When she started past him, he raised an arm to block the elevator opening. “What do you know about Crystal LaRue?”
“I know she’s dead.” Rosalie fisted a hand on her hip, cocked it. “Something else you want?”
Alex let her see that her snide invitation only amused him. “What do you know about her before she was dead?”
“Nothing.” She would have given him the same answer if she’d been Crystal’s most intimate friend, but as it was, she was telling the simple truth. “I never met her. Heard she was new, didn’t have a man yet.”
“Now, I heard that, too,” Alex said conversationally. “And I heard that Bobby wanted to make her one of his wives.”
“Maybe. Bobby likes to start them young.”
Alex struggled with his disgust. She’d been seventeen, he thought. A runaway who hadn’t known the rules and would never have a chance to learn them. “Did Bobby roust her, put on the pressure?”
“Can’t say.”
“Can’t say? Or won’t?”
Rosalie opened the hand on her hip and began to drum her fingers there. “Listen, I don’t know what Bobby did. I’ve been keeping out of his way lately.”
Saying nothing, Alex studied her face. The bruising had faded. “Seems to me Bess is paying you enough that you could stay out of his way altogether.”
“That’s my business.”
“And hers,” Alex said evenly. “I don’t want him finding out about this sideline of yours and going after her.” His eyes were cold and passionless. “Then I’d have to kill him.”
“You think I’d turn Bobby on to her?” Arrogance was sidelined as fury snapped into Rosalie’s voice. “Ioweher.”
“What?”
“Respect,” she said, with an innate and graceful dignity that had Alex softening. “She had me eat at her table. She even said I could stay in her extra bedroom. Like a guest.” Her lips thinned at Alex’s expression. “Don’t sweat it, honey. I didn’t take her up on it. Sure, she’s paying me, and maybe you don’t think that’s any different than me taking money from some slob off the street. But she treats me like somebody. Not something,somebody.” Embarrassed by her own vehemence, she shrugged. “She doesn’t have the sense not to.”
“She’s got sense, all right. Not all good.” Alex’s lips twitched, even as Rosalie’s did. “Maybe she hasn’t gone so wrong here. I just don’t want her hurt.”
“Neither do I.” Rosalie tapped a scarlet nail on his chest. “You got a bad case, cop. Stars in your eyes.” The little wisp of envy came and went, almost unnoticed. “Make sure you keep them in hers, or you’ll answer to me.”
His grin flashed before he could prevent it. The charm of it nearly had Rosalie changing her mind about cops. “Yes, ma’am.” Like Bess, he wanted to say something that would stop her from going back on the streets. Unlike Bess, he accepted that there was nothing that would do it.
“Maybe I see why she’s so stuck on you.” When he moved his blocking arm, she stepped into the elevator, turned. “You be good to her, Stanislaski. She deserves good.”
The elevator doors clunked shut. Alex stood studying them a moment before he turned and wandered down the corridor to find Bess.
She was bent over the keys, rapping out a machine-gun fire of words onto the monitor. Her fingers moved like lightning, but her eyes were far away. In Millbrook, he thought, smiling to himself.
She had her legs crossed under her, up on the chair. The way her shoulders were hunched, he imagined her muscles would complain loudly the moment she came back to earth.
She was wearing a skirt again, a little leather number in bold blue that was hiked high up on her thighs. The hot-pink blouse she’d tucked into it should have clashed with her hair, but it didn’t. The blouse looked like silk and was carelessly shoved up to her elbows. A half-dozen gold bracelets clanged at her wrist as she worked. Rings flashed on her fingers, and the big Gypsy hoops she wore at her ears peeked out of her tousled hair.
His heart ached with love for her. And his loins... Alex let out a little breath. He wanted, quite simply, to devour her. Inch by delicious inch.
What the hell was he going to do, he wondered, when she tried to slither out of his life? He was sure she would, as she’d done with others before. He could lock her up, carry her off. He could beg or threaten. He already knew he would do whatever he had to in order to keep her in his life.
What had ever made him think he would one day find some nice, pretty woman with simple tastes and a quiet style? Someone who would be content to sit home while he worked his crazy hours? Who would have and help him raise the houseful of children he so badly wanted?
With Bess, nothing was simple, nothing was quiet. She would never be content to sit home but would badger him incessantly, picking at him until he gave in and talked about the darker aspects of his work, those pieces of his life that he wanted to keep locked away from everyone who mattered. As for children... He didn’t know how the devil to get and keep a ring on her finger, much less ask her to help make a family.
Being in love with her left him helpless, made him stupid, brought him a kind of fear he’d never faced as a cop. Not fear for his life. Fear for his heart.
He could only take his own advice and leave things as they were. Handle each day until she was so used to him she’d want to stay.
