Falling Awake

of expensive furniture when you don’t have a house for it?”
    Isabel said nothing. She just sat there, looking stubborn.

    Ellis had had enough. He moved, violating the zone of intimacy. He sat down beside Isabel and gathered her securely against his side.
    “It was for her dream house,” he said quietly. “Isn’t that right, Isabel?”
    “Yes,” she whispered.
    And then, for the first time since the events in the storage locker, she started to cry.
    Ellis wrapped his hand around her head and pressed her face against his chest.
    While Isabel wept, he watched Leila, Tamsyn and Farrell, challenging them silently to push him out of the zone. None of them moved.
    a n hour later, she had recovered her composure. She curled on the sofa, Sphinx’s solid, warm body cuddled against her leg, and drank the wine Ellis had poured.
    “Thanks for getting rid of the others,” she said wearily.
    “You’re welcome.” Ellis spoke from the kitchen, where he was putting dinner together. “I was ready for a little privacy, myself.”
    “They mean well, but I’ve had about all the lectures on making poor financial decisions that I can take for one day.”
    Ellis dropped four slices of bread into the heated, buttered skillet. “Be fair. You gave them a hell of a scare today. They needed to blow off their shock and concern. The furniture and the lack of insurance were easy targets.”

    She was impressed. “That’s very insightful of you.”
    “Not really.” He slathered mustard on one side of each slice. “I’m probably just projecting. You scared the living daylights out of me today, too. I was ready to smash walls and yell, myself.”
    “But you didn’t.”
    “Only because there are too many other things to worry about. Maybe I’ll get around to it later, when this case is closed.”
    She turned the wineglass in her fingers, watching the play of light on the ruby red contents. “I guess I was a little obsessive about the furniture.”
    “Hey, you’re talking to a guy who has been told that he has a tendency to obsess, himself. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with being obsessive. Not when it comes to something that’s really important.”
    Isabel met his eyes across the room. “My furniture was very important to me. I bought it a few months ago. Walked into a furniture showroom one afternoon, saw the pieces and I just had to have them. I cleaned out my bank account to make the down payment and went into hock up to my eyebrows on my credit cards.”
    He dropped cheddar cheese onto the sizzling bread slices. “That accounts for your current cash-flow problems.”
    She frowned. “You were aware of my financial situation?”
    “I’m in that line, remember?”
    “Wait a second, are you telling me that you investigated my personal finances?”
    “It was just part of a routine check,” he assured her a little too smoothly.

    “Hah. I don’t believe that for a moment. More likely you and Lawson were worried that after I lost my job I might try to sell whatever I had learned about you and Lawson’s little dream operation to the highest bidder.”
    “I didn’t mention it to Lawson,” he admitted. “I knew it might make him a trifle nervous.”
    “What about you?”
    “Me? I wasn’t worried at all.” He glanced at her, smiling slightly. “But then, I know you a whole lot better than Lawson does.”
    She gave him a measuring look. “Are you telling me that it never crossed your mind that I might try to peddle some of your secrets in order to cover my debts?”
    He shook his head, concentrating on the toasted cheese sandwiches. “Call me a naive, easily manipulated dupe, but I just couldn’t see a woman who had advised me to read romance novels and stop eating red meat selling me out.”
    “Good thinking.” She took a sip of wine and lowered the glass slowly. “How did you know?”
    “About your dream house?” He reached for the spatula. “Not that hard to connect the dots.”
    “It doesn’t exist outside my dreams,” she said quietly. “But in my dreams I’ve designed and decorated every room. The furniture would have been perfect.”
    He slid the cheese sandwiches onto plates. “You’ll get that house someday. And you’ll find the right furniture for it.”
    “Think so?”

    “Yes.”
    He picked up the plates with the toasted sandwiches on them and carried them into the living room.
    She uncoiled her legs and sat forward. “That smells good.”
    “Glad to see your