The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5 (74 page)

While it buzzed up she started checking her phone messages. She’d set up her laptop, she decided, go over the schedule while she ate, find the best hole, check out the website Sylvia had recommended.

“Get the party started,” she murmured.

She took notes on her pad, saving or deleting messages as necessary.

“Ms. Bristow, this is Kati Starr. I’m a reporter with
U.S. Report
. I’m writing a story on the recent abduction murders of two women in California that seem to parallel those committed by George Allen Perry. As you were the only known victim to escape Perry, I’d like to speak with you. You can reach me at work, on my cell or via e-mail. My contacts are—”

Fiona hit
delete
. “No way in hell.”

No reporters, no interviews, no TV cameras or mikes pushed at her. Not again.

Even as she took a breath the next message came on.

“Ms. Bristow, this is Kati Starr with
U.S. Report
following up on my earlier call. I’m approaching deadline, and it’s very important that I speak with you as soon as—”

Fiona hit
delete
again.

“Screw you and your deadline,” she murmured.

She let the dogs in, comforted by their presence. Dinner, such as it was, didn’t hold much appeal, but she ordered herself to sit down, to eat, to do exactly what she’d planned to do with her evening before the reporter flooded her mind with memories and worries.

She booted up her laptop, poked at chicken potpie. To boost her mood, she checked the resort’s website first—and in moments was cruising on anticipatory bliss.

Hot stone massages, paraffin wraps, champagne and caviar facials. She wanted them all. She wanted them now.

She took the virtual tour, purring over the indoor pool, the posttreatment meditation rooms, the shops, the gardens, the lovely appointments in the guest rooms. That included, she thought, a two-story, three-bedroom “villa.”

She closed one eye, glanced at the cost. Winced.

But split three ways . . . it would still sting like hellfire.

But it had its own hot tub, and, oh God, fireplaces in the bathrooms.

In. The. Bathrooms.

And the views of the waterfall, the hills, the gardens . . .

Impossible, she reminded herself. Maybe when she won the lottery.

“It’s a nice dream,” she told the dogs. “So, now we know where. Let’s figure out when.”

She brought up her class schedule, calculated, tried some juggling, recalculated, shifted.

Once she’d settled on the two best possibilities, she e-mailed Sylvia and Mai.

“We’ll make it work,” she decided, and shifted over to check her incoming e-mail.

She found one from the reporter.

Fiona deleted the e-mail, including the list of contacts.

Then simply laid her head down on the table.

She was entitled to say no. Entitled to turn her back on that horrible time. She was entitled to refuse to be fodder for yet another story on death and loss.

Reliving all that wouldn’t, couldn’t bring Greg back. It wouldn’t help those two women or their grieving families.

She’d started her life over, and she was damn well entitled to her privacy.

She pushed herself up, shut down the laptop.

“I’m going to take that long bath, drink that stupid tea. And you know what? We’re going to book that damn villa. Life’s too damn short.”

T
hough her puppy classes invariably kept Fiona’s mood up, tension lingered, an endless echo of memories and loss.

Kati Starr, persistent if nothing else, called shortly after eight a.m.

One glance at the caller ID had Fiona letting the machine take it. She deleted it without listening, but the call itself lodged in the back of her neck like a brick.

She reminded herself her clients deserved her full attention.

Simon was late. Of course. He pulled in while the rest of the class ran through the basics.

“Just pick it up where we are,” she said coolly. “If we’re not interfering too much with your busy schedule.”

She moved away to work with each of her students individually, demonstrating how to discourage the exuberant Great Dane pup, who promised to be massive, from jumping up—and the perky schnauzer to stop crotch sniffing.

When they began to work off leash, she sighed as Jaws raced away to chase a squirrel—and led a stampede.

“Don’t chase them!” Fiona pushed a hand through her hair as Jaws did his level best to climb the tree the squirrel skittered up. “Call them back. Use your return command, then order your dog to sit. I want all the dogs back to their handlers and sitting.”

What she wanted took time and persistence—and some hands-on.

She reviewed sit and stay, individually and as a group, careful to keep her tone detached whenever she had to address Simon.

With leashes on, she worked on the stop and drop.

The class that usually amused and warmed her had a headache carving dully just above the brick at the base of her neck.

“Keep up the good work.” She ordered up a smile. “And remember: positive reinforcement, practice and play.”

As always, there were comments, questions, a story or two that had to be shared with her by one of the clients. Fiona listened, answered, stroked and petted. But felt none of her usual pleasure.

When Simon lingered, letting Jaws off leash to run with her dogs, Fiona decided it was fine. She’d deal with him, and eliminate a minor problem on her list.

“You’ve got a bug up your ass today,” he said before she could speak.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. And you look like hell.”

“You have to stop throwing all these pearls at my feet.”

“Did that guy in California kill someone else?”

“I don’t know. Why would I know? It has nothing to do with me.” She jammed her hands into the pockets of her hooded jacket. “I’m sorry for the women, for their families, but it has nothing to do with me.”

“Who’s arguing? You weren’t listening, not really, when Larry started on about how his supermutt figured out how to open doors or when Diane showed you the picture of her toddler drawing with crayons on the bulldog. I’d say that’s your version of having a bitch on. So, what’s the deal?”

“Listen, Simon, just because I kissed you, sort of—”

“Sort of?”

She set her teeth. “That doesn’t mean I’m obliged to share the details of my life with you, or explain the reasons for my moods.”

“I’m still stuck on ‘sort of,’ and wondering what would be actually.”

“You’ll have to keep wondering. We’re neighbors and you’re currently a client. That’s it.”

“A definite bitch on. Well, enjoy.” He whistled for his dog, which naturally brought the whole pack.

When Simon bent down, ruffled and praised, Fiona sighed again. “He’s doing well on the return. He doesn’t get stay yet, but he’s doing well in most areas.”

“He hasn’t eaten anything I needed to worry about in the last couple days.” He clipped on the leash. “See you.”

He got halfway to the car when she called his name.

She hadn’t planned to, couldn’t think why she had. And yet . . .

“Do you want to take a walk? I need to walk.”

“A walk? Where?”

She gestured. “One of the perks of living in the woods is being able to walk in them.”

He shrugged, crossed back to her.

“You’d better leash him,” she said. “Until you’re confident he’ll obey the stop command. He might take off after a rabbit or deer and get lost. Come on, boys, take a walk.”

Her dogs fell in happily, then ranged ahead. Jaws pulled on the leash.

“Wait,” Fiona ordered, sympathizing. The dogs paused, continuing at a slower pace at her signal when Jaws caught up.

“He thinks he’s one of the big guys. It’s good for him to get out like this, explore new territories, respect the leash, respond to you.”

“Is this another lesson?”

“Just making conversation.”

“Do you ever talk about anything other than dogs?”

“Yes.” Irritated, she hunched her shoulders, lapsed into momentary silence. “I can’t think of anything right now. God, I wish spring would hurry up. There, that’s other than. I can bitch about the weather. But it’s a nice day, so it’s hard to. Still I wish it would get warmer faster, and I want the sun to stay out till ten. I want to plant a garden and chase the deer and rabbits out of it.”

“Why don’t you just put up a fence?”

“Then I don’t have the entertainment value of chasing the deer and rabbits, do I? They’re not afraid of the dogs, which is my own fault because I trained the boys not to chase—oops. Dog talk. I love the way it smells in here.”

She took a deep breath of pine, grateful the headache had backed off a bit. “I love the way it looks—the lights, the shadows. I thought I’d be a photographer, because I like light and shadows, and people’s faces and the way they move. But I don’t take very good, or interesting, pictures. Then I thought I’d be a writer, but I bored myself so I suspect I’d have flopped at that one. Except I like to write—for the blog or the newsletter, or little articles about, you know, the thing I’m not talking about in this conversation. Then I thought I could coach track or be a trainer but . . . I didn’t really have a center, I guess. I’m not sure you’re required to have a center when you’re twenty. Why don’t you say something?”

“Mostly because you haven’t shut up.”

She blew out a breath. “That’s true. I’m babbling useless conversation because I don’t want to think. And I realize I asked you to come so I wouldn’t think or start brooding. I don’t have a bitch on. I have a brood on, and it’s entirely different.”

“Comes off the same to me.”

“You’re a hardass, Simon. That shouldn’t be appealing to me.”

They moved through a clearing where the trees soared overhead, beefy giants that sighed like the surf where their tops met sky.

“Why Orcas?” she asked him. “Of all the places to live.”

“It’s quiet. I like being near the water. Hold this.” He shoved the leash into her hand and walked over to a large, twisted stump, heaved half out of the needle-strewn ground.

While she watched, he circled it, crouched, knocked on it.

“Is this your property?”

“Yeah. We haven’t walked that far.”

“I want this.” His eyes, the color of old gold in the luminous streams and dapples of light, shifted briefly to hers. “Can I have this?”

“You want . . . the stump?”

“Yes. I’ll pay for it if you want to be greedy.”

“How much? I’m going on a spa vacation.” She walked closer trying to see what he saw.

“Pee somewhere else.” He gave Jaws a nudge as the pup prepared to squat. “Ten bucks.”

She
pff
’d.

“It’s just sitting here. You’re not using it, and I’m going to have to yank it out and haul it off. Twenty, but that’s it.”

“Replace it. Plant a tree in the hole and we’re good.”

“Done.”

“What’ll you do with it?”

“Something.”

She studied it, circled it as he had, but still only saw the twisted remains of a tree broken off in some long-ago storm. “I wish I could see like that. I wish I could look at a tree stump and see something creative.”

He glanced up again. “You looked at that dog and saw something.”

She smiled. “I think that was an actual nice thing to say. Now I guess I have to be sorry for being mean to you.”

“You have a strange scale, Fiona. ‘Sort of’ kissed me when you were locked on like a clamp. Being mean when you told me to mind my own business.”

“I yelled at you in my head.”

“Oh, well, now I’m crushed.”

“I can be mean. Harsh and mean, and I can be okay with it. But it has to be justified. You just asked what was wrong. You can come back and get the stump anytime.”

“Next couple of days.” He straightened, glanced around to orient himself. Then he looked at her. “You might as well spill it.”

“Let’s keep walking.” She held the leash, bringing Jaws to heel, letting him range, bringing him back while they wound through the trees, skirted the curve of a quiet creek.

“This reporter’s hounding me,” she began. “Calling, e-mailing. I haven’t talked to her—just deleted all the messages.”

“What does she want?”

“To talk to me about Perry—in connection with the two women in California. She’s writing a story on it. That’s her job; I get that. But it’s not mine to talk to her, to feed that fire. The only victim who escaped—that’s how she put it. I’m not a victim, and it just pisses me off to be called one. I had enough of that when it all happened.”

“Then keep deleting.”

“Sounds simple—and I will—but it’s not simple.”

The headache was gone, she realized, but the anger and frustration that had caused it remained lodged like splinters.

Small, sharp and nasty.

“When it happened, the prosecution and the cops kept me away from the press as much as possible. They didn’t want me giving interviews—and God knows, I didn’t want to give them. But a story like that? It’s got juice, right? They kept calling, or talking to people who knew me—people who knew people who knew me. Squeezing the juice.” She paused, glanced at him again. “I guess you’d understand that, from your relationship with Nina Abbott.”