The Novels of Nora Roberts Volume 1

by Nora Roberts

  “Sweet God.” Miranda would have slid bonelessly to the floor if he hadn’t held her up with that easy, eerie strength. “Who’d have thought you had all that under that Brooks Brothers suit?”

  “Only my tailor.” A bit belatedly, he tilted her head back for a kiss.

  “When did you say you had to leave?”

  “Tomorrow night, actually. But I have some time today.” And he might as well use it to case the house. “Do you have a bed?”

  Miranda wound her arms around his neck. “I’ve got four of them. Where do you want to start?”

  “You look pleased with yourself,” LeClerc noted when Luke dropped his suitcases in the foyer of the house in New Orleans.

  “Got the job done. Why shouldn’t I look pleased?” Luke opened his briefcase and took out a notebook filled with notes and drawings. “The layout of her house. Two safes, one in the master bedroom, another in the living room. She’s got a Corot in the downstairs hallway and a goddamn Monet over her bed.”

  LeClerc grunted as he scanned the notes. “And just how did you discover the painting and the safe in her bedroom, mon ami?”

  “I let her fuck my brains out.” Grinning, Luke peeled off his leather jacket. “I feel so cheap.”

  “Casse pas mon cœur,” LeClerc muttered, amusement gleaming in his eye. “Next time I’ll see that Max sends me.”

  “Bonne chance, old man. An hour with that lady would have put you in traction. Sweet Christ, she had moves you wouldn’t—” He broke off when he heard a sound at the top of the stairs. Roxanne stood there, one hand gripping the banister. Her face was blank, coldly so, but for two flags of color that could have been embarrassment or fury and rode high on her cheeks. Without a word, she turned and disappeared. He heard the echo of her door slamming.

  Now he did feel cheap, and dirty. He would have rejoiced to strangle her for it. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me she was here?”

  “You didn’t ask,” LeClerc said simply. “Allons. Max is in the workroom. He’ll want to hear what you found out.”

  Upstairs, Roxanne lay prone on her bed, fighting back a horrible urge to hurl breakables. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She didn’t need him, didn’t want him. Didn’t care. If he wanted to spend his time screwing overendowed tarts, it was strictly his business.

  Oh, but damn him to a fiery hell for enjoying it.

  There were a dozen—well, at least a half dozen—men who would be more than happy to relieve her of the burden of her virginity. Maybe it was time to pick one out.

  She could brag, too, after all. She could flaunt her sexual exploits under his nose until he choked on them.

  No, she’d be damned if she’d make a decision like that out of pique.

  And she’d be double damned, she decided, sitting up, if she’d wait in the wings this time while the men had all the fun. When they moved on the house in Potomac, she was going to be right there with them.

  Come hell or high water.

  “I’m fully prepared, Daddy.” Roxanne transferred a neatly folded blouse from her suitcase to a drawer in her room at the Washington Ritz. “And I’ve kept my part of the bargain.” She arranged lingerie tidily in the drawer above. “I’ve completed my first year at Tulane, with a three point five grade average. I fully intend to do the same when classes start back in the fall.”

  “I appreciate that, Roxanne.” Max stood at the window. Behind him, the Washington summer baked the pavements and rose again in oily waves. “But this job has been months in the planning. It’s wiser for you to make your debut, as it were, with something smaller.”

  “I prefer starting at the top.” With the careless precision of the innately tidy, she began to hang dresses and cocktail wear in the closet. “I’m not a novice, and you know it. I’ve been a part of this aspect of your life—behind the scenes, unfortunately—since I was a child. I can pick a lock as well, and often quicker than LeClerc.” Conscientiously, she shook a fold out of a silk skirt. “I know a great deal about engines and mechanics thanks to Mouse.” After closing the closet doors, she shot her father a bland look. “I know more about computers than any of you. You know yourself that kind of skill is invaluable.”

  “And I’ve appreciated your help in the early stages of this job. However—”

  “There’s no however, Daddy. It’s time.”

  “There are physical aspects as well as mental,” he began.

  “Do you think I’ve been working out five hours a week for the last year for my health?” she tossed back. They’d reached a crossroads. Roxanne chose her path and planted her fists on her hips. “Are you standing in my way because you’re having fatherly qualms about leading me down a dishonest path?”

  “Certainly not.” He looked shocked, then affronted. “I happen to consider what I do an ancient and valuable art. Thievery is a time-honored profession, my girl. Not to be confused with these hooligans who mug people on the street, or bloodthirsty klutzes who burst into banks, guns blazing. We’re discriminating. We’re romantic.” His voice rose in passion. “We’re artists.”

  “Well, then.” She crossed over to kiss his cheek. “When do we start?”

  He stared down into her smiling, smug face and began to laugh. “You’re a credit to me, Roxanne.”

  “I know, Max.” She kissed him again. “I know.”

  15

  The Kennedy Center lent itself to large-scale illusions, as did the network television cameras that were filming the event for a special to be aired in the fall. Max had staged the one-hundred-and-two-minute show like a three-act play, with full orchestra, complex lighting cues and elaborate costumes.

  It began with Max alone on a darkened stage, caught in the moonlike beam of a single spotlight. He was draped in a velvet cloak of midnight blue that was threaded with shimmering silver. In one hand he held a wand, also silver, that glinted in the light. In the other he cupped a ball of crystal.

  So Merlin might have looked as he plotted for the birth of a king.

  Sorcery was his theme, and he played the mystic necromancer with dignity and drama. He lifted the ball onto the crown of his fingertips. It pulsed with lights as he spoke to the audience of spells and dragons, alchemy and witchcraft. While they watched, already snagged by the theatrics, the ball began to float—along the folds of the velvet cloak, above the tip of the magic wand, spinning high above his head at a shouted incantation. All the while it pulsed with those inner lights, flickering scarlet and sapphire, amber and emerald onto his uplifted face. The audience gasped as the ball plummeted toward the stage, then applauded when it stopped, inches before destruction, to rotate in a widening circle, rising, rising toward Max’s outstretched hands. Once more he held it poised on his fingertips. He tapped it once with the shimmering wand and tossed it high. The ball became a shower of silver that rained down on the stage before it went black.

  When the lights came up again, seconds later, it was Roxanne who stood center stage. She was all in glimmering silver. Stars glittered in her hair, along the arms the column of sequins left bare. She stood straight as a sword, her arms crossed over her breasts, her eyes closed. When the orchestra began to play a movement from Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, she swayed. Her eyes opened.

  She spoke of spells cast and love lost, of witchery gone wrong. As she uncrossed her arms, lifted them high, sparks flew from her fingertips. Her hair, a flame of curls nearly to her shoulders, began to wave in an unseen wind. The spotlight widened to show a small table beside her, on it a bell, a book and an unlit candle. Cupping her palms, she made fire in them, flames rising and ebbing as if breathing. As she passed her hands over the candle, the flames guttered in her palms and spurted from the wick in a shimmer of gold.

  A flick of her wrist, and the pages of the book began to turn, slowly, then faster, faster, until it was a whirl. The bell rose from the table between her outstretched palms. As she swayed her hands, it tolled. Suddenly, beneath the table where there had been only space three candles burned
brightly. Their fire licked up and up until the table itself was aflame with Roxanne standing behind it, her face washed in its light and shadows. She threw her arms out and there was nothing left but smoke. At the same instant another spotlight shot on. Luke was there, upstage left.

  He wore sleek black trimmed in glistening gold. Lily’s clever makeup had accented his cheekbones, arched his brows. Nearly as long as hers, his raven hair flowed free. He looked to Roxanne like a cross between a satyr and a pirate. Her traitorous heart gave one thump before she quashed the flicker of need.

  She faced him across the stage with smoke twining between them. Her stance was a challenge, head thrown back, one arm up, the other held out to the side. A streak of light shot from her fingertips toward him. He lifted a hand, seemed to catch it. The audience erupted with applause as the duel continued. The combatants moved closer together, whirling smoke, hurling fire as the stage lights came up rose and gold, simulating sunrise.

  Roxanne threw her arm over her eyes, as if to shield herself. Then her arms fell limply, her head drooped. The silver gown sparkled, hissing with light while she swayed, as if her body were attached by strings to Luke’s hands. He circled her, passing those hands around her, inches from touching. He passed his spread hand in front of her eyes, indicating trance, then slowly, slowly gestured her back, farther back. Her feet lifted from the stage. Her back stayed straight as a spear as he floated her up until she lay on nothing more than wisps of blue smoke.

  He whirled once, and when he faced the stage again he held a slim silver ring. Graceful as a dancer, he moved from her feet to her head, sliding her body through the circle. Unrehearsed, he leaned forward, as if to kiss her. He felt her body stiffen as his lips halted a breath away.

  “Don’t blow it, Rox,” he whispered, then whipped off his cape, tossed it over her. It held for a moment before the form beneath it seemed to melt away. When the cape fluttered to the floor, Luke held a white swan cradled in his arms.

  There was a crash of thunder from backstage. Luke bent for his cape, praying the damn swan wouldn’t take a nick out of him this time. He crouched, swirling the cape over his head. And vanished.

  “I didn’t care for the ad-lib,” Roxanne told Luke the minute she caught up with him.

  “No?” He handed off the swan to Mouse and smiled at her. “I thought it was a nice touch. How about you, Mouse?”

  Mouse stroked the swan—he was the only one who could without endangering fingers. “Well . . . I guess. Gotta give Myrtle her snack.”

  “See.” Luke gestured after Mouse’s retreating back. “Loved it.”

  “Try it again and I’ll do a little ad-libbing myself.” She stabbed a finger into his shirt. “You’ll end up with a bloody lip.”

  He caught her wrist before she could storm away. From the sound of the applause he knew that Max and Lily were keeping the momentum high. His own emotions were a rising riot. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt better in his life.

  “Listen, Rox, what we do onstage is an act. A job. Just like what we’re going to do tomorrow night in Potomac.” Some inner demon had him shifting his body, effectively sandwiching her between it and the wall. “Nothing personal.”

  The blood was humming in her head, but she dredged up a friendly smile. “Maybe you’re right.”

  He could smell her—perfume, greasepaint, the slight muskiness of stage sweat. “Of course I’m right. It’s just a matter of—” His breath wolfed out as she rammed an elbow into his gut. She slipped easily away and smiled with a lot more sincerity.

  “Nothing personal,” she said sweetly. She stepped inside her dressing room, shut—and locked—the door. It was time for a costume change.

  The next time she had to deal with him they were nearly nose to nose with only a thin sheet of plywood between them. They were locked in a trick box and had only seconds before transmutation.

  “Pull that again, babe,” Luke hissed even as they were flipping positions. “I swear I’ll hit you back.”

  “Oh! I’m shaking.” Roxanne sprang out of the box in Luke’s place to thunderous applause.

  They took their bows graciously after the finale. Luke pinched her hard enough to bruise. Roxanne trod heavily on his instep.

  He bowed with a flourish, pulling roses out of thin air and offering them to her. She accepted them, but before she could dip into the curtsy, he moved. No way was he going to allow the blow to go unrewarded. He arched her back in an exaggerated dip and kissed her.

  Or it appeared to be a kiss to the delighted audience. He bit her.

  “You bastard.” She forced her throbbing lip to spread into a smile. They stepped back as Max made his final entrance. Luke took Roxanne’s hand. His eyes popped wide when she gripped his thumb and twisted.

  “Jesus, Rox, not the hands. I can’t work without my hands.”

  “Then keep them off me, pal.” She released him, satisfied with the idea that his thumb would be aching every bit as much as her bottom lip. Together they joined Max and Lily center stage for a final bow.

  “I love show business,” Roxanne said with a breathy laugh.

  The pure good humor in her voice scotched Luke’s notion of booting her in the rump. He took her hand again, with more caution. “Me too.”

  She didn’t find the benefits too shabby either. The elegant White House reception put the perfect cap on the evening. Max, she knew, was staunchly apolitical. He voted, considering it his right and his duty, but more often than not pulled the lever with the same kind of careless glee with which he gambled.

  Max thought nothing of drawing to an inside straight.

  It wasn’t the politics of Washington that appealed to Roxanne. It was the formal, often pompous ambience those politics generated. A far cry from New Orleans, she thought, admiring the richly dressed and somewhat stuffy dancers swirling around the ballroom floor.

  “You seem to have made magic work for you.”

  Roxanne turned, her pleasant, company smile fading into simple shock. “Sam. What are you doing here?”

  “Enjoying the festivities. Almost as much as I enjoyed your performance.” He took her hand, bringing her stiff fingers to his lips.

  He’d changed considerably. The thin, poorly attired teenager had groomed himself into a slim, impeccable man. His sandy hair was as conservatively cut as the tuxedo he wore. On his hand glittered one discreet diamond ring. Roxanne caught a whiff of masculine cologne as his lips brushed her skin.

  He was clean-shaven, as well polished as the gleaming antiques that littered the White House. Like the air they breathed, he exuded the strong, unmistakable aura of wealth and success. And like politics, she thought, beneath that glowing aura, was the faint stink of corruption.

  “You’ve grown up, Roxanne. And beautifully.”

  She slipped her hand away from his. Her flesh tingled where he’d touched, as if she’d reached too close to a current that might prove fatal. “I could say the same about you.”

  His teeth flashed. Those he’d lost in his fight with Luke had been nicely replaced. “Why don’t you—while we dance.”

  She could have refused, flatly, politely, flirtatiously. She had the skill for it. But she was curious. Without a word she moved with him out on the floor and joined the flow of dancers.

  “I could say,” she began, more than a little surprised to find him graceful and accomplished, “that the White House is the last place I would have expected to see you again. But—” She met his eyes. “Most cats land on their feet.”

  “Oh, I always planned to see you—all of you—again. Odd how fate would make it here in such . . . powerful surroundings.” He drew her closer, enjoying the way she held that slim, soft body rigid and still managed to follow his lead as fluidly as water. “The act tonight was quite a step up from those little bits of business at that grimy club in the Quarter. Better even than the show Max devised for the Magic Castle.”

  “He’s the best there is.”

  “His talent is phenomenal,�
� Sam agreed. He dipped his face down to hers, watched her eyes narrow. The sexual punch was like a brick to the gut. He shifted, just enough so that she’d feel his arousal. “But I must admit it was you and Luke that held me breathless. A very sexy little number that.”

  “An illusion,” she said coolly. “Sex had nothing to do with it.”

  “If there was a man unstirred when you levitated under his hands, they were dead and buried.” And how interesting it would be, he thought, to have her. To feel her stir, willing, unwilling, under his hands. A beautiful payback it would be, with the added benefit of hot, greedy sex. “I can assure you, I’m alive.”

  Her stomach muscles were knotted, but she kept her gaze level. “If you think I’m flattered by the bulge in your pants, Sam, you’re mistaken.” She had the satisfaction of seeing his lips tighten in anger before she continued. And yes, she noted, his eyes were the same. Sly, canny and potentially mean. “Where did you go when you left New Orleans?”

  Now he not only wanted to take her, but wanted to hurt her first. “Here and there.”

  “And here and there led you . . .” She gestured. “Here?”

  “On a circular route. At the moment, I happen to be the right-hand man of the Gentleman from Tennessee.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Not at all.” He spread his palm over the small of her back. “I’m the senator’s top aide. And I intend to be a great deal more.”

  It took her only a moment to recover. “Well, I suppose it fits, since politics is the ultimate con game. Won’t your past indiscretions interfere with your ambitions?”

  “On the contrary. My difficult childhood gives me a fresh and sympathetic perspective on the problems of our children—our most valuable natural resource. I’m a role model—showing them what they can make of themselves.”