by Nora Roberts
She shoved through the door, then scowled over at the counter where Mac was ringing up a sale for Debbie Mardson.
“I need hazelnuts,” she snapped out.
“Ah, can’t say we have any in stock.”
How the hell was she supposed to make her chicken Frangelico without hazelnuts? “Why not?”
“Don’t have much call for them. Sure can order you some though.”
“A lot of good that does me now.” She arrowed away to the grocery section to haunt the shelves, the bins, searching for inspiration and ingredients. Ridiculous, absurd, she thought, to try to find inspiration in this backcountry nowhere.
“Oh look, a miracle,” she muttered. “Sun-dried tomatoes.” She tossed them into the basket, picked through the fresh tomatoes. Hothouse, she thought in disgust. Wrapped in cellophane, for God’s sake. Tasteless, colorless.
Making do, that’s all. And barely.
No portobellos, big surprise. No eggplant, no artichokes. No fucking fresh dill.
“Hey there, Reece.”
Tossing a few obviously substandard peppers in her basket, she frowned up at Lo. “If your mother sent you down, you can go right back and tell her I’m done.”
“Ma? Haven’t been down there yet. Saw your car out front. Here, let me carry that for you.”
“I’ve got it.” She tugged the basket out of reach. “Or maybe you forgot I said I wouldn’t sleep with you.”
His mouth opened, then closed and he cleared his throat. “No, that sticks in my mind. Listen, I just came in when I saw your car because I figured you might be upset.”
“Why would I be upset? Red-skinned potatoes, another miracle.”
“I heard about the woman they found up near Moose Ponds. News like that doesn’t stay under the lid,” he added when she only stared at him. “Has to be rough on you.”
“A lot rougher on her, I’d say.” She headed over to pick through the packaged chicken breasts.
“I guess that’s true. Can’t be easy for you though. Seeing her again, even a picture of her. Having to go back in your head to the day you saw her when you were on the trail.” He shifted his feet when she made no response. “But at least you know they found her.”
“I don’t know if it was the same woman I saw.”
“Sure it was. Had to be.”
“Why?”
“Just makes sense it was.” He trailed her over to the counter. “Everybody’s saying so.”
“Everybody doesn’t know jack, and I can’t say the woman they found is the woman I saw just to make everyone happy.”
“Well, Jesus, Reece, that’s not what I—”
“Funny how it takes some kids finding a dead body to make people around here decide I wasn’t making the whole thing up after all. Gee, maybe Reece isn’t completely crazy, after all.”
With more care than usual, Mac boxed her purchases. “Nobody thinks you’re crazy, Reece.”
“Sure they do. Once a nutcase, always a nutcase. That’s how it goes.” She pulled out her wallet and noted with resignation that with the total on the cash register, she was going to be down to her last ten dollars and change. Again.
“You shouldn’t talk like that.” Mac took her money, gave her back thirty-six cents. “It’s insulting to yourself and the rest of us.”
“Maybe. It’s insulting to walk down the street, or into a room, and have people point me out as that poor woman from back East, or look at me out of the sides of their eyes as if I might start gibbering any second. Try being on the receiving end of that for a while,” she suggested as she hefted the box. “See if it doesn’t start pissing you off. And you can tell your mother,” she said to Lo, “that she owes me for twenty-eight hours.”
Reece started for the door. “Tell her I’ll be in to pick up my check tomorrow.”
THE SOUND OF the front door slamming shot Brody out of a tense scene between his central character and the man she has no choice but to trust.
He cursed, reached for his coffee only to discover he’d already finished the oversized mug of it. His first thought was to go down for a refill, but he heard further slamming—cupboard doors?—and decided he’d rather stay out of the war zone and do without the caffeine.
He rubbed the stiffness out of the back of his neck, which he attributed to craning it in order to paint the bathroom ceiling. Then he closed his eyes, pushed himself back into the scene.
At some point he thought he heard either the front or back door open, but he was in the zone and continued to write until it closed on him.
Satisfied, he pushed away from his keyboard. He and Maddy had taken a hell of a ride that day, and while she still had a ways to go, right now he deserved a cold beer and a hot shower.
But the beer came first. As he headed down to get one, he rubbed a hand over his face and heard the rasp. Should probably shave, he thought idly. Letting that little bit of business go two or three days running was fine and good for a man on his own. When a woman came into the equation, it was time for regular sessions with the damn razor.
He’d shave in the shower.
Better, he’d talk Reece into the shower with him. Shave, shower, sex—then a cold beer and a hot meal.
It was, he decided, a most excellent plan.
The fact that nothing was simmering on the stove was a bit of a shock. He’d gotten used to strolling into the kitchen and finding something cooking. It was another shock to realize it irritated him.
Nothing cooking, no colorful arrangement of plates and candles on the table, and the back door wide open. He forgot about shaving and stepped over to the door.
Reece was sitting on the squat back porch with a bottle of wine. From the level in the bottle, he deduced she’d been sitting there for some time.
He stepped out, sat down beside her. “Having a party?”
“Sure.” She lifted her glass. “Big party. You can buy yourself a very decent bottle of wine around here, but you just try to get a goddamn sprig of fresh dill or some lousy hazelnuts.”
“I complained to the mayor about that just last week.”
“You wouldn’t know fresh dill if I shoved it up your nose.” She gulped wine, gestured sloppily toward him with the glass. “And you’re from Chicago. You oughta have some standards.”
“I’m so ashamed.” And she was so drunk.
“I was gonna make chicken Frangelico, but hazelnuts are not to be had. So I figured I’d do pollo arrosto. Tomatoes are crap, and the idea of finding Parmesan that’s not dried powder in a can is a laugh.”
“That’s a tragedy.”
“Itmatters .”
“Apparently. Come on, Slim, you’re toasted. Let’s go on up so you can sleep it off.”
“I’m not finished being toasted.”
“Your choice, your hangover.” He considered it a kindness to pick up the bottle, take a slug straight from it, and save her system from dealing with at least that much of it.
“She wants to make potato salad with bottled dressing and no dill, let her. I quit.”
And around to Joanie, Brody deduced. “That’ll teach her.”
“Go along, make do, don’t make waves, just so nobody notices. No attention here, please, go about your business.”
She waved her hands a little wildly, so he laid his own on the bowl of her glass to keep wine from sloshing onto him.
“I’m tired of it. I’m tired of it all. Take a job I’m so overqualified for I could do it blindfolded and one-handed, live in a dinky apartment over a diner. Wasting my time, that’s all. Just wasting it.”
He considered, took another slug of wine. Not just toasted, he thought. Wallowing. “You plan on bitching and moaning much longer? Because if that’s all that’s on the slate, I can leave you to it and get a couple more hours of work in.”
“Typical. Typical man. If it’s not about you, it’s not worth listening to. What the hell am I doing with you, anyway?”
“Right now? You’re getting drunk on my back porch, wal
lowing in it and annoying me.”
Her eyes might have been glassy, but they still had punch when they aimed at him. “You’re selfish, self-absorbed and rude. The only thing you’ll miss about me when I go is having a hot meal put in front of you. So, screw you, Brody. Just screw you sideways. I’ll go wallow elsewhere.”
She got to her feet, swaying a little as the wine sloshed in her head as unsteadily as it did in her glass. “I should’ve kept driving right through this excuse for a town. I should’ve told you to go to hell the first time you made a move on me. I should’ve told Mardson that was the woman I saw. I should’ve just said it was and forgotten about it. So that’s just what I’m going to do.”
She took a few unsteady steps back toward the kitchen. “But not in that order. You first. Go to hell.”
She made it into the kitchen, reached for her purse. But he was quicker. “Hey.” She made a grab for it. “That’s mine.”
“You can have it back. Except for these.” He took out her keys from the inside zipper, exactly where she’d said she kept them. Mad, sick or otherwise, he noted, she kept her tidy ways.
He pulled the car key off the ring, dropped the ring with the apartment keys on the table, then stuck the car key in his pocket. “Go wherever the hell you want, but you’re not driving. You’re going to have to walk.”
“Fine. I’ll walk to Sheriff Does-His-Job Mardson, tell him what he wants to hear, then wash my hands of it. And you, and this place.”
She was halfway to the door when her stomach twisted like a wet rag between two opposing fists. Clutching it, she dashed to the bathroom.
He went in behind her. He wasn’t surprised she was dog-sick. In fact he thought it was for the best, the body’s way of defending itself against the overindulgent idiocy of its owner.
So he held her head, then shoved a wet cloth into her hand when it was over.
“Ready to sleep it off now?”
She stayed where she was, the cloth pressed to her face. “Could you just leave me alone?”
“Nothing I’d like better. I’ll get to that in a minute.” For now, he pulled her up. She managed a weak groan when he lifted her. “If you’re going to puke again, tell me.”
She shook her head, closed her eyes so that her dark, damp lashes lay against her sheet-white skin. He carried her upstairs to put her on the bed. He tossed a blanket over her and, as a precaution, moved the bedroom wastebasket to the side of the bed.
“Go to sleep” was all he said before he walked out.
Alone, she curled on her side and, shivering, pulled the blanket up to her chin. She’d just wait until she was warm and steady, she promised herself, then she’d go.
But the bottom dropped out, and she fell through it into sleep.
She dreamed of riding a Ferris wheel. Color and movement, and that quick, gut-dropping circle. At first, her screams were of laughter and delight.
Whee!
But it spun faster, faster, with the music blaring louder, louder. Delight became unease.
Slow down. Please? Can you slow it down?
Faster still, faster until the screams she heard were sharp with terror. As the wheel rocked madly side to side, panic gripped her throat.
It’s not safe. I want to get off. Stop the wheel! Stop it and let me off!
But the speed only picked up to a blur, and the music crashed around her. Then the wheel flew off, plunging her out of the lights and into the dark.
HER EYES flashed open. Her fingers dug into the sheets and her own breathless screams echoed in her head.
She wasn’t flying through the air, she assured herself. She wasn’t spinning toward certain death. Just a dream, just a panic dream. Regulating her breathing, she lay very still and tried to reorient herself.
A lamp was on beside the bed, and the light shone from the hallway. For a moment, she remembered none of it. When it flooded back, Reece wanted nothing more than to pull the blankets over her head and dive back to oblivion.
Even the flying Ferris wheel would be easier to ride out.
How could she face him? Face anyone? She wanted to find her keys, then slink out of town like a thief.
She propped herself up on an elbow, waited to see if her stomach would hold, then sat up. There was a silver insulated cup on the nightstand. Baffled, she picked it up, slid back the tab and sniffed.
Her tea. He’d made her tea, and left it so it would be close and warm when she woke.
If he’d recited Keats while showering her with white roses, she couldn’t have been more touched. She’d said horrible things to him, had behaved abominably. And he’d made her tea.
She sipped it, let it slide down and soothe her abused stomach. Because she could hear his keyboard now, she squeezed her eyes shut to help gather courage. A little unsteady on her feet, she got up to face the music.
He glanced up when she stepped into the doorway of his office, and only lifted that single eyebrow.
Funny, she thought, how many expressions that one move could transmit. Interest, amusement, irritation. And just now? Absolute boredom.
She’d have preferred a good, hard slap.
“Thanks for the tea.” He stayed silent, waiting, and she realized she didn’t have quite enough courage yet to begin. “Is it all right if I take a bath?”
“You know where the tub is.”
He started to type again, though the gibberish he put on the screen would need to be deleted. She looked like a dark-eyed ghost, sounded like a penitent child. He didn’t like it.
He sensed when she’d slipped away, waited until he heard the water begin to run into the tub. Then he deleted, shut down. And went down to make her soup.
He wasn’t taking care of her; he was still too pissed off to consider it. It was just what you did when someone was sick. Some soup, maybe some toast. Just bare minimum stuff.
He wondered how much of whatever poisons she’d had bottled up inside her she’d managed to reject along with the wine.
If she started spewing at him again, he was going to…
Nothing, he thought. It wasn’t just Reece he was pissed at, he realized. He was pissed at himself. He should’ve expected her to blow at some point. She’d been handling herself pretty well, rocking back from each separate sucker punch. But she’d been swallowing down the fear, the rage, the hurts. Sooner or later, they’d have to spill out.
Today had been the day.
The nasty psychological warfare someone was waging against her, being asked to look at pictures of a dead woman. He didn’t know dick about fresh dill, but obviously that had been one of the last straws for her.
Now she’d apologize, and he didn’t want her damn apology. Now she’d very likely tell him she had to go, had to find some other shelter from her personal storm, and he didn’t want her to go. He didn’t want to lose her.
And that was lowering.
When she came in, her hair was damp and she smelled of his soap. He could see she’d done her best to camouflage the fact she’d been crying, and knowing she’d been up there, sitting in his tub weeping, was another punch to the heart.
“Brody, I’m so—”
“Got soup,” he interrupted. “It’s no pollo arrosto—whatever the hell that is—but you’ll have to live with it.”
“You made soup.”
“My mother’s recipe. Open a can, pour contents into bowl, zap in nuclear oven. It’s world famous.”
“It sounds delicious. Brody, I’m sorry, I’m embarrassed, I’m ashamed.”
“But are you hungry?”
She pressed her fingers to her eyes while her lips trembled.
“Don’t.” There was the barest trace of desperation under the hard edge of his tone. “I’m at my limit on that kind of thing. You want the soup or not?”
“Yes.” She dropped her hands. “Yes, I want the soup. Aren’t you having any?”
“I had a sandwich while you were lying upstairs in a drunken stupor.”
The sound she made was tr
apped between a laugh and a sob. “I didn’t mean what I said to you.”
“Just shut up and eat.”
“Please, let me say this.”
With a shrug, he put the bowl of soup on the table, saw her blink in surprise when he put a plate of buttered toast beside it.
“I didn’t mean it. You are rude, but it works for me. You’re not selfish, or what selfishness you have seems awfully healthy from where I stand. I don’t want you to go to hell.”
“That one may not be your choice.”
“I can’t remember if I said anything else I should apologize for, being drunk at the time. If you want me out, I’ll go.”
“If I was going to kick you out, why did I spend all this time and trouble making you my mother’s famous soup?”
She stepped to him, wrapped her arms around him, pressed her face into his chest. “I fell apart.”
“No, you didn’t.” He couldn’t help himself, just couldn’t stop himself from lowering his head and pressing his lips to the top of her head. “You had a drunken tantrum.”
“Several tantrums, and only the last one was alcohol-driven.”
“Sounds like interesting dinner conversation.” He steered her to a chair, then poured himself coffee before sitting down across from her.
She spooned up soup and confessed all.
“I blasted everyone. Fortunately, it’s a small population so there weren’t many who came in range. But my spree’s left me without a job, very likely without an apartment. If he wasn’t so thick-skinned, I’d guess it would have left me without a lover.”
“Do you want them back? The job, the apartment?”
“I don’t know.” She broke off a corner of a piece of toast, crumbled it onto the plate. “I could take today as a sign—which I’m big on—that it’s time to go.”
“Where?”
“Yeah, that’s a question. I could prostrate myself in front of Joanie and swear a blood oath never to mention fresh herbs again.”
“Or you could go back into work tomorrow and fire up the grill, or whatever it is you do back there.”
She looked up, confusion in her tired eyes. “Just like that?”