Tribute

by Nora Roberts

  “Actually, I’ve seen . . . Nothing,” Ford said when Buddy turned slitted eyes on him. “I see nothing.”

  He trooped his way through the house, noted that the trim was nearly finished in the hall, the entryway. On the second floor, he poked into rooms. He could still smell the paint in a room with walls of a subtle, smoky brown. In the master, he studied the three colors brushed on the wall. Apparently, she hadn’t yet decided between a silvery gray, a gray-blue and a muted gold.

  He wandered down the hall, then up the widened, finished stairs. She stood with Matt, each holding a sample of wood up to the light streaming through the window.

  “Yeah, I like the contrast of the oak against the walnut.” Matt nodded. “You know what we could do? We could trim it out in the walnut. You’ve got your . . . Hey, Ford.”

  “Hey.”

  “Summit meeting,” Cilla told him. “Built-ins.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Okay, like this.” With his pencil, Matt began to draw on the drywall, and Ford’s attention shifted to the swaths of paint brushed on the opposite wall. She had the same silvery gray here, and a warm cheery yellow competing with what he’d call apricot.

  He took a look in the bathroom, at the tiles and tones.

  He tuned back in to hear Matt and Cilla come to an agreement on material and design.

  “I’ll get started on this in my shop,” Matt told her.

  “How’s Josie feeling?”

  “Hot and impatient, and wondering why the hell she didn’t do the math last winter and realize she’d be going through the summer pregnant.”

  “Flowers,” Ford suggested. “Buy her flowers on the way home. She’ll still be hot, but she’ll be happy.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that. I’ll check, make sure the flooring’s coming in on Tuesday. Barring another screwup, we’ll start hammering it out up here. Roses always work, right?” he asked Ford.

  “They’re a classic for a reason.”

  “Okay. I’ll let you know about the flooring, Cilla.”

  As Matt went down, Ford stepped over, tapped Cilla’s chin up, kissed her. “The pale silver up here, the dull gold in the master.”

  She cocked her head. “Maybe. Why?”

  “Streams better with the bathrooms than your other choices. And while they’re both warm tones, the gray gives a sense of coolness. It’s an attic, however jazzed up you make it. And in the bedroom, that color’s restful but still strong. Now tell me why Buddy’s putting a faucet over your stove.”

  “To fill pots.”

  “Okay. I talked to Brian.”

  “You often do.”

  “About the letters. His grandfather.”

  “You . . . you told him?” Her mouth dropped open. “You just told him I think his grandfather might have broken commandments with my grandmother?”

  “I don’t think commandments were mentioned. You wanted a handwriting sample. Brian can probably get one.”

  “Yes, but . . . Couldn’t you have been covert, a little sneaky? Couldn’t you have lied?”

  “I suck at sneak. And even if I gold-medaled in the sneak competition, I can’t lie to a friend. He understands I told him in confidence, and he won’t break a confidence to a friend.”

  She blew out a breath. “You people certainly grew up on a different planet than I did. Are you sure he won’t say anything to his father? It’s a stew pot of embarrassment.”

  “I’m sure. He did have an interesting comment though. What if Hennessy wrote the letters?”

  Cilla went back to gape. “Kill-you-with-my-truck Hennessy?”

  “Well, think about it. How crazy would you get if you’d been having an affair with a woman, then the son of that woman is responsible—in your eyes—for putting your son in a wheelchair? It’s way-fetched, I agree. I’m going to reread the letters with this in mind. Just to see how it plays.”

  “You know what? If it turns in that direction, within a mile of that direction, I don’t think I want to know. Imagining my grandmother with Hennessy just gives me the serious eeuuwws.”

  She sighed, started downstairs with him. “I talked to the police today,” she told Ford. “There won’t be a trial. They did a deal, Hennessy took a plea, whatever. He’ll do a minimum of two years in the state facility, psychiatric.”

  Ford reached for her hand. “How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t honestly know. So I guess I’ll put it aside, think about now.”

  She moved into the master, studied the paint samples. “Yeah, you’re right about the color.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Cilla used Sunday morning to pore through home and design magazines, scout the Internet for ideas and vendors and tear out or bookmark possibilities and potentials. She could hardly believe she’d reached the stage where she could begin considering furniture.

  Weeks away, of course, and she needed to add in trolling antique stores, even flea markets—and possibly yard sales—but she was approaching the time when ordering sofas and chairs, tables and lamps, wouldn’t be out of line.

  Then there was bedding, she mused, a kitchen to outfit, an office, window treatments, rugs. All those fun, picky little details to fill in a house. To make a house a home. Her home.

  Her first real home.

  The closer it came to reality, the more she realized just how much she wanted home. All she had to do was step outside, look across the road and see it.

  Sitting here now, at Ford’s counter, with her laptop, her magazines, her notebooks, she thought of just how far she’d come since March. No, well before March, she corrected. She’d started this journey on that long-ago trek through the Blue Ridge, one she’d taken specifically, deliberately to see, firsthand, her grandmother’s Little Farm, to see where her own father sprang from, and maybe to understand, a little, why he’d come back, and left her.

  And she’d fallen in love, Cilla thought now, with the hills that bumped their way back to the mountains, the thick spread of trees, the little towns and the big ones, the houses and gardens, the winding roads and streams. Most of all, she’d fallen in love with the old farmhouse sagging behind a stone wall, closed in by its desolate, overgrown gardens.

  Sleeping Beauty’s castle, maybe, she mused, but she’d seen home, even then.

  Now, what she’d dreamed of, yearned for, was very nearly hers.

  She sat at the counter, sipping coffee, and imagined waking in a room with walls the color of a glowing and hopeful dawn, and of living a life she’d chosen rather than one chosen for her.

  Ford gave a sleepy grunt as he walked in.

  Look at him, she thought. Barely awake, that long, long, lean, edging-toward-gawky body dressed in navy boxers and a tattered Yoda T-shirt. All that sun-streaked brown hair rumpled and messy, and those green eyes groggy and just a little cranky.

  Wasn’t he just unbelievably adorable?

  He dumped coffee into a mug, added sugar, milk. Said, “God, mornings suck through a straw,” and drank as if his life balanced within the contents of the mug.

  Then he turned, to prop his elbow on the counter. “How come you look so lucid?”

  “Maybe because I’ve been up for three hours. It’s after ten, Ford.”

  “You have no respect for the Sunday.”

  “It’s true. I’m ashamed.”

  “No, you’re not. But real estate agents also have no respect for the Sunday. Vicky just called my cell and woke me from a very hot dream involving you, me and finger paints. It was really getting interesting when I was so rudely and annoyingly interrupted. Anyway, the sellers came down another five thousand.”

  “Finger paints?”

  “And as an artist I can say it was the beginning of a master-piece. We’re only ten thousand apart now, as Vicky the dream killer pointed out. So . . .”

  “No.”

  “Damn it.” He looked like a kid who’d just been told there were no cookies in the jar. “I knew you were going to say no, which you did not say when
I was swirling cobalt blue around your belly button. Couldn’t we just—”

  “No. You’ll thank me later when you have that ten K to put into improvements and repairs.”

  “But I really want that ugly dump now. I want it for my own. I love it, Cilla, like a fat kid loves cake.” He tried a hopeful smile. “We could split the difference.”

  “No. We hold firm. No one else has made an offer on the property. The seller isn’t interested in making any of those repairs and improvements. He’ll cave.”

  “Maybe he won’t.” Those groggy eyes narrowed into a scowl. “Maybe he’s just as pigheaded as you are.”

  “Okay, here’s this.” She leaned back, an expert at the negotiation table. “If he doesn’t cave, if he doesn’t accept your offer within two weeks, you can counter with the split. But you hold tight for fourteen more days.”

  “Okay. Two weeks.” He tried the hopeful smile again. “Do you ever think about scrambling eggs?”

  “Hardly ever. But I am thinking about something else. I’m thinking, looking at that big, soft sofa over there—as I’ve been in the sofa-hunting mode. And wondering, as I’m thinking, what would happen if I stretched out on that big, soft sofa.”

  She slid off the stool, aiming a smile over her shoulder as she strolled to the sofa. “And I’m wondering will I have to lie here all by myself, all alone with my unquenched desires and lascivious thoughts.”

  “Okay, lascivious did it.”

  He skirted the counter, crossed, then pounced. “Hi.”

  With a low laugh, she scissored her legs, reared and rolled until their positions reversed. “I think I’ll be high this time.” Dipping down, she caught his bottom lip between her teeth, chewed lightly.

  “This is how I respect the Sunday.”

  “I was so wrong about you.” He ran his hands down her, over the loose, white tank. “Cilla.”

  “You’re all rumpled and sexy and . . .” She peeled Yoda off, tossed him away. “Mostly naked.”

  “All we’re missing are the finger paints.” He pushed up, locking his arms around her, fixing his mouth to hers. “I miss you. As soon as I’m awake and you’re not there.”

  “I’m not far.” She wrapped around him, only separating to let him strip the white tank away. And, oh, those hands, those slow, steady hands. “Here. Here.” She cupped his head, guided it down until his mouth closed over her breast.

  Everything coiled and curled inside her, and opened again.

  She wanted, wanted, with those hands pressing, that mouth feasting. Wanted him inside her, hot and hard. She wiggled out of her shorts, gasping as he touched and teased, moaning as she rose up, eased down, and filled herself with him.

  “This is what I want, on Sunday morning.”

  She took him, riding up, riding down, her hands braced on the arm of the couch. Slim, hard muscles, burnt honey hair, iced blue eyes so clear they were a mirror into his heart.

  No dream, no fantasy came close to the truth of her. No wish, no wonder compared.

  “I love you, Cilla. I love you.”

  Her breath caught; her heart skipped beats. Her body bowed, and the arrow it shot struck home.

  She slid down to him, snuggled right in. He loved the way they fit, line to line, the way her hair felt against his skin.

  “So . . . where exactly do you buy finger paints?”

  He grinned, lazily walked his fingers up and down her spine. “I’ll find out, lay in a supply.”

  “I’ll provide the drop cloth. Where did you get this couch?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere where they sell furniture.”

  “It’s a good size, shape, nice fabric. Comfortable. I need to start thinking furniture, and I have that great big living room to deal with. Conversation areas and lighting and art. I’ve never done all that before. It’s a little intimidating.”

  He glanced over when Spock wandered in, took one look at them twined together naked on the couch and walked away. Just jealous, Ford thought. “Never bought furniture before?”

  “Sure, you’ve got to sit on something. But I’ve never chosen things with the idea of keeping them any length of time. It’s always been temporary.” She brushed her lips over his collarbone, nuzzled at his shoulder. “And I’ve worked with stagers on flips. Staging a property can help it sell. So I know, or have opinions, about what works in a space. But this is different. Staging’s like a set. Load it in, break it down.”

  “Didn’t you have a house, an apartment, something in L.A.?”

  “Steve had a place. After our five-minute marriage I lived at the BHH awhile.”

  “The BHH?”

  “Beverly Hills Hotel. Then I traveled some, or stayed at Steve’s when I picked up some work. There was my very brief college stint, and I had an apartment off campus. When Steve bought the property in Brentwood to flip, I camped there. I got in the habit of staying in the flip houses. It gave me a sense of them.”

  Place, house, property. Never home, he thought. She’d never had what he and everyone he knew took for granted. She’d never had home. He thought of how she’d sat in the big, empty living room with its beautiful walls and gorgeous trim, and imagined a long-ago holiday party.

  She was reaching back to find her future.

  “We can move the couch over there,” he said, suddenly desperate to give her something. “You could see how it looks in place and have something to sit on besides the ever-versatile bucket.”

  “That’s a very nice offer.” She gave him an absent kiss before sitting up to hunt for her clothes. “But it’s more practical to wait for furniture until after the floors are done. Of course, now that I’ve gotten trapped into giving a party, I’d better find some suitable outdoor furniture.”

  “Party?”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” She pulled on her tank. “I made the mistake of mentioning to Cathy Morrow that I’d like—maybe—to give a party around Labor Day, but the house wouldn’t be finished or furnished. She jumped right on the first part, completely ignored the second. Now I’ve got Patty calling me with menu ideas, and your mother offering to make her pork barbecue.”

  “It’s great stuff.”

  “No doubt. The problem remains how I find time to squeeze in party planning while I’m installing kitchen cabinets, running trim, hanging doors, refinishing floors and hitting a very long punch-out list, not to mention exploring the world of sofas, couches, divans and settees.”

  “You buy a grill, a bunch of meat and a whole lot of alcoholic beverages.”

  She shook her head at him. “You’re a man.”

  “I am. A fact which I’ve just proven beyond any reasonable doubt.” And being Sunday, he should get a shot at proving it again. “A party’s a good thing, Cilla. People come, people you know and like, enjoy being with. You show off what you’ve done. You share it. That’s why you took down the gate.”

  “I . . .” He was right. “What kind of grill?”

  He smiled at her. “We’ll shop.”

  In an exaggerated gesture, she crossed her hands over her heart. “Words most women only dream about hearing from a man. I need to go get dressed. I could pick up paint while we’re out, and hardware, take another look at kitchen lighting.”

  “What have I wrought?”

  She tossed a smile at him as she walked out of the room. “We’ll take my truck.”

  He dragged on his boxers, but stayed where he was, thinking about her. She didn’t realize how much she’d told him. She’d never once mentioned the house, or houses, where she’d grown up.

  He, on the other hand, could describe in perfect detail the house of his childhood, the way the sun slanted or burst through the windows of his room at any given time of the day, the green sink in the bathroom, the chip in the kitchen tile where he’d dropped a gallon jug of apple juice.

  He remembered the pang when his parents had sold it, even though he’d been in New York, even though he’d moved out. Even though they’d only moved a couple miles away. Yea
rs later, he could still drive by that old brick house and feel that pang.