Innocent in Death by J. D. Robb Page B

tried not to obsess when Roarke didn’t make his usual play to join her under the hot jets. A woman who got herself twisted up because her man—who’d led a very full and…adventurous life before they’d met—ran into a former lover was just asking for stomach spasms.
    And she didn’t get herself twisted up, Eve reminded herself as she stepped out of the shower and into the drying tube. Or she never had before this.
    She was making too much of a…of a glint, she decided. Of a fraction of a second. Whoever Roarke had bounced on more than a freaking decade before had nothing to do with now.
    Nothing at all.
    He wasn’t in the bedroom when she went back in. But that meant nothing either. She dragged on some sweats, hunted up some socks that turned out to be cashmere, then headed toward her home office.
    Roarke’s adjoined hers. The door was open, the lights on. No reason not to step over and see what was going on.
    He was at his desk, the suit jacket and shirt replaced by a black sweater. The furry pudge that was their cat was curled on the corner of the workstation. Galahad blinked his dual-colored eyes, then lowered them to lazy slits.
    “Working?” Eve said, and felt stupid, awkward.
    “A bit. You?”
    “Yeah.” She couldn’t quite figure out what to do with her hands, so she hooked her thumbs in her front pockets. “I figured I’d put some time in.”
    He gave her his attention. He had a way of doing that even when he had a zillion things going on. “Want some help?”
    “No. No, I got it. It’s just routine stuff.”
    And his attention shifted away from her, back to his comp screen. “All right, then. Let me know if you change your mind.”
    “Yeah, okay.”
    “Lieutenant,” he said as she turned away. “Try not to drink more than a gallon of coffee.”
    For some reason it made her feel better that he’d poked at her. She moved into the kitchen of her work space, and programmed her AutoChef for a half pot instead of the full one she’d have ordered up otherwise.
    It was good he had some work to do, she thought. They’d both just do what they did for a few hours. She carried her coffee to her desk, and started to call up Peabody’s report on Craig Foster.
    Cursed.
    “Might as well just do it,” she muttered. “Get it off my brain.” She started the run on Percell, Magdelana, manually, ordering text only on her comp screen. It took some time to find her particular quarry, but she narrowed the search by approximate age, physical description—and unless she’d been way off on the accent—nationality. And scored.
    Percell, Magdelana. DOB: March 12, 2029. Born: St. Paul, Minnesota. Parents: Percell, James and Karen. Hair: blond. Eyes: green. Weight: 115 pounds. Height: five feet, five inches.
    Eve skimmed over her education, but noted that Magdelana had graduated from high school early—at fifteen. Had attended Princeton and graduated in just under three years on an accelerated program. Cum laude.
    “So she’s smart.”
    Married: Dupont, Andre, June 22, 2048. No offspring. Divorced: March 2051. Married: Fayette, Georges, April 5, 2055. No offspring. Divorced: October 2059.
    Approximate net worth: thirteen point five million U.S. dollars.
    Residences: Paris, France; Cannes, France.
    No criminal.
    Eve sat back.
    The official data was slim, and the no criminal doubtful as Roarke had said they’d worked together. Even if she hadn’t been convicted, even if she hadn’t been arrested, there should have been some note in her file about being questioned at some point or other.
    He’d cleared it for her, Eve thought, and felt something tighten in her belly. He’d hacked in and tidied up her data, the same way he’d taken care of his own once upon a time.
    He’d protected her.
    Because it was harder to accept than she’d imagined, Eve ended the search. She already knew more than she wanted to know.
    She dove into work, reading Peabody’s report, the case notes. She started runs on staff