Books by Nora Roberts

by Roberts, Nora

  After one slow glance around, she goes to the plane. Her skirt hikes high on smooth white thighs as she climbs into the cockpit. There is purpose, efficiency, in her movements. The way she slips into the pilot's seat, spins the locks on the leather case.

  Inside the case is a small, deadly bomb, which she secretes under the console. She laughs. The sound is sultry, seductive. The camera moves in on her face.

  Morgana's face.

  Swearing, Nash tossed the plane in the air. It did an immediate nosedive. What was he doing? he asked himself. Making up stories about her. Indulging in bad symbolism. So, sure, she'd climbed into his cockpit and set off an explosion. That was no reason to daydream about her.

  He had work to do, didn't he?

  Determined to do it, Nash shifted, sending books sliding to the floor. Using the remote, he switched off the television, then took up what was left of his notebook. He punched the play button on his recorder. It took less than five seconds for him to realize his mistake and turn it off again. He wasn't in any frame of mind to listen to Morgana's voice.

  He rose, scattering books, then stepping over them. He was thinking, all right. He was thinking he had to get the hell out of the house. And he knew exactly where he wanted to go.

  It was his choice, he assured himself as he snagged his keys. He was making a conscious decision. When a man had an itch, he was a lot better off scratching it.

  Her mood had improved enough that Morgana could hum along with the radio she'd turned on low. This was just what she'd needed, she thought. A cup of soothing chamomile, an hour of solitude, and some pleasant and constructive work. After packing up the crystal cluster and labeling it for shipping, she pulled out her inventory ledger. She could have spent a happy afternoon sipping the soothing tea, listening to music and looking over her stock. Morgana was certain she would have done exactly that if she hadn't been interrupted.

  Perhaps if she'd been tuned in, she would have been prepared to see Nash stride through the door. But it really didn't matter what she might have planned, as he stalked over to the desk, hauled her to her feet and planted a long, hard kiss on her surprised mouth.

  "That," he said when he took a moment to breathe, "was my idea."

  Nerve ends sizzling, Morgana managed a nod. "I see."

  He let his hands slide down to her hips to hold her still. "I liked it."

  "Good for you." She glanced over her shoulder and noted that Mindy was standing in the open doorway, smirking. "I can handle this, Mindy."

  "Oh, I'm sure you can." With a quick wink, she shut the door.

  "Well, now." Searching for composure, Morgana put her hands on his chest to ease him away. She preferred that he not detect the fact that her heart was pounding and her bones were doing a fast melt. That was no way to keep the upper hand. "Was there something else?"

  "I think there's a whole lot else." His eyes on hers, he backed her up against the desk. "When do you want to get started?"

  She had to smile. "I guess we could call this being direct and to the point."

  "We'll call it whatever you like. I figure it this way." Because she was wearing heels and they were eye to eye, Nash had only to ease forward to nibble on her full lower lip. "I want you, and I don't see how I'm going to start thinking straight again until I spend a few nights making love with you. All kinds of love with you."

  The stirring started deep and spread. She had to curl her fingers over the edge of the desk to keep her balance. But when she spoke her voice was low and confident. "I could say that once we did make love you'd never think straight again."

  He cupped her face with one hand and brushed his lips over hers. "I'll take my chances."

  "Maybe." Her breath hitched twice before she controlled it. "I have to decide whether I want to take mine."

  His lips curved over hers. He'd felt her quick tremor of reaction. "Live dangerously."

  "I am." She gave herself a moment to enjoy what he brought to her. "What would you say if I told you it wasn't the right time yet? And that we'd both know when it was the right time."

  His hands slid up so that his thumbs teased the curves of her breasts. "I'd say you're avoiding the issue."

  "You'd be wrong." Enchanted-his touch was incredibly gentle-she pressed her cheek to his. "Believe me, you'd be wrong."

  "The hell with timing. Come home with me, Morgana."

  She gave a little sigh as she drew away. "I will." She shook her head when his eyes darkened. "To help you, to work with you. Not to sleep with you. Not today."

  Grinning, he leaned closer to give her earlobe a playful nip. "That gives me plenty of room to change your mind."

  Her eyes were very calm, almost sad, when she stepped back. "You may change yours before it's done. Let me ask Mindy to take over for the rest of the day."

  She insisted on driving herself, following behind him with Luna curled in her passenger seat. She would give him two hours, she promised herself, and two hours only. Before she left him, she would do her best to clear his mind so that he could work.

  She liked his house, the overgrown yard that shouted for a gardener, the sprawling stucco building with arching windows and red tile for the roof. It was closer to the sea than hers, so the music of the water was at full pitch. In the side yard were a pair of cypresses bent close together, like lovers reaching for one another.

  It suited him, she thought as she stepped out of her car, off the drive and into the grass that rose above her ankles. "How long have you lived here?" she asked Nash.

  "Couple months." He glanced around the yard. "I need to buy a lawn mower."

  He'd need a bush hog before much longer. "Yes, you do."

  "But I kind of like the natural look."

  "You're lazy." She felt some sympathy for the daffodils that were struggling to get their heads above the weeds. She walked to the front entrance with Luna streaming regally behind her.

  "I have to get motivated," he told her as he pushed open the front door. "I've mostly lived in apartments and condos. This is the first regular house I've had to myself."

  She looked around at the high, cool walls of the foyer, the rich, dark wood of the curving banister that trailed upstairs and along an open balcony. "At least you chose well. Where are you working?"

  "Here and there."

  "Hmm." She strolled down the hallway and peeked in the first archway. It was a large, jumbled living area with wide, uncurtained windows and a bare hardwood floor. Signs, Morgana thought, of a man who had yet to decide if he was going to settle in.

  The furniture was mismatched and heaped with books, papers, clothes and dishes-possibly long forgotten. More books were shoved helter-skelter into built-in cases along one wall. And toys, she noted. She often thought of her own clutter as toys. Little things that gave her pleasure, soothed her moods, passed the time.

  She noted the gorgeous, grim-faced masks that hung on the wall, an exquisite print of nymphs by Maxfield Parrish, a movie prop-one of the wolves' claws from Shape Shifter, she imagined. He was using it as a paperweight. A silver box in the shape of a coffin sat next to the Oscar he'd won. Both could have used a proper dusting. Lips pursed, she picked up the voodoo doll, the pin still sticking lethally out of its heart.

  "Anyone I know?"

  He grinned, pleased to have her there, and too used to his own disorder to be embarrassed by it. "Whatever works. Usually it's a producer, sometimes a politician. Once it was this bean-counting IRS agent. I've been meaning to tell you," he added as his gaze skimmed over her slim, short dress of purple silk, "you have great taste in clothes."

  "Glad you approve." Amused, she set the unfortunate doll down, patted the mangled head, then picked up a tattered deck of tarot cards. "Do you read them?"

  "No. Somebody gave them to me. They're supposed to have belonged to Houdini or someone."

  "Hmm." She fanned them, felt the faint trickle of old power on her fingertips. "If you're curious where they came from, ask Sebastian sometime. He could tell. Come h
ere." She held out the deck to him. "Shuffle and cut."

  Willing to oblige, he did what she asked. "Are we going to play?"

  She only smiled and took the cards back. "Since the seats are occupied, let's use the floor." She knelt, gesturing for him to join to her. After tossing her hair behind her back, she dealt out a Celtic Cross. "You're preoccupied," she said. "But your creative juices aren't dried up or blocked. There are changes coming." Her eyes lifted to his. They were that dazzling Irish blue that tempted even a sane man to believe anything. "Perhaps the biggest of your life, and they won't be easy to accept."

  It was no longer the cards she read, but rather the pale light of the seer, which burned so much more brightly in Sebastian.

  "You need to remember that some things are passed through the blood, and some are washed out. We aren't always the total of the people who made us." Her eyes changed, softened, as she laid a hand on his. "And you're not as alone as you think you are. You never have been."

  He couldn't joke away what hit too close to home. Instead, he avoided the issue entirely by bringing her hand to his lips. "I didn't bring you here to tell my fortune."

  "I know why you asked me here, and it isn't going to happen. Yet." With more than a little regret, she drew her hand free. "And it isn't really your fortune I'm telling, it's your present." Quietly she gathered up the cards again. "I'll help you, if I can, with what I can. Tell me about the problem in your story."

  "Other than the fact that I keep thinking of you when I'm supposed to be thinking of it?"

  "Yes." She curled up her legs. "Other than that."

  "I guess it's a matter of motivation. Cassandra's. That's what I decided to call her. Is she a witch because she wanted power, because she wanted to change things? Was she looking for revenge, or love, or the easy way out?''

  "Why would it be any of those things? Why wouldn't it be a matter of accepting the gifts she was given?"

  "It's too easy."

  Morgana shook her head. "No, it's not. It's easier, so much easier, to be like everyone else. Once, when I was a little girl, some of the mothers refused to let their children play with me. I was a bad influence. Odd. Different. It hurt, not being a part of the whole."

  Understanding, he nodded. "I was always the new kid. Hardly in one place long enough to be accepted. Somebody always wants to give the new kid a bloody nose. Don't ask me why. Moving around, you end up being awkward, falling behind in school, wishing you'd just get old enough to get the hell out." Annoyed with himself, he stopped. "Anyway, about Cassandra-"

  "How did you cope?" She had had Anastasia, Sebastian, her family, and a keen sense of belonging.

  With a restless movement of his shoulders, he reached out to touch her amulet. "You run away a lot. And, since that just gets your butt kicked nine times out of ten, you learn to run away safe. In books, in movies, or just inside your own head. As soon as I was old enough, I got a job working the concession stand at a theater. That way, I'd get paid for watching movies." As troubled memories left his eyes, his face cleared. "I love the flicks. I just plain love them."

  She smiled. "So now you get paid for writing them."

  "A perfect way to feed the habit. If I can ever get this one whipped into shape." In one smooth movement, he took a handful of her hair and wrapped it around his wrist. "What I need is inspiration," he murmured, tugging her forward for a kiss.

  "What you need," she told him, "is concentration."

  "I'm concentrating." He nibbled and tugged at her lips. "Believe me, I'm concentrating. You don't want to be responsible for hampering creative genius, do you?"

  "Indeed not." It was time, she decided, for him to understand exactly what he was getting into. And perhaps it would also help him open his mind to his story. "Inspiration," she said, and slid her hands around his neck. "Coming up."

  And so were they. As she met his lips with hers, she brought them six inches off the floor. He was too busy enjoying the taste to notice. Sliding over him, Morgana forgot herself long enough to lose herself in the heat. When she broke the kiss, they were floating halfway to the ceiling.

  "I think we'd better stop."

  He nuzzled her neck. "Why?"

  She glanced down deliberately. "I didn't think to ask if you were afraid of heights."

  Morgana wished she could have captured the look on his face when he followed her gaze-the wide-eyed, slack-jawed comedy of it. The string of oaths was a different matter. As they ran their course, she took them gently down again.

  His knees buckled before he got them under control. White faced, he gripped her shoulders. The muscles in his stomach were twanging like plucked strings. "How the hell did you do that?"

  "A child's trick. A certain kind of child." She was sympathetic enough to stroke his cheek. "Remember the boy who cried wolf, Nash? One day the wolf was real. Well, you've been playing with-let's say the paranormal-for years. This time you've got yourself a real witch."

  Very slowly, very sure, he shook his head from side to side. But the fingers on her shoulders trembled lightly. "That's bull."

  She indulged in a windy sigh. "All right. Let me think. Something simple but elegant." She closed her eyes, lifted her hands.

  For a moment she was simply a woman, a beautiful woman standing in the center of a disordered room with her arms lifted gracefully, her palms gently cupped. Then she changed. God, he could see her change. The beauty deepened. A trick of the light, he told himself. The way she was smiling, with those full, un-painted lips curved, her lashes shadowing her cheeks, her hair tumbling wildly to her waist.

  But her hair was moving, fluttering gently at first as though teased by a playful breeze. Then it was flying, around her face, back from her face, in one long gorgeous stream. He had an impossible image of a stunning wooden maiden carved on the bow of an ancient ship.

  But there was no wind to blow. Yet he felt it. It chilled along his skin, whisked along his cheeks. He could hear it whistle as it streaked into the room. When he swallowed, he heard a click in his throat, as well.

  She stood straight and still. A faint gold light shivered around her as she began to chant. As the sun poured through the high windows, soft flakes of snow began to fall. From Nash's ceiling. They swirled around his head, danced over his skin as he gaped, frozen in shock.

  "Cut it out," he ordered in a ragged voice before he sank to a chair.

  Morgana let her arms drop, opened her eyes. The miniature blizzard stopped as if it had never been. The wind silenced and died. As she'd expected, Nash was staring at her as if she'd grown three heads.

  "That might have been a bit overdone," she allowed.

  "I-You-" He fought to gain control over his tongue. "What the hell did you do?"

  "A very basic call to the elements." He wasn't as pale as he had been, she decided, but his eyes still looked too big for the rest of his face. "I didn't mean to frighten you."

  "You're not frightening me. Baffling, yes," he admitted. He shook himself like a wet dog and ordered his brain to engage. If he had seen what he had seen, there was a reason. There was no way she could have gotten inside his house to set up the trick.

  But there had to be.

  He pushed out of the chair and began to search through the room. Maybe his movements were a bit jerky. Maybe his joints felt as though they'd rusted over. But he was moving. "Okay, babe, how'd you pull it off? It's great, and I'm up for a joke as much as the next guy, but I like to know the trick."

  "Nash." Her voice was quiet, and utterly compelling. "Stop. Look at me."

  He turned, and he looked, and he knew. Though it wasn't possible, wasn't reasonable, he knew. He let out a long, careful breath. "My God, it's true. Isn't it?"

  "Yes. Do you want to sit down?"

  "No." But he sat on the coffee table. "Everything you've been telling me. You weren't making any of it up."

  "No, I wasn't making any of it up. I was born a witch, like my mother, my father, like my mother's mother, and hers, and back for genera
tions." She smiled gently. "I don't ride on a broomstick-except perhaps as a joke. Or cast spells on young princesses or pass out poisoned apples."

  It wasn't possible, really. Was it? "Do something else."

  A flicker of impatience crossed her face. "Nor am I a trained seal."

  "Do something else," he insisted, and cast his mind for options. "Can you disappear, or-"

  "Oh, really, Nash."

  He was up again. "Look, give me a break. I'm trying to help you out here. Maybe you could-" A book flew off the shelf and bopped him smartly in the head. Wincing, he rubbed the spot. "Okay, okay. Never mind."

  "This isn't a sideshow," she said primly. "I only demonstrated so obviously in the first place because you're so thickheaded. You refused to believe, and since we seem to be developing some sort of relationship, I prefer that you do." She smoothed out the skirt of her dress. "And now that you do, we can take some time to think it all through before we move on."

  "Move on," he repeated. "Maybe the next step is to talk about this."

  "Not now." He'd already retreated a step, she thought, and he didn't even know it.

  "Damn it, Morgana, you can't drop all this on me, then calmly walk out. Good God, you're a witch."

  "Yes." She flicked back her hair. "I believe we've established that."

  His mind began to spin again. Reality had taken a long, slow curve. "I have a million questions."

  She picked up her bag. "You've already asked me several of those million. Play back your tapes. All of the answers I gave you were true ones."

  "I don't want to listen to tapes, I want to talk to you."

  "For now, it's what I want that matters." She opened her bag and took out a small, wand-shaped emerald on a silver chain. She should have known there was a reason she'd felt compelled to put it there that morning. "Here." Moving forward, she slipped the chain over his head.