hurry. I guess he didn’t have time for small talk.”
“Interesting indeed. Did he ever have time?”
Now she felt defensive, as if Ryan were attacking Desmond or something. “What are you implying?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
But she couldn’t, of course, especially now that he had made a big thing of it. Desmond hadn’t really cared much. Maybe not at all. So why the hell was she here? Nina blinked back tears.
Ryan reached over and took her hand without looking directly at her. “Hey, I get carried away sometimes. It’s no big deal, okay?”
“Okay.” But it wasn’t okay. Now she was questioning not only Desmond’s feelings for her, but hers for him. Maybe she harbored a deeply buried resentment after all and had never admitted it, even to herself.
“Let it go, Nina,” he suggested softly, squeezing her hand. “Think about something else.”
At least the change in topic had taken Ryan’s mind off her ignoring his orders earlier. His anger seemed to have lessened. She suspected that he rarely held on to it for long anyway, thank goodness. She wasn’t up to a fight in her present frame of mind.
She was getting to know Ryan better now. He found vulnerable spots with unerring accuracy, that was for sure. He also gave good advice. Picking apart her relationship with her brother wouldn’t do anyone any good now. He’d been killed, and she was here to find out what happened. It was that simple. Reasons no longer mattered.
She would concentrate on Ryan for the moment. Figuring him out might make the difference in her success or failure in this venture.
His bad temper popped like firecrackers and just as quickly disappeared, the residual smoke dispersing a bit more slowly, but even that was clearing with the breeze of diversion. All she had to do to diffuse a situation with Ryan was to sidetrack him.
“So, how about if I buy you lunch?” she asked, forcing a lilt into her voice.
“You make me crazy, you know that?” he asked.
Nina decided the question was about as rhetorical as questions ever got, so she didn’t answer it. Instead, she made an observation. “You really ought to work on your adaptability, McDonough. Did you go through this trauma every time you hired an assistant?”
“You are not an assistant,” he said, only pretending anger now and not doing it very well, either. “You’re a serious liability is what you are. All I want is to do my job, and now I have to divide my time between that and keeping you out of trouble.”
Nina clicked her tongue in sympathy. “King’s orders, huh?”
“Yeah. King’s orders.” He heaved a gruff sigh. “You want this murder solved or not?”
“That’s why I came here,” she told him, exerting her best effort to sound patient and companionable.
“Yeah, well, I hope that’s why.” He risked another glance even as he wove through the traffic. “If it is, then you owe me some cooperation. You have to do exactly what I tell you and quit taking off on your own the way you did last night and today.”
“I’m yours to command,” she said primly, folding her hands in her lap.
He laughed and shook his head. She couldn’t help noticing the creases beside his mouth that could almost be called dimples. His teeth could be a toothpaste ad and his long-lashed eyes crinkled just right at the corners. The laugh was infectious, but she resisted the urge to laugh with him since he was laughing at her.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded, but he didn’t answer. Once his laughter subsided, they rode in silence. He was still holding her hand while they both pretended not to notice.
Just when she thought she had him figured out, another side of him would emerge to confuse her. About the only thing she had locked down about Ryan McDonough was his firm determination not to act on his attraction to her. Oh, it was there, as surely as hers for him, but he resented it as much as he resented her helping him with the case.
She didn’t care, Nina told herself. It was just as inconvenient for her as it was for him. The man was not her type at all. The chemistry between them was a purely physical thing that sometimes happened for no good reason at all. Pheromones or something equally ephemeral. An accident of nature in this case.
When the two people involved had nothing at all in common and no way in the world to make a personal connection work, they should simply ignore it. Or fight it tooth and nail, if it turned out to be this strong. That’s what he was doing and helping her to do, she assured herself.
His strategy was working for the most part. She should applaud that and thank him for attempting to be a jerk so she could keep her distance and he could keep his.
She ought to develop some kind of defense herself instead of testing their attraction at every turn, of analyzing it and rationalizing it and wishing it could somehow work.
God, where had that thought come from? She didn’t wish it would work. Did she? No, certainly not with a man like McDonough, who admitted he had no time or inclination to involve himself in anything but his job.
One thing she definitely had to do was to stop questioning his ability to do that job. At first she really had believed he was shirking his duty with regard to Desmond’s case, but now she knew better. She had seen the collection of files and realized the vast amount of work he and his men had accomplished in a very short period of time. She knew that she could leave today and rest assured that Ryan would eventually solve her brother’s murder for her if it could possibly be solved. So why didn’t she simply go to the airport and leave it to him?
Nina honestly couldn’t answer her own question. She liked to think she owed it to Desmond to have a hand in bringing his killer to justice. But a small voice inside her head warned her that her original reason for being in Montebello had evolved into another that had an even less certain outcome.
Ryan parked half on the sidewalk, half in the street just outside Pietro’s. Pete served the juiciest hamburgers on this side of the world and the greasiest fries anywhere. Nina could have her blasted oatmeal when she craved comfort food. He hit Pete’s place when he needed a brief shot of home. Today was turning out to be one of those days.
God only knew what she’d try next if he left her anywhere so he could get some work done. He’d just have to haul her with him everywhere he went, he supposed.
Maybe his stopping for the junkiest food available in Montebello had a little revenge attached to it. She definitely looked like a yogurt-and-bean-sprout kind of girl. Damned yuppie. Graphic designer? What kind of job was that? Probably did those so-called subtle ads with tons of blank space for products that were unidentifiable to the average guy.
He hadn’t asked her about her job because he didn’t want to know. The less he knew about her, the better. But then again, he had to find out as much as he could to determine whether he was right about her being innocent. God, he hoped he hadn’t misjudged. The king would never trust him with another assignment if he screwed this up.
Ryan shoved the car into Park and got out. By the time he had gone around and reached her door, she was already standing on the narrow cobbled sidewalk.
“Where
