LN Cronan

 I think you're right. One more to add:  Snapshot #4 (the microphone on the stand) almost certainly goes with Snippet #10 (Brett talking to Eva in Times Square). Sylvia released Snippet #10 one day before Snapshot #4.

 "Top" is another way of saying "dom" and "bottom" is another way of saying "sub." Top-bottom essentially is the same thing as dom-sub. When having sex, the top is the one in control - regardless of the actual sexual position(s) being used.  When Eva accused him of "topping from the bottom" she was saying she could tell he was still keeping his control as the dom instead of surrendering control to her. It didn't matter that literally she was on top of him and he was on the bottom -- figuratively he was still maintaining control of her. Not for a minute was she fooled just because he let her climb up onto him.  In the limo the first time they made love, she "topped" in the figurative sense -- she was the one in control of the sex. She initiated it, choose the position, set the pace -- and got him to accept the pleasure she was giving. She got him to surrender his control over the situation, in other words. It was that -- the surrender -- that blew his mind (and caused his head trip). It wasn't simply the fact they'd done it in the car -- it was the surrender part.

 At least there definitely will be a next book beyond Entwined. Maybe even two more coming. I'll take them, even if I do have to wait.

 I don't think he has that kinda cash (yet) to flash. The sort of watch in that picture is something Gideon could afford, but not a suddenly up-and-coming rock star. Brett just barely got famous.  Besides, attempting to give Eva something like that would come off as too intense, weird, almost stalkerish. He'd still be at the hearts-and-flowers early stage: send her flowers, ask her out to dinner.

I'll bet that when Graves rolled the dice with Eva, one of the possible outcomes Graves hoped for would be Eva turning to her father -- and her father convincing Eva to "do the right thing" (i.e. let Gideon be brought to justice for murder.) Â Instead, Eva is using her inside knowledge of how police work in order to help Gideon. Such as deciding right away it was dangerous for her and Gideon to communicate. Gideon originally had done so, and kept it up for more than a week before he wavered and saw her two days in a row (Monday in the elevator, Tuesday taking the car ride.) But now Eva is the one calling the shots on secrecy. - as a cop's daughter, she knows she needs to do so, because Graves may have set her up. Â No more being kept in the dark. Having limited contact is much easier for Eva to bear, now that she knows it's for safety. Previously, she'd just taken no contact as more proof Gideon was a cheating coward.

 Well then, the Aston Martin snapshot makes sense .... James Bond car.  (OMG, Sylvia's going to laugh when she reads this road we're going down .....)

I don't ever see Corrine showing up on Gideon's doorstep either.  However .....  Two nights before Entwined started, Gideon paraded Corrine through the lobby of the Crossfire, his hand at the small of her back, walked her out to his car and left with her. Gideon probably was doing it for the benefit of the security tapes. He'd approached Eva earlier that day in the lobby (near the elevators.) This is the last time Eva (and thus we readers) definitely know Gideon saw Corrine.  Wouldn't it be sweet if that's the last night Corrine got to go out with Gideon (to dinner or wherever they went after he got out of work.) Two nights later, he found out from Eva that the cops aren't buying the Corrine cover story. So why keep it up?  SO .....  Karmic justice for the "nooner" stunt Corrine pulled, coming out the Crossfire looking like she'd just be f*****. Karma that the last night she'll ever go out with Gideon starts with her going to his office at the Crossfire in order to meet him for after-work plans. He dumps her on Thursday?

 Good question, because Gideon did face the very real possibility of police showing up with search warrants for his home. However, there would be little to no reason for the cops to execute search warrants at Eva's place. She immediately got crossed of the list of people suspected to have had anything to do with the killing.  Gideon might not have needed to clear out her room -- but -- he ought to have removed her possessions, leaving the room to simply look like a guest room. The best idea would be to restore his bachelor pad to pre-Eva status. Rumor probably has it he never takes women home (which prior to Eva was true.) Evidence that Eva spent considerable amount of time in his home would be useful to the cops trying to build the motive side of the case.  One of the snippets involves Gideon asking Eva to come home to him (instead of staying at the dance club) so they're probably sneaking her in and out of his building.

Favorite line from today's re-read project, Chapter 17 of Bared to You: Â Probably one of the sweetest things Gideon says, period, in the entire Crossfire series thus far. Page 261: Â "I must have wished for you so hard and so often you had no choice but to come true."

 The brunette question is one of the finalists. That question has always nagged me. I've been hoping for a long time that Sylvia would take pity on us and answer it here.  BUT ....  I think the answer lays buried deep in Gideon's dark past. So it's something she might not reveal yet, if its something central to Entwined (and thus we need to wait for June 4.)

 New character in Chapter One of Entwined - Chad, who works the night shift on the lobby desk in Eva's apartment building. He, too, gets paid by the landlord -- the landlord being Cross Industries (or some subsidiary thereof.)

 Gideon was with his sister, Ireland, not Corrine, during that PR event in Times Square, the one we got a peek into in a recent snippet along with a very strong suggestion Brett shows up at the same event in Chapter Four. I don't think, because the pain the vodka PR event caused Eva, that Gideon EVER again will subject Eva to the thought of him taking Corrine to another publicity event (by their very nature, PR events are for the benefit of the press.)

No worries. Didn't want to spread false rumors. Still recovering from a false rumor I inadvertently got going that Will, the new hire in Eva's office, was a Gideon plant (to watch over Eva.)

 Haven't submitted one yet. Still trying to decide, because I've got a couple of burning one.

 Unfortunately, Eva's name would used, used very, very extensively in any trial. And this all would go on in open court, meaning reporters would be there. If news organizations chose to do so, they could name Eva in stories. In fact, under the circumstances, because everyone would be able to easily figure Eva was involved anyway, there wouldn't be much sense in leaving her name out.  Some of the U.S. constitutional rights of people accused of crimes is "right to face accuser" and "open trial"  These protections prevent the government from using secret evidence against people and from putting them on trial in secret. If the government is going to accuse a person of a crime, bring him/her to trial, and try to send the person to prison, the government has to handle the whole case out on the open where the citizenry (and the press) is fully aware of what the government is doing. It's meant to keep the government accountable.

I'm GUESSING an engagement ring might have come up by now. We haven't seen an engagement ring in a snapshot. We'd go nuts with happiness if we did. Sorta like we went nuts in a bad way when a New York City detective shield came up. Â I was simply stringing together: gift of expensive jewelry worn every day near the hand (watch) + "Happy ....?" Happy two-month anniversary maybe. Put a trip to a jewelry store together with a certain amount of time a couple has been together and what might you get? That's where my engagement ring guess came up.

 They could. Especially if the defense wanted to paint a picture that Gideon wasn't the only one who could have killed Nathan (or arranged to have him killed.) The defense could lay out the history of years of measures taken on Eva's behalf to protect her. Measures taken by her mother and also measures taken later by Stanton as well.  This does NOT mean the defense would throw Monica and Stanton under the bus, saying "they did it!!!" All the defense would need to do, by laying out all that old history, would be to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the jurors, get them to think that "Well, maybe they, not Gideon Cross, were the ones who did it. So how can the prosecution say absolutely it must have been Gideon?" If the jurors can reasonably doubt Gideon must have done it -- then they cannot find him guilty.

 NO, Gideon can't go back to Eva yet. But he doesn't HAVE to stay with Corrine any more. In fact, it might be more plausible if he quit seeing Corrine and spent some time "unattached."

 The more I think about this, the more I think (hope) our least favorite brunette is buh-bye sooner than later. Like maybe Day Two of Entwined.  And not just because Gideon 1. doesn't want to cause another minute of pain to Eva and 2. the cops aren't buying the Corrine lie anyway, so he doesn't have to keep it going.  "Plausible deniability." That legal term Gideon's mentioned, something that's a fancy way of saying "lack of evidence."  Bear with one of my mini lessons in how the U.S. justice system works, per the way the U.S. Constitution set up the protections citizens have against the government, when the government seeks to criminally prosecute citizens.  The government (the prosecution side of the trial) has the "burden of proof." That side always has the uphill battle of proving to a jury the defendant is guilty. The defense does NOT have to prove the defenant is innocent. In fact, technically the defense doesn't have to lift a finger. This is why, among other things, people have the "right to silence." The suspect doesn't have to convince the cops -- and ultimately the jury -- that he/she is innocent. The prosecution has to do all the work. In practice, the defense is very active in trials -- busy punching holes in the prosecution's case. Under the "right to face an accuser" the prosecution has to put its witnesses on the stand, and then the defense gets to question them too. Usually, the defense will put its own witnesses up as well, witnesses to sow doubts about the prosecution's side of the story. Witnesses who can convince the jury that something else happened, not what the prosecution claims happened. The defendant himself/herself does NOT ever have to testify. If the defense does not put the accused on the stand, for tactical reasons, then the judge has to pretty much bend over backwards to explain to the jury the jury cannot hold that against the accused in any way. Because there's a very good reason why defendants sometimes do not take the stand -- they don't have to face questions from the prosecutor. If a defendant does take the stand, he/she gives up the right to silence, and the prosecutor gets to ask him/her questions.  OK, with all of that in mind, how could this all apply to the fake Corrine-Gideon-Eva triangle? Gideon does NOT have to prove he loves Corrine. Gideon does NOT have to disprove he loves Eva. The cops/prosecutors are the ones who HAVE to prove Gideon loves Eva. If they cannot prove Gideon loves Eva, then Gideon has "plausible deniability" he loves her.  I think that when Gideon started taking out Corrine again, and he set up the party as an alibi, he was hoping that between the two, the cops would quickly eliminate him as a suspect. Other people who loved Eva enough to conceivably kill for her -- like Eva's mother -- also had motive. Why would he have motive if he had already dumped her? Going out with Corrine just made it more believable he dumped Eva. He didn't dump Eva for the ###### of it, he dumped her for Corrine.  Gideon's got a couple of alternative believable reasons why he dumped Eva while Nathan was still very much alive: He never was in love to begin with -- Eva was just some hot summer fling that burned itself out in a few weeks, and the fling was already over before Nathan got killed. He had been in love, but Eva broke his heart by "cheating" on him with Brett. He walked away from her broken-hearted well before Nathan got killed.

 Signed up and good to go .... and planning to take notes!

Gideon may have thought/hoped, right on up to when Eva told him otherwise, Graves had not yet seen through the lie he was living with Corrine.  Sure, he must have known he was chief suspect, and the cops were digging hard. He might have even now realized that via aggressive interviewing of people who worked at the party hotel, Graves found the hour-long disruption to the party (and thus the hour-long hole in his alibi.)  Yet he was probably counting on her still be thwarted by the Corrine-cover-story part of his plot. Because, officially, she hasn't busted that yet. And certainly, the cops never would be revealing secrets of their investigation to Gideon's defense. They're not required to turn over jack s*** to the defense before a suspect is arrested. Only after someone is charged is the prosecution required to start sharing evidence (known by the legal term "discovery") with the defense.  So now Gideon knows -- Graves isn't buying the Corrine cover.  Oh could this mean that Gideon now will back off, perhaps even "dump" Corrine. She's not much use to him anymore. And now that  Eva has come back, he's got some very serious amends to make for how he treated Eva via using Corrine against Eva emotionally.

OK, how's this for a theory ....  Snapshot #10 is of a diamond-encrusted woman's watch. Among the possible things it can represent: passage of time a very serious gift of jewelry, the sort that a very rich man in love would give the woman in his life  Our brand-new Snapshot #12 is of flowers and a note indicating "Happy .... something?" It can represent: an expression of love recognition of some sort of specific occasion, such as a specific date  We're now in the neighborhood of the two-month anniversary of when Gideon met Eva  So combine: an expression of love, a serious gift of jewelry a man in love gives his woman, a love relationship anniversary  ....  ..... not only did Gideon give Eva a piece of jewelry she could wear on her wrist every day .... but .... he also gave her an engagement ring.

Thank God Eva 100% avoided reading about Gideon anymore once she dumped him, because the she was in post-breakup would have been a thousand times worse plagued by what probably were frequent pictures and daily stories about Gideon's lovelife, suddenly very big news again. Â BUT ..... Â If (actually when) the stories start running about her and Brett, she's possibly going to get exposed to a lot of related stories about Gideon and Corrine. The media would definitely play up the pair of love triangles.

Another reason why it makes sense for several hours to have passed since Detective Graves spoke to Eva, Eva sat in a daze on Gideon's doorstep for a while, Eva recounted to Gideon when he arrived home, left him almost immediately, and finally arrived home at her own place was ..... Â .... by the time she did get home, Cary already was in his bedroom for the night. Maybe even asleep. Had it been earlier (i.e. soon after he class wrapped up) Cary would still have been up. Gideon might not have dared to sneak into Eva's apartment unless it was so late at night that the risk would be small Cary would see him come in. Â Poor Gideon probably spent as little time as possible at home. Because it would be too painful to be in a place full of memories of Eva. Perhaps even more painful that being at the Crossfire during the day, plagued by visions of her past visits to his office, having to go through the elevator lobby where they met, even knowing during the workday she was down on the 20th floor. So close and yet for all intents and purposes on the other side of the moon. Â I'll bet he worked late a lot in those awful weeks, perhaps the only times he could even halfway concentrate in his office was after she'd left the building for the day. He probably spent a lot of time at the gym too. Â And some of his time spent away from home would be spent with Corrine. Taking her as his escort to business dinners, his date to society functions, out for dinners-for-two at restaurants. Now more than ever, because he was chief suspect in Nathan's killing, he needed to manipulate the public and the media (and thus manipulate the cops and the prosecution) he and Corrine were back together. He needed to spend more than a little time with her -- he needed to behave like a man in love, and that would involve somewhat frequent face-to-face time.

 Gideon's side of the hatred All Gideon told Eva about why he hates Lucas is that Lucas somehow "alienate" him from his (Gideon's family.) Lucas is a pediatrician. Based on Lucas' current age, around the time Gideon was sexually abused, Lucas would have recently finished medical school. We know from what Elizabeth Vidal said to Eva when Eva confronted her about how damaged Gideon is because of something sexual likely having happened to him when he was young, Elizabeth Vidal defended herself that exams by two separate pediatricians (supposedly) turned up no evidence. Gideon was branded as a messed up liar, and his sexual abuse accusations were illegally hushed up so that no outside authorities got involved, as they ought to have over mere accusations, regardless of what physical exams did or did not show. Circumstances strongly suggest Lucas was one of the pediatricians involved. It's pretty apparent, as well, Gideon's love for his mother was utterly destroyed because she failed him. Gideon confessed to Eva (in North Carolina) he'd hurt Lucas by having an affair with Lucas' wife.  Lucas' side of the hatred Lucas' wife, Anne, came on to Gideon sexually sometime in the not too distant past. At the time, she would have been in her early 40s and Gideon would have been a totally hot 20-something. At first, Gideon brushed her off as just another woman throwing herself at him. But then, he found out she was Lucas' wife. So Gideon jumped at the chance for a revenge f***. At the time, he planned it to be a one-night stand. But she kept coming back for more. In what Gideon would lately be deeply ashamed of himself for doing, he continued to f*** her. Thus she started carrying on a full-fledged extra marital affair. Gideon claimed to himself he never deliberately made any promises or did anything like telling her he loved her. However, he let things go on until Anne was ready to leave her husband for Gideon. Then he broke it off and sent her broken back to her husband. Based on a little totally unrelated research Eva did on Lucas via Google, it would appear the Lucases are still married. Lucas is firmly convinced Gideon is a mentally disturbed man who hates women and gets off by emotionally abusing them -- taking them on incredible highs and then destroying them. Obviously, Lucas is colored by the fact Gideon actually did engage in that sort of abusive pattern with Anne. Dr. Lucas, if he was involved with the sex abuse investigation of Gideon as a child, would have enough inside information about Gideon's mental health history to know that Gideon actually did have serious problems as a kid (problems that started with how Gideon's father died when Gideon was five.) At a time when Eva was most miserable and vulnerable, because Gideon at the time was emotionally manipulating her (distancing her so he could kill Nathan) Lucas ran into Eva, and he jumped at the chance to plant seeds of poison in her mind.  The one time we saw Gideon, Eva and Lucas all together in immediate proximity was when the three of them plus Corrine were all seated together at dinner during the fundraiser Corrine crashed. It was true that Gideon completely ignored Eva at the table, all of his attention focused on Corrine. (Idiot - one of Gideon's biggest screw ups!) Lucas witnessed everything, including how miserable Eva was, and he spent the meal keeping her company. After the meal was done, Lucas invited Eva to go to the bar with him for a drink. When Eva went to leave, Gideon (who at least had held her hand during dinner) suddenly became aware of her -- and of Lucas with her. Gideon tried to order Eva to stay put. In front of everyone within ear shot, Lucas essentially humiliated Gideon for having mistreated Eva by ignoring her in favor of Corrine. Things got worse for Gideon when Eva told him Lucas was right. Then Eva "safeworded" Gideon and walked away. About a minute later, Gideon got a text from Eva claiming she wasn't running - just leaving. But of course, Eva was pulling a runner, one that would have especially terrified Gideon under the circumstances. Perhaps it dawned on him he had very serious screwed up things with her. She'd never safeworded him, either.