by Nora Roberts
“It’s a pretty view from here,” she said for no other reason than to fill the void. There should be a sandbox in the yard, she thought, linking her tensed fingers together. A swing hanging from the thick bough of the big maple.
“We weren’t allowed in here.”
“Excuse me?” She turned back from the window, certain she’d misunderstood.
“We weren’t allowed in here,” he repeated, and his eyes were on her as if the pecan cupboards and rosy countertops didn’t exist. “Only the servants. Their wing was through there.” He gestured but didn’t look toward a side door. “Along with the laundry and utility rooms. The kitchen was off limits.”
She wanted to laugh and accuse him of making it up. But she could see quite clearly that he was telling the truth. “What if you had a desperate craving for some cookies?”
“One didn’t eat between meals. The cook, after all, was paid to produce them, and we were expected to do them justice—at eight A.M., one P.M. and seven in the evening. I used to come in here at night, just for the principle of it.” Now he did look around, his eyes flat and blank. “I still feel like a trespasser in here.”
“Jed—”
“You should see the rest of it.” He turned and walked out.
Yes, he wanted her to see it, he thought grimly. Every stone, every curve of molding, every inch of paint. And once she had, once he had walked through with her, he hoped never to walk through the door again.
She caught up with him at the base of the stairs, where he was waiting for her. “Jed, this isn’t necessary.”
“Let’s go upstairs.” He took her arm, ignoring her hesitation.
He remembered how it had smelled here—the air heavy with beeswax and funereal flowers, the expensive clashes of his mother’s and sister’s perfumes, the sting of cigar smoke from one of his father’s Havanas.
He remembered, too, when it hadn’t been silent. When there were voices raised forever in anger and accusation, or lowered in disgust. How the servants had kept their eyes downcast, their ears closed and their hands busy.
He remembered being sixteen, and being innocently attracted to one of the new maids. When his mother had come across them harmlessly flirting in the upstairs hall—right here, he thought—she had dismissed the girl on the spot.
“My mother’s room.” Jed inclined his head toward a doorway. “My father’s was down the hall. As you can see, there were several rooms between.”
She wanted to sigh and tell him she’d had enough, but knew it wasn’t enough for him. “Where was yours?”
“There.”
Dora moved down the hall and peeked into the room. It was large and airy, bright with afternoon light. The windows overlooked the rear lawn and the tidy privet hedge that marched along the verge of the property. Dora sat on the narrow window seat and looked out.
She knew there were always ghosts in old houses. A building couldn’t stand for two hundred years and not carry some memories of those who had walked in it. These ghosts were Jed’s, and he was violently possessive about them. What good would it do, she wondered, to tell him how easy it would be to exorcise them?
It only needed people. Someone to run laughing down the steps or to curl up dreaming by a fire. It only needed children slamming doors and racing in the halls.
“There used to be a chestnut tree out there. I’d go out that way at night, hitch a ride and go down to Market Street to raise hell. One night, one of the servants spotted me and reported it to my father. He had the tree cut down the next day. Then he came up here, locked the door and beat the hell out of me. I was fourteen.” He said it without emotion, took out a cigarette, lighted it. “That’s when I started lifting weights.” His eyes flashed through the smoke. “He wasn’t going to beat me again. If he tried, I was damn well going to be strong enough to take him. A couple of years later, I did. And that’s how I earned boarding school.”
Something sour rose up in her throat. She forced herself to swallow it. “You expect that to be hard for me to understand,” she said quietly. “Because my father never raised a hand to us. Not even when we deserved it.”
Jed considered the tip of his cigarette before tapping the ash on the floor. “My father had big hands. He didn’t use them often, but when he did, it was without control.”
“And your mother?”
“She preferred throwing things, expensive things. She knocked me unconscious once with a Meissen vase, and then took the two thousand in damages out of my college fund.”
Dora nodded, continued to stare out the window while she struggled not to be sick. “Your sister?”
“They vacillated between treating her like a Dresden doll and an inmate. Tea parties one day, locked doors the next.” He shrugged. “They wanted her to be the perfect lady, the virginal debutante who would follow the Skimmerhorn rules and marry well. Whenever she didn’t conform, they put her in solitary.”
“Excuse me?”
“Locked her in her room, a couple of days, maybe a week. Then they’d bribe her with shopping sprees or parties until she did what they wanted.” To combat the bitterness in his mouth, he took another drag. “You’d have thought sharing the misery would have made us close, but somehow it never did. We didn’t give a damn about each other.”
Slowly, she turned her head, looked at him over her shoulder. “You don’t need to apologize to me for your feelings.”
“I’m not apologizing.” He snapped the words out. “I’m explaining them.” And he refused to let her unquestioning compassion soothe him.
“I got the call to go see Elaine—supposedly from one of her staff, but it was one of Speck’s men. They wanted me on the scene when it happened. They knew she went out every Wednesday at eleven to have her hair done. I didn’t.” His gaze lifted again, latched onto Dora’s. “I knew nothing about her, wanted to know nothing about her. I was minutes away from her house, and royally pissed at being summoned, when the dispatch came through with the bomb threat. You could say Speck had a good sense of timing.”
He paused a moment, walked over to the small hearth and crushed out the cigarette on the stone. “I was first on the scene, just as Speck planned. I could see her in the car when I was running. The roses were blooming,” he said softly, seeing it all perfectly again, not like a film, not like a dream, but stark reality. “She looked toward me. I could see the surprise on her face—and the irritation. Elaine didn’t like to have her routine interrupted, and I imagine she was ticked off at the idea of the neighbors seeing me run across the lawn with my weapon out. Then she turned the key, and the car went up. The blast knocked me back into the roses.”
“You tried to save her, Jed.”
“I didn’t save her,” he said flatly. “That’s for me to live with, and the guilt of it because she meant no more to me than a stranger. Less, because she wasn’t a stranger. We lived in this house together for nearly eighteen years, and we shared nothing.”
She turned back then, and sat quietly. Jed felt a quick jolt of surprise at how lovely, how perfect she looked there with the sun pouring liquidly around her, her eyes calm and watchful, her mouth solemn. Odd, he thought, there had never been anything in this house he’d considered beautiful. Until now.
“I understand why you brought me here,” she began. “Why you felt you had to—but you didn’t have to. I’m glad you did, but it wasn’t necessary.” She sighed then and let her hands rest in her lap. “You wanted me to see a cold, empty house where very little is left but the unhappiness that used to live here. And you wanted me to understand that, like the house, you have nothing to offer.”
He had a need, an almost desperate one, to step forward and rest his head in her lap. “I don’t have anything to offer.”
“You don’t want to,” she corrected. “And considering the role models in your life, it’s certainly logical. The problem is, Skimmerhorn, emotions just aren’t logical. Mine aren’t.” She tilted her head and the sun creamed over her skin, warming it, as her v
oice was warm, as the room was warm with her in it. “I told you I love you, and you’d probably have preferred a slap in the face, but there it is. I didn’t mean to say it—or maybe I did.”
In a vulnerable and weary gesture, she brushed a hand through her hair. “Maybe I did,” she repeated softly. “Because even though I understood how you might react, I’m just not used to bottling my feelings inside. But they are my feelings, Jed. They don’t ask you for anything.”
“When a woman tells a man she loves him, she’s asking for everything.”
“Is that how you see it?” She smiled a little, but her eyes were dulled with sadness. “Let me tell you how I see it. Love’s a gift, and can certainly be refused. Refusing doesn’t destroy the gift, it simply puts it aside. You’re free to do that. I’m not asking for a gift in return. It’s not that I don’t want it, but I don’t expect it.”
She rose then and, crossing the room, took his face gently in her hands. Her eyes were still sad, but there was a bottomless compassion in them that humbled him. “Take what’s offered, Jed, especially when it’s offered generously and without expectations. I won’t keep throwing it in your face. That would only embarrass us both.”
“You’re leaving yourself open, Dora.”
“I know. It feels right to me.” She kissed him, one cheek, the other, then his mouth. “Relax and enjoy, Skimmerhorn. I intend to.”
“I’m not what you need.” But he gathered her close and held on. Because she was what he needed. She was so exactly what he needed.
“You’re wrong.” She closed her eyes and willed the threatening tears away. “You’re wrong about the house, too. You’re both just waiting.”
He kept losing his train of thought. Jed knew the details he and Brent discussed were vital, but he kept seeing Dora sitting on the window seat of his old, hated room, with sunlight pooling around her.
And he kept remembering the way her hands had felt against his face when she’d smiled and asked him to accept love.
“Jed, you’re making me feel like a boring history teacher.”
Jed blinked, focused. “What?”
“Exactly.” Blowing out a breath, Brent leaned back in his desk chair. “You want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
“It’s nothing.” He washed the mood away with some of the station house’s atomic coffee. “What you’ve picked up on Winesap makes it look like he’s another underling. I still think the best way to handle this is to approach the top man, Finley. Not directly. The longer we can keep the smuggled painting under wraps, the better.”
“What I can gather on the guy wouldn’t fill a teacup,” Brent complained. “He’s rich—rich enough to make you look like a piker, pal—successful, single, obsessively private.”
“And as the head of a large import-export firm, would be the perfect warehouse for smuggled goods.”
“If wishing only made it so,” Brent murmured. “We’ve got no hard evidence on Finley. Sure, the shipment was addressed to his assistant, and DiCarlo works for him.”
“DiCarlo’s small-time, a hustler. You’ve only got to look at his rap sheet.”
“And Finley has no rap sheet. He’s the American ideal, a modest self-made man and a solid citizen.”
“Then a little digging shouldn’t hurt him,” Jed pointed out. “I want to take a trip to LA.”
“I thought that was where this was leading.” Uncomfortable, Brent shifted. “Listen, Jed, I know you’ve got a personal investment in this. The department wouldn’t have diddly without you.”
“But,” Jed interrupted, “I’m not with the department.”
Feeling miserable, Brent pushed at his glasses, fiddled with papers on his desk. “Goldman’s asking questions.”
“Maybe it’s time you answered them.”
“The commissioner thinks so.”
“I’m a civilian, Brent. There’s nothing to stop me from taking a trip to the coast—at my own expense, on my own time.”
“Why don’t you cut the crap?” Brent blurted out. “I know you’ve got a meeting with the commissioner in an hour, and we both know what he’s going to say. You can’t keep straddling this. Make my life easier and tell me you’re coming back on the job.”
“I can’t tell you that. I can tell you I’m thinking about it.”
The oath dried up on Brent’s tongue. “Seriously?”
“More seriously than I ever thought I would.” Jed rose and paced to the frosted glass door, to the scarred file cabinets, to the coffeepot thick with dregs. “Goddamn, I miss this place.” Nearly amused at himself, Jed turned back. “Isn’t that some shit? I miss it—every minute of the tedium, the fucking reports, the candy-assed rookies. Nine mornings out of ten I reach for my shoulder harness before I remember it’s not there. I even thought about buying one of those frigging police scanners so I’d know what the hell’s going on.”
“Hallelujah.” Brent folded his hands, prayerlike. “Let me tell Goldman. Please, let me be the one.”
“I didn’t say I was coming back.”
“Yeah, you did.” On impulse Brent leaped up, grabbed Jed by the shoulders and kissed him.
“Christ, Chapman. Get a grip.”
“The men are going to welcome you back like a god. What does Dora think about it?”
Jed’s foolish grin faded. “She doesn’t think anything. We haven’t talked about it. It doesn’t concern her.”
“Oh.” Brent tucked his tongue in his cheek. “Uh-huh. Mary Pat and I have a bet. She says I’ll be renting a tux as best man by the end of the school year. I say Easter vacation. We tend to mark time by the school calendar.”
The quick flutter of panic in Jed’s stomach staggered him. “You’re off base.”
“Come on, Captain, you’re crazy about her. Ten minutes ago you were staring into space daydreaming. And if she wasn’t the star of the show, I’ll kiss Goldman on the mouth.”
“You’re awful free with your affections these days. Drop it, will you?”
He knew that tone of voice—the verbal equivalent of a brick wall. “Okay, but I’ve got dinner for two at the Chart House riding on you.” Brent leaned back on the edge of his desk. “I’d appreciate a rundown of what you and the commissioner come up with. Whether you go to LA officially or not, I can arrange some backup.”
“We’ll touch base tomorrow.”
“And, Captain,” Brent added before Jed made it to the door. “Do me a favor and let them bribe you back, okay? I can make you a list of the things we could use around here.”
Brent grinned and settled down to fantasize about breaking the news to Goldman.
It was nearly midnight when Dora gave up the attempt to sleep and bundled into her robe. An ordinary case of insomnia. It wasn’t because Jed hadn’t come home, or called.
And things were really bad, she admitted, when she started lying to herself.
She switched on the stereo, but Bonnie Raitt’s sultry blues seemed entirely too appropriate, so she turned it off again. Wandering into the kitchen, she put the kettle on to boil.
How could she have blown it like this? she wondered as she debated without interest between Lemon Lift and chamomile. Hadn’t she known that a man would head for the hills when he heard those three fateful words? Nope. She tossed a tea bag into a cup. She hadn’t known because she’d never said them before. And now that she was in the real show, she’d rushed her cue.
Well, it couldn’t be taken back, she decided. And she was sorry she and Jed hadn’t read the same script.
He hadn’t echoed the words back, or swept her up in delight. He had systematically and subtly withdrawn, inch by inch, since that fateful moment some thirty-six hours earlier. And she was very much afraid he would continue to withdraw until he had faded completely away.
Couldn’t be helped. She poured the hot water into the cup and let the tea steep while she rummaged for cookies. She couldn’t force him to let her show him what it could be like to give and take love. She could only keep he
r promise and not throw it in his face again. However much that hurt.
And she had some pride left—Bonnie Raitt was wrong about that, she thought. Love did have pride. She was going to pull herself together and get on with her life—with him, she hoped. Without him, if necessary. She figured she could start now by going downstairs and putting her wide-awake brain to work.
Carrying her tea, she headed out, remembering at the last minute to slip her keys into her robe pocket and lock the door behind her. She hated that, that sensation of not being completely safe in her own home. Because of it, she felt compelled to switch on lights as she went.
Once settled in the storeroom, she picked up the tedious task of continuing the reorganization of the files DiCarlo had upended.
As always, the steady work and the quiet relaxed and absorbed her. She enjoyed putting the proper thing in the proper place, and pausing occasionally to study a receipt and remember the thrill of the sale.
A paperweight commemorating the New York World’s Fair, at $40. A marquetry toilet mirror, at $3,000. Three advertising signs, Brasso, Olympic ale and Players cigarettes, at $190, $27 and $185, respectively.
Jed stood midway down the stairs watching her. She’d set all the lights burning, like a child left home alone at night. She was wearing the green robe and an enormous pair of purple socks. Each time she leaned down to read a piece of paper, her hair fell softly over her cheek and curtained her face. Then she would push it back, the movement fluid and unstudied, before she filed the paper away and reached for another.
His heart rate, which had spiked when he’d seen the hallway door open, settled comfortably. Even with the desire that seemed to nag him whenever she was close, he was always comfortable looking at her.
He’d already settled his weapon back under his jacket when she turned.
She caught a glimpse of a figure and stumbled back. Papers went flying as she choked on a scream.