.

She knew that look, had seen it on the faces of too many families. Lost. Baffled. Wounded. She hadn’t just made a mistake, she’d opened a vein. “What happened?”

“The usual. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” His smile cut like glass. “Not everybody’s a Lead. She never even got to be an Actor.”

Not a good time to express her skepticism on the whole theory. “Any other family?”

“My mother lives in Canada. Father—” He shrugged again. “I don’t really know. So, Lowell means a lot to me. He was there when I needed him.”

She studied him. “Then I’ll do everything I can.”

He nodded, sipped wine and fiddled with his fork. “Want me to drive you to the airport?”

“Sure.” She shrugged and then frowned. “You don’t have a car.”

“Rental. I need to take it back to the airport and catch the red-eye back to New York.”

“So you weren’t planning to stay.”

“No, I was planning to go, but which way I was flying depended on you.”

There was something underneath that, something like a cliff she could easily fall from, and she backed up fast. “Okay, then. If you could give me a ride, that would be great.”

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