“You don’t have to do that.” Gabriel looked at her in that way he did sometimes, where he just watched, and his brown eyes bored into her, unreadable, like he had a thousand thoughts that he wanted to share, but couldn’t, wouldn’t.

“I know I don’t have to. I want to.” Now that she had decided, she was determined. Sara stood up and headed for the kitchen. “Which cabinet is it in?”

Gabriel got up and followed Sara, torn between letting her drink his absinthe and forbidding her. He suspected if he told her flat-out no, that she couldn’t have it, she wouldn’t pursue it, and that was what his first instinct was. To just haul her out of his kitchen, put himself between her and the cabinets, break the bottle, and dump the drink down the drain. He had a slight panic in his gut at the thought of her going into his bottle, taking herself to that place he had loved so much and still craved. But Sara wasn’t him, and she wasn’t doing it to escape, she was doing it to understand. And he also suspected she was still shaken from the packet of pictures she had seen. Drinking the absinthe was a grasp at control, ironically enough, a way for her to express defiance in the face of death and two murder cases that appeared to be unsolvable.

He wanted to tell her no. Even said, “Sara, this isn’t a good idea.”

But when she found the bottle by opening all his cabinets, and pulled it down, he didn’t yank it away from her.

“It is a good idea. I need to know, Gabriel. Don’t you understand that? I can’t do anything else . . . I can’t bring my mother back and I can’t . . . with you, but this I can do. I can do whatever it takes to solve Anne Donovan’s case, at least to our personal satisfaction.”

The defiant and desperate edge to her voice forced him to realize that she did absolutely need to do this. She needed to let go of her fear, move herself out of the corner she had backed into, and allow herself to be bold, angry. The feral expression on her face had him contemplating the other way she could let go. They could have hot and sweaty sex. He could lift her onto the kitchen counter and hike up her skirt and plunge into her the way he ached to.

She wanted him to. It was on her face, in her words, in her body language as she held the bottle up against her breasts. She licked her bottom lip, and he had a painful, throbbing erection that demanded release. There was no doubt in his mind it would be passionate, intense, fast, with grinding and pushing and gripping, a hot, hard slapping of their bodies together.

He wanted that.