In Death 18 - Divided in Death

mine.” Fear clutched at her throat. “Was there?”
    “Relax.” To get back some of her own, Trina yanked Eve’s head back by the hair. “The pink streaks’ll wash out.”
    “She’s just kidding,” Mavis said as Eve went pale. “Honest.”
    ———«»———«»———«»———
    By the time it was over, Eve was limp as a noodle. The minute she was alone, she dashed into the nearest bathroom, shut the door, and braced herself for a look in the mirror.
    Her knees went weak with relief when she saw there were no streaks of pink, or anything else, in her hair. Nor were her eyebrows the carnival of colors Mavis’s had been when Trina finished with them. She wasn’t vain, Eve assured herself. She just wanted to look like she looked. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. And since she did, the ball of tension between her shoulder-blades dissolved.
    Okay, maybe she looked a little better than usual. Trina did something to her eyebrows whenever she got her hands on them that made the arch more defined and framed out her eyes. And her skin had a nice glow to it.
    She shook her head, pleased when her hair fell into place without any fuss.
    Then her eyes widened in shock. She was vain, or edging perilously close to it. And it had to stop. Deliberately, she turned away from the mirror. She needed to get out of this stupid robe and into clothes. As soon as she did, she’d check on the lab.
    Work, she assured herself, was the only thing worth being vain about.

Chapter 14
    She’d barely nipped into the bedroom when Roarke stepped in from the elevator.
    “I just need to change, then I was coming by the lab.”
    “Well, I need a minute to speak with you, and saw that Mavis and Trina had gone.”
    “What about?” She started rummaging through her dresser for old, comfortable sweats. It gave her something to do with her hands as she prayed it had nothing to do with a field operation in Dallas. “Did you guys have a breakthrough?”
    “No. It’s painstaking and exacting work. Slow and tedious. Feeney’s taking an hour restorative. It’s hell on the eyes.”
    “Okay.” She could hardly complain about the break when she’d spent a good chunk of the evening flat on her back and covered with goo. “I’m not much help in the comp-jock area, but I’ve got some probabilities to run, some theories I want to play with. Mind’s clear. I hate that.”
    “You hate that your mind’s clear?”
    “No.” Her shoulders relaxed again. She was tuned to every nuance in his voice, and everything was all right. For now. “I hate that the stuff Trina does actually works—on the brain. I’m pumped,” she said, hauling out a ragged and ancient short-sleeved sweatshirt she’d buried under a stack of silk and cashmere tees. “And I’m thinking . . . what’re you looking at?”
    “You. Darling Eve, you look—”
    “Don’t start.” She waved the shirt at him and backed up two steps. Even that was a fake, she thought. It was such a tremendous relief to know he could look at her that way. To know, when he did, her blood warmed, her body tightened. “Don’t even start.”
    “You’ve had a pedicure.”
    Instinctively, her toes curled in embarrassment. “She did it while I was under VR, and she won’t tell me how to get it off.”
    “I like it. Sexy.”
    “What’s sexy about pink toes? What could possibly be sexy about that? Wait, I forgot who I was talking to. If she’d painted my teeth pink, you’d think it was sexy.”
    “A fool in love,” he murmured and stepped close enough to brush a thumb over her cheek. “Soft.”
    “Stop it.” She slapped his hand away.
    “And you smell . . . exotic,” he said after easing closer for a testing sniff. “A bit tropical. Like a lemon grove in spring, with just a hint of . . . jasmine, I think. Night-blooming jasmine.”
    “Roarke. Down.”
    “Too late.” He laughed and gripped her hips. “A man needs his restorative, you know. Why don’t you be mine?”
    She was his, but still she gave him a shove as his lips came down on hers. “I’ve already had my break.”
    “You’re about to extend it. You taste incredible.” His lips skimmed over her jaw, then under it, and his busy hands had already unbelted her robe, slipped beneath it. “Let’s just see . . .”—he tugged on her bottom lip—”. . . what else Trina’s been up to.”
    He eased the robe off her shoulders, skimmed his teeth over bare skin.
    The little ball of lust that had