Luke Montgomery with you in your room last night after the gala?” Natalie asked bluntly.
If the model found the question invasive, she gave no indication. On the contrary, a wide smile curved her more than generous mouth.
“He most certainly was.” Each word vibrated with enthusiasm. Montgomery, Natalie concluded, had to be good in bed. No wonder Candace had been put out when the casino mogul didn’t want to rekindle their affair.
“What time was he there?” Natalie asked. She had deliberately refrained from mentioning which hours needed verifying.
“The whole time,” Erikka answered with a heartfelt sigh.
The woman was obviously not a Rhodes scholar, Natalie thought dryly.
“Specifically?” she pressed. Then, in case this word, too, was beyond the model’s grasp, she broke it down for the woman. “If you could remember what time he came into your room and what time he left, that would be very helpful.”
Erikka paused to sign the credit slip the desk clerk submitted to her. Handing it back, she placed the pen on the counter and thought a moment.
“From the time the gala ended—whenever that was—until this morning.” Her smile deepened. “If you think he did something wrong, he didn’t.” She sighed, clearly reliving a moment or two. “As a matter of fact, he did everything just right.”
More than I wanted to know, Natalie thought, suddenly feeling like a voyeur. “Is there somewhere I can reach you in case I have more questions?”
The model looked somewhat impatient, but she foraged through her purse and came up with a card. “That’s my agent’s number,” she pointed to it on the card. “He can usually find me.”
Or cover for you. But Natalie forced a smile to her lips as she pocketed the card.
“Thank you for your time,” she murmured, then moved away from the reservation desk. Erikka and her considerable luggage went in the opposite direction.
Matt found he had to lengthen his stride to keep up with Natalie. She always moved fast when she was agitated, he recalled. “You don’t look very happy,” he observed.
Natalie shot him a dirty look. “Why should I be happy? I’ve spent all day questioning people, and all I have is a dead end.”
He’d gotten good at spinning information when it was necessary. “You could think of it as having ruled out several possibilities.”
She stopped walking for a moment and gazed at him. He was looking at this in a far more positive light than she was.
“Since when did you become an optimist?”
Optimist was a lot better label than spin doctor, he mused. “Sometimes, in this line of business, you have to be.”
They were in the lobby of the casino with its ever-present noise and crowds of people. This was where they should just come to a parting of ways. He knew that the right thing to do would be to let her go back to her home or the precinct or wherever it was she was going. But the frustrated disappointment in her eyes got to him.
He was never going to be over her, Matt thought, no matter what he told himself.
“Have you had lunch yet?” he asked.
An odd little smile came and went from her lips. “I haven’t actually had breakfast yet.” She’d heard the call about her sister’s homicide come in just after hitting a fast-food restaurant. Three bites were all she’d had before her stomach rebelled. She’d thrown the rest away.
“We need to remedy that,” Matt told her. “Come with me.”
She began to follow, then stopped. Old habits died hard, but he had no right to take charge like that. “Why would I want to do that?” she challenged.
He took a couple of steps to cross back to her. “Because you’ve been working hard, and you haven’t had anything to eat. You need to keep your strength up if you’re going to play the part of a bulldog,” he said matter-of-factly, then smiled. “Besides, The Janus just landed a first-class world-famous chef, and I’m told he makes a filet mignon that has you believing you’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“I’m not interested in ‘dying and going to heaven.’ Or eating,” she informed him. “What I’m interested in is—”
He finished the sentence for her. “Solving your sister’s murder, yes I know. But you can’t continue functioning indefinitely on an empty stomach,” he insisted. Then he added, “Humor me.”
It was the wrong thing to say. She didn’t want to humor him, she wanted to double up her fists and beat on him. She wanted this damn ache in her chest that came up each time she looked at him to go away. She wanted to have never laid eyes on him in the first place. Humoring him didn’t even make the top one hundred on her list. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Because,” he told her patiently, “if we’re going to be working together, there’s going to have to be some kind of give and take.”
“There already was.” The words spilled out, refusing to be dammed up any longer. “As I recall, I gave, you took—and then you threw it back at me.”
Was that how she remembered it? “That wasn’t the way it played out.”
Her expression darkened, making him think of a thunderstorm over the desert. “Oh, wasn’t it?”
He didn’t want to go into it. Not here, not now. Not ever, actually. But she was forcing him to revisit his actions. “I did what I did for a reason, Natalie.”
“Right. I believe the term is ‘cold feet.’ All the way up to the neck,” she said sarcastically. “You suddenly realized that you were making a commitment, and it scared the hell out of you.”
And why did it still hurt so much, all these years later? Why aren’t I over you, damn it?
Someone jostled him. Matt hardly noticed. His entire attention was focused on the petite spitfire before him. The woman, if the gods had been kinder, who would have been his wife for several years now. Maybe even the mother of his children. “Is that what you think?”
“Yes,” Natalie bit off. “That is exactly what I think.”
He tried to take hold of her arms, but she shrugged him off. “You’re wrong.”
“Then what was your reason?” she challenged. “Why would you leave me that way without so much as a decent explanation?”
The answer was very simple. “Because if I gave you one, you would have tried to talk me out of it.” He knew how she thought. In her place, he would have done the same thing. But he hadn’t been in her place; he’d been in his and the action he took was necessary. “And what I did was for the best.”
“Right. For the best,” she mocked. “Whose best? Yours?”
“No.” Damn it, you little idiot, I did it because I loved you. “Yours.”
Lifting her chin, she tossed her head defiantly. Her short brown hair swayed from the movement. “I don’t believe you. You’re only saying that because you think it makes you out to be noble. Well, you’re not. You’re a coward,” she spat out.
He took a firm hold of her shoulders. This time he didn’t let her shrug him off. People were watching, and he didn’t want this getting back to anyone.
“There’s no point in arguing about it, Natalie. It’s all in the past.”
No, she thought. Not all of it. She only wished from the bottom of her heart that it was. But her feelings were very much alive and in the present. But that was her problem, not his.
“You’re right,” she replied in a monotone voice. “It is.”
Touching her,