Body Double: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

people wonder,” he said. “If they saw us out together.” He watched her for a moment, and the only sound was her knife blade rapping against the cutting board. What does one do with a priest in the kitchen? she wondered. Ask him to bless the food? No other man could make her feel so uneasy, so human and flawed. And what are your flaws, Daniel? she wondered as she slid the diced tomatoes into a salad bowl, as she tossed them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Does that white collar give you immunity to temptation?
    “At least let me slice that cucumber,” he said.
    “You really can’t relax, can you?”
    “I’m not good at sitting idle while others work.”
    She laughed. “Join the club.”
    “Would that be the club for hopeless workaholics? Because I’m a charter member.” He pulled a knife from the wooden block and began to slice the cucumber, releasing its fresh, summery fragrance. “It comes from having to help out with five brothers and a sister.”
    “Seven of you in the family? My god.”
    “I’m sure that’s what my dad said every time he heard there was another one on the way.”
    “So where were you in that seven?”
    “Number four. Smack in the middle. Which, according to psychologists, makes me a natural born mediator. The one always trying to keep the peace.” He glanced up at her with a smile. “It also means I know how to get in and out of the shower really fast.”
    “And how do you go from sibling number four to being a priest?”
    He looked back down at the cutting board. “As you might expect, a long story.”
    “One you don’t want to talk about?”
    “My reasons will probably strike you as illogical.”
    “Well, it’s funny how our biggest decisions in life are usually the least logical. The person we choose to marry, for instance.” She took a sip of wine and set the glass back down. “I certainly couldn’t defend my own marriage on the basis of logic.”
    He glanced up. “Lust?”
    “That would be the operative word. That’s how I made the biggest mistake of my life. So far, that is.” She took another sip of wine.
And you could be my next big mistake. If God wanted us to behave, He shouldn’t have created temptation.
    He slid the sliced cucumbers into the salad bowl and rinsed the knife. She watched him standing at the sink, his back to her. He had the tall, lean build of a long-distance runner. Why do I put myself through this? she wondered. Of all the men I could be attracted to, why does it have to be this one?
    “You asked why I chose the priesthood,” he said.
    “Why did you?”
    He turned to look at her. “My sister had leukemia.”
    Startled, she didn’t know what to say. Nothing seemed appropriate.
    “Sophie was six years old,” he said. “The youngest one in the family, and the only girl.” He reached for a dish towel to dry his hands, and neatly hung it back on the rack, taking his time, as though he needed to measure his next words. “It was acute lymphocytic leukemia. I suppose you could call it the good kind, if there’s any such thing as a good leukemia.”
    “It’s the one with the best prognosis in children. An eighty percent survival rate.” A true statement, but she was sorry the instant after she’d said it. The logical Dr. Isles, responding to tragedy with her usual helpful facts and heartless statistics. It was the way she’d always coped with the messy emotions of those around her, by retreating into her scientist’s role. A friend just died of lung cancer? A relative left quadriplegic from a car accident? For every tragedy she could cite a statistic, drawing reassurance in the crisp certainty of numbers. In the belief that behind every horror, there is an explanation.
    She wondered if Daniel thought her detached, even callous, for her response. But he did not seem to take offense. He simply nodded, accepting her statistic in the spirit she had offered it, as a simple fact.
    “The five-year survival rates weren’t quite so good back then,” he said. “By the time she was diagnosed, she was pretty sick. I can’t tell you how devastating it was, to all of us. To my mother, especially. Her only girl. Her baby. I was fourteen then, and I was the one who kind of took over keeping an eye on Sophie. Even with all the attention she got, all the coddling, she never acted spoiled. Never stopped being the sweetest kid you could imagine.” He still wasn’t looking at Maura; he was gazing at the floor, as though unwilling