The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 3

by Nora Roberts

  “Streaks?” said Maddy, nearly speechless with joy.

  “Highlights, subtle. Ask your father, and I’ll take you to my guy.”

  “Why do I have to ask about having my hair cut? It’s my hair.”

  “Good point. Go try this on. I’ll give the salon a call, see if they can fit you in before we head back home.” She started to hand Maddy the gown, then stopped. “Oh, Mama.”

  “What do you think?” She’d started with the peach, the ivory lace romancing the bodice, the skirt sweeping back into a gentle train. “Be brutal.”

  “Helen, come see,” Sophia called out. “You look beautiful, Mama.”

  “Like a bride,” Helen agreed and sniffled. “Damn, there goes the mascara.”

  “Okay.” Half-dreaming, Pilar turned in a circle. “Maddy? What’s your vote?”

  “You look great. Dad’s eyes are going to pop out.”

  Pilar beamed and turned in another circle. “We have a winner, first time out.”

  It wasn’t as simple as that. There were hats, headdresses, shoes, jewelry, bags, even underwear. It was dark before they headed north, with the back of the SUV crammed with shopping bags and boxes. Which didn’t include the dresses themselves, Maddy thought with wonder. Those had to be fitted and altered and fussed with.

  But she’d ended up with a pile of new clothes, shoes, really cool earrings that she was now wearing. They showed off great with her awesome haircut. And highlights.

  This new girl-family deal had definite high points.

  “Men,” Sophia was saying as she cruised north, “consider themselves the hunter. But they’re not. See, they decide to go after a grizzly, and that’s their whole focus. So while they track the big bear, they miss all the other game out of their narrowed vision. Women, on the other hand, may track the grizzly, but before, or even while, bagging it, they take down all the other game as well.”

  “Plus men shoot the first big bear they see,” Maddy put in from the backseat. “They don’t take into account the entire world of grizzlies.”

  “Exactly.” Sophia tapped the steering wheel. “Mama, this girl has real potential.”

  “Agreed. But I’m not taking the rap for those shoes with the two-foot soles she’s wearing. That one’s on you.”

  “They’re great. Funky.”

  “Yeah.” Pleased with them, and herself, Maddy lifted her foot. “And the soles are only about four inches.”

  “I don’t know why you’d want to clomp around in them.”

  Sophia met Maddy’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “It’s a Mom thing. She has to say that. You should’ve seen her face when I got my belly button pierced.”

  “You got your belly button pierced?” Fascinated, Maddy reached for the snap of her seat belt. “Can I see?”

  “I let it grow back. Sorry,” she said with a chuckle as Maddy sat back again in disgust. “It was irritating.”

  “And she was eighteen,” Pilar pointed out, turning her head to give Maddy a warning stare. “So don’t even think about it until you are.”

  “Is that a Mom thing, too?”

  “You bet. But I will say the two of you were right about the hair. It looks great.”

  “So when Dad connips, you’ll calm him all down, right?”

  “Well, I’ll . . .” She turned back as the car squealed around a curve. “Sophia, at the risk of saying another Mom thing, slow down.”

  “Tighten your seat belts.” Grimly Sophia’s hands vised on the wheel. “Something’s wrong with the brakes.”

  “Oh God.” Instinctively, Pilar turned back to Maddy. “Are you strapped in?”

  “Yeah.” She grabbed the seat to brace herself as the car shot around another turn. “I’m okay. Pull up the emergency brake.”

  “Mama, pull it up. I need both hands here.” Those hands wanted to shake, but she didn’t let them. Didn’t let herself think about anything but maintaining control. The car squealed again, fishtailed around the next turn.

  “It’s up all the way, baby.” And the car didn’t slow. “What if we turned off the engine?”

  “The steering’ll lock.” Maddy swallowed the heart that leaped into her throat. “She wouldn’t be able to steer.”

  Gravel spit as Sophia fought to keep the car on the road. “Use my phone, call nine-one-one.” She looked down briefly. A half tank of gas, she thought. No help there. And she wasn’t going to be able to control the car around the upcoming S turns at this speed.

  “Downshift!” Maddy shouted from the back. “Try downshifting.”

  “Mama, shove it into third when I tell you. It’s going to give us one hell of a jolt, so brace yourselves. But it might work. I can’t let go of the wheel.”

  “I’ve got it. It’s going to be all right.”

  “Okay. Hold on.” She pushed in the clutch, and the car seemed to gain more speed. “Now!”

  The car jolted hard. Though Maddy bit her lip, she couldn’t hold back the scream.

  “Into second,” Sophia ordered, wrenching the wheel from the shoulder of the road. A line of sweat ran cold down her back. “Now.”

  The car bucked, threw her forward, back again. She had a moment’s panic that the airbags would deploy and leave her helpless.

  “We’ve slowed down some. Good thinking, Maddy.”

  “We’re going to head downhill, around more turns.” Sophia’s voice was ice calm. “So the speed’s going to pick up again some. I can handle it. Once we’re through them, we go up a slope, and that should do it. Get my phone, Mama, just in case. And everybody hold on.”

  She didn’t look at the speedometer. Her eyes were glued to the road now, her mind anticipating each turn. She’d driven the road countless times. The headlights cut through the dark, slashed across oncoming traffic. She heard the angry sound of horns blaring as she crossed the center line.

  “Nearly there, nearly there.” She whipped the wheel left, then right. It slicked in her hands as her palms sprang with damp.

  She could see, could feel the ground begin to level. Just a little more, she thought. A little bit more. “Into first, Mama. Shove it into first.”

  There was a horrible noise, a tremendous shudder. Sophia felt as if an enormous fist punched into the hood of the car. Something shrieked, then clanged. And as the speed dropped, she pulled to the side of the road.

  No one spoke when they stopped. A car whizzed by, then another.

  “Is everyone all right?” Pilar reached for the latch of her seat belt and discovered her fingers were numb. “Is everyone okay?”

  “Yeah.” Maddy dashed tears from her cheeks. “Okay. I think we should get out now.”

  “I think that’s a good idea. Sophie, baby?”

  “Yeah. Let’s get the hell out.”

  She managed to get out, to get to the far side of the car before her legs buckled. Bracing her hands on the hood, she fought to get her breath back, and only managed to wheeze.

  “That was really good driving,” Maddy told her.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Here, baby. Here.” Pilar turned her, held her when the shakes came. And, holding her, reached out for Maddy. “Here, baby,” she said again. Maddy pressed herself into that circle of comfort and let the tears come.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Nearly blind with terror and relief, David bolted out of the house. Even as the police car braked, he scooped Maddy out, held her cradled in his arms as he would a baby.

  “You’re okay.” He pressed his lips to her cheeks, her hair. Breathed her in, as the shakes he’d held off since the call took over. “You’re okay.” He said it a half dozen times as she curled into him.

  “I’m all right. I’m not hurt or anything.” But when she wrapped her arms around his neck, her world came all the way right again. “Sophie drove like one of those guys you and Theo like to watch on the raceway. It was kinda cool.”

  “Kinda cool. Yeah.” Rocking now, calming himself, he kept his face buried in the curve of her throat w
hile Theo awkwardly patted her back.

  “Bet it was some ride.” Theo manfully swallowed the prickly lump in his throat. There was a jittering inside his chest that came as much from seeing his father break apart as from anxiety over Maddy. “I’ll haul her in, Dad. You’re going to wreck your arm.”

  Unable to speak, David just shook his head and held on. His baby, was all he could think. His little girl might have been lost.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” Maddy told him. “Everybody’s okay now. I can walk. We got the shakes after, but we got over it. But Theo can haul in all the loot.” She rubbed her cheek against her father’s. “We kicked shopping butt, right, Pilar?”

  “Right. I could use a hand, Theo.”

  “Theo and I’ll get it.” She wiggled until David set her down.

  “What’d you do to your hair?” David ran his hand over the sassy crop of it, left his hand resting warm on the back of her neck.

  “Got rid of most of it. What do you think?”

  “I think it makes you look grown up. You’re growing up on me. Damn, Maddy, I wish you wouldn’t.” He sighed, pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Just another minute, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “I love you so much. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t scare me like that again anytime soon.”

  “I don’t plan on it. Wait till you see the dress I got. It goes with the hair.”

  “Great. Go ahead, drag off your loot.”

  “You’ll stay, won’t you?” Maddy asked Pilar.

  “Yes, if you want.”

  “I think you should stay.” Since Theo had grabbed the bags, she clomped off after him in her funky new shoes.

  “Oh, David, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t say anything. Just let me look at you.” He cupped her face, skimmed his hands back into her hair. Her skin was chilled, her eyes huge and full of worry. But she was here, she was whole. “Just let me look.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He drew her close, seemed to fold himself around her and rock. “Sophia?”

  “She’s fine.” The taut wire that had held her straight and steady snapped as she burrowed into him. “God, David, God. Our babies. I’ve never been so scared, and all the time it was happening, they . . . they were amazing. I didn’t like leaving Sophie back there, dealing with the police, but I didn’t want Maddy coming home alone, so . . .”

  “Ty’s already on his way down.”

  She drew a ragged breath, then a second that came easier. “I thought he would be. That’s all right then.”

  “Come inside.” He shifted her, keeping her close to his side. “Tell me everything.”

  Tyler swung behind the police cruiser with a harsh scream of brakes. In the flashing lights, Sophia watched him stride over the road. She could see him well enough to recognize rage. As calmly as she could, she turned away from the cop who was interviewing her and walked toward him.

  He grabbed her fast enough, hard enough to knock the breath out of her. Nothing had ever felt so safe.

  “I was hoping you’d come. I was really hoping.”

  “Did you get banged up any?”

  “No. The Jeep, on the other hand . . . I think I blew the transmission. Ty, I didn’t have any brakes. They were just gone. I know they’re going to tow it in and check it out, but I already know.”

  The words poured out of her, shaky at first, then gaining strength, gaining temper. “It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t some mechanical failure. Somebody wanted to hurt me, and they didn’t care if my mother and Maddy got hurt, too. Goddamn it, she’s just a little girl. Tough, though. Tough and smart. She told me to downshift. She doesn’t even know how to drive.”

  The rage would have to wait. He’d have to wait to break something in half, to plow his fist into something, anything. Sophia was trembling, and needed tending.

  “Kid knows something about everything. Get in the car. Time for somebody else to take the wheel.”

  A little dazed now, she glanced behind her. “I think they still want to talk to me.”

  “They can talk to you tomorrow. I’m taking you home.”

  “Fine by me. I have some shopping bags.”

  He smiled, and his grip on her loosened to a caress. “Of course you do.”

  He meant what he’d said about taking her home. His home. When she didn’t argue the point, he figured she was more shaken than she’d admitted. He dumped her shopping bags in the foyer, then wondered what the hell to do with her.

  “You want, like, a hot bath, a drink?”

  “How about a drink in a hot bath?”

  “I’ll take care of it. You ought to call your mother, let her know you’re back. And you’ll be staying here.”

  “All right, thanks.”

  He dumped half a tube of shower gel that had been around since Christmas into the tub. It smelled like pine, but it bubbled. He figured she’d want bubbles. He stuck a couple of candles on the counter. Women went for candlelit baths, for reasons he couldn’t fathom. He poured her a glass of wine, set it on the lip of the tub and was standing back, trying to figure out what else to do when she stepped into the bathroom.

  Her single huge sigh told him he’d already hit the mark.

  “MacMillan, I love you.”

  “Yeah, so you said.”

  “No, no, at this moment—this exact moment, no one has ever, will ever love you more. Enough to let you get in with me.”

  In a tub full of bubbles? He didn’t think so. And if he could overlook the mortification of that for the obvious benefits, she looked beat.

  “I’ll take a pass on this one. Strip and get in.”

  “You romantic bastard. A half hour in here and I’ll feel human again.”

  He left her to it and went down to get her things. To his way of thinking, if he dumped her shopping loot in the bedroom, it would take her that much longer to run off again. As far as he was concerned, this was the first stage of her moving in.

  He grabbed her purse, her briefcase, four—Jesus Christ—four loaded shopping bags, and started back up with them. As long as he kept busy, he told himself, did what came next, he wouldn’t give in to the fury choking him.

  “What’d you buy? Small slabs of granite?” He tossed them on the bed, considered the job done, and her briefcase tumbled off. He grabbed for it, managed to snag the strap and, upending it, dumped out most of the contents.

  Why did anyone need so much junk in a briefcase? Resigned, he crouched and began to gather it up again. Okay, he could see the bottle of water, her bulging Filofax, the electronic memo deal. The pens, though, God knew why she needed a half dozen of them. Lipstick.

  Idly he uncapped it, swiveled the tube out. One sniff and he tasted her.

  Travel scissors. Hmmm. Post-its, paper clips, aspirin, a powder-puff thing, a fingernail thing, other assorted girl things that made him wonder why she bothered to carry a purse as well, and what the hell she put in it. Breath mints, a little bag of unopened candy, a mini–tape recorder, Wet Naps, matches, a couple of floppy disks and some file folders, a pair of Hi-Liters and a bottle of clear nail polish.

  Amazing, he decided. It was a wonder she didn’t walk crooked once she strapped it over her shoulder. Just passing the time, he flipped through the file folders as he replaced them. She had a tear sheet of the first ad, a comp of the second, a ream of scribbled notes and a stack of typed ones.

  He found the press releases, with the notes scribbled over them. Lips pursed, he read the English version and found it solid, strong and smart.

  He’d expected nothing else.

  Then he found the altered ad.

  Holding it, and a copy of an envelope addressed to her, he came straight up. He was still holding them when he shoved open the bathroom door.

  “What the hell is this?”

  She’d nearly fallen asleep. When she blinked the first thing she saw was his furious face. And the second the sheets in his hands.

  “What were you doing in my b
riefcase?”

  “Never mind that. Where did you get this?”

  “In the mail.”

  “When?”

  A hesitation, brief but long enough to let him know she was considering a cover.

  “Don’t bother jiving me, Sophie. When did you get this?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “And you were planning to show it to me . . . when?”

  “In a couple of days. Look, would you mind if I finish up in here before we discuss this? I’m naked and covered with boy bubbles.”

  “A couple of days?”

  “Yes, I wanted to think about it and I went to the police with it. To Linc just today so I could get a legal opinion. I can handle it, Ty.”

  “Yeah.” He looked at her, up to her chin in froth, her face haunted by shadows of fatigue. “You’re a real handler, Sophia. I guess I forgot that part.”

  “Ty—” She slapped a fist on the water when he walked out and closed the door. “Just wait a minute.” She got out of the tub and, rather than drying off, just wrapped a towel around herself. She went after him, leaving a trail of water and bubbles.

  She called him again, cursed him and heard the back door slam shut as she raced downstairs.

  She slapped on the outside lights, saw that his long, angry strides were carrying him toward the vineyards. Tightening her grip on the knotted towel, she ran outside.

  Her bare foot came down hard on a small stone, inspiring a fresh string of curses as she continued in a limping run.

  “Tyler! Just wait a damn minute.” She hurled insults at his back until she realized she was using Italian and they might as well have been promises of undying love to his ear. “Listen, you idiot, you coward. You stop where you are and fight like a man.”

  Because he stopped, whirled around, she all but plowed straight into him. She pulled up short, puffing like a steam engine and hopping to take the weight off her sore foot. “Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

  “You don’t want to be near me now.”

  “Wrong.” To prove it she tapped a fist on his chest. “You want to take a shot at me, fine.” She angled her chin. “I’d rather somebody take an honest punch than walk away.”