Page 60 of Devil's Bargain

Damn, he’s pretty,some traitor part of her brain told her. She ignored it. She wasn’t interested in pretty. She was interested in those photos telling her that Ben McCarthy had been on the other side of town when people were being murdered with his gun.

Borden raised the fruit basket and his eyebrows at the same time. “I come bearing…,um, looks like bananas, papayas, some pears…”

“You come bearing trouble,” she said, and crossed to take the basket from his hand. It was heavy. She deposited it on the side table with a frown. “What if I don’t like fruit?”

“It’s good for you,” he said. “Chocolate seemed a little clichéd. But hey, there’s some pear honey in there, too. And pear butter. Are you going to shoot me?”

“Thinking about it,” she said shortly. “I’m on my way out.”

The humor drained out of his face. “Jazz, wait. Look, I’m sorry, but I want—need—to talk to you.”

“Bad timing,” she said grimly, and adjusted the shoulder rig under her loose jacket. “Some other day, maybe, but this one’s just turned a little more interesting than normal, so if you don’t mind—thanks for the fruit, now get the hell out.”

“I can’t. I need to—”

She rounded on him and took a step into his space, spearing him with a glare. “Look, I don’t care what you need, okay? You come here with your—your fruit basket and your stupid red envelope and just expect me to be available? Well, it’s not that easy. I’m anActor,after all. Free will. Whatever.”

“You’re not the only one,” he said, and it occurred to her that she’d never heard anybody say, one way or another, what exactly James Borden’s role was in this little opera. Spear-carrier? Chorus? Actor?Lead?

Assuming she bought any of their bullshit, which she so very definitely didn’t. She’d gone to the cops and put in her statement about Blankenship’s murder. Lucia had put together an absolutely amazing cover story for why she’d been there on that street at that particular moment, and while detectives like Ken Stewart hadn’t cared for it, they hadn’t been able to poke holes in it, either.

And Wendy Blankenship’s killer was in jail, awaiting trial. That was something.

Sometimes, at weak moments, she wondered how the red envelope had managed to put her there on that street at the right time, if Laskins hadn’t been on the up-and-up with her. But she didn’t wonder too long or worry too much.

Too busy. If everything she did mattered, then she was damn well going to make every moment count.

“Right. I’m going … and, you’re not leaving,” she said, as Borden walked over to her couch and sat down, all arms and legs and angles. “Why aren’t you leaving?”

“I told you, I’m not going without talking to you.” He’d done something new to his hair, she decided. She wasn’t sure she liked it, but then, she hadn’t liked his last hairstyle, either. At least he looked comfortable today, not tied up in the suit and strangled in a tie. Blue jeans and that long-cut leather jacket she remembered from before. She’d never noticed before, but he had on some academic ring or other, something large, round and gold. Harvard or Princeton or something equally Ivy League, probably. He didn’t seem the type to have taken his J.D. at Podunk University.

“Okay, it’s possible that I’m using words that are too short for a smart guy like you to understand, but—”

“We have something we need you to do.”

“We? I just see one of you standing—”

“The Cross Society.”

“Stop interrupting me!”

“Stop acting like an asshole.”

“Hey!”

He uncoiled from the couch. It was probably unconscious, the way he tried to use his superior height and reach to intimidate her, but she didn’t like it. She stepped right into his space, staring into those dark eyes.

“Call me an asshole again,” she invited softly. “Go on.”

“I said you were acting like one, not—”

“I know what you said.”

Silence. She watched him breathe. Some part of her was acutely aware of him, of the warmth radiating off him, of the smell of his cologne and the matte-velvet slide of his skin. The quick throb of the pulse in his neck.

“I have work to do,” she said, and reached around him for her jacket.

He grabbed her wrist.

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