River's End (19 page)

• • •

Noah blinked his vision clear and heard only silence. The tape had run out, he realized. He stared at the machine, more than a little stunned that the images had come quite so clear. And more than a little embarrassed to find himself hard and unquestionably aroused.

With Olivia’s face in his mind.

“Jesus, Brady.” He picked up his wine with a hand not quite steady and took a long sip.

It was one of the side effects of crawling inside Sam Tanner, imagining what it was like to love and be loved by a woman like Julie MacBride. Remembering what it had been like to want the daughter that love had created.

But it was damned inconvenient when he didn’t have any outlet for the sexual frustration now kicking gleefully in his gut.

He’d write it out, he decided. He’d finish his meal, turn on the tube for noise and write it out. Since the story had a core of possessive love and sexual obsession, he’d write in Sam’s memory of the night he and Julie had become lovers.

Maybe it was idealized, he thought, and maybe there were times, moments, connections that produced the kinds of feelings Sam had spoken of.

For Noah, sex had always been a delightful part of life, a kind of sport that required some basic skills, a certain amount of protection and a healthy sense of team spirit.

But he was willing to believe that for some it could contain gilded emotions. He’d give Sam that night, and all the romantic swells that went with it. It was after all how the man remembered it—or wanted to. And the shimmering romance of it would only add impact to the murder itself.

He booted up his laptop, poured coffee from the room-service carafe that had kept it acceptably hot. But when he rose to turn on the television, he stopped by the phone, frowned at it.

What the hell, he thought, and going with impulse dug out the number for River’s End. Within ten minutes, he’d made reservations for the beginning of the following week.

Sam Tanner had still not spoken of his daughter. Noah wanted to see if she would speak of him.

He worked until two, when he surfaced briefly to stare with no comprehension whatsoever at the television where a giant lizard was kicking the stuffing out of New York.

He watched a uniformed cop, who obviously had more balls than brains, take a few plugs at the lizard with his handgun, then get eaten alive.

It took Noah a moment to process that he was watching an old movie and not a news bulletin. That’s when he decided his brain was fried for the night.

There was one more chore on his agenda, and though he knew it was just a little nasty to have waited until the middle of the night to deal with it, he picked up the phone and called Mike in L.A.

It took five rings, and the slur of sleep and bafflement in his friend’s voice gave Noah considerable satisfaction.

“Hey. Did I wake you up?”

“What? Noah? Where are you?”

“San Francisco. Remember?”

“Huh? No . . . sort of. Jesus, Noah, it’s two in the morning.”

“No kidding?” His brows drew together as he heard another voice, slightly muffled, definitely female. “You got a woman there, Mike?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“Congratulations. The blonde from the club?”

“Ah
. . . hmmmm.
”

“Okay, okay, probably not the time to go into it. I’m going to be gone at least another week. I didn’t want to call my parents and wake them up, and I’m going to be pretty busy in the morning.”

“Oh, but it’s okay to call and wake me up?”

“Sure—besides, now that you’re both awake, you might get another round going. Remember to thank me later.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“That’s gratitude for you. Since you’re so fond of calling my mother, give her a buzz tomorrow and let her know I’m on the road.”

There were some rustling sounds, making Noah imagine Mike was finally getting around to sitting up in bed. “Listen, I just thought you needed a little . . .”

“Interference in my life. Stop pulling on your lip, Mike,” he said mildly, knowing his friend’s nervous habits well. “I’m not pissed off, particularly, but I figure you owe me. So give my mom a call and take care of my flowers while I’m gone.”

“I can do that. Look, give me a number where I can—whoa.”

The low smoke of female laughter had Noah raising an eyebrow. “Later. I don’t really want to have phone sex with you and the blonde. You let my flowers die, I’ll kick your ass.”

The response was a sharp intake of breath, a great deal of rustling and whispering. Rolling his eyes, Noah hung up on a wild burst of laughter.

Terrific, he thought and rubbed his hands over his face. Now he had two sexual adventures in his head. He decided to take a cold shower and go to bed.

Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare.

—George Meredith

He was surprised he remembered it so well, in such detail, with such clarity. As he drove, Noah caught himself bracing for the sensory rush as he came around a switchback, heartbeats before his field of vision changed from thick wood and sheer rock to stunning blue sky painted with the dazzling white peaks of mountains.

It was true that he’d driven this way once before, but he’d been only eighteen, it had been only one time. It shouldn’t have been like coming home after a trip away, like waking up after a dream.

And it had been summer, he reminded himself, when the peaks were snowcapped, but the body of them green with the pines and firs that marched up their sides to give them the look of living, growing giants rather than the cold and still kings that reigned over the valleys.

He’d done his research, he’d studied photographs, the brochures, the travelogues, but somehow he knew they couldn’t have prepared him for this sweep, for the contrasts of deep, silent forest and wildly regal peaks.

He continued the climb long after he passed the turnoff for River’s End. He had time, hours if he chose, before he needed to wind his way down to the lowlands, the rain forest, the job.

Choices again. And his was to slip into a pull-off, get out of the car and stand. The air was cold and pure. His breath puffed out, and had little knives scoring his throat on the inhale. It seemed to him that the world was spread out before him, field and valley, hill and forest, the bright ribbon of river, the flash of lake.

Even as a car grinding into low gear passed behind him, he felt isolated. He couldn’t decide if it was a feeling he enjoyed or one that troubled him, but he stood, letting the wind slap at his jacket and sneak under to chill his body, and studied the vast
blue of the sky, with the white spears of mountains vivid against it like a design etched on glass.

He thought perhaps he’d stopped just here with his parents all those years ago, and remembered standing with his mother reading the guidebook.

The Olympic Range. And however vast and encompassing it seemed from this point, he knew that at lower elevations, in the forest where the grand trees ruled, it didn’t exist. You would walk and walk in that dimness, or clatter up rocks on the tumbling hills and not see the stunning scope of them. Then you would take a turn, step out on a ridge, and there it would be. The vast sky-stealing stretch of it snatching your breath as if it had sneaked up on you instead of the other way around.

Noah took one last look, climbed back in his car and started down the switchback the way he’d come.

The trees took over. Became the world.

The detour took him a little more than an hour, but he still arrived at the lodge by three in the afternoon. He traveled up the same bumpy lane, catching glimpses of the stone and wood, the fairy-tale rooflines, the glint of glass that was the lodge.

He was about to tell himself it hadn’t changed, when he spotted a structure nestled in the trees. It mirrored the style and materials of the lodge, but it was much smaller and not nearly as weathered.

The wooden sign over the double doorway read
RIVER
’
S END NATURALIST CENTER
. There was a walking path leading to it from the lane and another from the lodge. Wildflowers and ferns appeared to have been allowed to grow as they pleased around it, but his gardener’s eye detected a human hand in the balance.

Olivia’s hand, he thought, and felt a warm and unexpected spurt of pride.

It was undoubtedly man-made, but she had designed it to blend in so well it seemed to have grown there as naturally as the trees.

He parked his car, noted that the lot held a respectable number of vehicles. It was warmer here than it had been at the pull off. Warm enough, he noted, to keep the pansies and purple salvia happy in their long clay troughs near the entrance.

He swung on his backpack, took out his single suitcase and was just locking his car when a dog loped around the side of the lodge and grinned at him.

Noah couldn’t think of another term for the expression. The dog’s tongue lolled, the lips were peeled back and seemed to curve up, and the deep brown eyes danced with unmistakable delight.

“Hey there, fella.”

Obviously seeing this as an invitation, the big yellow lab pranced across the lot, plopped down at Noah’s feet and lifted a paw.

“You the welcoming committee, boy?” Obligingly, Noah shook hands, then cocked his head. “Or should I say girl. Your name wouldn’t happen to be Shirley, would it?”

At the name, the dog let out one cheerful woof, then danced toward the entrance as if to tell Noah to come on, pal, get the lead out.

He was charmed enough to be vaguely disappointed when the dog didn’t follow him inside.

He didn’t see any dramatic changes in the lobby. Noah thought perhaps some of the furnishings had been replaced, and the paint was a soft, toasty yellow. But everything exuded such an aura of welcome and settled comfort that it might have been exactly so for a century.

The check-in was quick, efficient and friendly, and after having assured the clerk he could handle his baggage himself, he carried his bags, a package of information and his key up two squat sets of stairs in the main lobby and down a hallway to the right.

He’d requested a suite out of habit and because he preferred a separate area to set up his work. It was smaller than the rooms he remembered sharing with his parents, but certainly not cramped.

There was a nap-taking sofa, a small but sturdy desk, a table where guides and literature on the area were fanned. The art—running to watercolor prints of local flora—was better than decent, and the phone would support his modem.

He glanced at the view, pleased to have been given the side
facing the back so it was untainted by cars. He dropped his suitcase on the chest at the foot of the sleigh bed of varnished golden wood and tossed the lid open. As his contribution to unpacking, he removed his shaving gear and dumped it on the narrow shelf over the white pedestal sink in the adjoining bath.

He considered the shower—he’d been in the car since six
A
.
M
;and thought of the beer he might find in the lobby bar. After a mild debate he decided to take the first, then go hunt up the second.

He stripped, letting his clothes lay where they fell, then diddled with the controls of the shower until the water came out fast and hot. The minute he stepped under the spray, he groaned in pleasure.

Right decision, Brady, he thought as he let the water beat on his head. And after the beer, he’d wander around, scope out the place. He wanted to get a feel for the owners, to see if he could judge by how the staff and guests spoke of them which one of the MacBrides would be the best to approach.

He wanted to go over to the Center, find Olivia. Just look at her awhile.

He’d do that in the morning, he thought. After he got his bearings and a good night’s sleep.

He toweled off, tugged on jeans. He gave some consideration to actually putting away the clothes in his bag. He opted instead to just dig out a shirt, when there was a hard rap on the door.

Noah quickly grabbed a shirt and carried it with him to the door.

He recognized her instantly. Later he would wonder why the recognition had been so immediate, and so intense. She’d certainly changed.

Her face was thinner, honed into sharp planes. Her mouth was firmer, still full and unpainted as it had been at nineteen, but it didn’t strike him as innocent any longer.

And that gave him one hard tug of annoyance and regret.

He might have noted it wasn’t smiling in welcome if he hadn’t been dealing with the ridiculous and completely unexpected flash of pleasure.

Her hair had darkened to a color that reminded him of the caramels Mike’s mother had always melted down at Halloween and swirled onto apples. And she’d lopped it off. Lopped off all that gorgeous shiny hair. And yet it suited her better this way. On another woman he supposed the short, straight cut with the fringe of bang would have been called pixyish. But there was nothing fairylike about the woman in the doorway with her tall and leanly athletic build.

She smelled like the woods and carried a stoneware bowl filled with fresh fruit.

He felt the foolish grin break out on his face and could think of nothing to say but: “Hi.”

“Compliments of River’s End Lodge.” She thrust the bowl at him, straight into the gut and with enough force to earn a grunt from him.

“Ah, thanks.”

She was in the room in one long stride that had him backing up automatically. When she slammed the door at her back, he lifted his eyebrows. “Do you come with the fruit? They hardly ever give you complimentary women in California.”

“You have a hell of a nerve, sneaking in here this way.”

Okay, he decided, all right, it wasn’t going to be a friendly reunion. “You’re right, absolutely. I don’t know what I was thinking of, calling ahead for reservations, registering at the desk that way.” He set the bowl down, gingerly rubbed his stomach. “Look, why don’t we take a minute to—”

“I’ll give you a minute.” She rammed a finger into his chest. “I’ll give you a minute, then you can get your butt back to Los Angeles. You have no right coming here this way.”

“Of course I have a right. It’s a goddamn hotel.” He lifted a hand. “And don’t poke at me again, okay?”

“I told you to stay away from me.”

“And I damn well did.” The flash in her eyes was a clear warning that had him narrowing his own. “Don’t hit me again, Liv. I mean it. I’m pretty well fed up with female abuse. Now we can sit down and discuss this like reasonable adults, or we can just stand here and snarl at each other.”

“I don’t have anything to discuss with you. I’m
telling
you to go away and leave us alone.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Deciding to play it another way, he sat, chose an apple from the bowl and stretched out his legs as he bit in. “I’m not going anywhere, Olivia. You might as well talk to me.”

“I’m entitled to my privacy.”

“Sure you are. That’s the beauty of it. You don’t tell me anything you don’t want to tell me.” He took another bite of the apple, then gestured with it. “We can start with something simple, like what you’ve been doing with yourself the last half dozen years.”

Smug, smirky son of a bitch, she thought and spun away to pace. She hated that he looked the same, so much the same. The sun-streaked, wind-tossed hair, the full, firm mouth, the fascinating planes and angles of his face.

“If you were half the man your father is, you’d have some respect for my mother’s memory.”

That edgy little barb winged home and hooked itself bloodily in his heart. Noah studied his apple, turning it around in his hand until he was certain he could speak calmly. “You measured me by my father once before.” He lifted his gaze, and it was hard as granite. “Don’t do it again.”

Olivia jammed her hands in her pockets, shot a withering glance over her shoulder. “You don’t care what I think of you.”

“You don’t know what I care about.”

“Money. They’ll pay you big bucks for this book, won’t they? Then you can bounce around on all the talk shows and spout off about yourself and the valuable insights you dug up on why my father butchered my mother.”

“Don’t you want to know why?” He spoke quietly and watched those wonderful eyes reflect fury, misery, then snap back to fury.

“I know why, and it doesn’t change anything. Go away, Noah. Go back and write about someone else’s tragedy.”

“Liv.” He called out to her as she strode toward the door. “I won’t go away. Not this time.”

She didn’t stop, didn’t look back, but slammed the door smartly enough to have the pictures rattling on the walls. Noah tossed his apple in the air. “Well, that was pleasant,” he muttered, and decided he’d more than earned that beer.

She went down the back stairs, avoiding the lobby and the people who would be milling around. She cut through the kitchen, only shaking her head when her name was called. She needed to get out, get out, get away until she could fight off the hideous pressure in her chest, the vicious roaring in her ears.

She had to force herself not to break out in a run, to try to outrace the panic that licked at her. She moved quickly into the forest, into the deep and the damp. Still, her breath wanted to come in pants, her knees wanted to shake. It wouldn’t be permitted.

When she’d gone far enough, when the chances of anyone hiking down the path were slim, she sat down, there on the forest floor and rocked herself.

It was stupid. She’d been stupid, Olivia admitted as she pressed her forehead to her knees. She’d known he was coming. Jamie had told her he would, told her what he intended to do. Told her that she herself had decided to cooperate with him on the book.

That had generated the first genuine argument between them Olivia could remember.

Already, Noah Brady and his book were causing rifts in her family.

But she’d prepared herself to face him again. To deal with it. She wasn’t the same naive, susceptible girl who’d fallen stupidly in love with him.

She hadn’t expected that rush of feeling when he’d opened the door and smiled at her. So much the way he had six years before. She hadn’t expected her heart to break again, not after she’d spent so much time and effort to heal it.

Temper was better than pain.

Still, she’d handled it—handled him—poorly.

She’d kept her eye out for his reservation. When it had come
in, she’d promised herself she would go to his room after he’d checked in, so that she could talk to him, reason with him, in private. She would be calm, explain each one of her objections.

He was Frank Brady’s son, after all. And Frank was one of the few people she trusted absolutely.

She arranged to take the fruit bowl up herself, had worked out exactly what she would say and how she would say it.

Welcome to River’s End again, Noah. It’s nice to see you. Can I come in for a minute?

Reasonable, calm, rational. But as she’d started toward his room the fear had crawled into her and she’d gripped her anger like a weapon to beat it back.