Chapter 15
Besides being butt-ugly, the fogeymobile was a rattling, tubercular piece of shit. Sean tried to coax more speed out of the old monster, but when he hit sixty, it started to shimmy all over the road.
He eased down, cursing under his breath. It was taking longer than he’d anticipated to make it to Tam’s. He was reasonably sure they weren’t being followed, but he could use some sleep, in someplace secure. Tam’s fortress was as secure as it got, after Seth and Raine’s Stone Island hideaway. Seth had rigged it up for her himself. Pure, high-tech, state of the art paranoia. Just what the doctor ordered.
“What language was that?” Liv asked.
He glanced over, startled to find her awake, and dragged the incredibly filthy epithet he’d just uttered out of his short term memory bank. “Croatian,” he said. “A regional dialect of it, anyway.”
“What does it mean?”
He hesitated. “Uh, well, it was directed at the car,” he hedged.
“Yes?” she said sweetly. “And the meaning?” Her soft, beautiful voice was froggy with sleep, but full of curiosity. She waited.
He sighed. “It was a crude, vicious attack upon the virtue and chastity of the mother, grandmother and great-grandmother of the mechanic who last serviced this piece of shit car.”
She made that muffled little giggling snort that he loved so much. “How awful,” she murmured. “Those poor women. How unfair.”
“Yeah, right. My manners suck,” he said sourly.
“So where did you learn Croatian?”
He shot an uneasy glance, but there was nothing to see in the dark but the pale glow of the oversized T-shirt she wore. He’d been pathetically grateful when the princess collapsed into exhausted sleep the minute they got on the road. She needed the rest, for one thing. And he needed space just as badly. Time to process what was happening.
He wasn’t done with that processing yet, but Liv was done with her nap, and feeling fresh and chatty and curious. He was so in for it.
“In the Army,” he told her. “Ranger Regiment. Mostly in the Balkans. After my stint in the military, I bummed around in eastern Europe and Africa. I got contract work through military contacts. The money was good. And it suited my mood, at the time.”
“Contract work?” Her voice was delicately cautious. “What’s that?”
“Mercenary,” he said.
That shut her up. She was probably thinking that he’d been a hired thug. In some ways, he guessed he had been. It all depended on your point of view. Life was like that. Hard to define, hard to justify.
“Wow,” she said faintly. “Isn’t that, ah, really dangerous?”
“Yeah. I got lots of work because I pick up languages fast. I speak Croatian, and Farsi, and some Arabic, some Persian, decent French, and a bunch of obscure dialects you probably never heard of. That photographic memory about works aurally, too, if you program your brain right.”
“Wow,” she whispered. “Amazing. I wish I could do that.”
He shot her a glance. “Why couldn’t you?”
She gave him a derisive snort. “Get real.”
“No, really,” he protested. “It’s just a trick. My dad taught us. You just have to set your mind to it. No biggie. Anyone could do it.”
“Yeah, right.” Her voice was heavy with irony. “I don’t know how to break this to you, Sean, but what you describe is not normal. It is, in point of fact, what other people would describe as freak genius.”
“You got the freak part right,” he agreed. “You should hear my brothers talk. They think I’m an idiot savant. I can do tricks like a dancing bear, but I can’t seem to stay out of trouble with the cops. What does that suggest about my intelligence level?”
She covered her face. He heard smothered giggles. It gave him a happy glow to get a laugh out of her, even if it was at his own expense.
“So you’ve been doing, ah, contract work ever since then?” she asked, when she got her voice back under control.
“Nah. I burnt out a while back. For a while, after Kev died—after Kev was murdered,” he corrected himself. “I didn’t care whether I lived or died. But after a while, I started caring again. And if you keep putting yourself in harm’s way, it doesn’t matter how lucky you are. Statistics will catch up with you. Besides, it was so freaking depressing. I would have ended up eating a bullet in the end. Just so I didn’t have to keep seeing all that awful shit every time I closed my eyes.”
“Oh dear,” she whispered. “That’s awful. I’m sorry.”
“You know that diamond mine fuck-up I told you about? The electrical wire episode? That was the clincher, for me. I got this other scar in that incident, too.” He put his hand over the side of his abdomen, against the throb of remembered pain. “I had lots of time afterwards to lie around watching a bag drip into my arm and ponder how fucked up my life was. I decided it was time to lighten up.”
She was quiet for a while while she thought about what he’d said, but he knew he wasn’t off the hook yet. Long car trips were the pits, when it came to curious women. It was like being chained to a chair.
“That summer that we met, you were saving up money to finish your degree,” she ventured, her voice cautious.
And I blew every last penny on a rock for you, baby.
He stopped himself, just in time. No need to burden her with that. He touched the small gem in his ear, twirled it. His one nervous habit.
He’d worn it ever since he’d gotten the money together to set it into an earring, and never examined why. Masochism, maybe. A stern reminder not to get wound up about women. A perverse mix of both.
Maybe just because he was a vain peacock. The diamond looked sharp, which he liked, and it bugged his humorless brothers, which he also liked. Jerking Davy and Con around was one of the great joys of his existence. They considered his diamond an effete affectation. Fuck ’em. That was just dour old crazy Eamon talking. He’d be damned if he’d let the ghost of his dead father dictate his fashion accessories, too.
The shadow Dad had cast over his life was long enough as it was.
“So. I know you were interested in studying chemical engineering. Did you ever…” Her voice trailed off.
“No, Liv,” he said gently. “I never went back to finish my degree.”
She paused. “I didn’t mean to seem as if I was criticizing you.”
“Nah. A lot of things changed that summer. To tell you the truth, I forgot all about chemical engineering. It barely crossed my mind.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“Don’t be,” he told her. “I’m not. In retrospect, academia or theoretical research or a think tank would have been all wrong for a spaz like me. I would have gone batshit. Adrenaline junkie that I am.”
She twisted her hands together. “I’m so sorry,” she said again.
He shot her a puzzled look. “What are you sorry for this time?”
She shrugged. “All of it. What happened fifteen years ago. The dent that it put in your life. What happened today, too.”
“Ah. That,” he said. “Don’t be sorry about that on my account. I’m better off than I was before. It’s easier to deal with Kev being murdered than accept that he’d gone nuts. Now I’ve got someone external that I can hunt down and kill. That’s so much better, babe. So much.”
“Well,” she murmured doubtfully. “I suppose. If you say so.”
He decided to deflect questions from his own twitchy self. “So what have you done with yourself in the past fifteen years?” he asked.
She let out a small laugh. “Compared to you, absolutely nothing.”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “Spill it.”
She tossed her hands up. “Normal, dull, predictable stuff. Went to college. Went abroad. Studied art and architecture and literature. Tried to learn some French and Italian. Didn’t get very far. Got a masters in library science. Worked various places as a research librarian. Decided to try my hand at running a bookstore. And the rest you know.”
“I thought your folks wanted you to go into the family business.”
“Oh, yes. My mother was frantic. I wasted lots of energy opposing her. I guess that’s the big war story of my life, but it’s too sad and boring to tell. So that’s it for me. No crossing the desert on a camel, or swashbuckling swordfights, or guarding diamond mines, or mortal combat with cruel warlords or suchlike. Just dull, normal living.”
He rubbed the scar from his bullet wound. “Be glad,” he said.
“I know, but it seems so tame. At least until yesterday. My normal life is mostly work. In my spare time, I read books, shop for groceries, do laundry, pay utility bills. I see lots of movies. I love to garden. I collect patchwork quilts. I enjoy making bread and jam. Being domestic.”
He pictured it. Cooking with her, rattling around together in their homey, cluttered kitchen. Cuddling next to her underneath one of those quilts. Munching homemade bread and jam with her on her couch.
Gardening? Hmm. Maybe he could sprawl in a lawn chair and nurse a cold beer while he watched Liv garden. Bent sexily over her tomatoes at a ninety degree angle, in snug blue jeans. Yeah. Mmm.
“Sounds real nice,” he said wistfully. “Can I come?”
She made a sound, like she was blowing air out of her lungs. “Stop it, Sean. I don’t know what to think when you say stuff like that.”
“I’m a simple creature,” he said. “Take me at my word.”
“Simple?” Her voice began to shake. “Oh, yeah, Sean. Sure. Look what your simplicity has done to my life. I was in therapy for years.”
That perplexed him. She seemed so well-adjusted. “You? Why?”
“I wanted to stop thinking about you,” she said, forcefully.
They both stared out straight ahead, watching the yellow line that divided the small highway curving to the right, the left, the right again.
“Did it ever work?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head. “No,” she whispered.
“Not for me, either,” he admitted.
“I don’t want to think about it.” Her voice sounded bleak. “Let’s figure out what’s going on here and now. You’re not kidnapping me, last time I checked, so what’s our status? Am I running away with you?”
He felt suddenly more cheerful. “I like the sound of that.”
“And what do you plan to do with me?” she demanded.
“I can think of some real fun things right off the top of my head.”
“Oh, stop it,” she snapped. “Be serious, for once.”
“I’ll keep you safe.” The words came out clear and decisive.
“Well, that’s nice, Sean, but in exchange for what? A professional bodyguard comes at about two hundred bucks an hour. I have exactly nothing. And I do mean zip. Just a burned-up bookstore and a gargantuan mortgage. I’ll get some insurance money eventually, but until then—”
“I don’t care,” he said.
“And don’t think my parents being filthy rich will help.” Her voice quivered. “They’ve cut me off. I’m out of the will.”
“Good,” he said, with quiet vehemence. “That’s great news, babe.”
“Is it? Really? So how am I supposed to recompense you?”
“Sexual favors,” he said promptly. “Let’s see, two hundred bucks an hour for twenty-four hours, that’s forty-eight hundred bucks a day, princess. That’s a lot of favors.”
She snickered into her hands. “Oh, would you shut up.”
“I’d be at you all the time,” he said. “When I’m not defending you with life and limb, we’ll be writhing around in bed. It’ll be strenuous.”
“It already is,” she snapped. “I can barely walk.”
“Sorry,” he said meekly. “Bullshit aside, though. I don’t need two hundred bucks an hour. I’ll just do it because you’re the princess. You deserve to be protected. You don’t have to put out. And you don’t have to pay me. All you have to do is exist. That’s more than enough for me.”
Her eyes gleamed at him, luminous with tears. She wiped her eyes, looked away. The silence got very thick for a moment.
“That’s a very sweet thing to say,” she said demurely. “But it’s not very economically practical. We need a nuts and bolts plan.”
“I’m working on it, babe. Now if you’ll excuse me, this is where I have to start concentrating if I’m going to find Tam’s place.”
He had memorized the exact point on the fourth curve after the old stonework bridge where he had to stop, and slew to the left, bumping down into a narrow ditch and up again, straight into what seemed like a blank thicket of scrubby bushes. They scraped and brushed against the body of the car. He pushed on through the wall.
Once through it, they found themselves in a blind clearing blocked by the wall of a barn. The tumbledown roof was green with moss and full of gaping holes. The fogeymobile bumped over something metallic. Sean saw a flash of movement ahead and jerked to a halt right before the low, jagged metal spikes rising up at an angle out of the ground could puncture the front tires.
“Oh, God,” Liv squeaked.
“Damn you, Tam,” he snapped. “Snotty bitch. She did that to rattle me. I don’t want to have to replace the tires on this heap of junk.”
The row of spikes slowly, majestically retracted back into the ground. Sean grunted. “Gee, thanks. So generous of you.”
A narrow beam of red light flipped on, swiveling until it focused first on him, then on Liv’s face. It flicked back to him, lingered. Sean thumbed his nose, waggled his fingers, stuck out his tongue. “Yes, it’s me, Tam,” he said. “What do you want, a fucking DNA sample?”
There was a muted hum, and the wall of the barn divided into four parts and retracted, showing a road that led into the forest beyond.
“Good heavens,” Liv said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Sean grunted. “Yeah, it’s like Disneyland. But she’s got money to burn.” He acccelerated through the barn. The road wove through the thick woods, climbing and switching back, until it topped a crest.
“Look down, to your right,” Sean said.
She did, and gasped. The road was on the crest of a hill that sloped down to the beach. The vast immensity of the Pacific Ocean spread out before them, illuminated with moonlight that cast the shadows of the stunted, wind-contorted trees. Wind-combed shreds of cloud moved across the sky. Surf washed over the broad, shining beach, in long swathes of white, bubbly foam, crashing against spires of black rock. It was beautiful, in a cold, aching, melancholy way.
“Tam’s fortress is up top,” he explained. “Architectural camou-flage. You really can’t see it until you’re in it.”
“It’s like a James Bond movie.” Liv’s voice sounded nervous.
“Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” he assured her. “Tam is like a bad Bond girl herself. The kind that’ll do a backflip onto your head and break your neck with her perfect thighs if you don’t look sharp.”
She turned a worried gaze on him. “That sounds alarming.”
“Oh, no. She’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys. It’s just that you can’t ever relax with her. She’s…well, you’ll see.”
“Who is this woman?” Liv demanded. “What does she do? You’re driving me nuts with this ‘you’ll see, you’ll see’ crap. Tell me, already!”
“She’s a mystery,” Sean said helplessly. “I’m not being coy. We don’t know much, and we’re kind of afraid to ask. Nobody knows what all she’s done, but it was against the law, that’s for sure. And when you look around her place, you’ll see that it was profitable.”
“How do you know her? You don’t mean to tell me that you…?”
“Hell, no,” he said hastily. “I’m squeaky clean, sweetheart. I don’t need to go looking for trouble. I’m plenty busy enough with the trouble that comes looking for me.”
“So how did you meet her?” Liv persisted.
“My brother Con met her a couple years ago. She was the mistress of this psychotic billionaire who was trying to rub out my brother’s girlfriend. Who is now his wife, Erin. Anyhow, turns out Tam was trying to assassinate the guy herself, but he was a real tough bastard. She and Connor saved each other’s asses.”
“It does sound a tad stressful,” Liv murmured. “So? Did she?”
“Did she what?”
“Kill the billionaire,” Liv said impatiently.
“Ah, no, actually. It was Erin who killed him.”
She shot him a wide-eyed glance. “You mean, Erin is a commando chick who breaks men’s necks with her perfect thighs, too?”
“Nah. Erin is a sweet, demure antiquities nerd who wouldn’t hurt a fly. But she stabbed that evil fucker right in the throat with a Bronze Age Celtic dagger.” Sean’s voice was proud. “Blood squirting everywhere. You should have seen the walls of the place. It was unreal.”
“Thank God I didn’t,” Liv said faintly.
“Well, he was trying to strangle her to death,” he added, defensive. “And then Con and Tam shot up all his evil henchmen. It was intense.”
Liv shook her head. “I’m getting an inferiority complex.”
“Why? It’s no different from what you did to T-Rex this morning.”
Liv let out a bark of laughter. “There’s the difference that Erin killed the billionaire. Whereas T-Rex is still running around out there.”
“Don’t feel bad about it, babe. Practice makes perfect,” Sean encouraged her. “I’m sure you’ll get another whack at him.”
“Whoopee,” she muttered.
Sean pushed on. “So that was our bonding experience with Tam. She was maid of honor at Con and Erin’s wedding, when she gave Margot, Davy’s wife, this hairclip that sprays soporific gas. Which saved Margot’s life when they were being hunted by this wacko scientist who was selling a lethal flu vaccine…” His voice trailed off. He gave Liv’s averted face an uneasy glance. “Maybe now’s not the time to share.”
“It’s OK.” Liv’s voice was hollow. “I’d rather know that the woman I’m staying with is a hard-core career criminal.”
“Not now,” Sean said quickly. “Retired career criminal would be more accurate. She just lurks in her fortress. Designs crazy jewelry.”
“Yeah. She’s as harmless as a patchwork granny, I’m sure.”
“She’s special, our Tam. Try not to let her get under your skin,” he advised. “Check out this space age cloaking device over the garage.”
“What garage?”
She gasped as the mountainside split, bushes and moss and rocks gliding smoothly aside to reveal a garage carved right into the mountainside. “My God,” she whispered. “This is surreal.”
“Yeah,” he said, switching off the headlights. “Don’t worry. Tam likes us, for some reason. I imagine that’s why she hasn’t killed us yet.”
Liv stared, transfixed, at the rectangle of red-tinged light at the end of the dark garage. Light spilled out, reflecting in a long, ruddy streak on the gleaming stonework of the floor. A slender form appeared in silhouette, dramatically backlit. Hip cocked, leaning against the door frame. A gun dangled negligently from one hand. The other brought a cigarette to her lips. The tip glowed red. She tilted her chin up, blew out a stream of smoke. It looked like the opening of a dance piece.
Liv took a deep breath, and shoved the car door open. All she needed. Another challenge. Chatting up the beautiful bad Bond girl.
Sean slid his arm around her waist. “Relax,” he whispered. “What’s with the gun, Tam?” he demanded. “Lighten up.”
“The day I lighten up is the day I get killed.” Tam’s voice was low and husky. “I know your face, but I don’t know hers. She could have been holding a gun to your ribs, for all I knew.”
“I don’t do things like that,” Liv announced.
“I can see that.” Tam took another deep drag on her cigarette and sauntered towards them, hips swaying langorously, keeping Liv’s face in the light and her own in the shadow. “Oh, God, look at you. Looks like I’ll be doing some emergency shopping in the morning.” She grabbed the flapping T-shirt Liv wore and twisted it, to reveal the shape of her body. “Nice tits. Thirty-six double D, size…twelve?”
Liv jerked away, hackles rising. “On a good day. But please don’t bother. I’ll manage.”
Tam took another drag. “I can’t let a sister with a figure like yours dress like that. It’s a crime. Follow me. And take off those shoes.”
Liv stopped on the threshhold, stepping out of her ruined sandals. “Do you have a no-shoes rule in your house?”
“I have a no-ugly-shoes rule in my house,” Tam said coolly.
Sean made a smothered laughing sound, and turned his face away. Liv privately vowed to make him pay for that lapse. In blood.
“Look, lady, I’ve been on the run for my life,” Liv told her, through set teeth. “I’ve had way more important things to think about than—”
“On the run for your life is all the more reason to look your best, cupcake.” Tamara tucked her gun into the back of her jeans, and waved them on ahead of her. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”
Liv stared as Tam tapped in codes to reset the alarms.
“I’ve never seen you with brown hair and yellow eyes,” Sean said.
“Enjoy it while you can,” Tam said. “You may never see it again.”
Tam was slim, muscular, and curvy, a triple combination which Liv took as a personal affront, it being so unfair. Her brown hair was braided, long wisps dangling around the sharp line of her jaw. She had the most astonishingly beautiful face Liv had ever seen. Everything was perfect; high cheekbones, full lips, straight, perfect nose. Her eyes were huge; golden brown, with curling lashes and winged brows. There were smudgy circles beneath them, but what would make another woman look tired and frazzled made Tam look dramatic and mysterious.
She was dressed in faded, low-slung Levis and a tank top that showed off several inches of taut belly. No makeup. Barefoot. Her only jewelry was a gold horn stuck through one ear that tapered to a point, like a fang. Anyone hugging her would probably bleed to death, stuck through the carotic artery. Maybe that was the idea.
Liv felt fat, frumpy and outclassed. She couldn’t stop staring.
Tam ignored her, evidently used to it. She shooed them into a huge kitchen, and turned on a bright overhead light. Liv blinked as the light refracted off an uncountable number of gleaming reflective surfaces. Tam gave Sean a brilliant smile. “Your brothers will be here to kick you around, first thing in the morning.”
Sean groaned. “Shit. Tam, I told you not to—”
“I didn’t have to. Any idiot would guess that you would go to ground here. Let’s just hope that no other idiots know about me.”
Sean gave her a smile that was equally toothy. “Just us idiots.”
“And no one followed you?”
“No.” They eyed each other, like alpha wolves circling.
“Hmm,” she murmured. “Come on, come on.” She grabbed Liv by the arm, and shoved her on one of the stools in front of a big bar.
Her kitchen was amazing. Acres of black gleaming marble counter space, endless expanses of shining silver toned appliances, an enormous double-sized silver refrigerator. A knife block that would be the envy of a professional chef, racks of hanging copper bottomed pans. The place looked like a showroom. It had clearly never been used.
Tam opened the refrigerator, and took out a clear plastic box with several hypodermic needles. “Always prepared.”
Liv blinked at them. “What—hey!” She squawked, struggled, but Tam had already yanked her T-shirt over her head and tossed it. Liv tried to slide off the stool, but Tam’s hand clamped onto her shoulder.
“What the hell? Do you mind?” Liv hissed. “Give me my shirt!”
Tam’s perfect brow tilted. “Sean said you had cuts, and a bite wound. I want to take a look. Allergic to any antibiotics?”
“No!” Liv glared at Sean, who gave her an apologetic shrug. Ineffectual twit. “And I’ve had enough of people ripping my clothes off today to last a lifetime. It is rude!”
Tam examined the bite mark, which was sore and red. “But you have great tits. Sit up straight and show them off.” Tam swabbed Liv’s arm with disinfectant, and stabbed the needle in without warning.
“Ouch!” She jerked, but Tam held her arm firmly in place. “What are you doing to me, anyway? What the hell is that?”
“Broad-spectrum stuff,” Tam said. “Human bites can go bad.” She spun the twirling stool around, swabbed the other arm.
“Hey. Wait. What’s—”
“Tetanus booster. Had one lately?”
“Uh…” Liv hesitated, trying to remember.
“Then you need one.” Stab.
Liv tried not to shriek as the stuff burned into her arm like a massive, awful bee sting. But it seemed ignoble to bitch about it.
Tam held up a third hypodermic. “Were you raped?” Her voice as matter-of-fact as if she were asking if Liv took milk in her coffee.
Liv caught her breath as an image of T-Rex squatting on top of her, flashed through her mind. “No,” she said. “Close, but no.”
Tam flashed Sean a quick, approving glance. “Good.”
“What’s in that one?” Liv asked, with some trepidation.
“A dose of morning-after juice,” Tam said. “Do you need it? You did spend the day wrangling an oversexed gorilla who was hopped up on adrenaline. I doubt he exercised much restraint. Just say the word.”
“God, Tam,” Sean complained. “Would you back off?”
“Never,” Tam said sweetly.
“Isn’t that stuff available by prescription only?” Liv asked.
Tam’s grin lit up her face, showing off blindingly white teeth. “Aw. Is she for real? She’s cute, Sean. Where did you find her?”
Sean shrugged. “In Endicott Falls. Of all places.”
Tam snapped her fingers in Liv’s face. “So? You want this shot?”
Sean lifted his shoulders in a shrug that said “your call.” She thought about it for a second and a half. “No,” she said quietly. If it came to that, she and Sean could have The Talk.
Tam’s eyes widened. She rummaged in the chest, and pulled out a string of condoms. “You hardly need these, but take them as a reminder not to take advantage of a girl’s romantic feelings.” She flung them.
He caught them one-handed. “I am tired of everyone throwing condoms at me,” he growled. “I’m perfectly capable of getting my own.”
“But not using them, hmm?” Tam’s voice was sugary.
“Mind your goddamn business, Tam.”
“Oh, but I was. Until I got your phone call. If you want my help, you’ll just have to tolerate my character defects. Now get your own shirt off, big boy. It’s your turn.”
“Me?” he sounded aggrieved. “Why? Nobody bit me. And nothing’s infected. I would know by now if it was. So don’t worry about—”
“Shut up.” Tam’s voice was adamant. “If she gets it, you get it.”
Sean let out a liquid string of words as he yanked his shirt off.
“Insult me any way you like,” Tam said. “But if you ever talk trash about my mother and grandmother again, I will rip your guts out and tie them around your neck in a big, festive bow. Is that understood?”
Sean’s eyes widened with shock. “You speak Croatian?”
Tam’s face was an icy mask as she squeezed the air out of the syringe. “Assumptions get you killed. Filthy, shit-mouthed idiot dog.”
“Uh, sorry,” he said, chastened. “I didn’t mean it personally.”
She swabbed, and stuck him in the arm.
Sean hissed. “Fuck! I take it back. I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all.”
“Crybaby.” She swabbed the other arm, jabbed.
“Hell witch,” he snarled.
She responded with something incomprehensible. Sean shot something back. The insults flew, picking up speed and volume and vicious energy, each in a new language she had never heard.
“Stop it!” Liv yelled.
They stared at her, startled into silence. Liv retrieved her shirt and tugged it on. “Stop showing off,” she snapped. “It’s really irritating.”
“Sorry.” Sean turned to Tam. “You have to teach me the one about the goat-fucking son of a lazy camel, though. What is that, Turkish?”
“Yeah. I liked the Corsican one about the sheep in the bushes,” she said, faint admiration in her tone. “Very obscure. Very dirty.”
Sean gazed at her for a long, thoughtful moment, his smile fading. “Where the fuck are you from, anyway, Tam?”
Her smile was brilliant and empty. “Nowhere,” she said.
Tam opened the door of the vast refrigerator, which had nothing in it other than mineral water and a big box. “Here’s your dinner. Take it up to your suite to eat it. I can’t handle the smell of food tonight.”
Sean frowned. “Not eating, huh? You don’t look so good.”
Her eyes flashed. “Your usual cheap gallantry has deserted you.”
“You’ve lost weight,” Sean persisted. “More than you can afford to lose. And you’ve got circles under your eyes. Have you been sick?”
“How about you mind your own goddamn business, hmm?” Sean grabbed the box. “Whatever,” he said. “Thanks for dinner.”
Tam jerked her chin at him, with ill grace. “Take it and go. You’re bothering me tonight. Take the north tower. You know the way.”
Liv scurried to follow him. If that was how Tam looked when she wasn’t looking good, Liv would be afraid to to see her looking fabulous.