by Нора Робертс
Fiona deleted the e-mail, including the list of contacts.
Then simply laid her head down on the table.
She was entitled to say no. Entitled to turn her back on that horrible time. She was entitled to refuse to be fodder for yet another story on death and loss.
Reliving all that wouldn’t, couldn’t bring Greg back. It wouldn’t help those two women or their grieving families.
She’d started her life over, and she was damn well entitled to her privacy.
She pushed herself up, shut down the laptop.
“I’m going to take that long bath, drink that stupid tea. And you know what? We’re going to book that damn villa. Life’s too damn short.”
Eight
Though her puppy classes invariably kept Fiona’s mood up, tension lingered, an endless echo of memories and loss.
Kati Starr, persistent if nothing else, called shortly after eight a.m.
One glance at the caller ID had Fiona letting the machine take it. She deleted it without listening, but the call itself lodged in the back of her neck like a brick.
She reminded herself her clients deserved her full attention.
Simon was late. Of course. He pulled in while the rest of the class ran through the basics.
“Just pick it up where we are,” she said coolly. “If we’re not interfering too much with your busy schedule.”
She moved away to work with each of her students individually, demonstrating how to discourage the exuberant Great Dane pup, who promised to be massive, from jumping up—and the perky schnauzer to stop crotch sniffing.
When they began to work off leash, she sighed as Jaws raced away to chase a squirrel—and led a stampede.
“Don’t chase them!” Fiona pushed a hand through her hair as Jaws did his level best to climb the tree the squirrel skittered up. “Call them back. Use your return command, then order your dog to sit. I want all the dogs back to their handlers and sitting.”
What she wanted took time and persistence—and some hands-on.
She reviewed sit and stay, individually and as a group, careful to keep her tone detached whenever she had to address Simon.
With leashes on, she worked on the stop and drop.
The class that usually amused and warmed her had a headache carving dully just above the brick at the base of her neck.
“Keep up the good work.” She ordered up a smile. “And remember: positive reinforcement, practice and play.”
As always, there were comments, questions, a story or two that had to be shared with her by one of the clients. Fiona listened, answered, stroked and petted. But felt none of her usual pleasure.
When Simon lingered, letting Jaws off leash to run with her dogs, Fiona decided it was fine. She’d deal with him, and eliminate a minor problem on her list.
“You’ve got a bug up your ass today,” he said before she could speak.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. And you look like hell.”
“You have to stop throwing all these pearls at my feet.”
“Did that guy in California kill someone else?”
“I don’t know. Why would I know? It has nothing to do with me.” She jammed her hands into the pockets of her hooded jacket. “I’m sorry for the women, for their families, but it has nothing to do with me.”
“Who’s arguing? You weren’t listening, not really, when Larry started on about how his supermutt figured out how to open doors or when Diane showed you the picture of her toddler drawing with crayons on the bulldog. I’d say that’s your version of having a bitch on. So, what’s the deal?”
“Listen, Simon, just because I kissed you, sort of—”
“Sort of ?”
She set her teeth. “That doesn’t mean I’m obliged to share the details of my life with you, or explain the reasons for my moods.”
“I’m still stuck on ‘sort of,’ and wondering what would be actually.”
“You’ll have to keep wondering. We’re neighbors and you’re currently a client. That’s it.”
“A definite bitch on. Well, enjoy.” He whistled for his dog, which naturally brought the whole pack.
When Simon bent down, ruffled and praised, Fiona sighed again. “He’s doing well on the return. He doesn’t get stay yet, but he’s doing well in most areas.”
“He hasn’t eaten anything I needed to worry about in the last couple days.” He clipped on the leash. “See you.”
He got halfway to the car when she called his name.
She hadn’t planned to, couldn’t think why she had. And yet...
“Do you want to take a walk? I need to walk.”
“A walk? Where?”
She gestured. “One of the perks of living in the woods is being able to walk in them.”
He shrugged, crossed back to her.
“You’d better leash him,” she said. “Until you’re confident he’ll obey the stop command. He might take off after a rabbit or deer and get lost. Come on, boys, take a walk.”
Her dogs fell in happily, then ranged ahead. Jaws pulled on the leash.
“Wait,” Fiona ordered, sympathizing. The dogs paused, continuing at a slower pace at her signal when Jaws caught up.
“He thinks he’s one of the big guys. It’s good for him to get out like this, explore new territories, respect the leash, respond to you.”
“Is this another lesson?”
“Just making conversation.”
“Do you ever talk about anything other than dogs?”
“Yes.” Irritated, she hunched her shoulders, lapsed into momentary silence. “I can’t think of anything right now. God, I wish spring would hurry up. There, that’s other than. I can bitch about the weather. But it’s a nice day, so it’s hard to. Still I wish it would get warmer faster, and I want the sun to stay out till ten. I want to plant a garden and chase the deer and rabbits out of it.”
“Why don’t you just put up a fence?”
“Then I don’t have the entertainment value of chasing the deer and rabbits, do I? They’re not afraid of the dogs, which is my own fault because I trained the boys not to chase—oops. Dog talk. I love the way it smells in here.”
She took a deep breath of pine, grateful the headache had backed off a bit. “I love the way it looks—the lights, the shadows. I thought I’d be a photographer, because I like light and shadows, and people’s faces and the way they move. But I don’t take very good, or interesting, pictures. Then I thought I’d be a writer, but I bored myself so I suspect I’d have flopped at that one. Except I like to write—for the blog or the newsletter, or little articles about, you know, the thing I’m not talking about in this conversation. Then I thought I could coach track or be a trainer but... I didn’t really have a center, I guess. I’m not sure you’re required to have a center when you’re twenty. Why don’t you say something?”
“Mostly because you haven’t shut up.”
She blew out a breath. “That’s true. I’m babbling useless conversation because I don’t want to think. And I realize I asked you to come so I wouldn’t think or start brooding. I don’t have a bitch on. I have a brood on, and it’s entirely different.”
“Comes off the same to me.”
“You’re a hardass, Simon. That shouldn’t be appealing to me.”
They moved through a clearing where the trees soared overhead, beefy giants that sighed like the surf where their tops met sky.
“Why Orcas?” she asked him. “Of all the places to live.”
“It’s quiet. I like being near the water. Hold this.” He shoved the leash into her hand and walked over to a large, twisted stump, heaved half out of the needle-strewn ground.
While she watched, he circled it, crouched, knocked on it.
“Is this your property?”
“Yeah. We haven’t walked that far.”
“I want this.” His eyes, the color of old gold in the luminous streams and dapples of light, shifted briefly to hers. “Can I have this?”
“You want... the stump?”
“Yes. I’ll pay for it if you want to be greedy.”
“How much? I’m going on a spa vacation.” She walked closer trying to see what he saw.
“Pee somewhere else.” He gave Jaws a nudge as the pup prepared to squat. “Ten bucks.”
She pff ’d.
“It’s just sitting here. You’re not using it, and I’m going to have to yank it out and haul it off. Twenty, but that’s it.”
“Replace it. Plant a tree in the hole and we’re good.”
“Done.”
“What’ll you do with it?”
“Something.”
She studied it, circled it as he had, but still only saw the twisted remains of a tree broken off in some long-ago storm. “I wish I could see like that. I wish I could look at a tree stump and see something creative.”
He glanced up again. “You looked at that dog and saw something.”
She smiled. “I think that was an actual nice thing to say. Now I guess I have to be sorry for being mean to you.”
“You have a strange scale, Fiona. ‘Sort of’ kissed me when you were locked on like a clamp. Being mean when you told me to mind my own business.”
“I yelled at you in my head.”
“Oh, well, now I’m crushed.”
“I can be mean. Harsh and mean, and I can be okay with it. But it has to be justified. You just asked what was wrong. You can come back and get the stump anytime.”
“Next couple of days.” He straightened, glanced around to orient himself. Then he looked at her. “You might as well spill it.”
“Let’s keep walking.” She held the leash, bringing Jaws to heel, letting him range, bringing him back while they wound through the trees, skirted the curve of a quiet creek.
“This reporter’s hounding me,” she began. “Calling, e-mailing. I haven’t talked to her—just deleted all the messages.”
“What does she want?”
“To talk to me about Perry—in connection with the two women in California. She’s writing a story on it. That’s her job; I get that. But it’s not mine to talk to her, to feed that fire. The only victim who escaped—that’s how she put it. I’m not a victim, and it just pisses me off to be called one. I had enough of that when it all happened.”
“Then keep deleting.”
“Sounds simple—and I will—but it’s not simple.”
The headache was gone, she realized, but the anger and frustration that had caused it remained lodged like splinters.
Small, sharp and nasty.
“When it happened, the prosecution and the cops kept me away from the press as much as possible. They didn’t want me giving interviews—and God knows, I didn’t want to give them. But a story like that? It’s got juice, right? They kept calling, or talking to people who knew me—people who knew people who knew me. Squeezing the juice.” She paused, glanced at him again. “I guess you’d understand that, from your relationship with Nina Abbott.”
“Relationship’s a pretty word for it.”
“And now you like quiet islands.”
“One doesn’t have much of a connection with the other. And this isn’t my brood.”
None of her business, she thought. Well, he had a point. “All right. After Greg, it started up again. Then the trial. I don’t want any part of what’s happening now. So I’m angry all over again, and that makes me feel sick inside. Because twelve before me, and Greg after me, died. And I didn’t. I barely had a scratch, but they say I’m a victim or they say I’m a heroine. Neither’s true.”
“No, neither’s true. You’re a survivor, and that’s harder.”
She stopped, stared at him. “Why do you get it? That’s the mystery.”
“It’s all over you. It’s in your eyes. So calm, so clear. Maybe because they’ve already seen so much. You’ve got wounds. You live with them. That shouldn’t be appealing to me.”
She might have smiled at the way he tossed her own words back at her, but they made her stomach flutter. “What have we got here, Simon?”
“Probably just some heat.”
“Probably. I haven’t had sex in almost ten months.”
“Okay, it’s getting hotter.”
Now she laughed. “God, you’ve actually made me feel better. But what I meant was I haven’t had sex in ten months, so waiting longer isn’t such a big deal. We both live on island—have a connection with Sylvia. I like your dog, and right now I’m part of his team. I think I need to figure out if sleeping with you would just be a nice release, or cause too many complications.”
“It wouldn’t be nice. Nice is cookies and milk.”
“Confident. I do like confidence. Since I’m not going to have sex with you in the woods, especially since we’ve only got about twenty minutes before the sun sets, I think we’re safe. So why don’t you give me a little preview of possible coming attractions?”
He reached behind her, wrapped her hair around his fist. “You like living on the edge?”
“No, I really don’t. I like stability and order, so this is unusual for me.”
He gave her hair a tug, enough to lift her face, to bring his mouth within a breath of hers. “You’re looking for nice.”
“I’m not really looking at all.”
“Me either,” he said, and closed the distance.
She’d asked for it, and thought herself prepared. She’d expected the fast strike, that immediate explosion of heat and lust and want that flashed through the brain and body.
Instead, he came in easy, disarming her with a slow kiss, the sort that shimmered through the system just before it fogged the brain. She sighed into it, lifting her arms to link them around his neck as he tempted her to offer more.
As she did, he pulled her deeper, gradually building that heat they both acknowledged, degree by degree, so when the strike came, she was defenseless.
The world snapped off—the woods, the sky, the deepening shadows. All that was left was the wonder of mouth against mouth, body against body, and the floodwall of need rising in her.
Even as he started to pull back, she dragged him back and dived again, dived deep.
She frayed his control. That combination of yielding and demand tore at his resolve to set both tone and pace. She reached inside him somehow, opening doors he’d determined to keep locked until he was no longer sure who led the way.
And when he intended to step back, regain some distance, she lured him back.
Soft lips, lithe body and a scent that was somehow both earthy and sweet. Like her taste—neither one thing nor the other, and utterly irresistible.
He lost more ground than he gained before the pup began to bark—wild joy—and scrabble at his legs in an attempt to nudge through and join the fun.
This time they stepped back together.
Fiona laid a hand on Jaws’s head. “Sit,” she ordered. “Good dog.”
Not so calm now, Simon thought as he looked at her eyes. Not so clear.
“I can’t think of a single sensible thing to say,” she told him. She signaled for her dogs, then handed Simon the pup’s leash. “We should start back. Um, he’s doing better on the leash. This is new territory for him, and there are a lot of fun distractions, but he’s responding pretty well.”
Back in her safe zone, he thought, with dog talk. Curious how she’d handle it, he simply walked along in silence.
“I’d like to work with him a little on some other skills and behaviors. Maybe an extra half hour in ten- or fifteen-minute sessions a week. A couple of weeks, no charge. Then if you like the way it’s going, we can discuss a fee.”
“Like a preview of possible coming attractions?”
She slid a glance in Simon’s direction, then away again. “You could say that. He learns quickly, and has a good personality for... And this is silly. It’s cowardly. I wanted to kiss you again to see if the other day was just a fluke, which, obviously, it was not. There’s a strong physical attraction, wh
ich I haven’t felt for anyone in a long time.”
“Just under ten months?”
He watched her color come up, but then she smiled. Not sheepish but amused. “Longer actually. To spare us both the embarrassment of details, that particular incident was a failure on several levels. But it does serve as a baseline, and causes me to wonder if the just-under-ten-months factor is part of the reason for the attraction. It also makes me cautious. I’m not shy about sex, but I am wary of repeating what turned out to be a mistake.”
“You’d rather be stable and ordered.”
She pushed her hands back in her pockets. “I talk too much and you listen too well. That’s a dangerous mix.”
“For who?”
“For the talker. See, you give the impression you don’t pay all that much attention, just aren’t interested enough. But you do pay attention. Not big on the interacting, but you take in the details. It’s kind of sneaky, really. I like you. Or at least I think I do. I don’t know much about you because you don’t talk about yourself. I know you have a dog because your mother gave him to you, which tells me you love your mother or fear her wrath. It’s probably a combination of both.”
They walked in silence for a full thirty seconds.
“Confirm or deny,” she insisted. “It can’t be a deep, dark secret.”
“I love my mother and prefer, when possible, to avoid her wrath.”
“There, that wasn’t so hard. How about your father?”
“He loves my mother and prefers, when possible, to avoid her wrath.”
“You realize, of course, that the less you say the more curious people get about you.”
“Fine. That can be good for business.”
“So, it’s a business. Your work.”
“People pay you, the government takes a cut. That’s business.”
She thought she had a handle on him now, even if it was a slippery one. “But it’s not business first or you’d have sold me that cabinet.”
He paused while Jaws found a stick and pranced along like a drum major at halftime. “You’re not letting that one go.”
“It was either a display of artistic temperament or bullheadedness. I suspect, in this case, the former, though I also suspect you’re no stranger to the latter. I’d still like to buy it, by the way.”