“I don’t know. Maybe it was.” He wound a short, thick blond curl around one finger. “I’m glad your niece is okay.”
He kissed her then, on the lips, gently, but not tentative—nothing about him, Juliet thought, was tentative.
Ethan stood back, studying her a moment. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have taken advantage.”
“You didn’t.” She straightened, rubbing the back of her neck, awkward, wanting to kiss him again. “I guess it’s just as well we’re going out for dinner.”
“Or?”
“Never mind. I’m light-headed.” She caught herself. “Not from the kiss, either.”
“Whatever you say, Marshal.”
That laconic Texas accent, that superfit body—she needed air, fast. She grabbed her jacket off the back of a chair and slung it over one arm, not feeling even remotely chilly. “We can go to the place where we met last night.”
“Works for me. Your niece?”
“Safely home in Vermont by now.” Juliet ripped open the door, pictured Tatro shoving Wendy into the apartment. “I don’t know what I was thinking, having fish.”
“Juliet—”
“Yet, if I hadn’t—I don’t know what would have happened to Wendy today.”
“You know better than to go down that road.”
She nodded, pushing out into the hall. “Would have, could have, should have. Yes. I do know.” She banged the down button for the elevator, keeping her eyes on it as Ethan came up next to her. “We can’t go back and undo what’s done. None of us.”
He leaned against the wall. “Knowing I can’t do a thing to change something that’s happened doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“It’s not about feeling better. It’s about acceptance—” She broke off, wishing she hadn’t gotten herself started. The man had lost his wife. Who was she to tell him how he should feel? All she needed to do was picture Wendy coming out of the bedroom with Bobby Tatro cuffed and muttering things into the floor. “Forget it. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
She stayed a step ahead of him. The night air was cool and clear, with just a hint of autumn, a breath of nostalgia, although for what, Juliet couldn’t pinpoint. The life she hadn’t led, she supposed. The paths not taken.
At the restaurant, she asked for a table by the window and looked out at the pedestrians walking slowly on the street outside, enjoying the beautiful fall evening.
“Joe Collins and Mike Rivera both want to talk to you,” she said without looking at Ethan.
He ordered Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. “I figured as much.”
She almost seconded his order, then opted for sparkling water. “How was Washington?”
“I slept for twelve hours in a comfortable bed.”
“You weren’t there to catch up on your sleep.”
He pointed to the menu. “I think you should order the mac and cheese. Comfort food. It’ll be easy on your stomach.”
“I’m not sure it goes with chardonnay.”
“Mac and cheese goes with anything.”
“Or chardonnay does,” she said. “Collins and Rivera both think you’re trouble. So do I, for that matter. Gee, I wonder why.”
“You told them—”
“Everything. I play by the rules.”
“No, you don’t. You’d never have been in Tennessee that day if you played by the rules. You’d never have let me into your apartment last month. You wouldn’t have told me about Bobby Tatro—”
“What I told you didn’t help you. Don’t pretend it did.”
“It will yet.”
She leaned over the table. “Stay out of this case, Brooker.”
He shrugged, obviously not particularly affected by her intensity or her authority. “You’re a little late with the orders, Marshal.”
Calling her “marshal” was just to tweak her, to pull her out of her unfocused anger. But thoughts of Juan, Wendy, Tatro, the fish, the dead dog’s ashes on her counter, the frustrated and terrified neighbors, the soon-to-be ex-friend in L.A.—began to weigh on her, and she knew she should be off on a five-mile run, not sitting in a restaurant with a man who’d spin her around until she collapsed before he told her one damn thing he hadn’t meant to tell her.
“You’ve been through SERE training, haven’t you?” Juliet asked him.
“Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Yes, ma’am.”
“Ever been captured by the enemy?”
He didn’t answer.
“Not something you want to talk about in an Upper West Side restaurant.” She didn’t feel her tension easing. “I’m not playing games with you, Brooker. I don’t care what you can’t or won’t tell me. I’ll find out what I want to know. A man was murdered today. I’m responsible.”
His eyes flickered with sudden intensity. “You’re not responsible.”
The water and bourbon arrived. He ordered a steak. When Juliet couldn’t make up her mind—couldn’t concentrate on the damn menu—he told the waiter to bring her the macaroni and cheese.
Ethan picked up his drink, took a small swallow, then set it back down. “I thought by coming up here yesterday I might stop something from happening, not cause something.”
“You had no idea Tatro was in New York?”