Eight Classic Nora Roberts Romantic Suspense Novels

by Nora Roberts

  “Oh.” Now that, she thought, very truly did put her in her place. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” She stood up again to pace. “I had it all worked out, logically, sensibly. You weren’t supposed to make me feel like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I can’t live without you. Dammit, Paul, I don’t know what to do.”

  “How about this?” He snatched her in mid-stride, nearly lifting her off her feet. The kiss did the rest. After a short, final struggle, she fell into it.

  “I do love you.” She held on tight to that, and to him. “I don’t know how to deal with it, but I love you.”

  “You’re finished dealing with things alone.” He pulled her away enough so that she could see he meant everything he said. “Do you understand, Julia?”

  “I don’t understand anything. Maybe, for right now, I don’t need to.”

  Content with that, he lowered his mouth to hers. The knock on the door had them both sighing. “I can send the waiter away.”

  She laughed, shaking her head. “No. Suddenly I’m starving.”

  “At least the champagne I ordered won’t go to waste.” He kissed her once, then again, lingeringly, as the knock sounded a second time.

  When Paul admitted the waiter, she saw that he’d also ordered flowers, a dozen delicate pink roses just budding. She slipped one from the vase, holding it to her cheek as their lunch was set up.

  “Two messages for you, Miss Summers,” the waiter told her, offering the envelopes as Paul signed the check. “Thank you.”

  “Enjoy your lunch,” he said, adding a cheery smile at his tip.

  “It feels decadent,” Julia said when they were alone. “Champagne, romance, flowers, in the middle of the day in a hotel.” She laughed as the cork popped. “I like it.”

  “Then we’ll have to make it a habit.” He lifted a brow as he poured. “Tonight’s tickets?”

  “Yes. Front row, center. I wonder how he managed it.”

  “My father can manage almost anything he wants to.”

  “I liked him,” Julia continued as she ripped open the second envelope. “It isn’t often you find the man so much like the image. Charming, urbane, sexy—”

  “Please.”

  Her laugh was low and rich and delighted. “You’re too much like him to appreciate it. I really hope we …”

  She trailed off, going dead white. The envelope fluttered to the floor as she studied the sheet of paper in her hand.

  TWO WRONGS DON’T MAKE A RIGHT.

  Paul set the bottle and glass aside so quickly that the champagne frothed over the lip. When he put both hands on Julia’s shoulders to ease her into a chair, she folded into it as if the bones had melted out of her legs. The only sound in the room was the hum from the heater and the splat of sleet on the glass. He crouched beside her, but she didn’t look at him, only continued to stare at the paper she held in one tensed hand, while her other pressed low on her stomach.

  “Let it out,” he ordered as his fingers began to rub at her shoulders. “You’re holding your breath, Jules. Let it out.”

  The air escaped in a long, shaky stream. Feeling as though she’d just fought her way above a dragging current, she gulped another breath and forced herself to expel this one slowly.

  “Nice going. Now, what is it?”

  After a quick, helpless shake of her head, she handed the slip to him.

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right?” Curious, he glanced up again to study her. She was no longer white to the lips, which was some relief to him, but her hands had gripped together in her lap. “Do trite sayings usually send you into shock?”

  “When they follow me six thousand miles, they do.”

  “Are you going to explain?”

  They rose together, he to stand, she to pace. “Someone’s trying to frighten me,” she said, half to herself. “And it infuriates me that it’s working. That’s not the first little homily I’ve received. I got one a few days after we’d been in California. It was left on the stoop in front of the house. Brandon picked it up.”

  “The first afternoon I was there?”

  “Yes.” Her hair swung around her shoulders as she turned back to him. “How did you know?”

  “Because you had that same baffled, panicky look in your eyes. I didn’t like seeing it then. I like it less now.” He ran the note through his fingers. “Did that note say the same thing?”

  “No. ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’ It was like this one, a slip of paper inside an envelope.” The initial sting of fear was fading rapidly into anger. It showed in her voice, in the way she walked off the emotion, her fisted hands jammed into the pockets of the robe, her strides lengthening. “I found another in my purse the night after the benefit, and a third one stuck in the pages of my draft right after the first break-in.”

  He handed her a glass of wine as she walked past him. If it couldn’t be used for celebration or romance, he figured it might calm her nerves. “Now I have to ask why you didn’t tell me.”

  She drank and kept on moving. “I didn’t tell you because it seemed more appropriate for me to tell Eve. In the beginning I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know you, and then—”

  “You didn’t trust me.”

  The look she sent him was caught somewhere between embarrassment and righteousness. “You were against the book.”

  “I still am.” He pulled a cigar out of the jacket he’d discarded earlier. “What was Eve’s reaction?”

  “She was upset—very, I think. But she hid it quickly and well.”

  “She would.” He kept his thoughts on that to himself for the moment. Idly he picked up his own glass of champagne and studied the bubbles. They rushed crazily to the brim, full of verve and energy. Like Eve, he thought. And oddly, like Julia. “I don’t have to ask your reaction. Why don’t I ask what you think the notes mean?”

  “I think they’re a threat, of course.” Impatience shimmered in her voice, but he merely lifted a brow and drank. “Vague, even foolish, but even worn-out phrases become sinister when they’re anonymous and pop out of nowhere.” When he remained silent, she pushed the tumbled hair away from her face. The move was sharp and impatient, and, he realized, the gesture would have come just as naturally to Eve. “I don’t like the fact that someone’s trying to gaslight me—don’t laugh at me.”

  “Sorry, it was the expression. So apropos really.”

  She snatched the slip off the room service cart where Paul had laid it. “Getting this here, six thousand miles away from where the others were delivered means someone must have followed me to London.”

  He drank again, watching her. “Someone other than me?”

  “It’s obvious …” The words had come out in a rush, an angry rush, she realized. Now she trailed off, then let out a long breath. The room was between them again. Had she put the distance there, or had he? “Paul, I don’t think you’re sending me these notes. I never did. This is much too passive a threat for you.”

  He lifted a brow, then drank. “Was that meant to be flattering?”

  “No, just honest.” It was she who closed the distance, then lifted a hand to his face as if to smooth away the lines that had formed there in only the last few moments. “I didn’t think it of you before, and I don’t—couldn’t—think it now.”

  “Because we’re lovers.”

  “No, because I love you.”

  A ghost of a smile touched his mouth as he lifted his hand to cover hers. “You make it difficult for a man to stay annoyed, Jules.”

  “Are you annoyed with me?”

  “Yes.” Still, he pressed a kiss into the palm of her hand. “But I think we should work through the priorities. First, let’s see if we can find out who left the message at the desk.”

  It irked that she hadn’t thought of that before him. That was part of the problem—she wasn’t thinking clearly. When he walked to the phone, Julia sat, reminding herself that if she intended to see this through—and she did—sh
e would have to be not only calm but calculating. The next sip of champagne reminded her that she was drinking on an empty stomach. That was no way to keep the mind clear.

  “The tickets were delivered by a uniformed messenger,” Paul told her after he hung up. “The second envelope was left on the desk. They’re checking, but it’s doubtful anyone noticed who put it there.”

  “It could have been anyone, anyone who knew I planned to come here and interview your father.”

  “And who did know?”

  She rose and walked to the cart to nibble. “I didn’t make a secret of it. Eve, certainly. Nina, Travers, CeeCee, Lyle—Drake, I suppose. Then anyone who might have asked any of them. Isn’t that what you did?”

  Despite the circumstances, it amused him that she carried the dish of shrimp in lobster sauce with her as she paced, stabbing at it and forking it into her mouth as if she were refueling rather than dining. “Travers told me. I suppose the next question is what do you want to do about it?”

  “Do about it? I don’t see what there is to do but ignore it. I can’t see me going to Scotland Yard.” The idea, and the food, helped her disposition. Calmer, she set the nearly empty dish aside, then picked up the champagne. “I can see it now. Inspector, someone sent me a note. No, I can’t say it was a threat really. More of a proverb. Put your best men on the case.”

  Normally he would have found her resilience admirable. Nothing was quite normal any longer. “You didn’t find it so funny when you opened the envelope.”

  “No, I didn’t, but maybe I should. Two wrongs don’t make a right? How can I be bothered with someone who can’t be any more original that that?”

  “Odd, I thought it was clever.” When he came to her, she saw that her attempt at humor had fallen well short of the mark. “If anyone caught the person who’s sending them, it would hardly interest the police, would it? Harmless, even shopworn sayings. It would be hard to prove there was anything threatening about them. But we know differently.”

  “If you’re going to tell me to give up the book—”

  “I think I understand the futility of that one by now. Julia, don’t block me out of this.” He touched her, just a hand to her hair. “Let me listen to the tapes. I want to help you.”

  She couldn’t turn away this time. It wasn’t arrogance, it wasn’t ego. It was love. “All right. As soon as we get home.”

  Even with Julia out of the country, Lyle found a lot to interest him in the comings and goings of the guest house. A cleaning crew had spent two full days on the place. Trucks had hauled away broken furniture, shattered glass, torn curtains. He’d taken a peek at the interior before the crew had arrived. It had looked as though someone had thrown one hell of a party.

  He was sorry he’d missed it. Damn sorry. The name of the partygoer might have been worth a tidy sum. But that particular afternoon he’d been happily boinking the upstairs maid. He now considered the fact that that brief—but very gratifying—fuck had probably cost him several thousand.

  Still, there were other ways to earn a living. Lyle had big dreams and a list of priorities. Right up top was a Porsche. Nothing impressed the babes more than a cool dude in a hot car. He wanted his own place, a beach house where he could sit on his deck and watch all those teeny bikinis and what was packed into them. He wanted a Rolex, too, and the wardrobe to go with it. Once he was set up, picking up classy women would be like swatting flies.

  Lyle figured he was on his way. He could almost smell the sunblock and sweat.

  He kept careful notes in his cramped handwriting. What was taken away from the guest house, what was brought in. Who made the deliveries. He’d even had a key made so he could move through the house at will. It had been a little dicier getting into the main house, but he’d chosen his time well and had managed to make a copy of Nina Soloman’s phone log and appointment book.

  Travers had nearly caught him sneaking into Eve’s bedroom. Nosy, tight-assed bitch guarded the house like a junkyard dog. He’d been disappointed that Eve hadn’t kept a diary or journal. That would have been worth big bucks. But he had found some interesting drugs in her bedside table, and some strange notes in her makeup drawer.

  What the hell was she doing with notes that said stuff like “let sleeping dogs lie”? Lyle decided to keep the pills and the notes his own little secret until he could figure out what they might be worth.

  It had been a cinch to get information from the guard at the gate, Joe. He liked to talk, and when you added a beer and some stories of your own, he got diarrhea of the mouth.

  Even gone, Eve received lots of visitors.

  Michael Torrent had been driven away after learning that Eve would be on location for the next couple of weeks. Gloria DuBarry had dropped by to see Eve, then had changed to Julia on learning Eve was away. She had driven herself, and according to Joe had been teary-eyed when she’d found no one at home.

  A couple of paparazzi had tried to get through disguised as delivery men, but Joe had weeded them out. Joe’s ability to sniff out press was revered among residents of Beverly Hills.

  He’d admitted Victor Flannigan, then had let him out again less than twenty minutes later. Eve’s agent, Maggie Castle, had gone in as well, and stayed twice as long.

  Lyle gathered the information. He had what he considered a very professional report ready. Maybe he should go into P.I. work, he thought as he dressed for the evening. On TV those guys were always getting the chicks.

  He chose a pair of black thong-style bikinis and gave his favorite member a quick pat. Some unsuspecting woman was going to get lucky tonight. He wiggled into black leather pants, then zipped a matching jacket over his tight red undershirt. Women, he knew, really went for a guy in leather.

  He’d deliver his report, pick up the cash. Then he’d cruise a few clubs until he chose the lucky lady.

  Julia hadn’t been sure what she’d think of Rory Winthrop’s current wife. But whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t that she would both like and admire Lily Teasbury.

  Onscreen, the actress usually played the frothy, flighty heroine who suited her busty blond looks and guileless blue eyes. At first glance it was tempting to typecast her as someone who giggled and wriggled a lot.

  It took Julia less than five minutes to revise her opinion.

  Lily was a sharp, witty, ambitious woman who exploited her looks rather than being exploited by them. She was also very much at home in the traditional parlor of the Knights-bridge house, looking very cool, very British, and very wifely in a simple blue Givenchy.

  “I wondered when you’d finally visit,” she said to Paul as she served aperitifs. “We’ve been married three months.”

  “I don’t get to London often.”

  Julia had been on the receiving end of that long, piercing look, and admired Lily for standing up under it with such apparent ease.

  “So I’m told. Well, you’ve picked a miserable season for this visit. Is this your first visit to London, Miss Summers?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “A pity about all this sleet. Then again, I always think it’s best to see a city at its worst—like a man—that way you can decide if you can really live with all the flaws.”

  Lily sat, smiled, and sipped her vermouth.

  “That’s Lily’s subtle way of reminding me she knows all of mine,” Rory put in.

  “Not subtle at all,” Lily said. She touched a hand to his briefly, but—Julia thought—with a great deal of affection. “It wouldn’t do to be subtle when I’m about to be treated to reminiscences about one of the great love affairs of my husband’s life.” She beamed at Julia. “Don’t worry, I’m not jealous, just avidly curious. I don’t believe in jealousy, particularly over things past. As to the future, I’ve already warned Rory that if he becomes tempted to repeat his past mistakes, I won’t be one to weep and wail and nag or run screaming to my solicitor.” She sipped again, delicately. “I’ll simply kill him quickly, cleanly, in cold blood, and without a moment’s re
gret.”

  Rory laughed, then toasted his wife. “She terrifies me.”

  As the conversation flowed around him, Paul began to listen, to feel, with more interest. He wouldn’t have believed it, but he began to think that something had clicked, something solid, between his father and the woman he had married. A woman younger than the man’s only child—and one who, at first glance, had easily been dismissed as another of the big-breasted, pouty-lipped bimbos his father often dallied with.

  But Lily Teasbury wasn’t like any of the others. After he’d worked beyond an old and established resentment of one of his father’s women, he watched with a writer’s eye, listened with a writer’s ear. He saw the subtle gestures, glances, heard the timbre of voices, a quick laugh. This, he realized with no little astonishment, was a marriage.

  There was an ease and companionship that he had never sensed between his father and his own mother. There was a friendship he had seen in only one of his father’s marriages. When Eve Benedict had been his wife.

  When they went in for dinner, it was with a sense of relief and wonder. The relief came when he realized Lily would not fall into either of the two categories so many of Rory’s women had. She would not pretend there was an instant familial relationship between them. Nor would she allude, privately, that she was open to a more intimate relationship.

  His wonder came from the fact that his own instincts were insisting that his father might at long last have found someone he could live with.

  Julia sampled the pressed duck and eased her left foot free of her shoe. There was a fire in the hearth behind Rory’s back and a waterfall of crystal lights over their heads. The room with its tapestries and glinting display cabinets might have been dauntingly formal, but comfort seeped through by the way the two-pedestaled Regency table was left unextended, by the vase of fairy roses as a centerpiece, by the scent of applewood, and the quiet hiss of sleet. She slipped her other foot free.