He thought about it for about three seconds. "Ah, bollocks to this."

And rising, he stepped to her, evaded the leading edge of the elbow jab, and scooped her off her feet. "There, now stay down." He dumped her on the bench. "We both know I'd not have taken you that easily if you were feeling yourself. I need you to listen to me."

He kept her hands gripped under his, felt the anger and insult vibrating through her. "After you do, if you feel you need to take a punch at me, well, you can have one for free. What I said in Whitney's office was the truth. I'd've done better to come to you so that we could have fought it out between us, but I didn't and I'm sorry. Still, what I said was the truth, Eve."

He squeezed down on her hands until she stopped trying to yank them away. "I'm asking for your help and offering mine to you. She wants to take you apart, little pieces of you sheared off each time she drops a body at your feet. Trying to make you think that you're responsible for putting them there."

"I don't think-"

"No, you know better, in your head. But she made you bleed in that cursed video of hers. In your heart. And she wants to finish you off with me. She doesn't know you. She doesn't understand what's in you, or what it is to love someone. If she managed, through some miracle, to take me out, you wouldn't fall apart. You'd hound her and hunt her. You'd run her to ground. And then, well, darling, you'd eat her alive."

He brought her clenched fists to his lips. "And I'd do exactly the same for you, if you're wondering." "That's real comforting, Roarke."

"Isn't it?" He said it with such cheer she felt a smile trying to tug at her mouth. "Let go. I'm not going to hit you. Just let go, and don't talk to me for a minute."

He released her hands, then brushed his fingers over her bruised cheek. Rising, he wandered off to leave her alone.

She sat where she was. The fury had sapped her, left even her bones feeling weak. More than that, she realized, it was the fear that made her weak. The image of seeing Roarke pitch to the floor at her feet, choking, gasping, dying. And Julianna standing there, out of her reach. Just out of her reach. Smiling.

She'd let that happen, Eve admitted. She'd let Julianna plant those weeds of fear, of guilt, of self-doubt. And she'd let them bloom instead of hacking them out by the roots.

That made her ineffective, and it made her slow. So Roarke had gone for the roots first.

He infuriated her. What else was new? They'd rammed heads countless times in the past, and would ram them countless times in the future. It was part of what they were. There had to be something sick about that, but there it was.

They just weren't peaceful people.

He'd been wrong, but so had she. As a cop, she should have examined and explored the option of using him as bait long before this. Love messed you up, she thought. No doubt about it.

He came back with two tubes of Pepsi and a greasy scoop of oil fries. And in silence sat beside her again.

"I want to say first that I'm entitled to be prideful when it comes to my work." She dug into the scoop, felt the grit of salt over the grease. And knowing he'd drenched them for her, had to choke back a sentimental sigh. "And second, sometime when you least expect it, I'm going to generate a memo to the top staff of your midtown offices stating that you wear women's underwear under those manly designer suits."

"Why, that's just cold."

"Yeah, then you'll have to strip down at a general meeting to prove it's a filthy lie and my vengeance will be complete." She looked at him then. "She's not just a- what did you call her-a mad tart. She's smart and she's driven. Don't underestimate her."

"I don't. I don't underestimate you, Eve. But I think, for just a bit of time here with one thing and then the other, you've been underestimating yourself." "Yeah, I have, and I don't like it thrown in my face. Okay. I've got to get home. There's a lot to do in a short amount of time."

She worked with him first, studying all the data on hotel security and on the event itself that he'd already had at the ready. She pitched questions, and he batted back the answers with the skill of a man who knew he owned the plate.

The Regency wasn't an urban castle as his Palace Hotel was. It was bigger, sleeker, and geared more for the upper-end business clientele than the fashionable rich.

It had sixty-eight floors, fifty-six of which were guest room levels.

Others held offices, shops, restaurants, clubs, and the conference centers, the ballrooms.

On the seventh floor was a casual bar/restaurant and swimming pool, which was open-air during good weather. The top two levels held eight penthouse suites, and were only accessible by private elevator. The health club, level four, was open to all hotel guests and to registered members. Entry, from inside the hotel or its exterior glide door, required a keycard.

Ballrooms were on floors nine and ten, with exterior and interior entries. The event would take place in the Terrace Room, named after its wide, tiled terrace.

"Lots of ways in, lots of ways out," Eve stated.

"That's a hotel for you. All exits will be secured. There are security cameras throughout the public areas. Full sweep." "But not the guest rooms."

"Well, people are fussy about their privacy. You'll have views in all elevators, in hallways. We can add monitors if you feel it's necessary. She'd be more likely to blend in as staff or an event attendee than a hotel guest, I'd say. She'd want to get out of the building after her job's done, not find a bolt-hole inside it."

"Agreed, but we keep a man monitoring all check-ins. I want that set up, along with field offices, ready rooms in a secured area as close to the ballroom as possible."

"You'll have it."

"Hotel security will be fully briefed. I don't want to alert the rest of the staff, or the outside event people. The less chance she gets wind of trouble, the better."

"You don't intend to tell Louise then?"

She'd considered, debated, weighed the pros and cons. "No, I don't.

We'll plant cops alongside the attendees, the servers, within your security. You'll arrange with your catering or whatever it is for the extra servers. Nobody will question you about it."

"I should think not," he mused.

"We'll need to go over the other functions in the hotel that evening.

You've got two conventions in, and a wedding deal. She may slip in through one of those."

"We'll nail it down. I'm sorry, I have a holo-conference in a few minutes. I have to take it; I've already re-scheduled twice." "It's all right, I've got plenty to do."

"Eve."

"Yeah, what?"

He bent over her, pressed his lips to the top of her head. "There are a number of things we need to talk about." "I'm only half-pissed at you now."

His lips curved against her hair. "That's just one of several. For now I'll just say I was half-pissed at you when Mira dropped by my office this afternoon."

She didn't look up, but she went very still. "I didn't ask her to.

Exactly."

"But it occurred to me, very shortly, that you'd wanted her to talk to me because you were worried. You knew the trip to Dallas was eating at me, perhaps more than I knew it myself. So thanks."

"No problem."

"And it would be small of me to qualify that gratitude by pointing out that by sending her along without mentioning it to me, you'd gone over my head and behind my back."

Now she looked up, just a shift of the eyes. "Good thing you're too big a man to do that." "Isn't it?" He bent lower, gave her one hard kiss, then left her alone.

"Managed to get the last word on that one," she commented, then scooped her hair back and shifted focus to the spa and transpo data.

She might still win this little battle by snapping Julianna up before she got her chance at Roarke.

An hour later, she was back to being annoyed and frustrated. She'd managed to intimidate and browbeat reservation lists out of two of the resort spas on her list. The others were sticking firm to the protection-of- guests' privacy line. And so were the private transportation companies.

Pushing through an international warrant to free up the data was problematic and time-consuming. The case was a hot enough button that the judge she'd tapped for it was sympathetic rather than annoyed. But it was taking time.

Another advantage for Julianna, Eve thought. She didn't have to jump through the hoops of the law. She paced, checked her wrist unit, and willed the warrant to spill out of her data slot.

"Problem, Lieutenant?"

She glanced back to where he leaned against the doorjamb separating their offices. He looked very alert, and very pleased with himself. "I guess somebody's time was well spent."

"It was. The meeting went very well. And yours?"