“Um.” She decided to ignore that loaded statement, and groped for a neutral topic to replace it with. “So how’s your health, Janos?”
The bastard had the nerve to look as if he was trying not to smile. “What about it?” he said lightly. “What do you care? I am no one to you. I am just an uninvited guest, no? You do not even call me by my name.”
“Cut the crap and answer the question,” she snapped.
He shrugged. “There were many holes to mend,” he said matter-of-factly. “I lost a great deal of blood. My convalescence would have gone more quickly if you had been near me.”
“I’m glad to see it went just fine anyway,” she said crisply.
The silence lengthened. Tam was on the verge of flinging herself at him when he looked around her studio with a rueful smile.
“I almost didn’t recognize the road to your house,” he said.
She sniffed. “Ah, yes. That. I changed the look of everything in the interests of getting the hell over my own paranoid bullshit. It was just overcompensation, anyway. I started feeling embarrassed by it.”
“You have less to be afraid of now,” Val said. “With Georg and Novak dead. And PSS is working on making you disappear from all the Most Wanted databases of the world.”
“They are?” She was startled. “Why on earth would they do that?”
He shrugged. “Because I told them to.”
The edge in his voice made her look at him more closely. “I didn’t know you had that kind of clout with them,” she said.
He waved his hand dismissively. “They were embarrassed about Hegel and Berne’s involvement in a mafiya turf war,” he said. “Bad for the company’s image. I told them I would be pleased to keep my mouth shut—if they did what they could for you.”
She blinked. “Ah. So you’re bullying them now? I’m surprised they didn’t just kill you.”
“Let them try,” he said.
She swallowed. “No,” she said quietly. “I would rather they didn’t.”
“Would you? How kind,” he said, his voice laced with irony. “In any case, you should not have much trouble now from anyone.”
“That is my hope,” she said stiffly. “I’ve lost my taste for trouble.”
“I have not,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “There is some trouble that I still would welcome.”
She broke eye contact quickly and stared down at the jewelry that she’d been working on. She couldn’t bear to look at him. Feelings vibrated inside her at a screamingly high frequency.
His footsteps sounded soft and deliberate, moving closer to her. “What are you working on now?” he asked quietly.
She invited him with her hand to take a look at what was on the bench. “See for yourself.”
He looked at the items she’d been working on, and carefully picked up a ring. It was a streamlined blend of white and colored gold knotwork, with a blazing sun as the centerpiece, a yellow diamond glittering in its core.
“Very beautiful,” he said. “This looks too big for a woman’s hand.”
“It’s not for a woman’s hand,” she said.
He slanted her a startled glance and then reexamined the ring in his hand. “No? Did you not tell me that you only design jewelry for women? Was that not part of your philosophy?”
“I did, and it was,” she admitted. “But this ring is not for a woman.”
He slid it onto his left hand, and admired the effect. “It fits.”
She shrugged. “It’s part of a matched set.”
“Ah, sì? Show me the other pieces.”
She picked up the other ring, a smaller one. “For the woman,” she said. She put it in his outstretched hand. This one was white gold knotwork, with tiny accents of yellow gold, with a crescent moon curled around a small white diamond.
He stared down at the pieces, a frown of concentration on his face. “They are perfect,” he said. “What are their defense applications?”
Her blush began to rise again. “There are none.”
He swiveled his head toward her, taken aback. “None?”
She shook her head.
Val closed his hand over the woman’s ring. “I want them.” His voice rang fiercely. “These rings are mine.”
She bit her lip, still unable to look into his face. “They’ll cost you.”
“I’ll give you everything I have,” he said promptly.
She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re not a very shrewd bargainer, Janos.”
“Do not play with me. Do not be flip. Not about something so important,” he said roughly. “Be silent if you cannot control yourself.”
He grabbed her left hand and slid the woman’s ring onto her ring finger. It fit, of course. He put her hand up to his lips, and kissed it. “Beauty for beauty’s sake alone?”
She covered her shaking mouth, embarrassed. “I suppose so.”
“No more deadly secrets?”
She started to shake with silent, helpless laughter. “I don’t have any secrets from you,” she said at last. “I’ve tried to keep them, but it just never seems to work out. I’m giving up the effort. Go ahead, Val. Know all my nasty, deadly, dangerous secrets if you feel like it. Knock yourself out.”
He kissed her hand again. “I am honored to know them.”
“Nice, nice,” she scoffed. “You’re good at putting a pretty spin on things, Janos. Did they teach you that in gigolo school?”
He winced. “Ouch. Must you always deflate me?”
“Always,” she warned. “I’m hardwired that way. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that love will change me.”
His grin went suddenly incandescent. “I could weep for joy to hear you say the word love for the first time. But for the fact that it would frighten you into fits if I did.”
“Frightened? Me? Hah.” She glared at him, but could not maintain the expression when he touched her face with his fingertip that way, as if she were a flower. Rare, precious, and delicate.
He leaned his forehead against hers, and the hot point of contact was so sweet, as intimate as a kiss but more oblique, more secret. She did not flinch away from it. She melted into it, softening.
He slid his hands down, over her shoulders, over her ribs, to the warm, bare skin of her waist, and then skimmed them upward, pulling the black T-shirt with them. Tam raised her arms, let him tug it over her head, pulling wisps of hair loose and dangling around her face.
She gazed at him, naked to the waist. “It’s not the first time,” she said. “I said the word once before.”
He froze. A muscle in his jaw pulsed. “After you drugged me? So it wasn’t just a dream?”
“No. It wasn’t a dream. I said it.” She shivered, feeling exposed. The pants hung low on her hips. He drew the drawstring bow loose, with a slow, deliberate pull. The soft, crumpled linen garment puddled around her feet, leaving her entirely naked. “And I meant it,” she finished in a whisper.
“Ah, Tamar,” he whispered back.
She flinched violently at the gentle touch of his hands spanning her waist. For a moment, it was just as she had feared it would be.
She