He said angrily, “You’re such an expert on commitment?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” My heart tripped and started that goddamned staggering three-legged run. I ignored it.

“What we had together was about a lot more than fucking. We had a friendship. For chrissake, you were the only person in the world I could be honest with.”

“You weren’t any more honest with me than you were with anyone else.” I had no idea what we were actually arguing about at this point, but I was hoping to draw blood.

“Bullshit,” Jake snarled. “You’re the one trying to pretend it was nothing more than sex --”

“You’ve been telling lies to other people for so long that you’ve started telling them to yourself --” I had to stop to catch my breath.

The anger went from him just like that. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fucking A. Jake, there’s no point…” I had to stop again. “Let’s stick to talking murder.” I turned, rested my hand briefly on the wall. “Get yourself a beer. I need to use the john.”

In the bathroom I got my pills out of the cabinet, scooped them down with a handful of water from the sink. Not a problem, I told myself. I was a little late taking my meds and I shouldn’t have had the brandy. I shouldn’t have let myself get so mad. I splashed more water on my face. Sat down on the side of the tub and gave myself a few moments. Pneumonia takes a while to get over. That’s all. I wasn’t seventeen anymore.

Jake was in the kitchen staring out the window over the sink. Two bottles of beer sat on the counter. He turned at the sound of my footsteps.

“Are you okay?” he asked again, scanning my face.

“I’m fine. Why do people keep asking me that?”

He said dryly, “Maybe they need reassurance.”

“Maybe they should mind their own business.”

He raised his brows, watching in silence as I got a tumbler out of the cupboard, poured myself a glass of water, and sat down at the table.

“I came to tell you the DA has given us the go-ahead to arrest Nina Hawthorne.”

I swallowed a mouthful of water. “That seems premature. Do you have enough to make it stick?” I asked.

“She had means, motive, and opportunity.”

“What motive did she have?”

“You should know that.”

Revenge for a dead child. It seemed kind of melodramatic this afternoon.

“Have you figured out how she got the poison into Porter’s glass?”

“Not yet.”

I studied his face. “And you’re not convinced she’s guilty.”

“I don’t know that she’s not guilty.”

That sounded as convoluted as the French justice system. “So why --?”

He sighed. “Because the mayor’s office is demanding an arrest, and the DA thinks we’ve got enough to move forward.”

“And arrest the wrong woman?”

“One of those two is up to her neck in it. It was either the Hawthorne woman or Ally Beaton-Jones, and we haven’t been able to connect Jones’s wife to digitoxin.”

“But it doesn’t make sense to rush into this, does it? Especially if your gut instinct is telling you something else.”

“I can’t take my gut instinct to the DA,” he said. “Anyway, it’s not my job to convict them. That’s why we have the courts. If Hawthorne isn’t guilty --” He must have read my expression correctly, because he grimaced and admitted, “And because it’s Alonzo’s case and I’ve already roadblocked his first two lines of investigation.”

Me and Paul Kane.

“Ah.” I said. “And you don’t want him looking too closely at why.”

His mouth tightened. “I didn’t want him wasting time and taxpayer dollars, no.”

I smiled. “Right. And you didn’t want him looking too closely at why you were so sure Paul Kane -- or I -- hadn’t committed murder.”

He gave me that long, dark look I remembered so well and then turned his profile to me, staring out the window.

I tilted my head, considering him. “Do you honest to God not see the compromises you’re having to make?”

“Adult life is a series of compromises, Adrien.”

“Yeah, only you’re negotiating with the Devil.”

Not looking at me, he growled, “Oh, go to hell.”

I raised my water in a toast. “Sure. I’ll follow the trail of bread crumbs you’re scattering.”

He turned to face me again, and shook his head like he could not understand why he was making the effort. Which made two of us.

“You came to me, Jake. And I’m wondering why. You didn’t have to drop by in person to tell me Nina was going to be arrested. It’s not like I’m really a colleague.”

Or a friend.

And weirdly, as though he had read my mind, he said, “I would like us to be friends again.”

“Well, I knew that was coming,” I said, although I hadn’t.

He said stubbornly, as though arguing with me -- or maybe himself, “I miss you. I miss talking with you. I miss -- laughing with you.”

“I am pretty damned adorable,” I said, “but as I recall we weren’t doing a lot of talking, let alone laughing, at the end there.”

He said, “You know that I didn’t -- that I never wanted to hurt you. You know --”

I cut in flippantly, “Kill me, yes. Hurt me, no.”

“Adrien.”

And it was my turn to have trouble meeting his eyes. I said -- and it wasn’t easy -- “I don’t think I can, Jake. I don’t think it’s even fair to ask.”

Silence.

He said finally, without inflection, “All right.”

And the funny thing was, that terse acceptance, the lack of any emotion, was somehow harder to take than if he’d begged or bullied.

He drained his beer, set the bottle beside the untouched one on the counter, and said without looking at me, “I guess I ought to get going.”

I nodded. I didn’t think I could get a word out if my life had depended on it.

He walked out of the kitchen, and I rose and followed him to the door. He took my key off his ring and handed it to me. “I’ll let you know when Nina is formally arraigned.”

I nodded. I felt the warm brush of his fingers pushing the key into mine all the way to my heart. I focused on the key because if I looked up, I’d see what he was feeling. Worse, he’d see what I was feeling -- in a minute what I was feeling was going to be spilling out of me, and it didn’t make any sense. It had been over long ago; we had just finally got around to saying good-bye, that was all.

Neither of us said a word. Neither of us moved a muscle.

Finally Jake said, huskily, “I lied. I didn’t come here to tell you about Nina Hawthorne, and I didn’t come here to ask you to be friends again.”

I raised my eyes. “I know,” I said.

Chapter Eighteen

His face stilled -- except for his eyes. Something blazed back into life there, and I recognized it because I’d felt it when he’d walked back into this room after a two-year absence.

I reached for him, and he wrapped his arms around me, and for a minute it could have been a hug good-bye…or maybe hello…because then his hands smoothed their way down my back, pulling me closer, closing on my hips, drawing me against him, unashamed of his arousal. Naked honesty right there, stretching the soft fabric of his jeans, poking against my groin.

And for once I had nothing to say. Jake’s mouth found mine, his lips molding hot and soft to my own. His tongue tentatively tested the seal of my lips; I parted them and he pushed inside. It was startlingly sweet and achingly familiar, like finding harbor. Like I had been waiting decades for this, traveling leagues, Odysseus sailing at long last into the blue crystal waters of Ithaca -- and never considering the trouble ahead.