by Nora Roberts
“Neither were the last few months before.” She felt cold suddenly.
“It was a bad time. The worst kind of time for both of you.”
Liv drew a deep breath. She didn’t often allow herself to remember. “You were a good friend to us, Greg. I don’t think I ever told you just how good. It was a difficult period of my life. You made it a bit easier.” Now, she returned the pressure of his hand. “I don’t think I realized that until much later.”
“I hated to watch you hurting, Livvy.” When she turned away, he took her shoulders and rested his head on her hair. “There’s nothing that makes you feel more helpless than watching people you care about in pain. Everything that happened seemed so unjust at the time. It still does.”
Liv leaned back against him. She remembered he had tried to comfort her all those years ago, but she had been beyond it then. “Doug and I didn’t handle it well, did we, Greg?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitated a moment, wondering if he should tell her. Perhaps it was best for her to know everything. “Livvy, Doug’s married again.”
She said nothing at all. Somehow she had known he would be, had been all but sure of it. Does it matter? she asked herself. She had loved him once, but that was over. Dead. Love was long dead. Still, she felt a wave of grief for what they had had, what they had lost. A long, shuddering sigh broke from her.
“Is he happy?”
“Yes, I think so. He’s put his life back together.” Greg turned Liv to face him. “Have you?”
“Yes.” She went into his arms, wanting to be held by someone who understood. “Yes, most of the time. My work’s important. I needed something important to keep me sane. I’ve put all those years behind me, into their own little box. I don’t open it often. Less and less as the years pass.” She closed her eyes. The grief was still there, only dulled by time. “Don’t tell him you saw me.” She lifted her face so that she met Greg’s eyes. “He shouldn’t open the box either.”
“You always were strong, Livvy, stronger than Doug. I think he had a hard time accepting that.”
“So did I.” She sighed again and rested against him. “I wanted too much from him; he didn’t want enough from me.” Suddenly, she clung to him. “When the one thing that bound us together was gone, we fell apart. Picking up the pieces is hell, Greg. I’m still missing some, and I don’t even know where to look for them.”
“You’ll find them, Livvy.” She felt him kiss her hair, then lifted her face to smile at him.
“I’m awfully glad I was the female your aunt chose to dangle in front of you this trip. I’ve missed you.”
He would like to have kissed her, as a man kisses a woman who has always held a special place in his heart. But he knew her too well. He touched her lips lightly with his.
“Excuse me.”
Liv’s eyes flew to the doorway. Even in the shadows, she could make out Thorpe’s silhouette. Carefully, she drew out of Greg’s arms, angry that Thorpe had discovered her in a weak, unguarded moment.
“Myra needs to fill in a table.”
“Bridge.” Greg grimaced and took Liv’s arm. “This is my punishment for not making it down last Christmas. You’ll have to tolerate being my partner for old times’ sake, Livvy.”
“You couldn’t do much worse.” She knew Thorpe’s eyes were fastened on her face, and felt absurdly guilty. To compensate, she smiled at Greg. “If you fix me a drink, I’ll try not to trump your ace.”
Thorpe stepped aside as they walked through the doorway.
He stood in the shadows another moment, watching them walk away. Jealousy was a new emotion. He found he didn’t care for it. Olivia Carmichael belonged in a man’s arms. He was going to make damn sure they were his.
“Two clubs.” Liv bid on a poor excuse for a hand. She and Greg had as opponents the head of thoracic surgery at a Baltimore hospital and his wife. They were being badly beaten. Neither of them played the game with much skill. After a particularly humiliating hand, Greg jokingly challenged the surgeon and his wife to a tennis match. He remembered well Liv’s energy on the court. With a grin, the surgeon marked down the scoring.
The three other tables in the room included two senators, a five-star general and the widow of a former secretary of the treasury. Liv kept her ears tuned to the light political talk and gossip. She wouldn’t learn any state secrets, but she had made contacts. A reporter couldn’t afford to ignore the smallest scrap of information. You could never tell what could lead to bigger things. Liv found it ironic that a torn dress and scuffed shoes had brought her to the drawing room of a Supreme Court justice.
“Five spades.” Greg took the bid, and Liv spread her cards on the table and rose.
“Sorry,” she said when he gave a small sigh at what she had to offer him.
“Tennis,” he muttered, and played his first ace.
“I’m going to get some air.”
“Coward,” he said, and shot her a grin.
With a laugh, Liv slipped out to the terrace.
It was still cool. Spring was fighting its way into Washington like a dark horse candidate. After the heat of the drawing room, Liv found the chill refreshing. There was little light as clouds drifted over a half-moon. And it was quiet. The rear of the house was shielded from the street sounds and hum of city traffic. She heard Myra’s boom of a laugh as she won game point.
How strange it was, Liv thought, to meet Greg again like this—to have those bittersweet years of her life brought back. Extremes, she mused. I lived on extremes. Staggeringly happy, unbearably sad. It’s better this way, without all those peaks and valleys of emotion. Safer. I’ve had enough of risks and failures. Smarter.
Wrapping her arms around herself, she walked to the edge of the terrace. Safer and smarter. You can’t be hurt if you don’t take chances.
“No wrap, Liv?”
She gasped and whirled. She hadn’t heard the terrace doors open, or Thorpe’s steps on the stone. What moonlight there was shone directly on her face, while his was in shadows. She felt at a disadvantage.
“It’s warm enough.” Her answer was stiff. She hadn’t forgiven him for embarrassing her in the studio.
Thorpe moved closer and laid his hands on her arms. “You’re chilled. Nobody wants to listen to a newscaster with the sniffles.” He stripped off his jacket and slipped it over her shoulders.
“I don’t need—”
Keeping his hands on the lapels, Thorpe pulled her against him and silenced her with a bruising kiss. Her arms were pinned between his body and her own, her mouth quickly and expertly conquered. Liv’s thoughts seemed to explode, then spiral down to a small, unintelligible buzz in her head. She felt the unwanted pull of desire begin to take over just before his mouth lifted from hers.
“Maybe you didn’t need that.” He kept her close, still gripping the lapels of his own jacket. “But I did.”
“You must be crazy.” The words were strong and scathing, but husky with awakened passion.
“I must be,” he agreed easily enough. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have walked out of your apartment the other night.”
Liv let that pass. The memories of her response to him were too uncomfortable. “You had no right pulling that business in the studio this evening.”
“Kissing you?” She watched his grin flash. “I intend to make a habit of that. You have a fantastic mouth.”
“Listen, Thorpe—”
“I hear you and Myra’s nephew are old friends,” he interrupted.
Liv let out a frustrated breath. “I don’t see what that has to do with you.”
“Just weeding out the competition,” he said smoothly. He liked holding her close, waiting for the slight resistance of her body to melt.
“Competition?” Liv would have drawn away, but she was trapped in the jacket. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ll have to learn about the other men you let hold you so I can dispose of them.” Thorpe pulled her fractionally closer. The heat of his bod
y seemed to skim along her skin. His eyes were direct on hers. “I’m going to marry you.”
Liv’s mouth dropped open. She hadn’t thought it was possible for Thorpe to shock her again. He was a man she had learned to expect anything of. But not this. Here was a calm, matter-of-fact statement. He might have been saying he was going to be her partner for the next round of bridge. After a close, thorough study of his face, Liv could have sworn he was completely serious.
“Now I know you’re crazy,” she whispered. “Really, really mad.”
His brow lifted in acknowledgment, but he continued in a reasonable tone. It was the tone more than anything else that left her baffled. “I’m willing to give you six months to come around. I’m a patient man. I can afford to be; I don’t lose.”
“Thorpe, you’re in serious trouble. You should ask for a leave of absence. Pressure does strange things to the mind.”
“I think it’ll be simpler if I’m straight with you.” He was smiling now, amused by her reaction. Her eyes were no longer shocked, but wary. “Now you’ll have time to get used to the idea.”
“Thorpe,” she said, “I’m not going to marry anyone. I’m certainly not going to marry you. Now, I think you should—”
She found herself cut off again as he took her mouth. Her small sound of protest was muffled, then silenced as his tongue slowly seduced hers. She was pressed against him, her arms still pinned straight down at her sides. But he felt the resistance melt, just as he had wanted. His own desire pounded. Her mouth wasn’t submissive, but active on his. She sought more, even as he did.
Clouds covered her mind and there was only sensation. She could feel the somehow soft and strong texture of his lips, the slow, sure movement of his tongue. If they had been free, she would have wrapped her arms around him and clung. Only her mouth and the pressure of her body told him that she wanted him. Just as his told her.
She was suddenly and completely a creature of the flesh. She wanted nothing more than to be touched by him. Her skin burned for it; her body ached. She murmured something neither of them could understand. Thorpe could feel her response. He wanted her desperately. The thought ran through his mind that she had been right to call him mad. He wanted her to the point of madness. If they had been alone . . . If they had been alone . . .
Gradually, he brought himself back. There would be other times, other places. Banking his desire, he lifted his mouth from hers. “What was it you were going to tell me to do?” he murmured.
Her breathing was unsteady. She struggled to remember who she was, who it was who held her, what he had just said to her. As he smiled at her, her brain began to clear. “See a doctor.” She couldn’t manage more than a whisper. Her body was tingling. “Quickly, before you really crack.”
“Too late.” Thorpe drew her back for a last, burning kiss. Stunned by her completely uninhibited response, Liv pulled out of his arms. She ran a hand through her hair.
“This is crazy.” She kept the hand aloft, gesturing with it as if to make him see reason. “This is really crazy.” Steadying, she took a quick breath. “Now, I’ll admit I’m attracted to you, and that’s bad enough; but that’s the limit. I’m going to forget all of this.” She slipped his jacket from her shoulders and dropped it into his hand. “I want you to do the same. I don’t know how much you had to drink in there, but it must have been too much.”
He was still smiling at her, a patient smile. “You wipe that grin off your face, Thorpe,” she ordered. “And—and stay away from me.” She stormed to the terrace doors, then turned her head to look at him a last time. “You’re crazy,” she added for good measure before she yanked the doors open and dashed through them.
5
There was a white rose on Liv’s desk in the morning. It stood in a slender porcelain vase, a bud only, with petals tightly closed. Of course, she knew who had sent it. Baffled, she dropped into the chair behind her desk and stared at it.
When she had returned to the card table the evening before, she had promised herself she wouldn’t think of her conversation with Thorpe. A sane person didn’t dwell on the words of a lunatic. Yet there had been a long, quiet stretch in the night when she had lain awake in bed. Every syllable of their conversation on the terrace had played back in her head. And now he was sending her flowers.
The smart thing to do would be to dump it, vase and all, into the trash and forget it.
Liv touched a fingertip to a white petal of the rose. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.
It’s just a flower, after all, she reminded herself. Harmless. I just won’t think about where it came from. Briskly, she pulled a sheet of copy toward her. She had a news brief to give in fifteen minutes.
“Liv, thank God you’re here!”
She glanced up as the assignment editor barreled down on her desk. “Chester?” He was an excitable, usually desperate man who lived on antacids and coffee. She was accustomed to this sort of greeting from him.
“Take crew two and get out to the Livingston Apartments in Southeast. A plane just crashed into the sixth floor.”
She was up, grabbing her purse and jacket. “Any details?”
“You get them. We’re going live as soon as you’re set up. An engineer’s going with you. Everybody’s scattered around town or down with the flu.” His tone hinted that the flu was no excuse for being unavailable for assignment. “Go, they’re in the van.” He popped a small, round mint into his mouth.
“I’m gone.” Liv dashed for the door.
It was worse, much worse than she could ever have imagined. The tail section of the plane protruded from the face of the building like the shaft of an arrow. It might have been taken from a scene of a movie, carefully staged. Fires, started by the impact, belched out smoke. The air radiated with waves of heat and smelled pungent. The building was surrounded by fire engines and police cars, and they were still coming. Fire fighters were geared up, going in or coming out of the building, or spraying it with the powerful force of their hoses. The lower floors were being evacuated. She could hear the weeping and the shouts above the wail of sirens and crackle of the fire.
Behind the barricades, the press was already at work. There were cameras and booms, reporters, photographers and technicians. All were moving in their special organized chaos.
“We’ll stay portable,” she told Bob as he hefted the camera on his shoulder. “For now, get the building on tape, a full pan of these trucks and ambulances.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he muttered, already focusing in on the visible section of the plane. “Can you imagine what it’s like inside there?”
Liv shook her head. She didn’t want to. There were people inside there. She forced back a swell of nausea. She had a story to report.
“There’s Reeder.” She glanced in the direction Bob indicated. “Assistant fire chief.”
“Okay. Let’s see what he can tell us.” Liv worked her way through the crowd. She was jostled now and again, but she was used to that. She knew how to snake through masses of people to her objective. And she knew the crew would follow behind her. Coming to the edge of the barricade, she secured her position and took the mike from her soundman.
“Chief Reeder, Olivia Carmichael with WWBW.” She managed to get the mike out to him by leaning over the barricade and planting her feet. “Can you tell us what happened, and the status of the fire?”
He looked impatiently at the mike, then at Liv. “Charter plane out of National.” His voice was curt, gruff and as impatient as his eyes. “We don’t know the cause of the crash yet. Four floors of the building are involved. Of the six floors, three have been evacuated.”
“Can you tell me how many people are on the plane?”
“Fifty-two, including crew.” He turned to bark an order into his two-way.
“Has there been any contact with them?” Liv persisted.
Reeder gave her a long, silent look. “My men are working down from the roof and up from the lower floors.”
“How many people are still in the building?”
“Talk to the landlord, I’m busy.”
As he walked away, Liv signaled to Bob to stop the taping. “I’m going to try to find out how many people are still inside.” She turned to the sound technician. “Go back to the radio; find out if the desk knows the flight number yet, the plane’s destination, any clue to the cause of the crash. We’ll set up for a live bulletin.” She checked her watch. “Five minutes, right here.”
She turned to push through the crowd again. There was a woman sitting alone on the curb. She was dressed in a worn robe and clutched a photo album to her breast. Liv backtracked from her search for the building’s landlord and went to her.
“Ma’am.”
The woman looked up, dry eyed, pale. Liv crouched down beside her. She recognized the look of shock.
“You shouldn’t be sitting out here in the cold,” Liv said gently. “Is there somewhere you can go?”
“They wouldn’t let me take anything else,” she told Liv, pressing the album closer. “Just my pictures. Did you hear the noise? I thought it was the end of the world.” Her voice was reed thin. The sound of it pulled at Liv. “I was fixing tea,” she went on. “All my china’s broken. My mother’s china.”
“I’m sorry.” The words were pitifully inadequate. Liv touched the woman’s shoulder. “Why don’t you come with me now. Over there. The paramedics will take care of you.”
“I have friends up there.” The woman’s eyes shifted to the building. “Mrs. McGiver in 607, and the Dawsons in 610. They have two children. Did they get out yet?”
Liv heard another window explode from heat. “I don’t know. I’ll try to find out.”
“The little boy had the flu and had to stay home from school.” Shock was giving way to grief. Liv could see the change in the woman’s eyes, hear it in her voice. “I have a picture of him in here.” She began to weep—deep, tearing sobs that pulled at Liv’s heart.
Sitting on the curb beside her, Liv gathered the woman into her arms. She was fragile, almost paper thin. Liv was very much afraid that the picture would be all that was left of the Dawson boy. Holding her close, Liv wept with her.