In Death 16 - Portrait in Death

bloody thing perfectly well myself." To prove it, Summerset engaged the controls and propelled himself toward the terrace doors.
     
     
Roarke managed to get there in time to open them before he whisked through.
     
     
Back poker straight, Summerset drove over the stone terrace, turned down one of the garden paths. And kept on going.
     
     
"He's in a very sour mood this morning," Spence commented. "More so than usual."
     
     
"I'll have him back for the therapy." Roarke shut the door behind him, and followed Summerset down the path.
     
     
The air was warm and close, and fragrant. He'd built this world, he thought, his world surrounded by the city he'd made his own. He'd needed the beauty. It hadn't been simply desire, but survival. With enough beauty, he could cover up all the ugliness of all the yesterdays.
     
     
So there were flowers and pools, arbors and paths. He'd married Eve out here, in this manufactured Eden. And found more than his measure of peace.
     
     
He let Summerset glide himself along for the first few minutes, understanding the man probably wanted to put some distance between himself and Spence as much as he wanted the control.
     
     
Then Roarke simply stepped up behind the chair, stopped it. Locked it in place. He walked around to sit on a bench so that he and Summerset were on the same level.
     
     
"I know you're angry with me," he began.
     
     
"You've saddled me with that creature. Locked me in with her as my warden."
     
     
Roarke shook his head. "Christ Jesus. You can be as mad as you like about that. Until you're healed you'll have the best care available. She's it. For that I won't apologize. For the things I said to you last night, for the way I behaved, I will. I'm sorry for it, very sorry."
     
     
"Did you think you couldn't tell me?" Summerset looked away, stared hard at a violently blue hydrangea. "I know the worst of you, and the best, and everything between." He looked back now, studied Roarke's face. "Well, at least I see she tended to you. You look rested."
     
     
Surprise flashed in Roarke's eyes before he narrowed them. "Eve discussed... she spoke to you about what I've learned?"
     
     
"However we disagree, whatever our difficulties with each other, we have one thing in common. That's you. You worried us both, needlessly."
     
     
"I did." He rose, walked a few paces down the path. Back again. "I can't get a grip on it. Any sort of a grip. It makes me sick inside in a way I haven't felt... in a very long time. And I wondered, I let myself wonder, if you knew."
     
     
"If I knew... ah." As another piece fell into place, Summerset let out a long breath. "I didn't. I had no knowledge of this girl. As far as I knew, Meg Roarke was your mother."
     
     
Roarke sat again. "I never questioned it."
     
     
"Why should you have?"
     
     
"I've spent more time, taken more care turning over the background on a low-level employee than I have on my own beginnings. I blocked them out from my mind and from data banks. Wiped most of it clean."
     
     
"You protected yourself."
     
     
"Fuck that." It was temper as much as guilt that radiated from him. "Who protected her?"
     
     
"It could hardly have been you, a babe in arms."
     
     
"And no justice for her, not by my hand. Not by her son's hand, for the bastard's been dead for years now. At least with Marlena-"
     
     
He cut himself off, drew himself in. "Marlena died to teach me a lesson. You never blamed me for it, not once have you said you blamed me."
     
     
For a long beat, Summerset looked over the garden. Those violently blue hydrangeas, the bloodred of roses, the hot pink of snapdragons. His daughter, his precious child, had been like a flower.
     
     
Beautiful, brilliant, and short-lived.
     
     
"Because you weren't to blame. Not for what happened to my girl, not for what happened to your mother." Summerset's gaze tracked back to him, held. "Boy," he said quietly, "you were never to blame."
     
     
"Neither was I ever innocent, not in my own memory anyway." With a little sigh, Roarke snapped off one of the blossoms, studied it. It occurred to him he hadn't given Eve flowers in some time. A man shouldn't forget to do such things, especially when the woman never expected them.
     
     
"You could have blamed me." He set the flower in Summerset's lap because that, too, was unexpected. A small gesture, a small symbol. "You took me in, when he'd damn near beaten me to death, and I had no one and nowhere to go. You