The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5 (84 page)

“It’s the middle of the afternoon, practically. It’s daylight.”

“Prude.” Lori elbowed him and laughed.

“I’m not a prude, but—”

“People make love in the daylight, James. Plus I like knowing he’s around, spending time with her. Didn’t you say we should come by just to check on her?”

“Yeah, but we’re her friends.”

“I think Fee and Simon are pretty friendly. Just a wild guess. I’m sorry if you’re jealous, but—”

“I’m not.” Genuinely surprised, he stopped scowling after Simon and turned to her.

“I know you and Fee are close,” Lori began, lowering her lashes.

“Wow. No. Not that way.”

The lashes lifted again. “At all?”

“At all, as in never. Jeez, do people actually think . . . ?”

“Oh, I don’t know about people. I guess I just thought you were, or had been or maybe hoped to.” She managed an embarrassed laugh. “I’ll shut up now.”

“Listen, Fee and I are . . . we’re like family. I don’t think about her that way. I don’t think that way.” He paused until she looked at him, looked in his eyes. “About Fee.”

“Maybe you think that way about somebody else?”

“All the time.”

“Oh.” She laughed again. “Thank God.”

He started to touch her; she started to let him. And Fiona rushed out of the house.

“Hey! Hi. It’s my day for pals. Did Simon leave?”

James let out a long breath. “Yeah, he said he had to go.”

“Sorry,” Lori put in. “Lousy timing.”

“Actually, it could’ve been worse. Or much more embarrassing for all. Let’s just close the door on all that. So.” She offered a big, bright smile. “What are you two up to?”

O
rganic milk.” Fiona unloaded the items she’d picked up for Sylvia. “Free-range eggs, goat cheese, lentils, brown rice and one shiny eggplant. Mmm, yummy.”

“I shudder to think what you’ve got in the car.”

“Besides Bogart? You’re better off not knowing.”

“Fat, salt, starch and sugar.”

“Maybe, but also a couple of very pretty apples. And look what I got for you,” she said to Oreo, “because you’re so cute.”

She pulled out a squeaky toy, gave it a squeeze and sent the little dog into a quiver of delight. “Sylvia,” she said when she offered the toy, and Oreo pranced off with it. “I’m having an affair.” With a laugh she turned two quick circles. “I’m closing in on thirty, and I’ve never been able to say that before. I’m having a hot, steamy, crazy affair.”

With the one shiny eggplant in her hand, Sylvia smiled. “It’s certainly giving you a relaxed, happy glow.”

“Is it?” Fiona laid her hands on her own cheeks. “Well, I am relaxed and happy. You know it was never an affair with Greg. It was friendship and a crush and a relationship one after another, or altogether. But a slow build. And this? This has been
pow!
Explosive.”

She leaned on the kitchen counter, grinned. “I’m having scorching, no-strings sex, and it’s fabulous.”

“Do you want to keep it that way?” Sylvia gave Fiona’s hair, loose today, swinging, a quick stroke. “The no strings?”

“I’m not thinking about that yet.” Fiona lifted her shoulders, let them fall in a kind of internal hug. “I like this phase of not thinking about it.”

“Exciting. A little dangerous. Unpredictable.”

“Yes! And that’s all so unlike me. No plans, no checklist.”

“And all glow.”

“If it keeps up, I may turn radioactive.” Charged, she broke a sprig of glossy green grapes from the bunch in the bowl on the counter and began popping them into her mouth. “I’ve been training Jaws one-on-one. Over a week now, which means either I go over there or Simon brings the dog to me. And we don’t always . . . There isn’t always time, but there’s always heat.”

“Don’t you ever go out? I mean, wouldn’t you like to go have dinner or catch a movie?”

“I don’t know. That all seems . . .” She whisked a hand through the air. “Outside right now. Maybe we will, or maybe it’ll burn off. But right now, I feel so
involved
, so excited, so—cliché time—alive. I’m a walking buzz. Did you ever have one? A hot, steamy affair?”

“Yes, I did.” After tucking the eggs away, Sylvia closed the refrigerator. “With your father.”

Fiona patted a hand to her throat as a grape threatened to lodge. “ Seriously?”

“I think we both decided it was just sex, just a fast, exciting ride—during that no-thinking phase.”

“Hold on a minute, because I want to hear this but I don’t want to get a picture in my head. That’s too weird. Okay, okay.” She squeezed her eyes shut, nodded. “No video. You and Dad.”

Sylvia licked her fingertip, made a hissing sound. “Scorching. I was managing Island Arts in those days. I have many,
many
fond memories of the stockroom.”

“I must say . . . wow. Dad in the stockroom.”

“Exciting, a little dangerous, unpredictable.”

“Like you,” Fiona murmured. “Not so much like him—or my perception of him.”

“We were like teenagers.” She sighed, smiled. “God, he made me feel that way. Of course, I was much too unconventional to consider marriage, so I imagined we’d just continue as we were, until we stopped. And then, I don’t know, Fee, how or when or why, not specifically, but then I couldn’t imagine my life without him. Thank God he felt the same.”

“He was so nervous the first time he took me to meet you. I know I was young, but I knew he loved you because he was so nervous.”

“He loved us both. We were lucky. Still, when he asked me to marry him, I thought, Oh no, absolutely not. Marriage? Just a piece of paper, just an empty ritual. I thought absolutely not, but I said yes—and stunned myself. My heart,” she murmured, laying her hand over it. “My heart wouldn’t say no.”

Fiona ran those words through her mind on the drive home.
My heart wouldn’t say no
.

She thought it lovely, and at the same time felt relief that, at the moment, her heart kept silent. A speaking heart could break—she knew that very well. As long as hers remained content, she’d stay relaxed and happy.

Spring was beginning to show her face as field and hill and forest steeped in green, sprinkled by the bold yellow of wild buttercups, like grains of shaken sunlight. Maybe there was a dusting of snow high up on Mount Constitution, but the contrast of white peaks against soft blue only made the shy blooms of the early white fawn lilies more charming, the three-note call of the sparrow more poignant.

Right at the moment, she felt like the island—coming alive, blooming, busy with the business of being.

Classes and clients and work on her blog packed her days, while her unit and training added the spice of satisfaction. Her own three dogs gave her love, entertainment, security. Her very hot neighbor kept her excited and aware—
and
had a dog she believed she could mold into a solid, even superior, Search and Rescue dog.

The police didn’t have any news—not that they were sharing, in any case—on the three murdered women, but . . . There’d been no more abductions reported in two weeks.

As she rounded a curve she caught sight of the iridescent blur of a hummingbird zipping along a clump of red-flowering currant.

If that couldn’t be taken as a good omen, she mused, what could?

“No bad news, Bogart, just the—what is that song?—the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees. Hell, that’s going to stick in my head.”

He thumped his glossy black tail, so she sang it again. “I don’t know the rest—before my time, you know. Anyway, errands are done, we’re nearly home. And you know what? Maybe I’ll give Jaws’s daddy a call, see if he wants to come over for dinner. I could cook. Something. It might be time we had ourselves a date—and a sleepover. What do you say? Do you want Jaws to come over and play? Let’s get the mail first.”

She turned into the drive, parked and walked over to the box on the side of the road. She tossed the mail into one of the grocery bags. “We’d better get this stuff put away so I can see if I actually have anything to make for dinner—the sort you make when somebody comes over.”

As she carried bags inside she wished she’d had the idea earlier. Then she could’ve picked up something, put together an actual adult menu.

“I could go back,” she mused, stowing frozen dinners, cans. “Pick up a couple of steaks. You know what?” She tossed the mail on the table, put away the cloth bags Sylvia had given her for grocery runs. “I could just call the pizza place and sweet-talk them into a delivery.”

Considering the options, she picked up the mail. “Bill, bill, oh, and, surprise, bill.” She lifted the padded mailing bag. “Not a bill. Hey, guys, maybe this is some pictures from one of our graduates.”

Her former clients often sent her photos and updates. Pleased to have something that wasn’t a bill, she zipped open the bag.

The gauzy red scarf fell onto the table.

She stumbled back, revulsion and panic rising in her throat like burning reflux. For a moment the room spun around her, gray at the edges so the snake coil of the scarf boiled red. Pain crashed into her chest, blocking her breath until the gray swam with white dots. She groped behind her, clamped one white-knuckled hand on the counter as her legs liquefied.

Bearing down, she sucked in air, hissed it out, and forced her quivering legs to move. Even as she reached for the phone, the dogs milling around her in concern went on alert.

“Stay with me. Stay with me.” She gasped it out as hammers of panic slammed against her ribs. She swore she heard the strike of them cracking her bones like glass.

Fiona grabbed the phone with one hand, a carving knife with the other.

“Damn it, Fiona, you left the door open again.”

Simon strode in, annoyance in every line. Faced with a woman, pale as wax, holding a very large knife and guarded by three dogs who all growled a low warning, he stopped short.

“You want to tell them to stand down?” he asked. Coolly, calmly.

“Relax. Relax, boys. Friend. Simon’s a friend. Say hi to Simon.”

Jaws galloped in with a rope, ready to play. Simon walked to the back door, opened it. “Everybody out.”

“Go on out. Go outside. Go play.”

Still watching her, Simon closed the door behind the rush of bodies. “Put down the knife.”

She managed another breath. “I can’t. I can’t seem to let go of it.”

“Look at me,” he ordered. “Look at me.” His eyes on hers, Simon put a hand on her wrist and used the other to release the vise of her fingers on the handle of the knife. He shot it back into the slot on the cutting board.

“What happened?”

She lifted a hand, pointed at the table. Saying nothing, he walked to the table, stared down at the scarf, the open bag.

“Finish calling the cops,” he told her, then turned when she didn’t speak, didn’t move. He took the phone.

“Speed dial one. Sheriff’s office. Sorry. I need to just . . .” She slid down, sat on the floor and dropped her head between her knees.

His voice was a vague buzz under the thunder of her heart in her ears. She hadn’t fainted, she reminded herself. She’d armed herself. She’d been ready.

But now, now all she wanted to do was come apart.

“Here. Drink.” Simon took her hand, wrapped it around a glass of water. “Drink it, Fiona.” Crouching, he guided the glass to her lips, watching her steadily.

“Your hands are hot.”

“No, yours are cold. Drink the water.”

“Can’t swallow.”

“Yes you can. Drink the water.” He nudged it on her, sip by slow sip. “Davey’s on his way.”

“Okay.”

“Tell me.”

“I saw a hummingbird. I saw a hummingbird, and I stopped to get the mail. It was in the mail. I picked up the mail, brought it in with the groceries. I thought it might be pictures of one of my dogs—students. I get them sometimes. But . . .”

He rose, took the bag by the corner with two fingers, flipped it over. “It’s postmarked Lakeview, Oregon. There’s no return address.”

“I didn’t look. I just opened it—right before you came in. Right before.”

“I couldn’t have walked in and scared you if you hadn’t left your door open.”

“You’re right.” The knot at the base of her throat wouldn’t loosen. The water wouldn’t wash it away, so she focused on Simon’s face, the rich tea color of his eyes. “That was careless. Comes from being relaxed and happy. Stupid.” She pushed to her feet, set the glass on the counter. “But I had the dogs. I had a weapon. If it hadn’t been you, if it had been . . .”

“He’d have a hard time getting by the dogs. Odds are he wouldn’t. But if he did, goddamn, if, Fiona, he’d have taken that knife away from you in two seconds.”

Her chin came up; so did her color. “You think so?”

“Look, you’re strong, and you’re fast. But grabbing a weapon you have to use close in, and can be used against you, isn’t a smart alternative to running.”

Her movements jerky, she yanked open a drawer, pulled out a spatula. The knot dissolved, with anger and insult in its place. “Take it away from me.”

“For Christ’s sake.”

“Pretend it’s a knife. Prove your point, goddamn it.”

“Fine.” He shifted, feinted with his right hand, then reached for her arm with his left.

Fiona changed her leg base, grabbed his reaching arm and used his momentum to drag him by. He had to slap a hand against the wall or run face-first into it.

“Now I’ve just stabbed you in the back with the knife—or if I’d been feeling less murderous, I’d have kicked you in the back of the knees and taken you down. I’m not helpless. I’m
not
a victim.”

He turned toward her. Fury shone on her face now, infinitely preferable to fear.

“Nice move.”

“That’s right.” She nodded sharply. “That’s goddamn right. Do you want to see another? Maybe the one where I kick your balls up against the back of your teeth, then beat you into a coma when you’re on the ground writhing in pain.”