From the Heart

by Nora Roberts

  “They’re one of my vices,” she confessed. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen The Big Sleep.”

  “That’s about a private detective, not a cop,” he pointed out as he walked her back to the library.

  “What’s the difference?”

  He shot her a look. “How much time do you have?”

  “Well.” She considered, glad to forget the outside world for a few moments. “It might be interesting to learn why one’s called a flatfoot and the other a gumshoe.”

  He stopped, turning to her with an expression between amusement and exasperation. “Very old movies,” he decided.

  “Classics,” she corrected. “I only watch them for their cultural value.”

  Slade only lifted a brow at that. It was a gesture Jessica had learned he used in lieu of dozens of words. “Since you want to help, you can do the cataloging.” He gestured toward the pile of books littering the work table. “Your handwriting has to be better than mine.”

  “All right.” Grateful for any task, Jessica plucked one of a neat stack of index files. “I suppose you’ll want to reference and cross-reference and all that sort of thing.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Slade.” She put the card back down before she turned to him. “You’d rather be working on your book than doing this. Why don’t you take a couple of hours for yourself?”

  He thought of the novel, nearly finished, waiting for him on the desk upstairs. Then he thought of the way Jessica had looked when she had walked through the library doors an hour before.

  “This kind of mess drives me crazy,” he told her. “While I’m here, I might as well point you in the right direction. How many books are in here?” he asked before she could voice another objection.

  Momentarily distracted, Jessica looked around. “I don’t have any idea. Most of these were my father’s. He loved to read.” A smile touched her lips, then her eyes. “His taste was eclectic to say the least but I think he had a preference for hard-boiled whodunits.” The thought occurred to her quite suddenly. “What’s your book about? Is it a detective novel?”

  “The one I’m working on now?” He grinned. “No.”

  “Well?” She lowered a hip to the table. “What then?”

  He began to make a clear space for her to work. “It’s about a family, beginning in the postwar forties and working through modern day. Changes, adjustments, disappointments, victories.”

  “Let me read it,” she demanded impulsively. His words, she knew instinctively, would reveal much of the inner man.

  “It’s not finished.”

  “I’ll read what is.”

  Searching for a pencil, Slade stalled. He wanted his words read. It was a dream he’d lived with for too many years to count. But Jessica was different; she wasn’t the nameless, faceless public. Her opinion, good or bad, held too much weight. “Maybe,” he muttered. “If you’re going to help, you’d better sit down.”

  “Slade.” Wrapping her arms around his waist, Jessica rested her cheek on his back. “I’ll just bother you until you say yes. It’s a talent of mine.”

  Something about the casually intimate embrace stirred him beyond belief. Her breasts pressed lightly against his back; her hands linked loosely at his waist. In that moment, for that moment, he surrendered completely to the love he felt for her. It was deeper than need, sharper than longing.

  Didn’t she see that there was nothing he could refuse her? Slade thought as he brought his hands down to cover hers. Couldn’t she see that she’d become woman and dream and vulnerability, all in the space of days? If they were to pretend—for her sake—that there was no threat beyond the walls, perhaps they could pretend for his that she belonged to him.

  “Bother me,” he invited, turning so that he could gather her into his arms. “But I warn you, I’m no pushover.”

  With a low laugh, Jessica rose on her toes until her lips brushed his. “I can only hope my work’s cut out for me.” Deepening the kiss, she slid her hands under his shirt to run them up the firm planes of his back, along the ridge of muscle.

  “That might get you a couple of pages,” he murmured. “Want to try for a chapter?”

  She allowed her tongue to trace his lips lazily, giving them a quick teasing nip as she slid a finger up and down his spine. She sensed his response, just as she sensed his reluctance to show it to her. “Bargaining is my forte,” she told him quietly. She gave him a slow, lingering kiss, retreating just as she felt him increase the pressure. “Just how many chapters are in this book?”

  Slade closed his eyes, the better to enjoy the sensation of being seduced when no seduction was necessary. “About twenty-five.”

  “Hmmm.” He felt her lips curve as they touched his again. “This could take all day.”

  “Count on it.” Unexpectedly, he drew her away, then framed her face with his hands. “We can start negotiations right after we do some work in here.”

  “Oh.” Catching her tongue between her teeth, Jessica looked around at the disordered books. “After?”

  “After,” Slade said firmly, nudging her down in a chair. “Start writing.”

  Jessica was hardly aware of the hours that passed—one, then two, then three. He worked quietly, systematically, and with a patience she could never hope to emulate. Slade knew the books a great deal better than she. Jessica saved reading for the rare times when her physical energy lagged behind her mental energy. She enjoyed books. He loved them. She found this small realization another step in the ladder to discovering him.

  It was easier in the quiet, cluttered library to get him to talk. Have you read this? Yes. What did you think of it? And he would tell her, easily and in depth, without ever stopping his work. How her father would have liked him, Jessica thought. He would have admired Slade’s mind, his strength, his sudden flashes of humor. He would have seen the goodness Slade took such care to keep hidden.

  She doubted Slade realized that, by letting her work with him here, he was revealing his other side. The dreamer. Perhaps she’d always known it was there, even when she had recognized the streak of hard street sense. It was a complex man who could carry a gun and discuss Byron’s Don Juan with equal ease. That afternoon she needed the dreamer. Perhaps he knew it.

  The light began to fade to a soft gray. Shadows gathered in the corners of the room. Jessica had forgotten her tension and had become involved with the mindless task of copying titles and names onto the index cards. When the phone rang, she scattered two dozen of them on the floor. Quickly she began to retrieve them.

  “It just startled me,” she said when Slade remained silent. She cursed her trembling hands as she gathered the cards back into a pile. “It’s been so quiet, that’s all.” Furious with herself, she let the cards fall again. “Damn it, don’t sit there looking at me like that! I’d rather you swore at me.”

  He rose and went to her, then crouched in front of her. “You made a hell of a mess,” he murmured. “If you can’t do better, I’ll have to get myself a new assistant.”

  With a sound that was part sigh, part laugh, she leaned her forehead against his. “Give me a break, it’s my first day on the job.”

  Betsy opened the door, then lifted her brows and pursed her lips. Well, she always figured where there was smoke there was fire, and she’d smelled smoke the minute those two had set eyes on each other. She gave a quick harrumph and watched Jessica jump as though she’d been scalded.

  “Mr. Adams is on the phone,” Betsy said regally, then closed the door again.

  Slade closed his hand over Jessica’s. “Call her back,” he said quietly. “Have her tell him you’re resting.”

  “No.” With a quick shake of the head, she rose. “Don’t keep asking me to run, Slade, because I might do it. Then I’d hate myself.” Turning, she picked up the phone. “Hello, Michael.”

  Slowly Slade straightened, tucked his hands in his pockets, and watched her.

  “No, it’s nothing really, just a
little touch of the flu.” Jessica spoke in quiet tones while she wrapped the phone cord around and around her fingers. “David’s just feeling guilty because he thinks I caught it from him. He shouldn’t have worried you. I am taking care of myself.” She shut her eyes tightly a moment, but her voice remained light and steady. “No, I won’t be in tomorrow.” The cord of the phone dug into her skin. Carefully Jessica unwound it. “That’s not necessary, Michael . . . . No, really. I promise—don’t worry. I’ll be—I’ll be fine in a couple of days. Yes, I will . . . . Good-bye.”

  After replacing the receiver, Jessica stood for a moment, staring down at her empty hands. “He was concerned,” she murmured. “I’m never ill. He wanted to come over and see me, but I put him off.”

  “Good.” Sympathy wouldn’t help her now, Slade decided. “We’ve done enough in here for today. Why don’t we go upstairs?” He walked to the door, as if taking her agreement for granted. He opened it, then paused and looked back. She still hadn’t moved. “Come on, Jess.”

  She crossed to him, but stopped at the door. “Michael would do nothing to hurt me,” she said without looking at him. “I just want you to understand that.”

  “As long as you understand that I have to look at everyone as a potential threat,” he returned evenly. “You’re not to see either one of them—or anyone else—unless I’m with you.” Spotting the light of defiance in her eyes, he continued. “If he and David are innocent, the next couple of days won’t do them any harm. If you really believe it,” he went on, shrugging off the look of fury she sent him, “you should be able to handle all this.”

  He wasn’t going to give her an inch, Jessica concluded as she fought both tears and rage. Perhaps it was best if he didn’t. She took a long steadying breath. “You’re right. And I will handle it. Are you going to work on your book now?”

  Slade gave no sign that the change of subject made any difference to him. “I thought I might.”

  Jessica was determined to be just as practical as he—at least on the surface. “Fine. Go on up then and I’ll bring some coffee for both of us. You can trust me,” she went on before he could object. “I’ll do exactly what you tell me to do so I can prove you wrong. I am going to prove you wrong, Slade,” she told him with quiet, concrete determination.

  “Fine, as long as you stick to the rules.”

  Finding herself more at ease with a goal in mind, Jessica smiled. “Then I’ll bring up the coffee. While I’m reading your book, you can concentrate on finishing it. It’s one sure way to keep me occupied for the rest of the day.”

  He pinched the lobe of her ear. “Is that a bribe?”

  “If you don’t know one when you hear one,” she countered, “you must be a pretty lousy cop.”

  8

  Jessica’s coffee grew cold again. She sat up against the headboard of Slade’s bed with a pile of manuscript on either side of her. The stack of pages she had read was rapidly outgrowing the pile she had yet to read. Engrossed, she had been able to pass off Betsy’s nagging when the housekeeper had brought up a tray of soup and sandwiches. Jessica had given her an absent promise to eat which she had forgotten the moment the door was closed again. She’d forgotten, too, though he had scrawled notes and revisions in the margins, that she was reading Slade’s work. The story, the people, had completely taken her over.

  She traveled with an ordinary family through the postwar forties, through the simplicities and complexities of the fifties, into the sixties with their turbulence and fluctuating mores. Children grew up, values changed. There were deaths and births, the realization of some dreams and the destruction of others. Through it all, as a new generation coped with the pressures of the seventies, Jessica came to know them. They were people she might have met—undeniably people she would have cared for.

  The words flowed, at times gently, at other times with a grittiness that made her stomach tighten. It wasn’t an easy story—his characters were too genuine for that. He showed her things she didn’t always want to be shown, but she never considered setting the pages aside.

  At the end of a chapter Jessica reached automatically for the next page. Confused, she glanced down to see that there were no more. Annoyed with the interruption, she then realized she had read all he had given her. For the first time in almost three hours, the sound of Slade’s typing penetrated her concentration.

  There was a full moon. That, too, came to her abruptly. The light flowed into the room to vie with the stream of the bedside lamp. The fire Slade had lit when they’d come upstairs had burned down to glowing embers. Jessica stretched her cramped muscles, wanting to give herself a moment before she went into Slade.

  When she had insisted on reading his work, Jessica hadn’t been certain how she would feel or what she would say to him when she was finished. Knowing herself too easily influenced by emotion, she had been certain that she would find some merit in his writing. Now she wanted time to decide how much her feelings for Slade had to do with her feelings about the story she had just read.

  None, she realized. Before she had completed the first chapter Jessica had forgotten why she was reading it even though her main purpose had been accomplished. She knew Slade better now.

  He had a depth of perception she had only sensed, an insight into people she envied as well as admired. In his writing as well as his speech, he was frugal with words—but in the writing, his inner thoughts surfaced. He might be sparing with his own emotions, but his characters had a range to them that were rooted in their creator.

  And, Jessica mused, she’d been wrong when she had once told him he didn’t know women. He knew them—almost too well, she thought as she fingered the tip of a page. How much did he see, when he looked at her, that she had been confident was private? How much did he understand, when he touched her, that she had been certain she could keep hidden?

  Did he know she loved him? Instinctively Jessica glanced at the doorway that separated the bedroom and the sitting room. Slade’s typing continued. No, she was certain he had no idea how deep her feelings ran. Or, she thought with a small smile, that she was determined not to let him walk out of her life whenever, or however, things were resolved. If he knew, she mused, he’d put her at arm’s length. A cautious man, she reflected. Slade was a very cautious man—one who saw himself suited for the solitary life. Jessica decided that he had some surprises coming. When she felt her life was her own again, she was going to deal him a few.

  She rose and went to the doorway. His back was to her, the light falling on his hands as they moved over the keys. From the set of his shoulders, the angle of his head, she could tell his concentration was deep. Not wanting to disturb him, she waited, resting against the doorjamb. The ashtray at his elbow was half full, with a lit cigarette smoldering and forgotten. His coffee cup was empty, but his dinner tray hadn’t been touched. She felt a Betsy-like urge to scold him for neglecting to eat.

  This is how it could be, she realized abruptly, if the nightmare was behind us. He could work here, and I’d hear the sound of his typing when I came home. There’d be times he’d get up in the middle of the night and close the door so the noise wouldn’t wake me. We’d walk on the beach on Sunday mornings . . . watch the fire on rainy afternoons. One day, she thought and closed her eyes. It could happen one day.

  With an exasperated sigh, Slade stopped typing. One hand reached up to rub at the stiffness in his neck. Whatever impetus had driven him for three hours had suddenly dried up, and he wasn’t ready. Automatically he reached for his coffee, only to find the cup empty. Maybe if he went down for some more, the flow would come back. Even as he considered it, Jessica came to him.

  Wrapping her arms around his neck, she rested her cheek on top of his head. Love was coursing through her swiftly, too swiftly. She squeezed him tightly, forcing back the words she was afraid he wasn’t ready to hear. There were others she wanted to say first.

  “Slade, don’t ever stop doing what you were meant to do.”

  Not sure
of her meaning, he frowned down at the words he’d just written. “How much did you read?”

  “All you gave me—not enough. When will you finish? Oh, Slade, it’s wonderful!” Jessica continued before he could speak. “It’s a beautiful piece of work. Everything: the words, the feeling, the people.”

  Slade turned so that he could see her face. He didn’t want platitudes, not from her. Her eyes were lit with enthusiasm while his remained cool and guarded. “Why?”

  “Because you told a story with depth, about people all of us have met or have been.” She spread her fingers, searching for words that would satisfy him. “Because it made me cry, and cringe, and laugh. There were parts—that scene in the parking lot in the seventh chapter—I didn’t want to read. It was hard, savage. But I had to read it even when it hurt. Slade, no one that reads that is going to be untouched.” She laid her hands back on his shoulders. “And isn’t that why a writer writes?”

  His eyes never left hers. He waited, weighing what he saw there with her words. “You know,” he said slowly, “I don’t think I realized until just now what a chance I was taking by letting you read it.”

  “A chance,” she repeated. “Why?”

  “If you hadn’t been touched, I’m not sure I could have finished it.”

  Nothing he could have said would have meant more. Jessica brought his hand up to her cheek, wondering if he realized how much he’d said in one sentence. “I was touched, Slade,” she said quietly. “When it’s published, and I read it, I’m going to remember that part of it was written right here.”

  “Going to erect a monument?” he asked with a smile.

  “Just a discreet plaque.” Leaning over, she kissed him. “I wouldn’t want it to go to your head. What about an agent?” she asked suddenly. “Do you have one?”

  Chuckling, he drew her down into his lap. “Yes, I have one. so far we haven’t done each other much good, but he’s marketed some short stories, and he’s doing whatever it is agents do to sell my other novel.”