When he pressed his lips to her forehead, she squeezed his hand.
“No, there’s the thing. After that, I was me. Now, not a kid. And I broke the chains. I broke them, and I woke up.”
He kissed her again. “As you did. As you would.”
“Damn right. So you don’t have to sit in the dark in your zillion-dollar suit keeping watch when you should be in your office buying Australia.”
“I don’t believe it’s for sale, and this suit only cost a quarter of a zillion.”
He rose to get them both coffee.
“I can get a jump on the day,” she continued. “And you can get back to yours. It didn’t really cost a quarter of a zillion, did it?”
He smiled, brought her coffee. “One day I’ll have to calculate your exact equation for a zillion.”
“As long as it’s enough to keep me in coffee, we’re good. I’m going to get a shower. No laying out my clothes. I’ve got it.”
She rolled out of bed. “Go take a meeting or whatever.”
“I’ll do that. We’ll have some breakfast in about thirty.”
When she went into the bathroom to shower, Roarke stroked the cat. “She’s steadied right up, so you’re off duty. Have another catnap.”
As Roarke left, Galahad stretched out and did just that.
She took a long, hot shower with jets on full to pummel some of the restless night away. She had those cracks, she reminded herself, and needed to be sharp to widen them into breaks.
The biggest break would be finding Dorian Gregg, but it wasn’t the only one she could work.
She had other names and faces now, and they gave her other trails to follow. She had locations to probe. Too many, sure, and the one she needed might not be among them. Yet.
But she had cracks.
The upcoming auction.
“Break the fucking chains, every one,” she muttered as she stepped out of the shower and into the drying tube.
Another robe waited for her, this one the color of the peaches ripening in the orchard.
Who the hell had an orchard in New York City? Roarke did.
The cat slept on when she came out, and apparently Roarke had taken that meeting, or decided to buy Australia after all.
For a moment she debated. Grab clothes and get dressed before he got back or program breakfast, because maybe pancakes?
Clothes first, she decided, and maybe she’d still beat him to the AutoChef.
In her closet she blew out a breath. There were times, like right now, the magnitude of choices made her head spin.
She started to grab black pants, then calculated.
He’d expect that.
She shifted to gray, which was almost as easy as black, eliminated a white shirt—also too expected—then got lost in the hues and colors and tones.
Blue worked, she decided. Nothing wrong with blue. A blue T-shirt, gray jacket—and hanging in plain sight, the magic lining. Gray boots. And anticipating him thinking she’d gone too heavy on the gray, grabbed a blue belt.
Christ, exhausting.
And time-consuming, she realized when she came out and found him at the bedroom AC. With Galahad busy inhaling his own breakfast.
The odds of pancakes plummeted.
“I was going to get that.”
“Done now.” He carried the domed plates to the table in the sitting area.
She set the jacket aside, then sat, poured more coffee from the pot he’d already put on the table.
When he removed the domes, she saw she’d been right about the pancakes. But the omelet, the bacon and berries and croissants didn’t leave room to bitch.
Naturally the omelet had spinach in it, but also plenty of cheese to offset it.
“I thought about working here for an hour or so, but I’m going straight in. I’d beat the worst of the traffic, and it’ll be quiet there, for a while anyway.”
“All right. Would you like to hear my take on the auction, the unregistered?”
“Yeah, I would.”
“I can come in later today, help EDD set up three fake accounts with all the background data necessary. You already have Willowby on one, so three is all, I think, we’d risk. And those we’ll spread out, geographically.”
“Okay. That’ll get us in, but bidding—”
“Each will have somewhere between, say, twelve million to fifty million. The lower numbers will appear to have other accounts, if anyone digs that deep. I would. This account would appear to be set up, offshore, for precisely this purpose.”
“Okay, I follow that. But you can’t toss that much money into an op.”