He’d had his chance to be a part of her life, a part of her family, and he’d turned it down without even a reply, just a packet of letters marked Return To Sender.
She shook her head, feeling the echoes of old sorrow, newer frustration. This would never work. There was no way she and Rathe could function together as a team. “We could’ve talked anytime today, you didn’t need to follow me home. Right now I’m tired and I have a full day of surgery to observe tomorrow, so I’m going to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”
She moved to brush past him, but he caught her arm and waited until she looked up at him. “Nadia. Nia. I didn’t follow you. Talbot told me where you were billeted, so I waited here for you.” He paused a beat. “Why? Did someone follow you?” When she didn’t answer right away, he shook her. “Nia! Were you followed?”
She thought of the high beams behind her, the feeling of creeping malevolence they’d given her and the relief she’d felt when she turned into the garage and they moved on by. “No, of course not.”
“You always were a lousy liar. Damn it! This is all because of that crazy stunt you pulled in the laundry area.” Looking suddenly tired, he released her arm, stepped forward and stabbed the elevator call button. “Come on. We need to set some ground rules. If you keep this up you’ll get yourself killed.”
“Why are you being like this?” Nia’s voice rose as her frustration moved to the fore. She was tired and confused, and though his presence complicated everything, she wasn’t going to bow out of her first official investigation simply because he wanted her to. “Why are you set on running me off this case? Is it personal? Is it because we were lovers? If so—” she dredged up the words she’d said so many times in the fantasies where he’d come back and begged for another chance “—you’re the one who walked, McKay, not me.”
Technically he hadn’t walked; he’d sent her back to her father. Somehow that had been worse.
“This has nothing to do with ancient history,” he snapped, though Nia swore that, for a moment, his eyes dropped to where her snazzy leather jacket hung over her breasts. Heat climbed her cheeks as he continued, “Nothing!”
“Then what is it about?”
He paused for a moment, seeming to struggle with the answer. Then he exhaled noisily. “You’re a woman, Nia, and I don’t work with women. You know that.”
It was one of the stories her father hadn’t told her, one she’d overheard her parents discussing late at night. Rathe’s partner, Maria, had been killed while they were on assignment. Not long after the incident, he had come to live with Nadia’s family for a few weeks. Gaunt and sad-eyed, he hadn’t spoken much. He’d spent most of his time sitting down by the beach with an empty sketchpad on his knee.
At eighteen, Nadia had known him only from her father’s stories. Though Tony had told her to leave Rathe alone, she had found excuses to wander down by the water. She’d sat on the steps above him, each day bringing a different book, until he’d finally turned around and asked, “What are you reading?”
She’d blushed and shown him the cover of a travel book about Bateo, wishing it were something more sophisticated. A text from her advanced P-chem class maybe, or a mature story about unrequited love.
“I’ve been there, you know,” he’d said.
And though she knew he’d been to Bateo—from the story entitled “The Time Rathe Stopped an Outbreak of Blood Fever”—she had shaken her head and asked him to tell her about the island. He’d described the way the light slanted down between the leaves high above, and how the bugs were bigger, the animals meaner, and the natives tougher than any she’d see in the States.
As he’d talked, his eyes had glowed a molten silver, his shoulders had squared and his back had straightened until he looked like the man she’d expected to meet, not the sad, hollow figure who’d sat down by the beach and sketched nothing.
The next morning he was gone. Inside her heavy book bag—she’d been in her third year of college by then—she’d found a sheet of paper folded inside the book on Bateo. On it was a pencil drawing of a jungle scene with some of the prettiest leaves, biggest bugs, and meanest-eyed creatures she could imagine.
After that he’d sent her presents once or twice—a colorful feather arrangement and a cowrie shell necklace she’d kept in a carved box beside her bed. Then he’d come back the year she turned twenty-one, and everything had changed.
And changed again.
Now she angled her chin up at him. “Yes, I’m a woman, but I’m also damn good at my job. Just ask Wainwright.” She knew full well Rathe had already called their boss, just as she knew he’d pushed to have her yanked from the case and been turned down. “Even better, open your eyes and see for yourself.”
“It’s not that.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Yes, it is.” She stepped into the empty elevator car, bracing an arm across the opening to keep him out. “And for your information, I’m not quitting. If you can’t work with me, you’ll have to take yourself off the case.”
A large part of her hoped he would do just that. A smaller, more feminine part hoped he wouldn’t.
He scowled. “Damn it, Nia! Let me come up. We need to talk about this.” The air around him vibrated with tension, and his eyes seemed to shoot silver sparks, but she wasn’t afraid of him.
Not physically, at least.
She stepped back and pulled her finger off the open-door button. “No. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Meet me in the coffee shop at seven.”
The doors tried to slide shut. He blocked them with his shoulder and glared at her. “Fine. But promise me one thing. Promise you won’t snoop around the hospital again tonight. Leave that to me, okay?”
Nia might have taken offense at the request, but she was too darned tired to do more than collapse into bed. And there was something in his frustration, in his suddenly human gaze, that told her the request wasn’t just the primary asking his junior investigator not to interfere.
Her father might have called it “The Time Rathe Asked for a Favor.”
Confused, stirred up and weary beyond words, she simply nodded. “Fine. I won’t go back to the hospital tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.”
A glint that might have been relief, might have been triumph, flashed in his eyes and he let go of the elevator doors. “Tomorrow, then.” He turned and walked away as the panels slid shut.
This time it was Nia who slapped a hand to keep them open. “Rathe!” He stopped and looked back without turning. She felt suddenly foolish, but something compelled her to call, “Be careful.”
Maybe he smiled. Maybe he winced. But after holding her eyes with his for a heartbeat, Rathe simply inclined his head and turned away.
Nia let the doors slide shut and resisted the urge to press her suddenly hot face against the cool metal wall.
THE NEXT MORNING Rathe leaned back in an uncomfortable booth and watched Nia enter the hospital coffee shop. A restless night was etched in the deep circles under her eyes. Her skin was tinted with makeup, but the hollows remained. And, damn it, they didn’t detract
