I thought I understood where he was going with this. “You mean, you don’t want me to break his heart so that he then goes insane with grief and blows up the island without realizing that’s what he’s doing?”
He nodded. “Yes, something like that.” I’d been joking, sort of, but he wasn’t smiling at all. “I’m glad you understand me.”
I might not have had a lot of romantic experience, having had only a handful of real boyfriends, but I’d grown up with brothers and all their friends, so I knew a thing or two about men. My experience had taught me that when a man warned a woman away from another man, it usually had more to do with jealousy than with real worry about that other man, whether or not the guy actually realized it. While I didn’t doubt that Rod was worried to some degree about Owen, I had the strongest sense that he was actually jealous.
That didn’t mean he was really interested in me himself. But if he went to the effort it took to mask his appearance with an illusion, and with his best friend being a total knockout naturally, it wasn’t far-fetched to think he might have issues about me seeing him as he really was and comparing him with Owen. Could that have been his motive for spying on Owen and tinkering with my immunity, if he was the one who’d done it?
Regardless of whether or not he was the culprit, I knew enough about men not to accuse him of jealousy to his face. Instead, I said, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“I don’t?”
“Think about it. You’ve known Owen a long time, right?”
“Since we were kids.”
“So you’ve seen him around someone he was interested in. And if I read him the right way, I’d guess that when he’s interested in someone, he freezes entirely and can’t speak to her.”
“That’s pretty much it,” he agreed.
“Well, he talks to me. Often, and quite comfortably, at that. I’d say that’s a pretty good sign he’s got me filed in the ‘friend’ category. Or, given the way he seems to organize things, I’m somewhere in the middle of the ‘friend’ pile.”
He brightened considerably at that, even as my heart sank when I recognized the truth in my own words. My “like a sister” curse had struck again. “You’re probably right. I guess I overreacted,” he said.
“No problem,” I said with a shrug. Then I realized this was my chance to probe him a little bit about his involvement. “While I’ve got you here,” I said as casually as I could manage, “I just need to take care of a few details in my investigation. Formalities, you know. First, how often do you come to the office on weekends?”
He frowned. “Are you talking about when you saw me nearby last Saturday?” It wasn’t much of a reaction. He didn’t seem surprised by my question, and he didn’t go overboard to act like he was shocked that I’d dare ask such a thing. In fact, he acted the way you’d expect an innocent person to when asked a question like that.
“Yeah. Since I did see you here on a weekend, and since that one break-in we know of happened over the weekend, I really want to tie off that potential thread.”
“Of course,” he said with a nod. “I usually don’t come to the office on weekends. I have a lot of other things going on.” His eyes sparkled a little bit, and I got the feeling I knew what else he had going on. “But that weekend, I’d written the phone number of the girl I was going out with that night on something that I left at the office, and I didn’t realize that until I needed to call her to finalize plans, so I had to come to the office to get it.”
It was an entirely plausible excuse, given what I knew of Rod’s social life. I wasn’t sure I could write him off entirely as a suspect, but he certainly wasn’t acting suspicious. “Okay, thanks,” I said, surprised at the surge of jealousy that hit me when I thought about him going on a date. “So, on the weekend of the break-in, you weren’t here?”
“No, I have an iron-clad alibi for that weekend. I was babysitting Owen.”
“Babysitting?”
“He was supposed to be resting, and you know him when he has a puzzle he wants to solve. I picked that weekend to have my cable go out, which meant I spent the weekend watching football at his place so he had no choice but to be a couch potato, too.”
That was a huge relief. I didn’t want Rod to be the bad guy. He had issues, but he was still my friend. Or could he be more? I wondered how much longer Isabel might be. Even if I knew it was an illusion and an attraction spell at work, Rod was awfully tempting, and he was looking at me with definite appreciation. I licked my lips—because they were dry, of course. Not for any other reason. He took a step toward me, his eyes darkening.
