At that, she subsided.
He tucked her arm into his elbow, and, as she walked up to the front entrance, the door opened automatically, and the doorman smiled at her. “Did you have a good evening?”
And with the same elegance that he expected from her at all times, she nodded and smiled. “Despite my looks, we just had a wonderful spaghetti dinner.”
The doorman’s face split in two with a great big smile. “Did Rosita look after you?”
She stared at him in surprise. “Do you know her?”
“She has the best Italian food anywhere in the city,” he said with a big grin. “Besides, I saw the bag.”
She chuckled and waved at him. “Any messages or anything I should know about?” she asked.
He shook his head. “All is quiet.”
“Thank God for that,” she said. As they walked into the elevator, she looked at her purse.
“Forget about it,” he said. She glared at him. “Yes, I know you’re thinking about checking your phone.”
“I absolutely am,” she said.
“Don’t,” he said. “Not right now, not until tomorrow morning.”
“But things can blow up in that time period,” she said in protest.
“Then let it,” he said. “You need to look after you. Remember?”
Suddenly they were at her front door, and he could see she felt awkward. He took the key from her, unlocked the door, and pushed it open, ushering her in. He put the leftovers into the fridge and then did a quick search of the flat.
She stood beside the front door, staring at him in confusion.
“Just making sure,” he said. He turned to walk to the door, then walked back in a very long, slow, unhurried pace, tilted her chin up, and kissed her on the lips. It wasn’t one of his out-of-the-park kisses, but it was definitely a way to impart that he cared, that he was really worried about her, and that he really wanted her to take care of herself. And that he really wanted to spend more time with her.
When she stood there dazed, swaying on her feet, he kissed the tip of her nose and said, “Now off to bed.” He turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.
It was all she could do to walk over, throw the bolt, and drag herself upstairs. As soon as she got into her bathroom, she took one look at the mirror and shrieked.
*
“Get out of my way, loser,” the beautiful woman snapped, as she walked past him on the sidewalk. Halo shrank back against the wall. He knew her.
She’d been in one of the paintings.
She was marked.
Needed to be warned. To be saved.
“Your soul is at risk,” he cried out, his voice hoarse.
Caustic laughter wafted toward him.
“There’s no saving me, asshole. And I don’t need your help. Look at you. Just a homeless bum on the street. You wouldn’t know good or evil if it came and bit you in the ass.” And she walked away, strutting her stuff.
But she was wrong. He did know. He’d learned at a young age that evil came in male and female forms. That it came in the form of those who said they loved you the most. And sometimes in the form of complete strangers.
You couldn’t let down your guard.
Good boy. Bad boy.
Chapter 14
“Oh, my God,” Cayce said to her mirror. “He dragged me out in public like this? How could the restaurant even let me in?” She alternated between laughter and fury, and then realized it was already an after-the-fact thing. No wonder Graham, her doorman, had been grinning.
She shrugged, stripped out of her clothes, let them all drop where she stood, and stepped into the shower. She leaned over, putting her hands against the shower wall, and just let the water sluice down her hair and back. She wanted to moan and cry for joy, but that took effort.
It took three times washing her hair to be able to run a comb through it without snagging on dried paint. Her fingers took a little bit longer to scrub. By the time she was done, she stepped out, grabbed a towel, wrapped it around her hair, and another around her body. She quickly dried off and walked into her bedroom.
She stared out the window, wondering how quickly her life had changed. She’d lost Elena, and then, all of a sudden, there was Richard. She didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know how to act. It was like he’d completely taken over, not as if she were a suspect, but as if she were a dear, dear friend. Something that Elena would certainly have done, if she’d been here. If it had been anybody else who had affected Cayce the same way, she might have known how to handle it. Not that she had to handle anything, but it felt like she did.
Then she realized she was just too damn tired, too tired to think, too tired to stand here any longer.
She walked over to the bed, dropped her towels to the floor, and completely collapsed under the sheets. Her last thought was that he had put all the leftovers in her fridge. And then she closed her eyes and let the world of darkness take her away.
And if her dream world had just taken her for a nice gentle stroll, it would have been fine. Instead it led her through a nasty maze of nightmares, of artists being hacked apart, arms being skinned, legs being skinned to go with the torsos. She knew that she could count on Richard to do the best he could, but,
