it bother you to have to coddle a bunch of overprivileged snobs?”
“I don’t coddle. I perform a service. I do my best to see that the guests of the hotel have an exceptional experience.”
“But aren’t most of the requests things your guests could do for themselves if they’d only lift a finger or two?”
“Sometimes. But honestly, I don’t see it that way. A lot of them are simply too busy to start checking the phone book or to find out where the closest luggage shop is. I know the city. I can make their stay more pleasant, easier. I have extraordinary connections, so I’m able to help the guests get the things they really need.”
“I’m leaving,” he said, apropos of nothing.
She put her fork down. “Now?”
He shook his head, surprised that he’d brought this up. He hadn’t planned on telling her anything about himself. “In three months. I’m leaving the force.”
She didn’t seem too shocked, which made sense considering their earlier conversation. “Where are you going?”
“Boulder. I’m going back to school.”
“That’s wonderful. Studying law, or—”
“Literature.”
Mia sat back in the booth. Now she seemed shocked. “Literature. Wow.”
Oddly, he felt proud and embarrassed both when he should have felt neither. “I want to write. To teach.”
“I’d very much like to hear that story,” she said.
He tried to hold back a yawn and failed. “Maybe another time.” When he looked at her again it was with a sleepy smile. “I have the feeling you’re a very good concierge.”
“That I am,” she said.
He sat back in the booth as she took her tiny bites of blintzes, thinking that he should leave her to finish dinner alone. He needed to go home and get some sleep. Not that he hadn’t done this a hundred times over the last ten years. Stayed up for twenty-four, thirty-six or more hours. It was part of the gig. What made him wonder about his mental state wasn’t that he was sleepy. It was that all he wanted to do was sit in Maxwell’s diner across from Mia Traverse and watch her eat. Sip her iced tea.
Nope, it didn’t make a damn bit of sense. But there it was.
4
“I PREFER JANE AUSTEN, personally,” Mia said as they returned to Hush later that night. “Pride and Prejudice. Emma.” She gave herself a little hug. “So wonderful.”
“Would my manliness come into question if I admitted I like her books, too?”
Mia looked up at him with a broad smile. “I think you’re safe in that respect, Detective.”
He slowed his pace, wondering if he was about to make a big mistake. Screw it. He only had three more months to get through, and they were going to be working together. “It’s Bax.”
The back of her hand brushed the back of his. The briefest of touches, probably an accident. And yet it made him feel things he hadn’t felt in a hell of a long time.
“I know,” she said. “Baxter Milligan. What I can’t figure out is if the name is Irish or Scottish.”
“Both is my guess. The Milligans were on the border between England and Scotland, from Wigtown, in fact. From what little my grandfather told me, the young lads had issues with geography.”
“Have you been there?”
He shook his head. “But if the writing works out, I mean really works out, I might like to settle in Ireland.”
“Won’t you miss living here?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, his pace so slow they were almost standing still. Thing is, he didn’t want the conversation to be over. “I don’t have real close ties. A brother in California, a sister in Boston. We hardly see each other.”
“Why not?”
He had to think a minute but before he could even suppose at an answer they were in front of the hotel.
Suddenly there was a crowd of people surrounding Mia. Someone shouldered him back a step, then a camera hit him in the ribs.
“Who killed Gerry Geiger?”
“Why are Bobbi and Danny only taking half their regular salaries?”
A dozen more questions shot like gunfire over the flashing camera lights. He ignored it all in his need to get to Mia, to get her out of the center of the storm. Taking no precautions, he barreled through, not caring one damn that there were cries of protest and pain. Especially when, to his horror, Mia yelped as she fell over some moron’s camera case.
Bax was there in a heartbeat, kneeling down, scared shitless and mad enough to put the whole lot of them behind bars or worse.
“Mia?”
She blinked up at him. “Whoa. That wasn’t very pleasant.”
“No, it wasn’t.” He took her arm and helped her sit up as flashes went off all around them. He wanted to shove the cameras down some throats. For Christ’s sake, they weren’t celebrities. None of those pictures would mean a damn thing.
The moment he could see she hadn’t been seriously hurt, he turned on the paparazzi. “Get the hell away from her.”
Instant quiet. No more camera flashes.
“You found the body. Any clues there who killed Geiger?” some guy shouted from the edge of the crowd.
“Are Danny and Bobbi having an affair?”
“Why was Geiger on Weinberg’s payroll since the Mexico shoot?”
“Come on, you must know something, huh!”
Bax checked Mia once more. “You okay? Should I get an ambulance?”
“No, no. I’m fine. Just a little bump on my butt is all.”
“You sure?”
She squeezed his arm with her small hand. “Positive.”
“Good,” he said, then stood up, pulling her along with him. She seemed steady on her feet.
He swung around, lifting his badge as he faced the bulk of the crowd. “Two seconds and I’m taking you all in for a hard forty-two. Is that clear enough for you bastards, or do you want to get a tour of Rikers?”
The photographers flew apart as if blown by a tornado, and that’s what Bax felt like. This whole event had been unacceptable and it was all he could do not to bust some heads.
Of course, most everything was unacceptable these days.
