He let her get to her feet, continued to make notes. “You still have forty-five minutes on your time. If you’re going to renege . . .” He swept his gaze up, met her furious stare. “I can only assume you’re afraid. It wasn’t my intention to frighten or upset you. I apologize.”
“Stuff your apology.” She strained against pride, always her most fretful war. She’d made the damn bet, she’d accepted the terms. With a bad-tempered jerk, she scraped her chair back out and sat again.
He didn’t rub it in, only continued to make notes, as if, Ripley thought, grinding her teeth, he’d known all along he would win.
“I’m going to take a wild leap here. You don’t practice.”
“I have nothing to practice.”
“You’re not a stupid woman. And my impression is you’re very self-aware.” He watched her face. She was trying to remain steady. But there was something beneath the calm veneer, some strong, even passionate emotion.
He wanted desperately to dig in. Discover it. Discover her. But he would never get the chance, he realized, if he alienated her so quickly. “I’m assuming this is a sensitive area for you. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve already told you what you can do with your apology. You can do the same with your assumptions.”
“Ripley . . .” He lifted a hand, spread his fingers in a gesture of peace. “I’m not a reporter looking for a story. I’m not a groupie looking for a show or a neophite searching for a mentor. This is my work. I can promise to respect your privacy, keep your name out of my documentation. I won’t do anything to hurt you.”
“You don’t worry me, Booke. You’re going to have to look for your guinea pig elsewhere. I’m not interested in your . . . work.”
“Is Nell the third?”
“You leave Nell alone.” Before she could think, she reached across, gripped his wrist. “You mess with her, I’ll take you apart.”
He didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. Her pupils had gone so dark they were nearly black. Where her fingers gripped were points of heat so intense he wouldn’t have been surprised to see his skin smoke. “Bring harm to none,” he managed in a voice that somehow remained steady. “That’s not just Craft philosophy. I believe it. I won’t do anything to hurt your sister-in-law. Or you, Ripley.”
Very slowly, watching her as he might a guard dog who had snapped its chain, he brought his hand up to cover hers. “You can’t control it, can you?” His voice was soft. “Not completely.” He gave her hand a squeeze that was almost friendly. “You’re burning my wrist.”
With that statement she lifted her fingers, spread them. But her hand wasn’t steady as she looked down, saw the red welts where her fingers had been.
“I won’t do this.” She struggled to bring her breathing back to normal, to close off that violent spike of energy. To be herself again.
“Here.”
She hadn’t heard him get up, or go to the sink. In an instant he was standing beside her, offering her a glass of water.
After she’d taken it, gulped it down, she was no longer sure whether she was angry or embarrassed. But she was sure it was his fault. “You’ve no right to come here, prying into people’s lives.”
“Knowledge, and truth, save us from chaos.” His tone was quiet, reasonable. And made her want to bite him. “Tempering them with compassion and tolerance makes us human. Without those things, fanatics feed on fear and ignorance. The way they did in Salem, three hundred years ago.”
“Not hanging witches anymore doesn’t make the world tolerant. I don’t want to be part of your study. That’s the bottom line.”
“Okay.” She looked so tired all at once, he noted. Bone-weary. It stirred him, a mixture of guilt and sympathy. “All right. But something happened the other night that might make that difficult for both of us.”
He waited a moment, while she shifted in her chair then gave him her reluctant attention. “I saw a woman on the beach. At first I thought it was you. Same eyes, same coloring. She was very alone, and brutally sad. She looked at me, for one long moment. Then vanished.”
Ripley pressed her lips together, then picked up her wine. “Maybe you’ve been drinking too much Merlot.”
“She wants redemption. I want to help her find it.”
“You want data,” she tossed back. “You want to legitimate your crusade, maybe cop a book deal.”
“I want to understand.” No, he admitted, that wasn’t all of it. That wasn’t the core of it. “I want to know.”
“Then talk to Mia. She loves attention.”
“You grew up together?”
“Yeah. So?”
It was easier, he decided, even more pleasant, to deal with her when she had her attitude back in place. “I caught some . . . tension between the two of you.”
“I must repeat myself. So?”
“Curiosity is the scientist’s first tool.”
“It also killed the cat,” Ripley said with a glimmer of her former sneer. “And I don’t call bopping around the globe playing witch-hunter science.”
“You know, that’s just what my father says.” He spoke cheerfully as he rose to take their soup bowls to the sink.
“Your father sounds like a sensible man.”
“Oh, he is that. I’m a constant disappointment to him. No, that’s unfair,” Mac decided as he came back, topped off their wine. “I’m more a puzzle, and he’s sure some of the pieces have gone missing. So. Tell me about your parents.”
“They’re retired. My father was sheriff before Zack, my mother was a CPA. They took their life on the road a while back, in a big Winnebago.”
“Hitting the national parks.”
“That, and whatever. They’re having the time of their lives. Like a couple of kids on an endless spring break.”
It wasn’t what she said so much as how she said it that told him the Todd family was tight and happy. Her problem with her power didn’t stem from family conflict. He was sure of that.
“You and your brother work together.”
“Obviously.”
There was no doubt about it, she was back. “I met him the other day. You’re not much like him.” He glanced up from his notes. “Except for the eyes.”
“Zack got all the nice-guy genes in the family. There weren’t any left over for me.”
“You were there when he was injured while arresting Evan Remington.”
Her face went very still again. “Do you want to read the police report?”
“Actually, I have. It must’ve been a rough night.” And let’s just circle around that for now, he decided. “Do you like being a cop?”
“I don’t do things I don’t like.”
“Lucky you. Why The Maltese Falcon?”
“Huh?”
“I was wondering why you picked that instead of, say, Casablanca?”
Ripley shook her head, adjusted her thoughts. “I don’t know. Because I figure Bergman should’ve told Bogart, ‘Paris, my butt’ instead of getting on the plane. In Falcon he did the job. He turned Astor over. That was justice.”
“I always figured Ilsa and Rick got together after the war, and Sam Spade . . . Well, he just kept being Sam Spade. What kind of music do you like?”
“What?”
“Music. You said you like working out to music.”
“What does that have to do with your project?”
“You said you didn’t want to be involved in my work. We might as well pass the rest of the time getting to know each other.”
She blew out a breath, sipped her wine. “You’re a really strange individual.”
“All right, then, enough about you. Let’s talk about me.” He sat back and, when her face blurred out of focus, remembered to remove his reading glasses. “I’m thirty-three, embarrassingly rich. The second son of the New York Bookes. Real estate. The MacAllister branch—we have that surname as first name in common—they’re corporate law. I got interested in preternatural subjects when I was a kid. The history, variati
ons, the effect on cultures and societies. My interest caused my family to seek the advice of a psychologist, who assured them this was just a form of rebellion.”
“They took you to a shrink because you liked spooky?”
“When you’re a fourteen-year-old college freshman, someone’s always calling the shrink.”
“Fourteen?” She pursed her lips. “That had to be strange.”
“Well, it was pretty hard to get a date, let me tell you.” The slight twitching of her lips pleased him. “I channeled the energy from what would have been those first sexual rumbles into study and my personal interest.”
“So you got off on books and research.”
“In a manner of speaking. By the time I was eighteen, my parents had given up on trying to box me into one of the family firms. Then I hit twenty-one and came into the first lap of my trust fund and could do what I wanted.”
She angled her head. She was interested now, couldn’t help herself. “Did you ever get a date?”
“A couple. I know what it is to be pushed in a direction you don’t want to go, or one you’re not ready for. People say they know what’s best for you. Maybe sometimes it’s true. But it doesn’t matter if they keep pushing until they take your choices away.”
“Is that why you’re letting me off the hook tonight?”
“That’s one reason. Another is because you’re going to change your mind. Don’t get steamed,” he said quickly when her mouth thinned. “When I first came here, I thought it would be Mia I needed to work with. But it’s you—at least primarily it’s you.”
“Why?”
“That’s something I’d like to find out. Meanwhile, you’ve paid off your bet. I’ll drive you home.”
“I’m not going to change my mind.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’ve got plenty of time to waste. I’ll get your coat.”
“And I don’t need you to drive me home.”
“We can arm-wrestle over that,” he called back. “But I’m not letting you walk home in the dark, in subzero temperatures.”
“You can’t drive me home. You didn’t dig out your car.”
“So I’ll dig it out, then drive you home. Five minutes.”
She’d have argued with that, but the front door slammed and she was left stewing in the house alone.
Curious, she eased open the back door, stood shivering while she watched him attack the snow around the Rover with a shovel. She had to admit those muscles she’d seen that morning in the gym weren’t just for show. It appeared that Dr. Booke knew how to put his back into the job at hand.
Still, he wasn’t particularly thorough. She nearly called out to say so when it occurred to her that any comment she made would prove she’d been interested enough to watch him. Instead she shut the door and rubbed the warmth back into her hands and arms.
When the front door slammed again, and she heard him stomping his feet, she was leaning against the kitchen counter, looking bored.
“Bitching cold out there,” he called back. “Where did I put your stuff?”
“In the bedroom.” And since she had a minute, she scurried around the table to flip through his notes. Hissed when she saw they were in shorthand, or what she assumed was shorthand. In any case, the notes were odd symbols, lines and loops that meant nothing to her. But the sketch in the center of a page had her gaping.
It was her face. And a damn good likeness, too. A quick pencil sketch, full face. She looked . . . annoyed, she decided. And watchful. Well, he was right about that, too.
There was no doubt in her mind that MacAllister Booke bore watching.
She was standing a foot away from the table, her hands innocently in her pockets, when he came back. “Took me a few minutes longer because I couldn’t find my keys. I still can’t figure out what they were doing in the bathroom sink.”
“Poltergeist?” she said sweetly and made him laugh.
“I wish. I just never seem to put anything in the same place twice.” He’d tracked snow through the house. Rather than point it out, Ripley slipped on her vest and scarf.
He held her coat, made her shake her head when she realized he intended to help her on with it.
“I can never figure that out. How do you guys figure we get our coats on when you’re not around?”
“We have no idea.” Amused, he set her cap on her head, then pulled her hair through the back as he’d seen her wear it. “Gloves?”
She pulled them out of her pocket. “Are you going to put them on for me, too, Daddy?”
“Sure, honey.” But when he reached out, she slapped his hand away. And was grinning until she saw the welts on his wrist. Guilt churned in her. She didn’t mind hurting someone, when they deserved it.
But not that way. Never that way.
Still, what was done could be undone, even if it did mean swallowing pride.
He saw a change in her expression as she stared at his wrist. “It’s no big deal,” he began and started to pull his cuffs down.
“It is to me.” She didn’t bother to sigh, but took his wrist again. Her gaze shot up, held his. “This is off my time, off the record. Off everything. Understood?”
“All right.”
“What in anger I have harmed, I regret and spin this charm. Heal this hurt caused by me by the power of one times three. As I will, so mote it be.”
He felt the mild pain, the heat lift away from his skin. The flesh where her fingers lay was now cool, as if they’d drawn the burns out. There was a jump in his belly, not so much from the physical change as from the change in her eyes.
He had looked into power before, and knew he looked into it now. It was something he never forgot to respect.
“Thanks,” he told her.
“Don’t mention it.” She turned away. “I mean that.”
When she reached for the doorknob on the kitchen door, his hand, its wrist unmarked, closed over it first. “We don’t know how you open doors either,” he said. “They’re so heavy and complicated.”
“Funny guy.” When they stepped out, his hand slid under to cup her elbow. The long, baleful look she sent him only brought on a shrug.
“It’s a little icy. I can’t help it. It’s very difficult to resist early childhood training.”
She let it go, and didn’t have the heart to jab at him when he walked her around the Rover and opened the passenger door for her.
It wasn’t much of a drive, but as she directed him she realized she was, indeed, grateful for the lift. Even in the hour she’d been inside, the temperature had dropped. The heater wouldn’t have time to kick in, but at least they were out of the open air—air that seemed cold enough to break.
“If you’re looking for more firewood, Jack Stubens sells it by the cord,” she told him.
“Stubens. Can you write that down?” Steering one-handed, he dug in his pocket. “Got any paper?”
“No.”
“Try the glove compartment.”
She opened it, and felt her jaw drop in shock. There were dozens of notes, countless pens, rubber bands, a half-empty bag of pretzels, three flashlights, a hunting knife, and several unidentified objects. She pulled one out that looked to be made up of red twine, various beads, and human hair.
“What’s this?”
He glanced over. “Gris-gris. It was a gift. No paper?”
She stared at him another moment, then put the charm back and pulled out one of the many scribbled notes. “Stubens,” she repeated, scrawling it on the scrap of paper. “Jack, over on Owl Haunt Lane.”
“Thanks.” He took the paper, stuffed it in his pocket.
“Turn here. It’s the two-story, wraparound porch.”
As the police cruiser was in the drive, he could’ve figured it out for himself. Lights were glowing cheerfully in the windows, and smoke puffed out of the chimney.
“Nice house.” He got out, and though she’d already hopped down before he could come around and open her door, he took her arm again.
<
br /> “Look, Mac, it’s kind of cute and all that, but you don’t need to walk me to the door. This wasn’t a date.”
“It’s a compulsion. Besides, we had a meal, and conversation. And wine. So that’s several date elements.”
She stopped on the porch, turned. He’d pulled a ski cap on, and his dark blond hair escaped here and there. He couldn’t help but look at her intensely. “So, what, you want a kiss good night now?”
“Okay.”
The response was so cheerful, so harmlessly cheerful, she grinned. But only for an instant.
He had. . . moves. Smooth, unexpected, incredible moves.
It wasn’t fast, but it was so slick, so silky, she had no time to readjust. To think.
His arms came around her, slid her against him, body to body so that without any real pressure she was molded to him. He dipped her back, just the slightest bit, and somehow conjured the illusion that they were horizontal instead of vertical.
The intimacy of it jolted through her, sent her head on a dizzy spin even before his mouth took hers.
Soft. Warm. Deep. His lips didn’t brush or nibble, but simply absorbed. Now the dizziness was joined by a shimmering wave of heat that seemed to start in her toes and rise until it melted every bone.
A little sound—stunned pleasure—hummed in her throat. Her lips parted in welcome. Oh, more! It took two tries to lift her boneless arms and circle his neck.
Her knees buckled. It wouldn’t have surprised her to feel her body simply dissolve and slide in little liquid drops into a pool at his feet.
When he eased back, gently set her away, her vision was blurred, her mind blank.
“We’ll have to do this again sometime,” he said.
“Uh.” She couldn’t quite remember how to form words.
He gave her hair a friendly tug. “Better get inside before you freeze.”
“Ah.” She gave up, turned blindly and walked into the door.
“Let me get that for you.” He spoke quietly, quite soberly, and turned the knob, nudged the door open. “Good night, Ripley.”
“Mmm.”
She stepped inside, then had no choice but to lean back against the door he closed until she got her bearings and her breath back.
Books by Nora Roberts Page 177