Books by Nora Roberts

by Roberts, Nora

  But he cut her off with a long, hard kiss. "Mmm, you're still wet."

  She was surprised the water wasn't steaming off her. Surprised with the sudden urge that poured through her just to lay her head against his shoulder. "Look, I don't have time for this. I have to be in court—"

  "In two hours," he said with a nod. "Plenty of time for breakfast."

  "If you think I'm going to fix you breakfast, you're doomed to disappointment.''

  "I wouldn't dream of it." He skimmed a glance down her short silky robe. The single embrace had made him achingly aware that she wore nothing else. "I like you in blue. You should always wear blue."

  "I appreciate the fashion advice, but—" She broke off when another knock sounded.

  "I'll get it," he offered.

  "I can answer my own door." She stomped over to it, her temper fraying. She was never at her best in the morning, even when she only had herself to deal with. "I'd like to know who hung out the sign that said I was having an open house this morning." Wrenching the door open, she was confronted by a white-jacketed waiter pushing an enormous tray.

  "Ah, that would be breakfast. Over by the window, I think," Gage said, gesturing the waiter in. "The lady likes a view."

  "Yes, sir, Mr. Guthrie."

  Deborah set her hands on her hips. It was difficult to take a stand before seven in the morning, but it had to be done. "Gage, I don't know what you're up to, but it isn't going to work. I've tried to make my position clear, and at the moment, I don't have the time or the inclination… is that coffee?"

  "Yes." Smiling, Gage lifted the big silver pot and poured a cup. The scent of it seduced her. "Would you like some?"

  Her mouth moved into a pout. "Maybe."

  "You should like this blend." Crossing to her, he held the cup under her nose. "It's one of my personal favorites."

  She sipped, shut her eyes. "You don't play fair."

  "No."

  She opened her eyes to study the waiter, who moved briskly about his business. "What else is there?"

  "Shirred eggs, grilled ham, croissants, orange juice—fresh, of course."

  "Of course." She hoped she wasn't drooling.

  "Raspberries and cream."

  "Oh." She folded her tongue inside her mouth to keep it from hanging out.

  "Would you like to sit?"

  She wasn't a weak woman, Deborah assured herself of that. But there were rich and wonderful smells filling her living room. "I guess." Giving up, she took one of the ladder-back chairs the waiter had pulled up to the table.

  Gage passed the waiter a bill and gave him instructions to pick up the dishes in an hour. She couldn't bring herself to complain when Gage topped off her cup. .

  "I suppose I should ask what brought all this on."

  "I wanted to see what you looked like in the morning." He poured juice out of a crystal pitcher. "This seemed like the best way. For now." He toasted her with his cup, his eyes lingering on her face, free of makeup and unframed by her slicked-back hair. "You're beautiful."

  "And you're charming." She touched the petals of the red rose beside her plate. "But that doesn't change anything." Thoughtful, she tapped a finger on the peach-colored cloth. "Still, I don't see any reason to let all this food go to waste."

  "You're a practical woman." He'd counted on it. "It's one of the things I find most attractive about you."

  "I don't see what's attractive about being practical." She cut a small slice of ham and slipped it between her lips. His stomach muscles tightened.

  "It can be… very attractive."

  She did her best to ignore the tingles sprinting through her system and concentrate on a safer kind of hunger. "Tell me, do you always breakfast this extravagantly?"

  "When it seems appropriate." He laid a hand over hers. "Your eyes are shadowed. Didn't you sleep well?"

  She thought of the long and restless night behind her. "No, didn't."

  "The case?"

  She only shrugged. Her insomnia had had nothing to do with the case and everything to do with the man she had met in the shadows.

  Yet now she was here, just as fascinated with, just as frustrated by the man she sat with in the sunlight.

  "Would you like to talk about it?"

  She glanced up. In his eyes she saw patience, understanding and something beneath it all she knew would burn to the touch. "No." Cautious, she drew her hand away again.

  He found himself enjoying the not-so-subtle pursuit and retreat. "You work too hard."

  "I do what I have to do. What about you? I don't even know what you do, not really."

  "Buy and sell, attend meetings, read reports."

  "I'm sure it's more complicated than that."

  "And often more boring."

  "That's hard to believe."

  Steam and fragrance erupted when he broke open a flaky croissant. "I build things, buy things."

  She wouldn't be put off that easily. "Such as?"

  He smiled at her. "I own this building."

  "Trojan Enterprises owns this building."

  "Right. I own Trojan."

  "Oh."

  Her reaction delighted him. "Most of the Guthrie money came from real estate, and that's still the basis. We've diversified quite a bit over the past ten years. So, one branch handles the shipping, another the mining, another the manufacturing."

  "I see." He wasn't an ordinary man, she thought. Then again she didn't seem to be attracted to ordinary men lately. "You're a long way from the twenty-fifth."

  "Yeah." A shadow flickered into his eyes. "Looks that way." He lifted a spoonful of berries and cream and offered it.

  Deborah let the fruit lie on her tongue a moment. "Do you miss it?"

  He knew if he kissed her now she would taste sharp, fresh, alive. "I don't let myself miss it. There's a difference."

  "Yes." She understood. It was the same way she didn't let herself miss her family, those who were gone and those who were so many miles away.

  "You're very appealing when you're sad, Deborah." He trailed finger over the back of her hand. "In fact, irresistible."

  "I'm not sad."

  "You are irresistible."

  "Don't start." She made a production out of pouring more coffee. "Can I ask you a business question?"

  "Sure."

  "If the owner, or owners, of a particular piece of property didn't want that ownership publicized, could they hide it?"

  "Easily. Bury it in paper corporations, in different tax numbers. One corporation owns another, another owns that, and so on. Why?"

  But she leaned forward, waving his question aside. "How difficult would it be to track down the actual owners?"

  "That would depend on how much trouble they'd gone to, and how much reason they had to keep their names off the books."

  "If someone was determined enough, and patient enough, those names could be found?"

  "Eventually. If you found the common thread."

  "Common thread?"

  "A name, a number, a place. Something that would pop up over and over." He would have been concerned by her line of questioning if he hadn't been one step ahead of her. Still, it was best to be cautious. "What are you up to, Deborah?"

  "My job."

  Very carefully, he set his cup back in its saucer. "Does this have anything to do with Parino?"

  Her eyes sharpened. "What do you know about Parino?"

  "I still have contacts at the twenty-fifth. Don't you have enough to do with the Slagerman trial?"

  "I don't have the luxury of working on one case at a time."

  "This is one you shouldn't be working on at all."

  "Excuse me?" Her tone had dropped twenty degrees.

  "It's dangerous. The men who had Parino murdered are dangerous. You don't have any idea what you're playing with."

  "I'm not playing."

  "No, and neither are they. They're well protected, and well-informed. They'll know what your next move is before you do." His eyes darkened, seemed to tu
rn inward. "If they see you as an obstacle, they'll remove you, very quickly, very finally."

  "How do you know so much about the men who killed Parino?"

  He brought himself back. "I was a cop, remember? This isn't something you should be involved in. I want you to turn it over to someone else."

  "That's ridiculous."

  He gripped her hand before she could spring up. "I don't want you hurt."

  "I wish people would stop saying that to me." Pulling her hand away, she rose. "This is my case, and it's going to stay mine."

  His eyes darkened, but he remained seated. "Ambition is another attractive trait, Deborah. Until you let it blind you."

  She turned back to him slowly, fury shimmering around her. "All right, part of it is ambition. But that's not all of it, not nearly. I believe in what I do, Gage, and in my ability to do it well. It started out with a kid named Rico Mendez. He wasn't a pillar of the community. In fact, he was a petty thief who had already done time, and would have done more. But he was gunned down while standing on a street corner. Because he belonged to the wrong gang, wore the wrong colors."

  She began to pace, her hands gesturing and emphasizing. "Then his killer is killed, because he talked to me. Because I made a deal with him. So when does it stop, when do we stop and say this is not acceptable, I'll take the responsibility and change it?"

  He stood then and came toward her. "I'm not questioning your integrity, Deborah."

  "Just my judgment?"

  "Yes, and my own." His hands slid up, inside the sleeves of her robe. "I care about you."

  "I don't think—"

  "No, don't. Don't think." He covered her mouth with his, his fingers tightening on her arms as he pulled her against him.

  Instant heat, instant need. How was she to fight it? His body was so solid against hers, his lips were so skilled. And she could feel the waves, not just of desire, but of something deeper and truer, pouring out of him and into her. As if he were already inside her.

  She was everything. When he held her he didn't question the power she had to both empty his mind and fill it, to sate his hunger even as she incited it. She made him strong; she left him weak. With her, he began, almost, to believe in miracles again.

  When he stepped away, his hands were still on her arms. She struggled for balance. How could he do this to her each time, every time, with only a touch?

  "I'm not ready for this," she managed.

  "Neither am I. I don't think it matters." He brought her close again. "I want to see you tonight." He crushed his mouth to hers. "I want to be with you tonight."

  "No, I can't." She could hardly breathe. "The trial."

  He bit back an oath. "All right. After the trial is over. Neither one of us can keep walking away from this."

  "No." He was right. It was time to resolve it. "No, we can't. But I need time. Please don't push me."

  "I may have to." He turned for the door, but paused with his hand on the knob. "Deborah, is there someone else?"

  She started to deny it, but found she could only be honest with him. "I don't know."

  Nodding, he closed the door at his back. With a bitter kind of irony, he realized he was competing with himself.

  She worked late that night, poring over papers and law books at the desk in her bedroom. After court she had spent hours cleaning her already clean apartment. It was one of the best ways she knew to relieve tension. Or to ignore it. The other was work, and she had dived into it, knowing sleep was impossible.

  As she reached for her mug of coffee, the phone rang.

  "Hello."

  "O'Roarke? Deborah O'Roarke?"

  "Yes, who is this?"

  "Santiago."

  Instantly alert, she grabbed a pencil. "Mr. Santiago, we've been looking for you."

  "Yeah. Right."

  "I'd like very much to talk to you. The D.A.'s office is prepared to offer you cooperation-and protection."

  "Like Parino got?"

  She smothered the quick pang of guilt. "You'll be safer with us than on your own."

  "Maybe." There was fear in his voice, tight and nervy.

  "I'm willing to set up an interview any time you agree to come in."

  "No way. I'm not going nowhere. They'd hit me before I got two blocks." He began to talk quickly, words tumbling over each other. "You come to me. Listen, I got more than Parino had. Lots more. I got names, I got papers. YOU want to hear about it, sister, you come to me."

  "All right. I'll have the police—"

  "No cops!" His voice turned vicious with terror. "No cops or no deal. You come, and you come alone. That's it."

  "We'll do it your way then. When?"

  "Now, right now. I'm at the Darcy Hotel, 38 East 167th. Room 27."

  "Give me twenty minutes."

  "You're sure this is where you want to go, lady?" Though his fare was wearing worn jeans and a T-shirt, the cabbie could see she had too much class for an armpit like the Darcy.

  Deborah looked through the hard mean rain that was falling. She could see the dark windows, the scarred surface of the building and the deserted street. "Yes. I don't suppose I could convince you to wait."

  "No, ma'am."

  "I didn't think so." She pushed a bill through the slot in the thick security glass. "Keep it." Taking a breath, holding it, she plunged into the rain and up the broken steps to the entrance.

  In the lobby she stood, dripping. The check-in desk was behind rusty iron bars and was deserted. There was a light, shooting its yellow beam over the sticky linoleum floor. The air smelled of sweat and garbage and something worse. Turning, she started up the stairs.

  A baby was crying in long, steady wails. The sound of misery rolled down the graffiti-washed stairwell. Deborah watched something small and quick scuttle past her foot and into a crack. With a shudder, she continued up.

  She could hear a man and woman, voices raised in a vicious argument. As she turned into the hallway of the second floor, a door creaked open. She saw a pair of small, frightened eyes before it creaked shut again and a chain rattled into place.

  Her feet crunched over broken glass that had once been the ceiling light. Down the dim hall, she heard the bad-tempered squeal of brakes from a television car chase. Lightning flashed outside the windows as the storm broke directly overhead.

  At Room 27, she stopped. The raucous television boomed on the other side of the door. Lifting a hand, she knocked hard.

  "Mr. Santiago."

  When she received no response, she knocked and called again. Cautious, she tried the knob. The door opened easily.

  In the gray, flickering light of the television, she saw a cramped room with one dingy window. There were heaps of clothes and garbage. The single dresser had a drawer missing. There was the stench of beer gone hot and food gone bad.

  She saw the figure stretched across the bed and swore. Not only would she have the pleasure of conducting an interview in this hellhole, she would have to sober up her witness first.

  Annoyed, she switched off the television so that there was only the sound of drumming rain and the shouts of the argument down the hall. She spotted a stained sink bolted to the wall, a chunk of its porcelain missing. It would come in handy, she thought, if she could manage to hold Santiago's head in it.

  "Mr. Santiago." She raised her voice as she picked her way across the room, trying to avoid greasy take-out bags and spilled beer. "Ray." Reaching him, she started to shake him by the shoulder, then noted his eyes were open. "I'm Deborah O'Roarke," she began. Then she realized he wasn't looking at her. He wasn't looking at all. Lifting her trembling hand, she saw it was wet with blood.

  "Oh, God." She took one stumbling step back, fighting down the hot nausea that churned in her stomach. Another drunken step, then another. She turned and all but ran into a small well-built man with a mustache.

  "Senorita,'' he said quietly.

  "The police," she managed. "We have to call the police. He's dead."

  "I know." He smile
d. She saw the glint of gold in his mouth. And the glint of silver when he lifted the stiletto. "Miss O'Roarke. I've been waiting for you."

  He grabbed her by the hair when she lunged toward the door. She cried out in pain, then was silent, deathly still as she felt the prick of the knife at the base of her throat.

  "No one listens to screams in a place such as this," he said, and the gentleness in his voice made her shudder as he turned her to face him. "You are very beautiful, senorita. What a pity it would be to damage that cheek." Watching her, he laid the shaft of the knife against it. "You will tell me, por favor, what Parino discussed with you before his… accident. All names, all details. And with whom you shared this information."

  Struggling to think through her terror, she looked into his eyes. And saw her fate. "You'll kill me anyway."

  He smiled again. "Wise and beautiful. But there are ways, and ways. Some are very slow, very painful." He glided the blade lightly down her cheek. "You will tell me what I need to know."

  She had no names, nothing to bargain with. She had only her wits. "I wrote them down, I wrote all of it down and locked it away."

  "And told?"

  "No one." She swallowed. "I told no one."

  He studied her for a moment, twirling the stiletto. "I think you lie. Perhaps after I show you what I can do with this, you'll be willing to cooperate. Ah, that cheek. Like satin. What a pity I must tear it."

  Even as she braced, there was another flash of lighting and the sound of the window glass crashing.

  He was there, all in black, illuminated by a new spear of lightning. This time the thunder shook the room. Before she could so much as breathe, the knife was at her throat and a beefy arm banded her waist.

  "Come closer," her captor warned, "and I will slit her throat from ear to ear."

  Nemesis stood where he was. He didn't look at her. Didn't dare. But in his mind's eye he could see her, face pale with fear. Eyes glazed with it. Was it her fear, or his own that had made him unable to concentrate, unable to come into the room as a shadow instead of a man? If he was able to do so now, to divorce himself from his fear for her and vanish, would it be a weapon, or would it cause the stiletto to strike home before he could act? He hadn't been quick enough to save her. Now he had to be clever enough.