Orla gave him an innocent look. She was referring to the fact that Aimee might succeed in getting her, but she wasn’t about to say as much. With another shrug, she told him, “Put your own meaning to it.”

  Sean looked at her as if he actually understood what she was suggesting, but of course he didn’t.

  “You are definitely an enigma, Orla, and I don’t know if you noticed or not, but this mystery is already taxing enough without having a mental challenge thrown in on top of it.”

  “Sorry, I can leave,” Orla said, her voice growing distant. She didn’t like being lectured to, especially when she felt at such a loss, getting her true bearings.

  “Or,” he countered with a note of impatience, “you can straighten up and fly right.”

  Anger creased her forehead as she raised her chin. “I’m not accustomed to being spoken to that way.”

  “Obviously,” he noted. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  Orla began to storm toward the door, intending to leave, but Sean caught hold of her wrist, holding her in place.

  The look in his eyes did the same.

  He backed off a little bit, perhaps realizing he had overplayed his hand.

  “What do you say we have a do-over?” he suggested, then elaborated, “And start over again?”

  For a moment, she debated giving him hell, then decided that he was going out of his way to protect her. Reading him the riot act would be an awful way to pay him back.

  Orla blew out a shaky breath, then apologized. “Sorry,” she murmured. “Where are my manners anyway?”

  The question wasn’t meant for him, but for herself. Still, he was the one who answered her. “Gone into hiding for the time being, it seems. That’s okay,” he told her. “You’re entitled. I’m not here to point fingers, I’m just here to give you a place to find a little bit of solitude.”

  Usually she was the one who provided the solitude by either making her clients feel like they were safe, or assuring them that they would come out of this tailspin that either life—or some man they had mistakenly trusted—had knocked them into. She did not like feeling as if control of her life was completely out of her hands.

  She felt a smile, grounded in gratitude, rising to her lips.

  “I appreciate that,” she said, voicing her feelings in a far more relaxed tone. “I know it doesn’t sound that way, but I really do.”

  The smile he flashed her said he believed her. “No judgment,” Sean told her. “The bedroom is right this way.”

  It was a small room, but, like the rest of the apartment, it was neat and clean and right now, she didn’t require anything more than that.

  But she felt guilty about taking over like this. “I still don’t feel right about this,” Orla confessed.

  “Luckily there’s no need for you to sign a document stating that you do,” Sean quipped. “All you need to do at this point is just go along with it.”

  She gave him a dubious look, but she could see that he was really being sincere.

  “Ordinarily,” he continued, taking out a fresh set of sheets from the side closet and placing them on the bed, “I’d suggest that maybe you’d rather stay at my sister’s place, but one of her rooms is being painted and although the smell of paint doesn’t seem to bother her, it does bother most normal people.

  “Can I interest you in having something to eat?” he asked her in a friendly voice.

  Orla shook her head. “No.”

  “Okay, theme and variation on that question,” he said. “When was the last time you had something to eat?”

  Orla lifted her shoulders in response and then let them drop. To be totally honest, she couldn’t really remember the last time she’d eaten. She vaguely remembered breakfast, but after that, she hadn’t a clue.

  Sean nodded. “That’s what I thought,” he murmured. “You do realize that it’s important for you to eat something in order to keep going, don’t you?”

  She could feel her stomach rejecting the very idea of food. “Right now, if I ate something, I’m fairly sure that I’d wind up recycling it within minutes.”

  “Then we’ll put something light into your system to keep that from happening. My late mother insisted that we put something nutritious into our bodies every day. She wouldn’t allow us to leave the house until we did.”

  “Simple but wise,” Orla commented.

  “You would have liked her,” Sean mused.

  His comment surprised her. She wasn’t accustomed to having anyone talking about their parent as someone they would have liked introducing her to. For the most part, she felt removed from people’s day-to-day lives.

  Until now, she thought.

  She flashed a small smile at Sean, trying to imagine what his mother had been like. “I’m sure I would have,” she said.

  She could see that her response pleased him. Her smile grew a little wider.

  Orla caught herself looking toward the refrigerator. Maybe, just for the sake of getting along, she should try consuming something.

  “I’ll have a piece of toast,” she told him.

  Sean immediately walked over to the refrigerator. “Well, it’s a start,” he said, taking out what was left of a loaf of bread.

  Orla watched as the detective undid the twist tie that was holding the bag closed. “It’s also a finish,” she informed him.

  He flashed a knowing smile in her direction. Now that she had left an opening, he was not about to back off. “You are nothing if not an optimist,” he told her.

  He was being sarcastic. She supposed that she really couldn’t blame him. “This is all new to me,” Orla admitted. “I was raised to be utterly conscious of the dark side. The lighter side is something I’m really not accustomed to.”

  Nodding, he said, “Maybe that’s something we can work on once this is all behind us.”

  Was he planning on maintaining some sort of a relationship with her once this was over and they had managed to put her father’s killer away? Orla wondered. It certainly sounded that way to her. Ordinarily, that would have gotten her back up, or at the very least, annoyed her.

  Oddly enough, it didn’t.

  She couldn’t begin to explain why, even to herself, but she did know that she was exceedingly aware that she’d caught herself actually smiling.

  The toast had popped. Sean buttered it and placed the two slices of bread in front of her, then took a seat opposite her himself.

  She noticed that the slices were golden brown and said as much. She hadn’t told him how she liked it.

  “You didn’t strike me as a burnt toast kind of person,” he told her. “But if this isn’t to your liking, I can always make you something else. Just tell me what you prefer.”

  “This is fine,” she assured him quickly. “Besides, I’m not about to have you jumping through hoops over toast. Especially since you were nice enough to insist on making it for me in the first place.”

  “I thought that maybe it would help you—us,” he corrected, “unwind.” He smiled at her as he continued. “I figured that if I talk long enough, I might end up putting you to sleep—which is my ultimate goal.”

  She laughed as she swallowed the piece of toast she’d bitten off. “You’re not that boring,” Orla assured him.

  “There might be a couple of people who would disagree with you,” Sean told her.

  “Your ex-fiancées?” she asked.

  That was much too good a guess to just be a shot in the dark. He stared at her, stunned. “How did you...”

  “I have my sources, even if I spend most of my time working.” She had made a phone call to someone she knew while he’d been going over her father’s apartment, looking for evidence, but there was no reason for her to admit to that.

  “There is a reason why they became exes,” he said. “They didn’t appreciate competing with my line of work. As a matter of fact, they resented it.”

  “I never had that problem. For me it was strictly work,” Orla admitted.

  “Spending too much time that way could be taxing for anyone. You need to unwind, to relax,” he told her, adding, “to learn to breathe.”

  Orla looked at him knowingly. “Said the police detective who rescues hit-and-run targets in his spare time.”

  He smiled, probably catching the intended irony. “Hey, we all have to have hobbies to help us cope with the stresses of our job,” he told her. He glanced down at her plate and nodded with approval. She’d finished the toast, every last bit of it, rather than leaving some of the crust behind. “You cleaned your plate. Want more?”

  “Oddly enough, maybe one more slice,” she answered. Saying that, she waved him back to his seat. “You stay put, Detective. I can make it myself. I’m not exactly a great cook,” she freely admitted. “But I assure you, I can handle making toast. It doesn’t exactly require a gift—or even mild expertise.” She laughed.

  He gestured toward the toaster, indicating that she should go ahead and make the toast.

  As he watched, she put in two slices.

  “Do you feel like talking?” he asked her as the two new slices popped.

  She looked at him, somewhat confused. “I thought that was what I was doing,” she said, puzzled.

  “No, I meant talking about your father and what you’re going through with your sister. Actually, about anything at all,” he amended.

  He waved at her. “Never mind, carry on.” He flashed a rueful expression at her. “As you can see, I’m really not very good at small talk or getting people to unburden themselves.”

  “I have no need to unburden myself,” she said, bringing the plate back to the table. “If I did, I would have availed myself of a psychiatrist. All I need is a warm body to talk to. If that makes you uncomfortable...” Her voice trailed off.

  “I didn’t say that,” he told her. “I also don’t want you to feel that I’m attempting to interrogate you.”

  Orla nodded her head. “Tell you what, no preconceived notions, how’s that?” she asked.

  The smile he sent her way managed to warm her heart with no effort at all. “That suits me,” Sean responded.

  Orla talked until she realized that her eyes were closing.

  * * *

  Sean saw her head drooping down and then over to the side.

  “Looks like my company is putting you to sleep,” he noted with a soft laugh.

  Sean gave Orla another fifteen minutes, then very slowly, he rose from the sofa. For a moment, he debated letting Orla go to sleep that way, then decided that by the time morning arrived, she would have one killer of a crick in her neck. One that would take her more than a day to get over.

  Very gently, he slid over and then picked her up in his arms. Executing very careful, gentle steps, Sean carried the sleeping woman into the lone bedroom.

  He kept his eyes on her face the entire time, worried that in her present condition, if she woke up now, she might find his carrying her into the bedroom as some sort of breach of trust. Most likely, she might even think that he was up to something.

  Still watching her face carefully, he placed Orla on the bed, then covered her with the comforter that he kept gathered up on the edge.

  She began to stir and he froze; then very slowly, he resumed moving until he was finished covering her.

  Something stirred within him, a gentle feeling that he ordinarily reserved for a very small circle of people in his life.

  He was just tired, Sean thought.

  “See you in the morning,” he told her softly. Making his way back toward the sofa and the living room, he stopped dead when he saw Rockwell Roberts’s face on the TV screen.

  Obviously the story had broken. He had hoped they’d have more time to work the case before it went public. It looked as if tomorrow was going to be one very busy day. He’d better get his rest now while he was still able to do so—if he was going to be of any use to her tomorrow.

  Before he lay down on the sofa, he shut off the TV. The last thing he wanted was to wake up to a “breaking news bulletin.”

  He was asleep in moments.

  Chapter 12

  Orla was certain that she would wind up tossing and turning for the remainder of the night. Instead, to her unending surprise and relief, she found that she wound up sleeping a lot better than she’d imagined she would.

  She didn’t exactly wake up fully rested by a long shot, but she had slept for several hours.

  When her eyes did flutter open, it was in response to the aromatic, tempting scent of coffee, scrambled eggs and toast.

  Since she had fallen asleep in the clothes that she’d worn the night before, she had no need to get dressed: she already was.

  Sitting up in bed, Orla scrubbed her hands over her face, doing her very best to come to. She had no recollection of walking into the bedroom and lying down, so she was fairly certain that she had been carried to bed. Not only that, but apparently Sean had covered her with a comforter as well. She had no idea whether or not to mention that to the detective, or just pretend she hadn’t noticed any of it.

  First things first, she thought, getting up and slipping on her shoes, she went to the bathroom, threw water into her face and brushed her teeth. She began to feel a little human. At that point, she followed the very tempting scent of coffee as well as the breakfast that Sean had prepared, to its source.

  She leaned against the doorway, taking the scene in. Apparently he’d just finished with the preparations.

  “That smells wonderful,” she told him.

  Surprised, he looked over his shoulder as he set the plates down on the table. He waved off her compliment. “That’s just because you really haven’t eaten anything in hours.”

  She had never met a man so determined to shrug off any sort of compliment. Joe, the former boyfriend who had caused her so much grief, had a head one and a half times the normal size and liked to pound his chest any opportunity he got, she remembered. It was that trait that had caused her to become introverted.

  “I’m pretty sure that the smell of burnt food, or something akin to that, would have completely turned me off. This, however,” she said as he placed the plate in front of her, “smells absolutely wonderful.” She looked at Sean pointedly. “Learn to take a compliment, Detective,” she told him.

  “I could say the same thing to you,” he pointed out, sitting down at the table opposite her.

  She inclined her head in acknowledgment of his comment. “Touché, Detective.” Taking a healthy forkful, she slipped it into her mouth. “This is really good.” Orla looked up at him. “Who taught you how to cook?” she wanted to know.

  “I picked it up by watching my mother when I was a little kid. Then I found I had to do it in earnest when Mom got sick because my father was too busy working around the clock to pay for my mother’s bills. When she passed, I was still cooking for my siblings because my father was dying of cancer. He was too sick to do anything.”

  Orla took the information in in awed silence. “You’re a pretty impressive man, Detective Colton,” she commented.

  Sean didn’t see it as being a big deal. “You do what you have to do,” he said.

  “Don’t downplay it. It’s not as common as you might think.” Finished eating, she picked up her plate as well as his. Sean began to get up to take the plates from her.

  “One doesn’t have to have a special talent to wash dishes,” she told him. “Trust me, if there was, there would be a huge stack of dishes piled up all over my place.” She glanced at the open laptop that was sitting on the counter. She couldn’t help wondering if the news media had said anything about what had happened to her father. Most likely, the story about her twin and that hateful boyfriend of hers—she certainly wouldn’t refer to him as her boyfriend—had probably already made the rounds.

  “Do you mind if I turn on the TV?” Orla asked even as she was making her way over to the monitor in the living room. She grabbed the remote before he had a chance to answer.

  Immediately, the image of her slain father was all over the screen. It was a twenty-year-old picture that showed him at his best.

  “The newest version of ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’ is on everyone’s lips,” the announcer was saying. “Real estate tycoon Rockwell Roberts was found dead in his Manhattan apartment sometime yesterday morning. According to CSI crew who were sent to the scene to conduct an investigation, Roberts’s daughter’s DNA was found to be all over the premises. Speculation is that Roberts’s daughter Orla grew tired of waiting for crumbs to be tossed in her direction and decided that it was high time to claim her inheritance now while she could enjoy it.”

  Stunned, she turned away and looked at Sean, completely indignant.

  “How could they say that?” she demanded, outraged. “They didn’t even bother mentioning Aimee as a possible suspect. Even though her escape from prison was everywhere, I would’ve thought that would be the first thing the news media jumped on. Don’t they bother to vet their stories from moment to moment?”

  “Obviously not,” Sean replied. Crossing to the TV, he was about to shut it off, but she caught his arm, stopping him. He raised his eyebrows, an obvious question in his eyes.

  “Leave it on,” she told him. “I want to hear what they have to say.”

  “No, you don’t,” he insisted. “There is absolutely no reason to get aggravated. These people are sensationalists. The more they stir people up, the bigger their audience is. Tomorrow there’ll be another story to grab people’s attention and this will be old news.”

  Orla frowned. “I’m not all that sure,” she said. “A lot of damage can be done in a very small space of time.”

  “By then,” Sean told her confidently, “we’ll track down your sister and that guy she fled prison with and arrest them.”