"Robb, J D - In Death 10 - Loyalty in Death (1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robb J D)

when she'd moved to New York and put on a uniform. Then it had been traffic
incidents, squabbles to break up, and paperwork. Now she was attached to
homicide. She dealt with death every day and rubbed shoulders with those who
caused it.
Yes, she looked different, Zeke acknowledged. The things she'd seen and done and
felt were there behind those dark, serious eyes.
"Are you good at it?"
"Pretty good." Now she smiled a little. "I'm going to be better."
"You're learning from her. From Dallas."
"Yeah." Peabody sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at him. "Before she
took me on as her aide, I studied her. I read her files, I crammed on her
technique. I never expected to be able to work with her. Maybe that was luck,
maybe it was fate. We were taught to respect both."
"Yeah." He sat next to her.
"She's giving me a chance to find out what I can do. What I can be." Peabody
drew in a long breath, let it out slowly. "Zeke, we were raised to take our own
path, to pursue it, and to do the best we were capable of. That's what I'm
doing."
"You think I don't approve, don't understand."
"I worry about it." She slid her hand down to the regulation stunner strapped to
her belt. "About what you -- especially you -- feel."
"You shouldn't. I don't have to understand what you do to know it's what you
need to do."
"You were always the easiest of us, Zeke."
"Nah." He bumped his shoulder against hers. "It's just when you're the last
coming up, you get to watch how everyone else screws up. Okay if I take a
shower?"
"Sure." She patted his hand and rose. "Water takes awhile to come up to temp."
"No hurry."
When he got his bag and took it into the bath, she pounced on the kitchen 'link,
called Charles Monroe, and left a message on his service canceling their date
that night.
However wise and broad-minded and adult he'd sounded, she didn't see her baby
brother embracing her casual, and just lately spotty, relationship with a
licensed companion.
-=O=-***-=O=-
She might have been surprised at just how much her little brother would
understand. As he stood under the spray, let the hot water ease away the faint
stiffness from travel, he was thinking of a relationship that wasn't -- couldn't
be -- a relationship. He was thinking of a woman. And he told himself he had no
right to think of her.
She was a married woman, and she was his employer.
He had no right to think of her as anything else, less to feel this shaky heat
in his gut at the knowledge he would see her again very soon.
But he couldn't get her face out of his mind. The sheer beauty of it. The sad
eyes, the soft voice, the quiet dignity. He told himself it was a foolish, even
childish crush. Horribly inappropriate. But he had no choice but to admit here,
in private, where honesty was most valued, that she was one of the primary
reasons he'd taken the commission and made the trip east.
He wanted to see her again, no matter how that wanting shamed him.