I’m horrified. Numb. Somehow, I manage to take in a breath. “No.”
“Hey, look at Dec, here.” He snaps his fingers in front of my face. “I’m good for the old eyes.” I turn to him, still shuddering. “You’re fine. You’re with me. Now…” He frowns. “I was in your dressing room earlier. I didn’t see that box, or I’d have taken it. Someone must’ve left it for you during the show?”
Things get dropped off for us all the time during performances. It’s not unusual to find cards, flowers, and gifts before and after a performance. Sometimes even the next day.
I stare at his bare chest, the tattoos of Irish tribal symbols that I didn’t pay attention to earlier because I was busy. He pulled off the shirt at some point, and I’m aching in a good way between my thighs, like I’ve used muscles I never have. Which is ludicrous because I’ve had pretty much every muscle of my body aching before, so I don’t know why…
“Marlowe?”
His voice snaps me back to attention. I finally meet his gaze, halting my frenzied thoughts. “Or sent it, had it dropped at the theater. People do that,” I murmur absently.
“What about cameras?”
“I don’t think they have any security feeds.”
“I bet they do.” It’s not contempt exactly, but he dismisses my words while he pulls out his phone. “Tor? It’s me. I need any and all footage of the Manhattan Ballet foyer and backstage…if it exists… Yes, it is fucking easy… How far back? A week?” He pauses again. “Someone dropped off a metallic wrapped package off for Marlowe. I want to know who. Thanks.”
I expel a quaking breath, my eyes dropping to the cards and other small gifts that sit on the table next to my bag. He looksat them, making short work of reading the cards and opening the packages, but there’s nothing dangerous or…dead…in them. Then he swings that fierce aqua gaze to me.
I can imagine what he’s thinking, that I’m so shallow and materialistic I wanted to see the gifts that were sent, to bask in the adoration in the cards.
But I always open them and read them. If the gift sender has their address, I send a thank you on official Manhattan Ballet letterhead. “We all get things.” I look up at him. “It’s normal. I’ll send a thank you if there’s an address, it’s the right thing.”
“Personalized?”
“No. Unless it’s from a child.”
Declan shakes his head, gently strokes the feathers on the little dead creature, and mutters, “Fuck people.”
He’s not mad at me. He’s upset someone killed the bird. For a moment I stare at him, but it makes sense. After all, he was great with all our animals.
He walks over to his bag and unzips the top. I can’t look away because he’s that magnificent. I know a perfect body. I’ve seen them. I’m surrounded by them daily. It takes me a long minute to tear my gaze away. He turns from his bag, clothes in hands. And I try so hard not to ogle the thick cock between his legs.
“What’s the small tattoo on your back?” Which isn’t the question I wanted to ask, but it was the stylized outline of a woman looking over five other outlines in a wreath of roses, leaves, and thorns. There’s an Irish word above it.
“Family.” He gives a half shrug. “Mam.”
I force a laugh. “Are you a mama’s boy?”
But he isn’t smiling. “Damn fucking right. I’m Mam’s boy, through and through, so are we all. She kept us together like glue.”Then the dimple flashes and my heart flutters. “It’s a tattoo. I thought I was the shit when I got it done at sixteen. Told ’em I was eighteen. Not that they believed me. Believed my money, though.”
I turn away from him as he starts pulling on clothes.
“Why would someone send me that poor bird?”
“A fucked-upSwan Lakereference,” he mutters. “I don’t know. It’s psychotic—or meant to be.”
I swallow. “Maybe because I was asking around about Daddy?”
“Hard to tell. I don’t know what the whole story is or how this Leon guy might be involved.”
I glare at him. “I told you. We had a meeting set up. Money for information. And Leon arranged it after I gave him the details I knew.” But questions still swirl through my mind about that night, about Leon’s explanations, and I don’t fully trust what I’ve been told.
Not that I tell Declan.
“Which were?”
“Not much. Someone demanded money from Mom, who ignored the request. Just like I told you. Leon got the ball rolling.”
