Northern Lights

by Nora Roberts

  "I like you dressed, too. Just FYI," he said as he tugged her sweater up.

  He liked the feel of her body under his hands and how he had to go layer by layer before he reached skin. And how warm that skin was, how smooth. And despite the fleece and wool and cotton, despite all that practicality, there was the secret, sexy scent of her under it.

  She touched him, easily and eagerly, stripping those layers from him as he did from her. And she lit something inside him, something more than lust. Something that had been hibernating far too long.

  He could lose himself in her without feeling lost. Let himself go without worrying if he'd find his way back. When his mouth closed over hers, tasted both surrender and demand, he had all he needed.

  They circled toward the bed, lowered to it. He heard her sigh and wondered if she could be as relieved or as needy as he. She drew him down, arched and offered when his mouth roamed her throat, when his teeth nipped their way to her nape. He felt her heart kick lightly against his and the firm, welcoming stroke of her hands on his back.

  She wanted him to take what he needed. That was rare for her, a woman who preferred seeing to her own needs first—and often last as well. But she wanted to give to him, to ease away that smudge of sorrow that haunted his eyes. And she knew, somehow, she could give, and he would never leave her wanting.

  There was more to the heat of his lips, the greed of his hands than a search for satisfaction. If some part of her worried over it, she brushed it aside. She knew there was always plenty of later for worries and regrets.

  So she rose to him, found his face with her hands, with her lips, and let the tender mix with the heady.

  He moved over her, stirring little quivers, lighting little fires, and finally clasped her hands with his to keep her from arousing him too much, too soon.

  He wanted to taste her. Those shoulders, breasts, that wonderful lean line of her. As his lips roamed over her, she shuddered, her breath catching on a moan as her fingers flexed in his.

  He stroked his tongue over her, into her, and set her wild.

  She came on a gallop, her body going hot and damp as pleasure flooded her. Her system screamed with release, then churned in a desperate quest for more.

  He gave her more, shockingly, until she would have clawed and bit to have him, until her body went lax and dazed with the drug he'd sent swimming into her blood.

  "Meg." He pressed his mouth to her belly, under her heart, over it.

  As her freed hands gripped his hips, he lifted hers.

  He was inside her, at last. Linked. Mated. Dropping his forehead to hers, he fought for breath and waited for his head to clear so he would know every second, every movement, every thrill.

  She held him, held him close as bodies merged and minds blurred. He said her name again, an instant before he emptied.

  SHADOW

  Follow a shadow, it still flies you;

  Seem to fly it, it will pursue.

  - BEN JONSON

  And coming events cast their shadows before.

  - THOMAS CAMPBELL

  Twelve

  She didn't mind lying quiet in the dark. In fact, she liked it, especially when her body was loose from sex.

  She heard the dogs come in and settle in their usual tangle on the floor at the foot of the bed.

  The grandmother clock from her office down the hall bonged nine.

  Too early to sleep, she thought. And too relaxed to stir.

  The perfect time, then, to satisfy some of her curiosity about the man beside her.

  "Why did she cheat on you?"

  "What?"

  "Your wife. Why did she cheat on you?"

  She felt him shift, moving his body slightly apart from hers. A shrink, she supposed, would have theories on that.

  "I guess I wasn't giving her what she was looking for."

  "You're good in bed. Better than good. Hold on a minute."

  She rolled out of bed and, since she was determined to ferret out some information, dug out a robe.

  "Be right back," she said, and headed down to get the wine and fresh glasses.

  When she came back, he was up, had pulled on his pants, and was tossing a fresh log on her bedroom fire. "Maybe I should—"

  "If go is the next word, forget it. I'm not done with you." She sat back on the bed, poured the glasses. "It's time for that long, sad story, Burke. You might as well start with her, since she's probably the root."

  "I don't know that she is."

  "You were married," Meg prompted. "She was unfaithful."

  "That about wraps it up."

  But she only cocked her head, held out a glass. He hesitated, but walked back. Accepting the wine, he sat on the bed with her. "I didn't make her happy, that's all. It's not easy being married to a cop."

  "Why not?"

  "Because . . . " Let me count the ways, he thought. "The job pulls at you all the damn time. The hours suck. Every second time you make plans, you have to cancel. You get home late, and your head's still in the case. When you work homicides, you can drag death around with you even when you don't want to."

  "Sounds true enough." She sipped her wine. "Tell me this. Were you a cop when she married you?"

  "Yeah, but—"

  "No, no, I'm asking the questions here. How long did you know each other before you took the leap?"

  "I don't know. A year." He took a slow sip of wine and watched the fire. "Closer to two, I guess."

  "Was she slow? Stupid?"

  "No. Jesus, Meg."

  "Just pointing out that you'd have to be one or the other to be involved with a cop for a year or more and not clue in to the rules of the road."

  "Yeah, maybe. That doesn't mean you have to like the rules or want to live with them."

  "Sure, people are entitled to change their minds, whenever. No law against it. I'm saying she married you knowing the package. So using the package as an excuse to cheat or cast blame in your direction if things weren't working doesn't wash."

  "She married the son of a bitch she was cheating with, so I guess that plays into it."

  "Okay, she fell for somebody else. Shit happens. But that's on her. Pushing the blame for her actions on you is just bitchy and cheap."

  He looked at her now. "How do you know she did?"

  "Because I'm looking at you, cutie. Am I wrong?"

  He took a gulp of wine. "No."

  "And you let her."

  "I loved her."

  Those wonderful eyes clouded with sympathy as she touched his cheek, brushed her hand through his messy mass of hair. "Poor Nate. So she broke your heart and kicked you in the balls. What happened?"

  "I knew things weren't right. I ignored it, so that's on me. Figured it'd smooth out. I should've worked at it harder."

  "Coulda, shoulda, woulda."

  He gave a half-laugh. "You're tough."

  Easing over, she kissed his cheek. "How's that? So you didn't pay enough attention to the cracks in the ice as you should have, in your opinion. What then?"

  "Bigger cracks. I thought I could take some time off, and we could get out of town, rediscover.

  Whatever. She wasn't interested. I wanted kids. We'd talked about it before we got married, but she'd chilled to the idea. We had some rounds about that. We had some rounds about a lot of things. It's not all her fault, Meg." It never is.

  "I came home one day. Bad day. Caught a case, drive-by shooting. A woman and her two kids. She's waiting for me. Tells me she wants a divorce, that she's sick of waiting around until I decide to come home. Sick of having her needs and wants and plans take a backseat to mine, and so on. I blew, she blew, and it comes out she's in love with somebody else—who happens to be our frigging lawyer—and she's been seeing him for months. She lays it all out. I've emotionally deserted her, never consider her needs or desires, expect her to alter her plans at the drop of a hat. I'm not there for her anyway, so she wants me out. And has considerately packed up most of my stuff."

  "What did you do
?"

  "I left. I'd just come in from dealing with the useless slaughter of a twenty-six-year-old woman, her ten- and eight-year-old kids. And after Rachel and I yelled at each other for an hour, I didn't have anything left. I packed up my car, drove around awhile and landed at my partner's. Slept on his couch for a few nights."

  To Meg's mind, the woman—Rachel—should've been the one sleeping on a friend's couch, after Nate had delivered a good kick in her ass to help her out the door. But she let it pass.

  "Meanwhile?"

  "She served me with papers; I went to talk to her. But she was done and made it clear. She didn't want to be married to me. We'd divide up the assets and walk away. I was married to the job, anyway, so she was superfluous. That's what she said. End of story."

  "I don't think so. A guy like you might get his heart cracked, and he might mope about it for a while. Then he gets pissed off. Why haven't you?"

  "Who says I didn't?" He got up, set his wine aside, walked to the fire. To the window. "Look, it was a bad year. A long, bad year. Or two. My mother got wind of the divorce in progress and that was lots of fun. She came down on me like bricks."

  "Why's that?"

  "She liked Rachel. She never wanted me to be a cop in the first place. My father died, line of duty, when I was seventeen; she never got over it. She'd handled, pretty well, being a cop's wife. But she couldn't handle being a cop's widow. And she never forgave me for wanting to be what he was. Somewhere in her head she thought that Rachel, that marriage, would turn me into something else.

  It didn't, and as far as she was concerned, I'd wrecked it. That pissed me off, for a while, so I buried myself in the job and got through."

  "And then?"

  He turned away from the window, came back to sit. "Rachel got married. I don't know why it was such a kick in the gut, but it hit me pretty hard, and I guess it showed. Jack, my partner, said we were going out, have a couple drinks. Jack was a family man. He'd go home to his wife and kids, but I was down, he was my partner, so he sat with me over a couple of beers and let me vent. He should've been home, instead of walking out of a bar with me in the middle of the night. He should've been home in bed with his wife. But he wasn't. And we come out, and we see it, half a block up. Drug deal going south. Guy starts shooting, and we pursue. Down the alley, and I'm hit."

  Shot, she thought. "The scars on your leg and right side."

  "I go down, with the leg shot, but I tell Jack I'm okay. I'm calling for backup on my cell. And I'm pulling myself up, and he shoots Jack. Chest, gut. Jesus. I can't get to him. Can't, and the shooter's coming back. Crazy, hyped up. Fucking crazy to come back instead of run. He hits me again, not much more than a graze really. Just this hot arrow under the ribs. And I emptied my clip in him. I don't remember, but that's what they told me. I remember crawling to Jack, watching him die. I remember the way he looked at me, how he gripped my hand and said my name—like what the hell? And how he said his wife's name, when he knew. I remember that, every night."

  "And blame yourself."

  "He wouldn't have been there."

  "I don't see things that way." She wanted to gather him up, rock him like a child. A mistake for him, she knew, an indulgence for her. So she sat beside him, only laid her hand on his thigh. "Every choice a person makes takes them somewhere. You wouldn't have been there either if your wife had been waiting at home for you. So you could just as easily blame her and the guy she'd been seeing. Or you could just blame the man who shot him, because you know, somewhere you know, he's the one to blame."

  "I know all that. Heard it all before. It doesn't change how I feel at three in the morning or three in the afternoon. Or whenever it wants to slap me down."

  Might as well say it all, tell her all, whatever it cost.

  "I went into a hole, Meg, a big, black, nasty hole. I've been trying to climb out, and sometimes I'm almost there, right at the edge. Then something from below reaches up and drags me back down again."

  "You have therapy?"

  "The department arranged it."

  "Meds?"

  He shifted again. "I don't like them."

  "Better living through chemistry," she said, but he didn't smile.

  "They make me edgy or jumpy or out of myself. I can't do the job on meds, and if I couldn't do the job, the whole thing was pointless. But I couldn't stay in Baltimore either. Couldn't face it every day. Another body, another case—trying to close the ones Jack and I caught together before. Seeing somebody else at his desk. Knowing he left a wife and kids who loved him, and there was nobody who'd have been left if it'd been me instead."

  "So you came here."

  "To bury myself. But things happened. I saw the mountains. I saw the lights. Northern lights."

  He looked at her and realized by the faint smile on her face she understood. He didn't have to say more. So he could say more.

  "And I saw you. Similar reaction to all. Something inside me wanted to come back to life. I don't know how it'll be or if I'm any good for you. I'm not a sure bet."

  "I like long odds. Let's just see how it plays."

  "I should go."

  "Didn't I say I wasn't done with you? I'll tell you what we should do. We should go out and jump in the hot tub for a while, then we should come back up here and roll around naked again."

  "Go out? As in outside? Get in a tub of water outside where it's about ten degrees?"

  "Not in the tub, it isn't. Come on, Burke, get hardy. Get stimulated." And soak away some of those blues, she thought.

  "We could stay right here in bed and get stimulated."

  But she rolled away. "You'll like it," she promised, and yanked him out of bed.

  She was right: He did like it. The insanity of the rushing cold, the painful plunge into hot water, the absurdly sexy sensation of being naked with her under a sky now mad with stars and those magical, shifting lights.

  Steam pumped and plumed off the surface, and the dogs once again raced like maniacs. The only downside he could see was having to heave himself out again, race through the bitter air to the house—and the possibility of a heart attack.

  "Do you do this a lot?"

  "A couple times a week. Gets the blood moving."