The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5 (77 page)

He probably needed a new collar.

Reaching over, he slid his finger between the collar and the fur. “Shit. Why don’t you tell me these things?”

As he drove over the bridge, the pup’s tail slashed—door, seat, door, seat, in a jubilant rhythm.

“Glad somebody’s happy,” Simon muttered.

The truck sat in the drive; the dogs raced in the yard.

“We’re not staying,” he warned Jaws. “In and out.”

He let the dog out first and considered that what with stump hauling with Gary and Butch, a visit to town, the adoration of women and now the unscheduled playdate with pals, this had turned into the canine version of a day at Disney World for Jaws.

He retrieved the pot and the foil-wrapped bread.

Fiona stood in the doorway now, leaning casually on the jamb. And to Simon’s puzzled surprise, she was smiling.

“Hi, neighbor.”

“I had to go in to Sylvia’s. She asked me to drop this off.”

She straightened to take the lid off the pot and sniff. “Mmm, minestrone. I’m very fond. Bring it on back.”

She moved aside to let him pass and left the door open as she often did.

The fire crackled, the whiff of soup spiced the air, and she smelled like the woods.

“I heard you got your stump.”

“Is it out on the newswire?”

“Grapevine’s faster. I ran into Gary and Sue on my way home. They were heading to their son’s for dinner. Just set it on the counter, thanks. I was going to have a beer, but Syl’s minestrone requires a good red. Unless you’d rather beer.”

The plan to get in and out shifted, weighed by curiosity. The grapevine
was
fast, he thought. She had to know about the article. “The red’s good.”

She crossed to a long, narrow cupboard—she really could use a wine cabinet—to select a bottle. “So, a sink?”

“What?”

“The stump.” She opened a drawer, pulled out a corkscrew without any rooting around. “Gary said you’re going to make a sink. A stump sink. It’s going to be the talk of the island.”

“Because not that much goes on here. I’ll get your tree planted in a couple days.”

“Works for me.”

He studied her face while she pulled the cork, saw no signs of distress, shed tears, anger. Maybe the grapevine had broken down after all.

She poured the wine, plugged in the cord on the pot. “Let’s give it a few minutes,” she said, and tapped her glass to his. “So, a solarium.”

“A what?”

“You said I should think about a solarium, south side. Open the kitchen. How would it work?”

“Ah . . . that wall.” He gestured with his glass. “Load-bearing so you’d need support. Maybe a couple of beams, columns—keep it open but give it a sense of entry. Wall out, beams up. Take it out ten, twelve feet. Maybe pitch the roof. Skylights. A good, generous window would give you a view into the woods. Maybe wide-planked floors. You’d have room for a table if you wanted an alternate to eating in the kitchen.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“It’d be some work.”

“Maybe I’ll start saving my pennies.” She took a sip of wine, then set the glass down to get a jar of olives out of the refrigerator. “You know about the article.”

“Apparently you do.”

She transferred olives from bottle to a shallow dish. “James read it before we met up this morning—and passed the word to the rest of the unit. They were all so worried about bringing it up, not bringing it up, nobody could concentrate. So they finally told me and we got started on our work.”

“Did you read it?”

“No. This is my version of an appetizer, by the way.” She shoved the olives toward him. “No, I didn’t read it, and I won’t. No point. There’s nothing I can do to change what happened before, and nothing I can do to change what’s happening now. I knew it was coming, now it has. Tomorrow it’ll be yesterday.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“Syl sent my favorite soup. She thought I’d be upset.”

“I guess.”

Fiona picked up her wine again, pointed at him with her free hand. “You know very well, as she’d have told you—and maneuvered you into coming by so I wouldn’t be alone.”

The dogs rushed in then, a happy pack of fur. “You’re not alone anyway.”

“True enough.” She gave everyone a rub. “You figured I’d be upset—and probably couldn’t outmaneuver Syl.”

“Does anybody?”

“Not really. I am upset—but in a controllable way. I’ve already had two brooding days this month, so I’m not allowed another one.”

He found himself unwillingly fascinated. “There’s a limit?”

“For me there is. And now I have soup and . . .” She peeled back the foil. “Mmmm, rosemary bread. This is exceptional. I have a stepmother who’d take the time to make it for me, a neighbor who’d bring it by even though he’d rather not, and my dogs. I’m not allowed to brood. So we’ll have dinner and conversation. But I’m not going to sleep with you after.”

“Cocktease.”

She nearly choked on the wine. “You did not just say that.”

“Say what?”

She threw back her head and laughed. “See? This is better than brooding. Let’s eat.”

She ladled out bowls of soup, put the bread on a board and poured some sort of dipping sauce into a dish.

“The candles,” she said as she lit them, “aren’t for seduction. They just make the food taste better.”

“I thought they were to make me look prettier.”

“But you’re so beautiful already.” She smiled, spooned up soup. “To Syl.”

“Okay.” He sampled. “Wait.” Sampled again. “This is really good. Like dinner-in-Tuscany good.”

“She’d love to hear that. Mostly, I think Sylvia’s developed too close an attachment to tofu and strange grains of rice. But when she does minestrone, she’s a genius. Try the bread.”

He broke off a hunk, dipped. “She called your mother.”

“Oh.” Distress came into those clear blue eyes. “I should’ve thought of that. I’ll call them both later and let them know I’m all right.”

“You’re right about the bread, too. My mother bakes bread. Baking’s kind of a hobby for her.”

“I can bake. You know you buy that cookie dough in rolls, slice it, stick it in the oven?”

“My specialty’s frozen pizza.”

“Another fine skill.”

He went back to his soup. “Everyone I know who’s divorced hates all parties involved. Or at least coldly disdains.”

“My father was a very good man. My mother’s a lovely woman. At some point they just stopped being happy together. I know there were fights, and anger, probably some blame tossed around, but for the most part they handled it as well as it can be handled. It still hurt unbelievably, for a while. But then, it didn’t, because he was a very good man, and she’s a lovely woman, and they were happy again. And, oddly, came to like each other again. Then Dad met Syl, and they were . . . well, they were just beautiful together. She and my mother took the time, made the effort to get to know each other, because of me. And they just hit it off. They really like each other. My mother sends Syl flowers every year on the anniversary of my father’s death. Sunflowers, because they were my father’s favorite. Okay.” She pressed her hands to her eyes briefly. “Enough of that. It gets me weepy.

“Tell me what you did today besides hauling a stump out of the woods.”

Before he could speak, the dogs wandered back in. Jaws scented the air and bulleted for the table. He plopped his paws on Fiona’s leg and whined.

“Off.” She snapped her fingers, pointed to the ground. He sat, but the tail swished and the eyes shone with anticipation. She shifted her gaze to Simon.

“You feed him from the table.”

“Maybe. He keeps at me until—”

He broke off when she huffed out a breath. She rose, walked to the pantry. She got out small chew bones. One for Jaws, and one each for the three dogs who looked at the pup with pity.

“These are yours.” She laid the bones across the room. “Go ahead. Distract,” she said to Simon. “Replace, discipline. As long as you give in and feed him from the table—and people food isn’t good for his diet—he’ll keep begging. And you’re teaching him to be a nuisance by rewarding bad behavior.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Keep it up, you’ll raise a counter-grazer. I’ve had more than one student who’s chowed down on the Thanksgiving turkey, the dinner party rack of lamb or the Christmas ham because they weren’t taught proper manners. One stole a neighbor’s steaks right off the grill.”

“Was that a fetch/retrieve? Because that could be a good skill.”

She shook her spoon at him. “Mark my words. Anyway, other than the stump?”

“Nothing much. I had some work, and I took some pieces into Syl’s, which is why I’m eating soup.” It wasn’t a chore after all, he realized, this dinner conversation with candlelight and dogs gnawing on rawhide. “She’s buzzed because a couple of women were in there when I came in, and they walked out loaded down. She’s shipping the wine cabinet because it was too big for their car.”

“The wine cabinet.” Her spoon stopped halfway to her mouth. “You sold my wine cabinet.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

She sulked a moment, then shrugged. “Well, hell. Congratulations.”

“It suited her.” He shrugged back when Fiona’s eyes narrowed. “Susan from Bainbridge Island. Canary diamond, good leather jacket, stylish boots. Subtle but expensive Susan from Bainbridge Island.”

“What am I? Obvious and cheap?”

“If you were cheap we’d be having sex now, soup later.”

“That’s supposed to be funny. It is, but only a little.”

“What do you do when you’re out with your unit like today? Don’t you just know all the stuff anyway?”

“It’s essential to practice, individually and as a team. We work a different problem, over different terrain, at least once a month. Then we can go over any mistakes, any flaws or any room to improve. We worked a cadaver find today.”

Simon frowned at his soup. “Nice.”

“Happy to change the subject if you’re sensitive.”

“Where’d you get the cadaver? Corpses Are Us?”

“They were out. We use cadaver material—bone, hair, body fluid—in a container. Mai, as base operations, plants it earlier. Then we set up, just as we would for a real search, assign sectors and so on.”

He tried to think if he’d ever had a more unusual conversation over minestrone. Absolutely not.

“How does the dog know it’s supposed to find a dead person instead of a live one?”

“That’s a good question. Different command. For mine, I use ‘find’ for a live search and ‘search’ for cadaver work.”

“That’s it?”

“There’s more, but most of it deals with the cross-training, the early work, the advanced work.”

“Jaws might be good at it. He found a dead fish today. No problem.”

“Actually, he could be. He can be taught to differentiate between the scent of a dead fish, or animal, and human remains.”

“And not to roll in it when he finds it?”

“Definitely.”

“Might be worth it just for that.” He glanced over to see Jaws bellying toward the table. Fiona simply turned, pointed. Jaws slunk back to the other dogs.

“He responds well, see? Not only to you but to another handler. That’s another essential skill.”

“I think he responds better to you, and I’m not sure that’s all that helpful.”

She nudged her bowl aside. “Maybe not, but this has been. I wouldn’t have brooded because it’s against the rules, but I’d have come close on my own.”

He studied her while the candlelight flickered. “You don’t look like hell tonight.”

“Oh my goodness.” She fluttered a hand at her heart. “Am I blushing?”

“I figured you would,” he added, unperturbed. “A full day out on maneuvers, or whatever they are.”

“Unit training.”

“Sure, and the fallout from the article. But you look good.”

“Wow, from not looking like hell to looking good in one leap. What could be next?”

“Your smile. I also figure you have to know it’s your best feature—the most appealing, the sexiest thing about you. That’s why you use it so often.”

“Really?”

“See, like right now.”

Still smiling, she rested her chin on her fist. “I’m still not sleeping with you tonight. This wasn’t a date. I may want you to take me on a date before we sleep together. I haven’t decided.”

“You haven’t decided.”

“That’s right. It’s one of the privileges of the female to decide these things. I don’t make the rules. So I’m not going to sleep with you yet.”

“Maybe I don’t want to sleep with you.”

“Because I’m not your type,” she said with a nod. “But I’ve already seduced you with my smile, and softened you up with Sylvia’s soup. I could lay you like linoleum.”

“That’s insulting. And provocative.”

“But I won’t because I like you.”

“You don’t really like me that much.”

She laughed. “I actually do, and I’m not altogether settled tonight, so it wouldn’t be what it should be. But I’ll take this.”

She rose to walk around the table. And slid into his lap. She grazed her teeth over his bottom lip, then soothed it with her tongue before sinking them both into the kiss.

Comfort and fire, she thought, promise and threat. The hard body and thick, soft hair, the rough stubble and smooth lips.

She sighed into it, retreated, then locked her eyes on his.

“A little more,” she murmured, and took his mouth again.

This time his hands slid up her sides, skimmed her breasts. Possessed. Small and firm, with her heart thudding under his palms.

“Fiona.”

She broke the kiss to lay her cheek to his. “You could convince me; we both know it. Please don’t. It’s so unfair, but please don’t.”

Some women, he thought, had the power to turn a man in the opposite direction from what he wanted. It seemed his fate to run up against them. And, damn it, to care.