Eight Classic Nora Roberts Romantic Suspense Novels

by Nora Roberts

  “I want to take my time.”

  “You’ve been taking your time with Michael since you were thirteen,” Marianne pointed out. “What’s it like to have a man carry a torch for you for over ten years?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “It’s exactly like that. In fact, I’m surprised he managed to stay on the Coast when you told him you were going to visit here for a couple of days before flying back.”

  “He wants to get married.”

  “Well, you could knock me over with a twenty-foot crane. Who’d have guessed it?”

  “I suppose I haven’t wanted to think about what happens next.”

  “That’s only because you’ve blocked the M word out of your vocabulary for a while. So what are you going to do about it?”

  “It?”

  “The two Ms. Marriage and Michael.”

  “I don’t know.” She looked out the window again. He was still there, standing patiently. “I’m going to wait until I see him again. We both may feel differently now that things have settled down, and our lives are getting back to normal. Dammit.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before. Da’s hired a bodyguard again.” She turned her head quickly, eyes narrowed. “Did you know about this?”

  “No.” Marianne stirred herself to go to the window and look out again. “Brian never said a word to me. Look, the guy’s just standing around. Why automatically assume he’s there for you?”

  “When you’ve lived with it most of your life, you know when you’re being watched.” Annoyed, she moved away from the window. On an oath, she whirled back and yanked the window open. “Hey!” Her sudden shout surprised her as much as the man on the street. “Go call your boss and tell him I can take care of myself. If I see you down there in five minutes, I’m calling the cops.”

  “Feel better?” Marianne murmured at her shoulder.

  “Lots.”

  “I’m not sure he could hear you all the way down there.”

  “He heard enough,” Emma said with a satisfied nod. “He’s leaving.” A little dizzy, she pulled her head in. “Let’s go get a facial.”

  Michael pored over the printout. It had taken him days to correlate lists and cross-check. In the past weeks he’d found himself just as caught up in Darren McAvoy’s murder as his father had been twenty years before. He had read every inch of every file, studied every photograph, checked and rechecked every interview that had been compiled during the original investigation. From his own memory he pulled out the visit to the house in the hills with Emma, making his own notes from her descriptions and recollections.

  From his father’s meticulous investigation and Emma’s recollections, he was able to re-create, in his mind, the night of Darren’s death.

  Music. He imagined Beatles, Stones, Joplin, the Doors.

  Drugs. Everything from grass to LSD cheerfully shared.

  Shop talk, party talk, gossip. Laughter and intense political discussions. Vietnam, Nixon, women’s liberation.

  People coming and going. Some invited, some just showing up. No one questioning unfamiliar faces. Formal invitations had been for the establishment. Peace, love, and communal living the order of the day. It sounded nice enough, but for a cop in the first year of the nineties, it was frustrating.

  He had the guest list his father had compiled. It was, of course, woefully inadequate, but a place to start. Playing a hunch, he. Spent days verifying the whereabouts on the night of Jane Palmer’s death of every name on the list. He’d turned up sixteen people who had been in London, including all four members of Devastation, their manager, and Bev McAvoy. Michael ignored his tendency to cross them off, and spent several more days checking alibis,

  His printout now had twelve names. He liked to think if there was indeed a connection between two murders, twenty years apart, it was on that list.

  “It gives us something to work with,” Michael said. He leaned over his father’s shoulder so that they could both study the printout. “I want to dig a little deeper, find any and all of the connections between these twelve people and Jane Palmer.”

  “You’ve got the McAvoys on the list. You don’t think they killed their own son?”

  “No. It’s the connection.” He pulled over a file and opened it. He had a list of names connected with broken lines. It resembled a family tree, headed by Bev, Brian, and Jane. Below were Emma’s and Darren’s names. “I’ve been hooking them up, using interviews and file information. Take Johnno.” Michael slid his finger down. “He’s Brian’s oldest friend, his writing partner. They formed the group together. He remained friends with Bev during her long estrangement from Brian. He also knew Jane the longest.”

  “Motive?”

  “Money or revenge is all we’ve got,” Michael went on. “We can easily apply both of those to Jane Palmer, but it’s a stretch for anyone else on the list. Blackpool.” Michael moved his finger down. “He was more of a hanger-on at the time Darren was killed. His big break came several months later when he recorded a song Brian and Johnno had written. And Pete Page became his manager.” He ran his finger over the lines connecting Blackpool with Brian, Johnno, Pete, and Emma.

  “No connection with Palmer?” Lou asked.

  “I haven’t found one yet.”

  With a nod, Lou leaned back. “There are several names on your list that even I recognize.”

  “A rock-and-roll countdown.” Sitting on the edge of the desk, Michael lit a cigarette. “I know when you figure the main motive for kidnapping is money, most of these names don’t fit. That’s where Jane comes in. If she planted the idea, she could have used blackmail, sex, drugs, or any other kind of hook to pressure someone into getting to Brian through Darren. She tried to get to him once through Emma, and all she got out of it was money. She wanted more. What better way than through his son?”

  He pushed away from the desk to pace the office and try to figure it out. “If she could have gotten into the house, she would have done it herself. But she was the one person who wouldn’t have been welcome that night. So she found someone else, used whatever lever worked best, and got what she wanted.”

  “You sound like you understand her very well.”

  Michael thought of his brief, destructive affair with Angie Parks. “I think I do. If we take her at her word that the kidnapping was her idea, then we have to find the connection. She used someone on this list.”

  “There were two people in the nursery that night.”

  “And one of them had to know their way around the house. He had to know the layout of the rooms upstairs, the McAvoys’ private space. He had to know the kids, the routine. So we look for someone connected to both Jane and Brian.”

  “You’re forgetting something, Michael.” Lou leaned back to study his son. “If you penciled your name on this page, how many lines would connect you? Nothing clouds an investigation quicker than personal involvement.”

  “And nothing motivates more.” Michael tapped out his cigarette. “I’m not sure I would be a cop today if it hadn’t been for Emma. She came to the house that time. You remember, it was around Christmas. She came to see you.”

  “I remember.”

  “She was looking for help. There wasn’t a lot anyone could give her, but she came to you. It started me thinking. It wasn’t all filling out forms, making lists. It wasn’t all shoot-outs and collars. It was having people come to you because they knew you’d know what to do. We went to the house in the hills, and I walked through it with her. I understood that there have to be people who know what to do. Who care enough about one small boy they’ve never met to keep trying.”

  Touched, Lou looked down at the papers on his desk. “It’s going on twenty years, and I haven’t figured out what to do about this one.”

  “What color were Darren McAvoy’s eyes?”

  “Green,” Lou answered. “Like his mother’s.”

  Smiling a little, Michael rose. “You’ve never st
opped trying. I’ve got to pick Emma up at the airport. Can I leave this stuff with you? I don’t want her to see it.”

  “Yeah.” He fully intended to go over every word in his son’s report. “Michael.” He glanced up as Michael paused at the door. “You’ve turned out to be a pretty good cop.”

  “So have you.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Emma had convinced herself to ease back. Her relationship with Michael was moving too quickly. She would gently pull their relationship back a few notches. Her book was about to be published. It was time to open her own studio, perhaps have another showing.

  How did she know her own feelings in any case? Her life had been in too much upheaval. It was easy to mistake love for gratitude and friendship. And she was grateful to him. Always would be. He had been her friend, a constant if distant one for most of her life. Her decision to back off was best for both of them.

  She took a firm grip on her camera case as she walked through the gate.

  There he was. He saw her the same instant she saw him. All of the practical decisions she’d made over the last three thousand miles vanished. Before she could say his name, he had swooped her off her feet. To the amusement and annoyance of other passengers, he greeted her in silence, blocking most of the gateway.

  When she could breathe again, she touched a hand to his cheek. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” He kissed her again. “It’s good to see you.”

  “I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

  “I think it’s over eleven years now.” He turned and started toward the terminal.

  “Aren’t you going to put me down?”

  “I don’t think so. How was your flight?”

  “Smooth.” With a laugh, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Michael, you can’t carry me through the airport.”

  “There’s no law against it. I checked. I guess you’ve got luggage.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You want to pick it up now?”

  She answered his grin, then settled back to enjoy the ride. “Not particularly.”

  Two hours later they were in her bed, sharing a bowl of ice cream.

  “I’d never developed the habit of eating in bed before I met you.” Emma scooped out a spoonful and offered it. “Marianne and I used to hoard Hershey bars in our room at school. Sometimes we’d sneak them into bed after lights out, but that was as decadent as it got.”

  “I always figured girls snuck guys into their room after lights out.”

  “No. Just chocolate.” She slid thé ice cream into her mouth and closed her eyes. “We only dreamed about boys. We talked about sex all the time, looking up with envy to any of the girls who claimed to have lived through the experience.” She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “It’s better than I imagined it would be.” She offered him another spoonful and the strap of the tank top she wore slithered off her shoulder.

  Reaching out, Michael toyed with it. “If you let me move in, we could practice a lot more.”

  He was looking at her, waiting. Wanting an answer, Emma thought. And she didn’t know which one to give him. “I haven’t decided whether I’m going to keep this house or look for another one.” That was true enough, but they both knew it was an evasion rather than an answer. “I need studio space, and a darkroom. I think I’d like to find a place where I could have it all.”

  “Here, in L.A.?”

  “Yes.” She thought of New York. It would never be her home again. “I’d like to try to start here.”

  “Good.”

  She set the bowl aside, certain he didn’t know what she meant by starting. “I need to concentrate on getting ready for another show. I have a number of contacts out here, and I think if we could tie it in with the book—”

  “What book?”

  She smoothed the sheets and took a deep breath. “Mine. I sold it about eighteen months ago. On Devastation. Early photographs from when I was a child up to the last tour I went on with Da. It’s been delayed a couple of times because … because of what happened. But it’s due to come out in about six months.” She glanced toward the window. The wind had picked up from the sea and brought with it a rush of rain. “I have an idea for another one. The publisher seems to be interested.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Before she could make an excuse, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, long and hard. “All we have is a bottle of mineral water to celebrate with. Uh-oh.”

  She’d nearly relaxed, and now braced again. “What?”

  “My mother’s going to kill me if you don’t give her first dibs on autographing sessions.”

  And that was it? she thought, staring at him. No demands, no questions, no criticisms. “I … the publisher wants me to tour. It’s going to mean a lot of traveling for a few weeks.”

  “Do I get to watch you on Donahue?”

  “I—I don’t know. They’re setting stuff up. I told them I’d be available for anything they wanted during the month of publication.”

  It was her tone that had him lifting a brow. “Is this a test, Emma? Are you waiting for me to grow fangs because you’re telling me you’ve got a life?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.” He started to rise, but she laid a hand on his arm.

  “Don’t. If it’s not fair, I’m sorry. It’s not always easy to be fair.” She dragged both hands through her hair. “I know better than to make comparisons, but I can’t help making them.”

  “Work on it,” he suggested flatly, then reached over for his cigarettes.

  “Dammit, Michael, he’s all I have to compare. I never lived with another man, I never slept with another man. You want me to pretend that that part of my life never happened. That I never let myself be used or hurt. I’m supposed to forget and pick up and go on so that you can take care of me. Every man who’s ever been important to me has wanted to take over because I’m too weak or stupid or defenseless to make the right choices.”

  “Hold on.”

  But she was scrambling out of bed to pace the room. “All of my life I’ve been tucked into corners, all for my own good. My father wanted me to forget about Darren, not to dwell on it, not to think of it. I wasn’t supposed to worry about what he was doing to his own life, either. Then Drew was going to take care of it all. I was too naïve to handle my finances, my friends, my work. And I was so bloody used to being pointed in a direction, I just went. Now I’m supposed to forget all of that, just forget it, and let you click into place so I’m protected again.”

  “Is that why you think I’m here?”

  She turned back. “Isn’t it?”

  “Maybe that’s part of it.” He blew out smoke, then deliberately crushed out his cigarette. “It’s hard to be in love with someone and not want to protect them. But let’s just back up, okay? I don’t want you to forget about what happened between you and Latimer. I want you to be able to live with it, but I hope to Christ you never forget it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Neither will I.” He stood then to cross to her. Outside the rain was whipped by the wind, battering windows. “I’ll remember everything he did to you. And there’ll be times when I’ll wish he was still alive so I could kill him myself. But I’ll also remember that you pulled yourself out of it. You took a stand, and you survived. Weak?” He lifted a fingertip to trace the faint scar under her jawline. “Do you really believe I think you’re weak? I saw what he did to you that day. I’ll always be able to see it. You didn’t let him plow you under, Emma.”

  “No, and I won’t let anyone take control of my life again.”

  “I’m not your father.” He spit out the words as he gripped her shoulders. “And I’m not Latimer. I don’t want to control your life, I just want to be part of it.”

  “I don’t know what I want.” She lifted her hands to cover his. “I keep coming back to you, and it’s frightening because I can’t stop. I don’t want to need you this way.”

  “Dammit, Emma—�
� When the phone rang, he swore again.

  “It’s for you,” she said, holding out the receiver.

  “Yeah?” He picked up his cigarettes, then paused. “Where? Twenty minutes,” he said and hung up. “I’ve got to go.” He was already pulling on his jeans.

  She only nodded. Someone was dead. She could see it on his face.

  “We’re not finished here, Emma.”

  “No.”

  He shouldered on his gun. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Michael.” She didn’t know what she wanted to say. Instead, she went with instinct and put her arms around him. “Goodbye.”

  She couldn’t settle once he’d gone. The rain was coming in sheets now. She could barely see the ocean through it, but she could hear the waves crashing. She found it soothing, the gray light, the sound of water. It was cool enough to start a fire from the stack of split oak in the woodbox. Once it was blazing, she called the airport to arrange for her luggage to be delivered.

  It occurred to her that it was the first time she was completely alone in the house, a house she was considering making her own. After brewing tea, she wandered through it, sipping. If she did buy it, remodeling would be essential. There was a room off the kitchen that could be enlarged for a studio. The light was good. Or was, she thought, when there was sun.

  There were three bedrooms upstairs, all large and lofty. An impractical amount of space perhaps, but she liked having it. She could make it her own. Thoughtful, she glanced at her watch. It would be worth a call to the real estate agent. Before she could pick up the phone, it rang.

  “Emma?”

  “Da.” She sat on the arm of the sofa.

  “I just wanted to see if you’d gotten there.”

  “Everything’s fine. How are you?”

  “A little crazed at the moment. We’re recording. We’ll be breaking off to come out to the Coast.”