Eight Classic Nora Roberts Romantic Suspense Novels

by Nora Roberts

  “Only because you pretend you can’t cope with details.” Nina stuck the pencil back in her hair. “Your car should be out front. Shall I tell them to wait?”

  “No, I’m coming. Fritz, my own true love, I’m so glad you haven’t lost your touch.” Eve gave him a long kiss that had him flushing down to his pecs.

  “I’ll walk out with you,” Julia said, beating Nina to the punch by an instant. Nina hesitated, then gave way.

  “I’ll go get started on the half million phone calls I have to return. We’ll expect you about seven, Miss B.?”

  “If the gods are willing.”

  “I’m sorry,” Julia began as they went out through the central courtyard. “I know that wasn’t very subtle, but I wanted another minute.”

  “Nina’s not easily offended. What is it you wanted to say that you wouldn’t say in front of her, or Fritz?” She paused to admire the flame-colored peonies that were just about to bloom.

  “Too much for a short trip to the car, but to begin with I think you should know. This was delivered to the desk of my hotel in London.”

  Eve studied the slip of paper Eve pulled out of her bag. She didn’t have to open it to know, didn’t have to read it. “Christ.”

  “It seems to me someone went to a lot of trouble to get it there. Paul was with me, Eve.” She waited until Eve looked back at her. “He knows about the other notes as well.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry if you feel I should’ve kept quiet about it, but—”

  “No, no.” She interrupted with a wave of her hand before her fingers moved unconsciously to rub at her temple. “No, maybe it’s best this way. I still don’t believe they’re anything more than a nuisance.”

  Julia replaced the paper. The moment was probably all wrong, but she wanted to give Eve time to consider before she spoke again. “I know about Delrickio, and Damien Priest, and Hank Freemont.”

  Eve’s hand fluttered to her side. The only sign of tension was the quick, instinctive clutching and releasing of her fist. “Well, that saves me from repeating the whole mess.”

  “I’d like to hear it from your view.”

  “Then you will. But we have other things to discuss first.” She started walking again, past the fountain, the early roses, the thick islands of azaleas. “I’d like you to have dinner with me tonight. Eight o’clock.” She turned inside to pass through the core of the main house. “I hope you’ll come with an open mind, and an open heart, Julia.”

  “Of course.”

  She hesitated at the front door, then opened it and stepped into the sunlight again. “I’ve made mistakes and regret very few of them. I’ve lived with lies very comfortably.”

  Julia waited a moment, then chose her words carefully. “In the past few weeks I’ve come to wish that I’d accepted my own mistakes, and my own lies as well. It’s never been my function to judge you, Eve. Now that I know you, I couldn’t.”

  “I hope you still feel that way after tonight.” She laid a hand on Julia’s cheek. “You’re exactly, exactly what I needed.”

  She turned, walking quickly to the car. Turmoil whirled around her. She barely acknowledged the chauffeur as he opened the door. Then everything fell quietly into place.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Victor said from the backseat. “I missed the hell out of you, Eve.”

  She slipped inside and into his arms.

  Julia had developed an image of Kenneth Stokley as a rather spare, graying man on the prim side. He would certainly have to be an organized individual to have worked for Eve. Conservative, she thought, to the point of being futsy. His voice had been cultured, smooth, and scrupulously polite.

  Her first indication that she might be wrong about the image she’d conjured was the houseboat.

  It was charming, romantic, a trim square of softly faded blue with gleaming white shutters. Blood red geraniums spilled lushly from snowy windowboxes. At the apex of a fanciful peaked roof was a wide sheet of stained glass. After a stare and a blink, Julia identified the portrait of a naked mermaid smiling seductively.

  Her amusement at that faded a little when she took stock of the narrow swaying bridge that linked the boat to the dock and took off her shoes. At the midway point, she heard the passionate strains of Carmen soaring out of the open windows ahead. She was humming, doing her best to keep her rhythm harmonic with the sway of the bridge when the door opened.

  He could have doubled for Cary Grant, circa 1970. Trim, silver-haired, tanned to a bronze sheen, and charmingly sexy in baggy white pants and a loose pullover of sky blue, Kenneth Stokley was the kind of man who had the saliva pooling in the mouth of any female with a heartbeat.

  Julia nearly lost her balance, and her shoes, when he came out to help her.

  “I should have warned you about my entranceway.” He took the briefcase from her, then gracefully walked backward with her hand caught in his. “Inconvenient, I know, but it does discourage all but the most avid of vacuum cleaner salesmen.”

  “It’s charming.” She let out a little breath when her feet hit the more substantial wood of the deck. “I’ve never been on a houseboat.”

  “It’s quite sturdy,” he assured her while he made his own assessment. “And there’s that possibility of being able to sail off into the sunset if the whim strikes. Do come in, my dear.”

  She stepped inside. Instead of the nautical decor of anchors and fishnetting she might have expected, she entered a sleek, elegant living area of low-slung sofas in vibrant tones of peach and mint. There was the warmth of teak and cherrywood and what was surely a gloriously faded Aubusson carpet. An entire wall was taken over by shelves of varying widths that were overflowing with books. Circular stairs wound tightly upward and bisected an overhanging balcony. The sun played through the mermaid and danced in rainbow colors on the pale walls.

  “It’s lovely,” Julia said, and the astonishment as well as the appreciation in her voice made Kenneth smile.

  “Thank you. One prefers to be comfortable after all. Please, sit down, Miss Summers. I was just making some iced tea.”

  “That would be nice, thanks.” She hadn’t expected to feel so at ease, but sitting on the cushy sofa, surrounded by books and Carmen, it was impossible to be otherwise. It wasn’t until Kenneth had moved into the adjoining kitchen that she realized she had yet to put her shoes on again.

  “I was sorry to miss Eve’s little extravaganza recently,” he told her, raising his voice to be heard over the music. I’d taken a little trip down to Cozumél for some scuba diving.” He came back in carrying an enameled tray with two green-hued glasses and a fat pitcher. Lemon slices and ice swam in the golden tea. “Eve always throws an unusual party.”

  Not Miss Benedict or even Miss B., Julia noted. “Are you still in touch with Eve?”

  He settled the tray, handing her a glass before taking a seat across from her. “What you’re asking, quite politely, is if Eve and I still speak. After all, in the strictest sense of the word, she did fire me.”

  “I was under the impression there was a disagreement.”

  His smile radiated good heath and good humor. “With Eve life was filled with disagreements. In actual fact, it’s much simpler to be associated with her now that I’m not in her employ.”

  “Do you mind if I record this?”

  “No, not at all.” He watched as she took out her tape recorder and set it on the table between them. “I was surprised to hear that Eve had instigated this book. Over the years the handful of unauthorized biographies annoyed her.”

  “That may be your answer. A woman like Eve would want to have the major part in the telling of her own story.”

  Kenneth lifted a silver eyebrow. “And the control of the telling.”

  “Yes,” Julia said. “Tell me how you came to work for her.”

  “Eve’s offer came at a time when I was considering changing jobs. She hired me away from Miss Miller and their competition forced Eve to offer me more money—a tidy bi
t more. There was the added incentive of having my own quarters. I must say I doubted Eve would be tedious, but I also knew her reputation with men. So I hesitated. It was vulgar, I suppose, to bring the fact up to her, and to state my requirements for a purely nonphysical relationship.” He smiled again, fondly, a man cherishing memories. “She laughed, that big, lusty laugh of hers. She had a glass in her hand, I recall, a champagne flute. We were standing in the kitchen of Miss Miller’s home where Eve had sought me out during a party. She picked another glass off the table, handed it to me, and then clinked crystal to crystal in a toast.

  “ ‘Tell you what, Kenneth,’ she said, ‘you stay out of my bed, and I’ll stay out of yours.’ ” He lifted his hand, palm out, fingers spread. “How could I resist?”

  “And you both kept the bargain?”

  If the question offended or surprised, he gave no sign. “Yes, we kept the bargain. I came to love her, Miss Summers, but I was never infatuated. In our own way, we forged a friendship, and sex was never involved to complicate matters. It would be dishonest to say that there weren’t moments during the decade I worked for Eve that I didn’t regret the bargain.” He cleared his throat. “And, risking immodesty, I believe there were moments she regretted it as well. But it was a bargain we kept.”

  “You would have started as Eve’s assistant about the time she married Rory Winthrop.”

  “That’s right. A pity the marriage didn’t work out. It seemed they were better friends than partners. Then there was the boy. Eve was devoted to him from the first. And though many would find the image difficult to focus, she made an excellent mother. I grew quite attached to Paul myself, watching him grow up.”

  “Did you? What was he like …” She caught herself. “I mean what were they like together?”

  But he hadn’t missed the first question, nor the look in her eyes when she’d asked it. “I take it you and Paul are acquainted.”

  “Yes, I’ve met most of the people who’ve been close to Eve.”

  When a man spent most of his life serving people, it became second nature to glean facts from gestures, tones, phrasing. “I see,” he said, and smiled. “He’s become quite a successful man. I have all of his books.” He waved a hand toward the shelves. “I remember how he used to scribble stories, read them to Eve. They delighted her. Everything about Paul delighted her, and in turn he loved her without question, without reserve. They filled a void in each other’s lives. Even when Eve divorced his father and ultimately married again, they remained close.”

  “Damien Priest.” Julia leaned forward to set her glass back on the tray. “Paul didn’t care for him.”

  “No one who cared about Eve cared for Priest,” Kenneth said simply. “Eve was convinced that Paul’s aloofness toward him stemmed from jealousy. The plain fact was that even at that age, Paul was an excellent judge of character. He had detested Delrickio on sight, and held Priest in the lowest contempt.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ve always considered myself to be an excellent judge of character as well. Would you mind if we moved out to the deck above? I thought we’d have a light lunch.”

  The light lunch proved to be a small feast of succulent lobster salad, baby vegetables, and crusty bread lightly herbed, enhanced by a smooth, chilled Chardonnay. The bay spread below them, dotted with boats, sails puffed up by the breeze that smelled richly of the sea. Julia waited until they were toying with the fruit and cheese before she brought out her recorder again.

  “From what I’ve already been told, I understand that Eve’s marriage to Damien Priest ended acrimoniously. I’ve also been filled in on some of the details of her relationship with Michael Delrickio.”

  “But you would like my viewpoint?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  He was silent for a moment, looking out over the water at a bright red spinnaker. “Do you believe in evil, Miss Summers?”

  It seemed an odd question to come in the sunlight and gentle breeze. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “Delrickio is evil.” Kenneth brought his gaze back to hers. “It’s in his blood, in his heart. Murder, the destruction of hope, of will, are only a business to him. He fell in love with Eve. Even an evil man can fall in love. His passion for her consumed him, and, I’m not ashamed to admit, it frightened me at the time. You see, Eve thought she could control the situation as she had controlled so many others. This is part of her arrogance and her appeal. But one doesn’t control evil.” “What did Eve do?”

  “For too long she simply toyed with it. She married Priest, who struck a chord with her vanity and her ego. She eloped with him on impulse, partly to put a buffer between herself and Delrickio, who was becoming increasingly demanding. And dangerous. There was an incident with Paul. He had walked in on a scene where Delrickio was being physically threatening to Eve. When he attempted to intervene—hot-headedly, I should add—Delrickio’s ubiquitous bodyguards took hold of him. God knows what damage they might have done to the boy if Eve hadn’t prevented it.”

  Julia remembered the scene Paul had described to her. She stared, wide-eyed at Kenneth. “You’re telling me you were there. You saw it, saw that Paul might have been maimed, or worse. And you did nothing?”

  “Eve handled it quite well, I assure you.” He dabbed at his lips with a lemon-colored linen napkin. “I was superfluous as it happened, standing at the top of the stairs with a chrome-plated .32, safety off.” He laughed a little and topped off the wineglasses. “When I saw it wouldn’t be needed, I stayed in the shadows. Better for the boy’s manhood, wouldn’t you say?”

  She wasn’t sure what to say as she stared at the debonair gentleman whose silver hair ruffled dashingly in the breeze. “Would you have used it? The gun?”

  “Without a moment’s hesitation or regret. In any event, Eve married Priest shortly after that. Exchanging evil for blind ambition. I don’t know what happened at Wimbledon; Eve never discussed it. But Priest won the tournament and lost his wife. She cut him completely out of her life.”

  “Then you weren’t fired over Priest?”

  “Hmm. That may well have been a part of it. Eve found it difficult to adjust to the fact that she had been wrong about him and I had been right. But there was another man, one who meant a great deal more to her, who indirectly caused the severing of our professional ties.”

  “Victor Flannagan.”

  This time he didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “Eve’s discussed him with you?”

  “Yes. She wants an honest book.”

  “I had no idea how far she meant to go,” he murmured. “Is Victor aware …?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. Well then, Eve’s always had an affection for fireworks. Through two marriages, over thirty years, there’s been only one man Eve Benedict really loved. His marriage, his tug-of-war with the church, his guilt over his wife’s condition, made an open relationship with Eve impossible. Most of the time she accepted it. But other times … I remember once finding her sitting alone in the dark. She said: ‘Kenneth, whoever said half a loaf is better than none wasn’t hungry enough.’ That summed up her relationship with Victor. Sometimes Eve got hungry enough to look for sustanence elsewhere.”

  “You disagreed?”

  “With her affairs? I certainly thought she was throwing herself away, often recklessly. Victor loves her as deeply as she loves him. Perhaps that’s why they cause each other so much pain. The last time we discussed him was shortly after her divorce plans became public. Victor came to the house to see her. They argued. I could hear them shouting all the way up in my office. I was working with Nina Soloman. Eve had brought her in, asked me to train her. I remember how embarrassed Nina was, how timid. She was far from the slick, confident woman you know today. At that point Nina was just a stray, a frightened little puppy who’d already felt the boot too many times. The shouting upset her. Her hands shook.

  “After Victor stormed out, or was kicked out, Eve burst into the office. Her temper was far from ove
r. She spewed out orders at Nina until the poor girl raced out of the room in tears. Then Eve and I had it out. I’m afraid I forgot my position long enough to tell her she’d been an idiot for marrying Priest in the first place, that she should stop trying to fill her life with sex instead of taking the love she already had. I said several other, probably unforgivable things, about her life-style, her temperament, and her lack of taste. When it was over, we both were quite calm again, but there was no going back to our former positions. I had said too much, and she had permitted me to say too much. I chose to retire.”

  “And Nina took your place.”

  “I believe Eve softened toward her. She felt tremendous compassion for the girl because of the ghastly things she’d been through. Nina was grateful, understanding that Eve had given her a chance many wouldn’t have. All in all, it’s worked out well for everyone.”

  “She still speaks of you fondly.”

  “Eve isn’t one to bear a grudge against honest words, or honest feelings. I’m proud to say I’ve been her friend for nearly twenty-five years.”

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I have to ask. Looking back, do you regret never being her lover?”

  He smiled over the rim of his glass before he sipped. “I didn’t say I was never her lover, Miss Summers, only that I was never her lover while in her employ.”

  “Oh.” The humor in his eyes had her responding with a laugh. “I don’t suppose you’d like to expand on that.”

  “No. If Eve choses to, that’s her business. But my memories are mine.”

  Julia left feeling sleepy from the wine, relaxed from the company, and pleased with the day’s work. During the brief wait in the terminal while her plane was readied, she labeled the tape and put a fresh one in her recorder.

  A little ashamed of the weakness, she slipped two Dramamine on her tongue and washed the pills down at the water fountain. When she straightened she caught a glimpse of a man across the lobby. For a moment she thought he’d been watching her, but she told herself she was just being self-conscious as he turned a page in a magazine that apparently had his full attention.