Chapter 7
Seven
Luca knocked on the door to Kira’s apartment, more nervous than he should be. Juggling the cardboard tray with two kinds of juice and two coffees and the paper bag of food he’d brought. Sure, it was five in the evening, but if she’d slept all day like he had, she would be ready for breakfast.
He was about to knock again when the door swung open and she stood there staring at him.
“Hey.” She blinked at him, either thrown or still a little sleepy, or both. Wearing loose blue-and-white-striped pajama pants and a formfitting tank top that accentuated the curves of her waist, with her hair in a messy bun on the top of her head.
“I figured you might want breakfast right about now.” He tried to keep it casual. “I just woke up an hour ago.”
She said nothing.
“So can I come in?” A horrible thought crossed his mind. “Or do you have a…guest.”
She almost flinched. “I don’t have anyone in here. I actually never invite people over. Ever.”
Ah, so she was just unaccustomed to having someone in her personal space. “I can give you this and take off.” He didn’t want to, but he would if she asked him.
She shook her head. “It’s fine.”
Not super excited, but he’d take it.
She held the door open, and he didn’t go too far into her space, letting her set the pace of his invasion and take the lead on where they went next. He knew she’d had a rough night last night, and it looked like she’d slept some but not much.
How she managed to still be gorgeous in pajamas, no makeup, and a thrown-together hairdo was a mystery to him. He had to fix his hair all the time, or it looked like he’d been dragged through a hedge.
“I brought passion orange guava juice and apple juice. Coffee and a bunch of pastries. Egg bites, things like that.”
She led him through the apartment, past a low couch that looked like it was too nice to sit on unless you had freshly cleaned clothes.
Over by the dining table and four chairs, he could see into the kitchen.
The whole place gleamed spotless. Maybe she was the kind of person who stress cleaned.
Or she simply hired an excellent service to keep her space tidy.
“What’s your poison?” He set the bag and the drink carrier on the table.
“Unrealistic expectations.” Before he could ask what that meant, she said, “But I’ll take the passion orange guava. I had it on vacation last year, and I loved it. I’m more of a tea than coffee kind of person.”
“Me too. But joining the military got me hooked on coffee, and now I feel like I can’t live without it.” He handed her the clear plastic cup and a straw and took a sip of his coffee.
She pulled out a chair on the other side of the table. “You can have a seat, if you want.”
So they’d graduated from her reluctantly admitting him into her space to him actually being invited to sit. He didn’t want to get ahead of himself, but that was a kind of victory on its own.
“This is a gorgeous apartment.”
She sipped the juice, then lowered the cup to the table.
“Basically everything was new when I moved here. I didn’t have much stuff when I emigrated to the US, so I kind of overordered furniture, not really knowing what I would need.
Some of the stuff I sold later, and this is everything I liked and what’s functional left over. ”
“I rent an office a couple of streets over, and it came fully furnished. Otherwise I would’ve been doing the same thing.” He tried to relax in the seat, like he fit here. Like she didn’t have to worry about him and she could let down her guard.
Not only because he wanted to know more about who she’d been before she moved to Renegade. But also because he was the kind of person she could do that with. A safe place for her to open up.
Luca opened the bag and spread the contents across the torn paper so she could see what he had brought. He laid the napkins beside the bag while she selected a chocolate croissant.
He grabbed an egg bite and tossed it into his mouth, eating it whole.
“This is good.” She wiped a thumb at the corner of her mouth. “I’ve had pain au chocolat in Paris, so in a lot of other places, they don’t seem quite as good. But this isn’t bad.”
He absorbed the news that she had a sweet tooth and tucked that information away like a secret. “Did you sleep okay? You had a pretty rough shift.”
“Kind of. After I got off work, I went for a run through the park. It usually helps me if I take some time to process what happened.” She shook her head. “And then I met the doctor who’s going to be doing the procedure on the person the Marshals are protecting.”
“Did you actually get any sleep today?”
She smiled, lifting her features. “We didn’t talk for long.
It was kind of crazy, actually. He rolls up to the curb in front of me in this SUV like they knew where I was going to be, and I get in the back of the car.
If it hadn’t been a marshal inviting me into the car, I wouldn’t have got in.
” She shook her head. “Sounds way too much like the beginning of a TV special about my tragic demise.”
Luca chuckled. “I’m glad that isn’t what happened.”
“Me too. Anyway, he wanted to talk to me in person about how we plan to treat the patient and monitor him, things to watch for. That kind of thing. He seems like he knows what he’s talking about, and the procedure is cutting-edge.
The patient is part of a series of trials he’s doing, and he’s hopeful for a positive outcome.
” She shrugged. “We drove around downtown for about twenty minutes, and then I had him drop me off out front here.”
“So he knows where you live now?”
“I figure he already did,” she said. “Considering they have to be tracking me if they knew exactly where I was going to be this morning.”
“This whole operation is turning into something pretty interesting.”
“I wasn’t actually in the market for excitement.” She wiped her lips with a napkin but missed a spot of chocolate at the corner of her mouth. “I happen to like my very calm, very ordered life that is exactly the way I want it.”
“And then I showed up and threw everything for a loop.”
Her eyes gleamed. “You have no idea.”
He liked the sound of that a lot. “I’m not sure if I should apologize.”
“I’ll keep you posted.”
Luca smiled, finishing up his coffee. “Trash can?” He shook the cup, so she’d know why he needed it.
“Under the sink.”
He got up and headed into the kitchen, spotting a row of spices on the counter beside the oven. Ones he used often in his own kitchen. Which told him that she knew how to make some staples from her heritage and ate them often enough she needed the seasonings within reach.
At the end of the counter, a white engraved invitation caught his eye.
“Are you snooping in my mail, Mr. Private Investigator?” She appeared at the open doorway.
“I just noticed it.” Luca lifted his hands. “Fancy party?”
“It’s a gala for the Healing Hearts Foundation. They give needed medical supplies to kids in Africa, South America, and across other parts of the world.”
“I think I’ve heard of it. It’s based in Renegade?”
She nodded. “An acquaintance of mine runs it and wants me to join the board.”
“You aren’t sure?”
She frowned, as if not expecting that she’d given her feelings away.
“Like I said, I like my quiet life. I do my job and I get plenty of rest. Busyness isn’t actually a sign of success.
It’s just a way to fill your day with things you don’t necessarily care about, and then I’m at work and dragging. Which puts patients’ lives at risk.”
“It sounds smart to be aware of your limitations like that.” He smiled. “Suddenly being awake all night let me know mine.”
She grinned at him. “No one asked you to pull an all-nighter at the hospital or go around interviewing my patients like they’re the subject of an investigation.
The people you were speaking to are actually part of this.
” She pointed to the invitation. “Destiny Rousseau is the one who runs the Healing Hearts Foundation. She’s been my tennis partner and someone to have lunch with. ”
“I was talking to her husband Ralph, and they asked me if they could hire me to protect him. Destiny thinks someone is trying to kill her husband, and wants me to make sure nothing happens to him.”
Kira blinked. “I had no idea. She told me she thought someone had tried to kill him, but I didn’t think anything would come of it.”
He shrugged. “It’s good to have focus and not be swept along by everything you hear.”
“Even when it means I have blinders on to the rest of the world?”
“You spent a lot of years taking care of the rest of the world. It’s okay to have a season where you take care of you.” And yet she was still choosing to give of herself at the hospital where she worked.
Kira leaned her hip against the counter, and Luca shifted closer.
“You understand that what you do is amazing, right?”
She glanced at him, uncertainty in her gaze. “You mean like guys who go on missions all over the world, saving people’s lives when they have no idea you’re even doing it? Amazing stuff like that?”
Yeah, he wanted to ask her about what she’d done with that flash drive in the refugee camp. But he was pretty sure it would ruin the moment. “Guys who go on those missions also come home and realize there are plenty of wrongs to right here. Even in a place like Renegade.”
“And Ralph is part of that?”
“He was kidnapped a few months ago and mentioned something to us that we’re trying to follow up on.
It’s actually been a frustrating investigation because Rousseau skirted out from all the legal trouble he should’ve been in, and beyond what he says was faked, we haven’t been able to discover much so far that is real, physical evidence that there’s a criminal empire at work in Renegade. ”
“That’s what you’ve been working on?”
He nodded. “Almost exclusively. Signing on for this Marshals job is going to be a good distraction. It might even help me figure out things I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.”