The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5 (41 page)

It amused him that no one questioned him. Either he was too familiar or too forbidding, but the interns went about their business—and from across the compound, Tansy sent him a friendly wave.

A single question to a passing staff member gave him Lil’s location as her office. He drove the trailer over to the cabin, then went in to get her.

“Coop.” Mary gave him an absent nod of greeting from her desk. “She’s on the phone, but I think she’s wrapping it up.” She glanced toward the office, lowered her voice. “Have you heard about the murder? Do you know if it’s true?”

“Yeah, it’s true.”

“That poor man. His poor wife. Come out here for a little holiday, and go home a widow. Every time I think people are basically good and decent, something happens that convinces me too many of them are no damn good.”

“You’re right, both ways.”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? Oh, your friend—the alarm system man—he’s been in touch.”

“I talked to him. He should have you fully secured in another two days.”

“Glad to hear it, and that’s a shame, too. That we have to go to all this trouble and expense because some people are no damn good.”

“It’s the right investment.”

“Well. There, she’s off the line. Better get in there before she calls somebody else.”

“Mary, do you have any problem with me taking Lil off for a couple hours?”

“Not if it’s somewhere that doesn’t involve work and worry, which is all she’s been doing the last few weeks.”

“That’s a deal.”

“Don’t let her say no,” Mary ordered, as he walked to Lil’s office.

She sat angled toward her monitor, fingers on her keyboard.

He wondered if she had any idea how pale she was, or how shadowed her eyes.

“I’ve got a line on a tiger.”

“Not a sentence you hear every day.”

“Boris is lonely. Strip joint in Sioux City used a Bengal as part of an act.”

“Did she strip?”

“Ha ha. No, they kept her caged, or chained. Finally got shut down for animal abuse. She’s been declawed and drugged, and God knows. We’re going to take her.”

“Good, go get her.”

“I’m working on having her brought to us. A lot of red tape to wind through. I’m pushing for donations. She’s made some media outlets, and I can use it to beef things up. I just need to—”

“Come with me.”

He watched her tense. “Is something wrong? Something else?”

“For the next hour or two, no. The tiger can wait. Everything can wait. We’ve got daylight.”

“Cooper, I’m working. There’s a busload of middle-schoolers in the ed center, a bunch of people roaming around hooking up alarms. Matt just finished sewing up a fawn that got clipped by a car, and I’m working on getting Delilah here by early next week.”

“I assume Delilah’s the tiger, not one of the dancers. I’ve got work of my own, Lil, and it’ll be here when we get back. Let’s go.”

“Where? God, Coop, some poor man was killed and dumped in the Spearfish. I can’t think about taking a walk with you and discussing . . . whatever.”

“We’re not walking. And I guess we do this the hard way.” He came around the desk, pulled her up out of the chair, and boosted her over his shoulder.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” She gave his back a thump with her fist. “Cut it out. This is ridiculous. Don’t! Don’t you walk out of here with . . .”

He grabbed her hat on the way. “We’ll be a few hours, Mary.”

With her eyes laughing, Mary gave them a sober nod. “All right.”

“You okay to close up if we’re not back?”

“Not a problem.”

“Stop it. This is
my
place. You don’t tell my staff—Don’t you step outside this building. Cooper, you’re embarrassing both of us.”

“I’m not embarrassed.” He walked outside, continued toward the truck. “But you will be if you don’t sit where I put you, because I’ll just catch you and put you back again.”

“You’re just making me mad.”

“I can live with that.” He pulled open the passenger door, dumped her on the seat. “I mean it, Lil, I’ll just haul you back.” He reached across, hooked her seat belt, then dropped her hat in her lap. Ice-blue eyes met molten brown. “Stay where I put you.”

“Oh, I’ll stay. I’ll stay because we’re not having this out here. I’m not having more of a scene here.”

“Good enough.” He slammed the door, skirted the hood of the truck, then got behind the wheel. “We’re going riding. We’re not coming back until you’ve got some color back in your cheeks.” He glanced over. “I’m not talking pissed-off color.”

“Pissed-off is all you’re going to get.”

“We’ll see.” He headed down the road. “We’ll drive to Rimrock. We could consider that neutral ground.” And miles away from where Tyler’s body had been found.

“What’s the point of this?”

“The point is you need a break, and so do I. And Lil, we’ve put this off long enough.”

“I decide when I need a break. Damn it, Coop, I don’t know why you’d want to make me so mad. I’ve got enough going on without working in a fight with you—and we were fine. Just last night we were fine.”

“You were too worn-out to get into this last night. I’d rather have you mad than almost in tears with the idea of
talking
to me.”

“I’ve been talking to you plenty.” She leaned her head back, shut her eyes. “Jesus Christ, Cooper, a man is dead. Dead. And you’re pushing this? Talking about what? What’s over and done?”

“That’s right, a man’s dead. And the one who did it has you in the crosshairs. You need help, but you don’t trust me.”

With sharp, jerky movements, she plucked the hat off her lap, set it on her head. “That’s not true.”

“You trust me to help you protect your place. You trust me enough to sleep with me. But you don’t trust me down in the deep. We both know that.”

He parked at the campground. Together, in silence, they unloaded the horses. “We can take the lower loop from here. It’s shorter.”

“I don’t like being handled this way.”

“I don’t blame you. And I don’t care.”

She mounted, turned her horse toward the trailhead. “Maybe the women you got used to tolerate this kind of thing. I don’t. I won’t. You’ll get your two hours because you’re bigger and you’re stronger—and because I’m not having this out in front of my staff, my interns, my guests. Then that’s it, Cooper. That’s it between us.”

“You get some color in your cheeks, some worry out of your eyes, and we clear the air between us. After that, if you say that’s it, that’ll be it.” He opened the cattle gate for her to pass through, then closed it behind them.

“You can tell me everything you know about what happened to James Tyler. I can’t think about much else. I don’t know how you could expect me to.”

“Okay, we’ll get that out of the way.”

He laid it out for her, every detail he remembered, as they rode toward the rim of the canyon. He spoke of murder and death as the trail leveled out to wind through pines and quaking aspen where flickers swooped and darted among the trees.

“Is Gull all right?”

“He’s going to see Tyler, the way he found him, every time he closes his eyes for a while. He’ll lose sleep over it, have nightmares when he does sleep. Then it’ll pass.”

“Is that the way it was for you?”

“I saw Melinda Barrett for a long time. The first time I saw a body when I was in uniform, it was just as horrible. And then . . .” He shrugged.

“It becomes routine?”

“No. It becomes the job, but it’s never routine.”

“I still see her sometimes. Even before all this started up. I’d think it had gone away, then I’d wake up, cold and sweating, with her in my head.” Calmer, she turned to look at him, so their eyes met. “We shared a hard thing at an early age. We shared a lot of things. You’re wrong when you say I don’t trust you. And you’re wrong to think manhandling me is the way to get whatever it is you want.”

“You’re what I want, Lil. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

Color did indeed rush into her face as she whipped her head toward him. “Go to hell.”

She kicked her horse into a trot.

PART THREE

SPIRIT

—PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

21

He thought: Shit. And let her take her distance. Maybe she’d blow off the steam of temper, maybe she wouldn’t, but temper was better than exhaustion. She needed to ride, he thought, needed to just breathe awhile. The air filled with the scents of sage and juniper, while overhead an eagle circled on the hunt. He heard what he thought was the drumming of a grouse from a thicket of buckbrush that looked like it wanted to open its tight buds and bloom.

Mad or not, he knew she’d take it all in and be better for it.

She might not look up and watch the eagle, but she knew it was there.

When she finally slowed, he caught up with her. No, he decided, she hadn’t blown off the steam. She rode on it every bit as much as she rode on Rocky.

“How can you say that to me?” she demanded. “All you’ve ever wanted? You left
me.
You broke my heart.”

“We’re remembering it differently, because I don’t remember anybody leaving anybody. And you sure didn’t act brokenhearted when we decided the long-distance deal wasn’t working.”

“When you decided. I came halfway to New York to see you, to be with you. I’d wanted to go all the way, to spend real time with you on your turf. In your place. But you wouldn’t have that.” Those dark eyes stabbed at him, lethal as knives. “I guess you figured it would be harder to dump me if I was sitting in your New York apartment.”

“Jesus Christ, Lil, I didn’t dump you.” They wounded him, those eyes, spilled blood she couldn’t see. “It wasn’t like that.”

“What the hell was it like, from your perspective? You told me you couldn’t keep doing it, that you needed to concentrate on your own life, your own career.”

“I said
we
couldn’t,
we
needed.”

“Oh, bullshit!” Rocky shied a bit, disturbed by the tone, the temper. She controlled him with no sign of effort or concern. “You had no right to speak for me or my feelings. Not then, not now.”

“You sure as hell didn’t say so at the time.” His horse danced, as uneasy as Rocky. Coop steadied him, and would have turned so he and Lil were face-to-face. But she trotted off. Again. Setting his teeth, Coop nudged his mount to follow. “You agreed with me,” he added, annoyed with the defensiveness in his tone once he’d caught up.

“What the hell was I supposed to do? Fling myself into your arms and beg you to stay with me, to love me?”

“Actually—”

“I drove all the way to that damn motel in Illinois, so excited. It felt like years since we’d seen each other, and I was worried you wouldn’t like my hair, or my outfit. Stupid things. And I was
aching
to see you. Literally aching. Even my damn toes hurt.”

“Lil—”

“And I knew the minute I saw you that something was wrong. You got there before I did—remember? I saw you crossing the parking lot, coming from that little diner.”

Her voice changed. The anger leaked out of it as misery pushed in. Where the anger wounded him, the misery simply destroyed.

He said nothing, let her finish. Though he could’ve told her yes, he remembered. He remembered crossing that pothole of a parking lot, remembered the first instant he became aware of her. He remembered the thrill, the need, the despair.

All of it.

“You didn’t see me, at first. And I knew. I tried to tell myself it was just nerves, seeing you again. It was just . . . you looked different. Tougher, harder.”

“I was different. We both were by then.”

“My feelings hadn’t changed, not like yours.”

“Wait a minute.” He reached out to snag her bridle. “Wait a minute.”

“We made love, almost the minute we closed the door of that motel room. And I knew you were going to end it. Do you think I couldn’t tell you’d pulled away, pulled back?”

“I pulled back? How many times had you? Why had it been so long since we’d seen each other? There was always a project, a field trip, a—”

“You’re blaming me?”

“There’s no blame,” he began, but she swung off her horse, stalked away.

Struggling for patience, he dismounted to tether both the horses. “You need to listen.”

“I loved you. I loved you. You were the one, the only one. I’d have done anything for you, for us.”

“That’s part of the problem.”

“Loving you was a problem?”

“That you’d have done anything. Lil, just—hold still, damn it.” He gripped her shoulders when she would have walked away from him again. “You knew what you wanted to do with your life. You knew what you wanted, and you were doing it. Top of your class, honors and opportunities. You came alive, Lil. You were exactly where you needed to be, doing exactly what you needed to do. I couldn’t be a part of that, and I sure as hell couldn’t get in the way of it.”

“Now you’re claiming you dumped me and ripped my heart out for my own good? Is that how you choose to look at it?”

“That’s how it was, how it is.”

“I never got over you, you bastard.” Anger and insult in every part of her—face, body, voice—she shoved at him. “You
ruined
me. You took something from me, and I could never get it back, never give it to anyone else. I hurt a good man, a very good man, because I couldn’t love him, because I couldn’t give him what he deserved to have and you’d thrown away. I tried. Jean-Paul was perfect for me, and I should’ve been able to make it work. But I couldn’t, because he wasn’t you. And he knew, he always knew. Now you want to stand there and tell me you left for my sake?”

“We were children, Lil. We were just kids.”

“I didn’t love you any less, or hurt any less, because I was nineteen.”