by Nora Roberts
“Zoe.”
The sponge she’d been using to spread the grout fell on the tiles with a plop.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” Brad stayed in the doorway, one shoulder resting on the jamb. As he’d been standing for the last several minutes, watching her.
A lot going on inside that head, he knew. He’d seen all of it run over her face.
“No, that’s okay.” She bent back to the work. “I’m nearly finished here.”
“The rest of the crew’s about to break for lunch.”
“Okay. I’ll be down as soon as I’m done. It’ll give the grout a chance to dry.”
He waited until she’d worked her way over, was half in, half out of the doorway. Then he crouched. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
Her hand hesitated, then picked up the rhythm again. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve spent enough time looking at you to know when something’s going on inside. Tell me what happened since yesterday, Zoe.”
“I will.” She put the sponge in the bucket she’d set just outside the room. “But not just you.”
“Did he hurt you?” He grabbed her hand, used his free one to tilt her face around.
“No. Let go. My hands are all covered with grout.”
“But he did something.” His tone had chilled, the way it did when he was chaining down temper. “Why haven’t you said anything?”
“I just wanted some time to think about it, work some of it out, that’s all. It’ll be easier for me to tell everybody about it all at once.” His hand was still cupping her cheek. And his face was very close. “It’d be easier for me, too, if you wouldn’t touch me that way right now.”
“Right now?” He trailed his fingers back to the nape of her neck. “Or ever?”
She wanted to stretch into that hand and purr. “Let’s start with now.”
She started to push to her feet, but he was already up, her hand still caught in his as he drew her up beside him. “Just tell me this—Simon’s okay?”
She could fight attraction. She could even fight the sexual buzz. But she was going to have a very hard time fighting his obvious and deep concern for her son.
“Yes. He’s fine. He really wanted to come today. He likes being with you—with all of you,” she added quickly. “But I didn’t want to talk about this in front of him. At least, not yet.”
“Then let’s go down and talk about it, and I’ll come by and see him later this week.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I like being with him, too. With both of you.” He brushed the side of her throat, her shoulder. “Maybe you could invite me to dinner again.”
“Well, I . . .”
“Tomorrow. How about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow? We’re just having spaghetti.”
“Great. I’ll bring some wine.” Obviously considering the matter settled, he tugged her out of the doorway. “We’d better go down and clean up.”
She wasn’t sure when she’d lost her footing, or why it seemed so impossible to refuse. He’d boxed her in, Zoe realized as she scrubbed up for lunch. There was no question about that, but he’d done it so neatly the lid was on before she’d seen it coming.
Besides, that was tomorrow. She had enough to worry about today without getting worked up about a plate of spaghetti.
It might have been a work in progress, but the kitchen was the best gathering place. A sheet of plywood on two sawhorses served as a table, and there were buckets and ladders for chairs.
Dana scooted a bucket over to her. “Is that peanut butter and jelly?” she demanded, eyeing the sandwich Zoe had unwrapped. “Chunky peanut butter and grape jelly?”
“Yeah.” Zoe started to lift one of the triangular halves to her mouth, and noted Dana practically salivating for it. “You want it?”
“It’s been much too long since I had a good pb and j. Half of yours for half my ham and swiss on rye.”
They made the exchange, then Dana took a test bite. “Excellent,” she said around a mouthful. “Nobody makes these like a mom. So, are you going to tell us what’s going on, or do you want to eat first?”
Zoe glanced up, then shifted her gaze around the room. Everyone was watching her. Waiting. “Am I wearing a sign?”
“Might as well be.” Malory dipped a spoon into her carton of yogurt. “You looked upset when you came in this morning, but more like you were trying not to look upset. Then you shot straight upstairs. Plus you haven’t said anything about how the kitchen looks now that it’s painted.”
“It looks great. I meant to tell you.” Never easy with being the center of attention, Zoe tore her half sandwich in two. “And I wanted to wait until everybody was taking a break before telling you what happened last night.”
“We’re taking a break now.” Dana rubbed a hand over Zoe’s thigh. “What gives?”
She took her time in the telling, wanting to make it clear, wanting to be sure she didn’t leave out any details. “It was different than it was with you. With everybody here who’s had an experience with Kane. Even different than what happened to us here in the house, the first month.”
“Did you know it was him?” Jordan asked her.
“That’s the thing. I never stayed in any one of the three . . . places”—she supposed she should call them that—“long enough to feel it. And I don’t think I pulled myself out, the way some of you were able to. There wasn’t time for that. It was more like being somewhere, then closing your eyes for a second and being somewhere else.”
“Let’s take them one at a time.” Flynn had already pulled out a notebook. “Swinging in a hammock.” He tapped the page. “Were you in your yard?”
“No. I don’t have a hammock. I’ve never actually lain around in a hammock in the shade with a pitcher of lemonade and a book. Who has the time? It’d be nice, and I was thinking about not having much breathing room over the next few weeks, then, pop, I’m swinging in a hammock and drinking lemonade.”
She frowned, and didn’t notice the narrowed look from Brad. “I don’t know where I was. I don’t think it mattered, that’s what I’ve figured out thinking it over. It didn’t matter where the stupid hammock was, it was just symbolic of having nothing to do for an afternoon. Or, I guess, as long as I wanted to have nothing to do.”
“I think you’re right,” Malory agreed. “He clicks into fantasies, lets us get a look at them, experience them. Mine, being an artist and married to Flynn. The perfect house, the perfect life.” She gestured across the table. “Dana’s, being alone on a tropical island without a care in the world. And for you, a lazy afternoon.”
“Pretty pitiful fantasy, compared to yours.” But Zoe smiled, relieved that her conclusion seemed valid.
“But he yanked you out of it, instead of giving you time to wallow,” Jordan pointed out. “Maybe he didn’t want to give you the chance to see it as false. Just give you a quick taste, then move on. A new strategy.”
“I think that’s part of it. But, well, take the second part. That was my mother’s trailer, and God knows I swept up plenty in there. I recognized the way it looked, smelled, the way my brother and sister were arguing outside. But I don’t know how old I was. Was I the way I am now? Was I a kid? Somewhere between?”
Thoughtfully, she shook her head. “What I mean is, I didn’t get a sense of myself, just the heat and the fatigue and the annoyance of it all. I just felt like this is all I ever do, clean up around this place, mind the children, and I’m so tired of it. I felt, you could say, particularly put upon and bitchy. I think it’s sort of symbolic, too.”
“Being trapped in a loop,” Brad supplied. “Always doing what needs to be done, and for somebody else, and never seeing an end to it.”
“Yes. Mama did her best, and she needed me to help out. But you get to feeling trapped. You get so you feel it’s not going to get any better, no matter what you do.”
“So you can lie around in a hammock and enjoy life, or you ca
n sweat and run the same loop over and over.” Dana pursed her lips as she considered. “But those aren’t the only choices. It’s not that cut and dried. You’ve proven that yourself.”
“Some people might look at my life and think I’m just running a different loop now. I don’t feel like that, but it could seem that way. Then there’s the third part.”
“He wanted to scare you,” Malory said.
“Oh, yeah, and boy, mission accomplished. It was cold, and I was alone. It wasn’t one of those pretty wonderland snows. It was vicious and mean, the kind that kills you. And I was so tired, the baby so heavy inside me. I just wanted to lie down somewhere and rest, but I knew I couldn’t. I’d die if I did, and if I died, the baby died.”
Unconsciously, she pressed a hand to her belly, as if to protect what had lived there.
“Then the contractions. I knew what they were, you remember that pretty quick. But this was meaner, it wasn’t progress. The way labor pains are. It was an ending, an ending with all that blood on the snow.”
“He wanted to threaten you, through Simon.” Flynn’s face hardened. “It’s not going to happen. We’re not going to let him.”
“I think that’s part of it. Trying to scare me, using Simon to do it. And I think that’s one of the reasons he yanked me out of the last one, too, and told me to choose. I can tell you, as soon as I came back, saw Moe standing there growling, I was up and in Simon’s room like a shot.”
And shaking like a leaf, she remembered now. “But he was just all sprawled out the way he gets, one leg hanging off the bed and the blankets all wrapped around the other. I swear, that boy can’t be still even when he’s sleeping.”
“He was using Simon as another symbol.” Brad poured coffee, and since she hadn’t taken any for herself as yet, handed a mug to her.
Her gaze met his as she nodded, as the fear fluttered at the base of her throat. “That’s what I worked out of it, too.”
“A symbol for what?” Dana demanded. “Her life?”
“Her life, yeah,” Brad replied. “And her soul. Choose. Comfort, tedium, or the loss of everything she is. He threw down the gauntlet.”
“He did. But I think—I wonder if he doesn’t know Simon’s safe. Maybe he can’t see that he’s protected and that it won’t do him any good to try to threaten me that way.”
“You could be right. But,” Brad continued, “I’d say he’ll find out soon enough, then look for something else to use on you.”
“As long as it’s not my baby. Anyway, what happened made me think harder about the clue. It pissed me off,” she said with a quick laugh. “So I spent more time trying to work it out. I had this idea that maybe the Valley’s like my forest. The different things I’ve done or selected are like the paths.”
“Not bad,” Dana told her.
“It was something to work on. I took an hour early this morning and drove around, sort of tripping down memory lane. Trying to see it the way I did when I first came, and track how things changed for me.”
“Or how you changed them,” Brad put in.
“Yes.” Pleased, she gave him one of her rare smiles. “I don’t know if it’s the right direction, but I’m putting together places and, well, events, I guess, that seem important to me personally. If I gather them up in my head maybe one will stand out. If I start heading the right way, it seems to me Kane won’t like it. Then I’ll know.”
IT was hard to imagine herself in a pitched battle with anyone, much less a sorcerer. But she wasn’t going to back down at the first punch. If there was one thing she knew how to do, Zoe determined, it was how to stick it out.
Maybe she wouldn’t find the key, but it wouldn’t be because she hadn’t looked.
She spent Sunday evening plowing through notes, scanning the books they’d collected on Celtic myths, and tiptoeing her way around the Internet on the laptop Flynn lent her.
She didn’t know if she learned anything new, but the exercise helped line up what she did know.
The key, wherever it was, would be personal to her. It would relate to her life, or to what she wanted out of life. And in the end, it would come down to a choice. Though her friends, one or all of them, might be connected to it, she would be the only one able to make the choice.
So what did she want? Zoe asked herself as she prepared for bed. An afternoon in a hammock? Sometimes it was just as simple as that. To know she’d shoved her way out of the door of that trailer and moved on? No question about that. And that she’d found her way out of that terrifying forest, and given her child not only life but a good life.
She needed to know those things, and to know that she would keep building that life for Simon, and herself. She needed Indulgence to be a success. That was partly pride.
Her mother had always said she was too proud.
Maybe she had been, and maybe that pride had made things harder than they might have been. But it had also carried her through the hard times.
She hadn’t gotten everything she’d dreamed of, but what she had would do just fine.
She turned off the light. If there was a pang that there was no one there, in the dark, she could turn to, there was the satisfaction, even the pride, of knowing she could always rely on herself.
SHE was working upstairs at Indulgence the next day, screwing the hardware onto her completed stations, when she heard the shouts from below. Excited shouts, she noted immediately, not distressed ones. So she finished the station she was working on before going down to see what was causing the commotion.
Following the voices, she walked into Dana’s section, then let out a shout of her own when she saw the book display rack lining one wall and the two huge cartons in the middle of the floor.
“They came! Your shelves came. Oh, they look great. You were right to go with these. They look so good with your colors.”
“They do, don’t they? I’ve got the diagram I worked out, the one I changed six dozen times. But I’m wondering if I should switch the kids’ section with the nonfiction.”
“Why don’t we just open the next one, put it where you have it planned, then see?” Malory wielded her box cutter.
The deliveryman wheeled in the next carton. “Lady, where do you want this one?”
“Oh, God,” was all Dana could manage.
“Just leave it here,” Zoe told him. “We’ll figure it out. How many did you get?” she asked Dana.
“A lot. Maybe too many, but I wanted to be sure I could showcase everything the way I had in my head. But now . . . Jesus, my heart’s pounding. Is it excitement? Is it terror? You be the judge.”
“It’s excitement.” Gleefully, Malory ripped open another carton. “Come on, let’s get this one set up, too. Let’s get them all set up, then you’ll see how wonderful it is.”
“It’s real,” Dana murmured as yet another carton was wheeled in. “It’s really real. It’s not just going to be empty rooms now.”
“Shelves, books, tables, chairs.” Zoe tore cardboard away. “In a few weeks we’ll sit down in here and have our first cup of tea.”
“Yeah.” Bracing herself, Dana helped them move the next section into place. “Then we’ll wander over and admire all the pretty things in Malory’s gallery.”
“And finish it off with a tour of Zoe’s salon.” Malory stepped back. “Look what we’ve done already. Can you get over what we’ve done?”
Zoe looked at the next carton to come in. “Right now, I can’t get over what we’re about to do. Get that box cutter going, Mal. We’ve got work to do.”
They were still carrying bookcases when the next delivery truck pulled up.
“It’s from HomeMakers.” Malory looked back at them from the window. “Are we expecting a delivery from HomeMakers today?”
“We’ve got some things on order,” Zoe told her. “I didn’t think any of it was in yet. I’ll go check.”
She went to the front door and met the driver on the porch. “This Indulgence?” he asked her.
Hearing someone else say the name made her feel so good inside. “It will be.”
“Got some windows on the truck.” He handed her the invoice to check. “Got a list here, which one’s we’re replacing. If that’s right, we’ll get started. We’ll have them in for you today.”
“In? We didn’t order installation, just the windows.”
“Installation comes along with them. Got a note here.” He dug into his pocket. “From Mr. Vane for a Ms. McCourt.”
“I’m Ms. McCourt.” Frowning, she took the envelope, ripped it open. Inside was a single sheet of letterhead, with a single line of message.
Don’t argue.
She opened her mouth, shut it again, then looked back at the driver. She saw two other men now, getting out of the truck to lean against the hood.
“Mr. Vane, he said you should give him a call if there was any trouble with this. You want us to get started, or you want us to wait?”
“No. No, go ahead and get started. Thank you.”
She walked back inside, rubbing the back of her neck as she watched Dana and Malory set another section in place. “The replacement windows are here.”
“That’s great. Maybe we should angle this,” Dana suggested.
“There’s a crew here to install them,” Zoe continued. “Bradley—HomeMakers—included installation.”
“Brad’s such a sweetie,” Malory commented.
“Pays to know the owner.” Dana stepped back, shook her head. “No, let’s keep this one flush.”
Unsettled, Zoe nudged a sheet of cardboard with her toe. “Don’t you think we should pay for it?”
“Gift horse, Zoe.” Huffing a bit, Dana muscled the shelf into position. “I’d rather kiss it on the lips than look it in the mouth.” She glanced back, added a quick leer. “Of course, this particular horse would rather you be the one giving out the smoochies.”
“He’s coming to dinner tonight.”
“Good. Give him a big, wet one.”