by Nora Roberts
top down?”
“Absolutely.”
It helped—the drive, the air, the smell of the sea, the blare of the radio. He didn’t chat at her or try to ease her into conversation. A.J. did something she allowed herself to do rarely in the company of others. She relaxed.
How long had it been, she wondered, since she’d driven along the coast, no time frame, no destination? If she couldn’t remember, then it had been too long. A.J. closed her eyes, emptied her mind and enjoyed.
Just who was she? David asked himself as he watched her relax, degree by degree, beside him. Was she the tough, no-nonsense agent with an eye out for ten percent of a smooth deal? Was she the fiercely protective, obviously devoted daughter—who was raking in that same ten percent of her mother’s talent on one hand and raising the roof about exploitation the next. He couldn’t figure her.
He was a good judge of people. In his business he’d be producing home movies if he weren’t. Yet when he’d kissed her he hadn’t found the hard-edged, self-confident woman he’d expected, but a nervous, vulnerable one. For some reason, she didn’t entirely fit who she was, or what she’d chosen to be. It might be interesting to find out why.
“Hungry?”
Half dreaming, A.J. opened her eyes and looked at him. How was it he hadn’t seen it before? David asked himself. The eyes, the eyes were so like Clarissa’s, the shape, the color, the…depth, he decided for lack of a better word. It ran through his head that maybe she was like Clarissa in other ways. Then he dismissed it.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, “I wasn’t paying attention.” But she could have described his face in minute detail, from the hard cheekbones to the slight indentation in his chin. Letting out a long breath, she drew herself in. A wise woman controlled her thoughts as meticulously as her emotions.
“I asked if you were hungry.”
“Yes.” She stretched her shoulders. “How far have we gone?”
Not far enough. The thought ran unbidden through his mind. Not nearly far enough. “About twenty miles. Your choice.” He eased over to the shoulder of the road and indicated a restaurant on one side and a hamburger stand on the other.
“I’ll take the burger. If we can sit on the beach.”
“Nothing I like better than a cheap date.” A.J. let herself out. “This isn’t a date.”
“I forgot. You can pay for your own.” He’d never heard her laugh like that before. Easy, feminine, fresh. “Just for that I’ll spring.” But he didn’t touch her as they walked up to the stand. “What’ll it be?”
“The jumbo burger, large fries and the super shake. Chocolate.”
“Big talk.”
As they waited, they watched a few early-evening swimmers splash in the shallows. Gulls swooped around, chattering and loitering near the stand, waiting for handouts. David left them disappointed as he gathered up the paper bags. “Where to?”
“Down there. I like to watch.” A.J. walked out on the beach and, ignoring her linen skirt, dropped down on the sand. “I don’t get to the beach often enough.” Kicking off her shoes, she slid stockinged feet in the sand so that her skirt hiked up to her thighs. David took a good long look before he settled beside her.
“Neither do I,” he decided, wondering just how those legs—and the rest of her—might look in a bikini.
“I guess I made quite a scene.”
“I guess you did.” He pulled out her hamburger and handed it to her.
“I hate to,” she said, and took a fierce bite. “I don’t have a reputation as an abrasive or argumentative agent, just a tough one. I only lose objectivity with Clarissa.”
He screwed the paper cups into the sand. “Objectivity is shot to hell when we love somebody.”
“She’s so good. I don’t just mean at what she does, but inside.” A.J. took the fries he offered and nibbled one. “Good people can get hurt so much easier than others, you know. And she’s so willing to give of herself. If she gave everything she wanted, she’d have nothing left.”
“So you’re there to protect her.”
“That’s right.” She turned, challenging.
“I’m not arguing with you.” He held up a hand. “For some reason I’d like to understand.”
With a little laugh she looked back out to sea. “You had to be there.”
“Why don’t you tell me what it was like? Growing up.”
She never discussed it with anyone. Then again, she never sat on a beach eating hamburgers with associates. Maybe it was a day for firsts. “She was a wonderful mother. Is. Clarissa’s so loving, so generous.”
“Your father?”
“He died when I was eight. He was a salesman, so he was away a lot. He was a good salesman,” she added with the ghost of a smile. “We were lucky there. There were savings and a little bit of stock. Problem was the bills didn’t get paid. Not that the money wasn’t there. Clarissa just forgot. You’d pick up the phone and it would be dead because she’d misplaced the bill. I guess I just started taking care of her.”
“You’d have been awfully young for that.”
“I didn’t mind.” This time the smile bloomed fully. There were, as with her mother, the faintest of dimples in her cheeks. “I was so much better at managing than she. We had a little more coming in once she started reading palms and doing charts. She really just sort of blossomed then. She has a need to help people, to give them—I don’t know—reassurance. Hope. Still, it was an odd time. We lived in a nice neighborhood and people would come and go through our living room. The neighbors were fascinated, and some of them came in regularly for readings, but outside the house there was a kind of distance. It was as if they weren’t quite sure of Clarissa.”
“It would have been uncomfortable for you.”
“Now and then. She was doing what she had to do. Some people shied away from us, from the house, but she never seemed to notice. Anyway, the word spread and she became friends with the Van Camps. I guess I was around twelve or thirteen. The first time movie stars showed up at the house I was awestruck. Within a year it became a matter of course. I’ve known actors to call her before they’d accept a role. She’d always tell them the same thing. They had to rely on their own feelings. The one thing Clarissa will never do is make decisions for anyone else. But they still called. Then the little Van Camp boy was kidnapped. After that the press camped on the lawn, the phone never stopped. I ended up moving her out to Newport Beach. She can keep a low profile there, even when another case comes up.”
“There was the Ridehour murders.”
She stood up abruptly and walked closer to the sea. Rising, David walked with her. “You’ve no idea how she suffered through that.” Emotions trembled in her voice as she wrapped her arms around herself. “You can’t imagine what a toll something like that can take on a person like Clarissa. I wanted to stop her, but I knew I couldn’t.”
When she closed her eyes, David put a hand on her shoulder. “Why would you want to stop her if she could help?”
“She grieved. She hurt. God, she all but lived it, even before she was called in.” She opened her eyes and turned to him then. “Do you understand, even before she was called in, she was involved?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“No, you can’t.” She gave an impatient shake of her head for expecting it. “I suppose you have to live it. In any case, they asked for help. It doesn’t take any more than that with Clarissa. Five young girls dead.” She closed her eyes again. “She never speaks of it, but I know she saw each one. I know.” Then she pushed the thought aside, as she knew she had to. “Clarissa thinks of her abilities as a gift…but you’ve no idea what a curse that can be.”
“You’d like her to stop. Shut down. Is that possible?” A.J. laughed again and drew both hands through hair the wind had tossed. “Oh, yes, but not for Clarissa. I’ve accepted that she needs to give. I just make damn sure the wrong person doesn’t take.”
“And what about you?” He would have sworn som
ething in her froze at the casual question. “Did you become an agent to protect your mother?”
She relaxed again. “Partly. But I enjoy what I do.” Her eyes were clear again. “I’m good at it.”
“And what about Aurora?” He brought his hands up her arms to her shoulders.
A yearning rose up in her, just from the touch. She blocked it off. “Aurora’s only there for Clarissa.”
“Why?”
“Because I know how to protect myself as well as my mother.”
“From what?”
“It’s getting late, David.”
“Yeah.” One hand skimmed over to her throat. Her skin was soft there, sun kissed and soft. “I’m beginning to think the same thing. I never did finish kissing you, Aurora.”
His hands were strong. She’d noticed it before, but it seemed to matter more now. “It’s better that way.”
“I’m beginning to think that, too. Damn if I can figure out why I want to so much.”
“Give it a little time. It’ll pass.”
“Why don’t we test it out?” He lifted a brow as he looked down at her. “We’re on a public beach. The sun hasn’t set. If I kiss you here, it can’t go any further than that, and maybe we’ll figure out why we unnerve each other.” When he drew her closer, she stiffened. “Afraid?” Why would the fact that she might be, just a little, arouse him?
“No.” Because she’d prepared herself she almost believed it was true. He wouldn’t have the upper hand this time, she told herself. She wouldn’t allow it. Deliberately she lifted her arms and twined them around his neck. When he hesitated, she pressed her lips to his.
He’d have sworn the sand shifted under his feet. He was certain the crash of the waves grew in volume until it filled the air like thunder. He’d intended to control the situation like an experiment. But intentions changed as mouth met mouth. She tasted warm—cool, sweet—pungent. He had a desperate need to find out which of his senses could be trusted. Before either of them was prepared, he plunged himself into the kiss and dragged her with him.
Too fast. Her mind whirled with the thought. Too far. But her body ignored the warning and strained against him. She wanted, and the want was clearer and sharper than any want had ever been. She needed, and the need was deeper and more intense than any other need. As the feelings drummed into her, her fingers curled into his hair. Hunger for him rose so quickly she moaned with it. It wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. Yet the feeling swirled through her that it was exactly right and had always been.
A gull swooped overhead and was gone, leaving only the flicker of a shadow, the echo of a sound.
When they drew apart, A.J. stepped back. With distance came a chill, but she welcomed it after the enervating heat. She would have turned then without a word, but his hands were on her again.
“Come home with me.”
She had to look at him then. Passion, barely controlled, darkened his eyes. Desire, edged with temptation, roughened his voice. And she felt…too much. If she went, she would give too much.
“No.” Her voice wasn’t quite steady, but it was final. “I don’t want this, David.”
“Neither do I.” He backed off then. He hadn’t meant for things to go so far. He hadn’t wanted to feel so much. “I’m not sure that’s going to make any difference.”
“We have control over our own lives.” When she looked out to sea again, the wind rushed her hair back, leaving her face unframed. “I know what I want and don’t want in mine.”
“Wants change.” Why was he arguing? She said nothing he hadn’t thought himself.
“Only if we let them.”
“And if I said I wanted you?”
The pulse in her throat beat quickly, so quickly she wasn’t sure she could get the words around it. “I’d say you were making a mistake. You were right, David, when you said I wasn’t your type. Go with your first impulse. It’s usually the best.”
“In this case I think I need more data.”
“Suit yourself,” she said as though it made no difference. “I have to get back. I want to call Clarissa and make sure she’s all right.”
He took her arm one last time. “You won’t always be able to use her, Aurora.”
She stopped and sent him the cool, intimate look so like her mother’s. “I don’t use her at all,” she murmured. “That’s the difference between us.” She turned and made her way back across the sand.
4
There was moonlight, shafts of it, glimmering. There was the scent of hyacinths—the faintest fragrance on the faintest of breezes. From somewhere came the sound of water, running, bubbling. On a wide-planked wood floor there were shadows, the shifting grace of an oak outside the window. A painting on the wall caught the eye and held it. It was no more than slashes of red and violet lines on a white, white canvas, but somehow it portrayed energy, movement, tensions with undercurrents of sex. There was a mirror, taller than most. A.J. saw herself reflected in it.
She looked indistinct, ethereal, lost. With shadows all around it seemed to her she could just step forward into the glass and be gone. The chill that went through her came not from without but from within. There was something to fear here, something as nebulous as her own reflection. Instinct told her to go, and to go quickly, before she learned what it was. But as she turned something blocked her way.
David stood between her and escape, his hands firm on her shoulders. When she looked at him she saw that his eyes were dark and impatient. Desire—his or hers—thickened the air until even breathing was an effort.
I don’t want this. Did she say it? Did she simply think it? Though she couldn’t be sure, she heard his response clearly enough, clipped and annoyed.
“You can’t keep running, Aurora. Not from me, not from yourself.”
Then she was sliding down into a dark, dark tunnel with soft edges just beginning to flame.
A.J. jerked up in bed, breathless and trembling. She didn’t see moonlight, but the first early shafts of sun coming through her own bedroom windows. Her bedroom, she repeated to herself as she pushed sleep-tousled hair from her eyes. There were no hyacinths here, no shadows, no disturbing painting.
A dream, she repeated over and over. It had just been a dream. But why did it have to be so real? She could almost feel the slight pressure on her shoulders where his hands had pressed. The turbulent, churning sensation through her system hadn’t faded. And why had she dreamed of David Brady?
There were several logical reasons she could comfort herself with. He’d been on her mind for the past couple of weeks. Clarissa and the documentary had been on her mind and they were all tangled together. She’d been working hard, maybe too hard, and the last true relaxation she’d had had been those few minutes with him on the beach.
Still, it was best not to think of that, of what had happened or nearly happened, of what had been said or left unsaid. It would be better, much better, to think of schedules, of work and of obligations.
There’d be no sleeping now. Though it was barely six, A.J. pushed the covers aside and rose. A couple of strong cups of black coffee and a cool shower would put her back in order. They had to. Her schedule was much too busy to allow her to waste time worrying over a dream.
Her kitchen was spacious and very organized. She allowed no clutter, even in a room she spent little time in. Counters and appliances gleamed in stark white, as much from the diligence of her housekeeper as from disuse. A.J. went down the two steps that separated the kitchen from the living area and headed for the appliance she knew best. The coffeemaker.
Turning off the automatic alarm, which would have begun the brewing at 7:05, A.J. switched it to Start. When she came out of the shower fifteen minutes later, the scent of coffee—of normalcy—was back. She drank the first cup black, for the caffeine rather than the taste. Though she was an hour ahead of schedule, A.J. stuck to routine. Nothing as foolish and insubstantial as a dream was going to throw her off. She downed a handful of vitamins, preferring t
hem to hassling with breakfast, then took a second cup of coffee into the bedroom with her to dress. As she studied the contents of her closet, she reviewed her appointments for the day.
Brunch with a very successful, very nervous client who was being wooed for a prime-time series. It wouldn’t hurt to look over the script for the pilot once more before they discussed it. A prelunch staff meeting in her own conference room was next. Then there was a late business lunch with Bob Hopewell, who’d begun casting his new feature. She had two clients she felt were tailor-made for the leads. After mentally reviewing her appointments, A.J. decided what she needed was a touch of elegance.
She went with a raw silk suit in pale peach. Sticking to routine, she was dressed and standing in front of the full-length mirrors of her closet in twenty minutes. As an afterthought, she picked up the little half-moon she sometimes wore on her lapel. As she was fastening it, the dream came back to her. She hadn’t looked so confident, so—was it aloof?—in the dream. She’d been softer, hadn’t she? More vulnerable.
A.J. lifted a hand to touch it to the glass. It was cool and smooth, a reflection only. Just as it had only been a dream, she reminded herself with a shake of the head. In reality she couldn’t afford to be soft. Vulnerability was out of the question. An agent in this town would be eaten alive in five minutes if she allowed a