A Will And A Way

by Nora Roberts

  She was more generous than he’d imagined, less inhibited, more open. She didn’t ask to be coaxed, she didn’t pretend to need persuasion. She ran her hands over him with equal curiosity. Her mouth took from him and gave again. When his lips parted from hers, her eyes were on him, clouded with desire, dark with amusement of a shared joke. They were together, Michael thought as he buried his face in her hair. About to become lovers. The joke was on both of them.

  Her hands were steady when she pulled his sweatshirt over his head, steady still as she ran them over his chest. Her pulse wasn’t. She’d avoided this, refused this. Now she was accepting it though she knew there would be consequences she couldn’t anticipate.

  The fire crackled steadily. The soft light glowed. Consequences were for more practical times.

  Her skin slid over his with each movement. Each movement enticed. With his heartbeat beginning to hammer in his head, he journeyed lower. With openmouthed kisses he learned her body in a way he’d only been able to imagine. Her scent was everywhere, subtle at the curve of her waist, stronger at the gentle underside of her breasts. He drew it in and let it swim in his head.

  He felt the instant her lazy enjoyment darkened with power. When her breath caught on a moan, he took her deeper. They reached a point where he no longer knew what they did to each other, only that strength met need and need became desperation.

  His skin was damp. She tasted the moistness of it and craved more. So this was passion. This was the trembling, churning hunger men and women longed for. She’d never wanted it. That’s what she told herself as her body shuddered. Pleasure and pain mixed, needs and fears tangled. Her mind was as swamped with sensations as her flesh—heat and light, ecstasy and terror. The vulnerability overwhelmed her though her body arched taut and her hands clung. No one had ever brushed back her defenses so effortlessly and taken. Taken and taken.

  Breathless and desperate, she dragged his mouth back to hers. They rolled over the bed, rough, racing. Neither had had enough. While she tugged and pulled at his jeans, Michael drove her higher. He’d wanted the madness, for himself and for her. Now he felt the wild strength pouring out of her. No thought here, no logic. He rolled on top of her again, reveling in her frantic breathing.

  She curled around him, legs and arms. When he plunged into her, they watched the astonishment on each other’s faces. Not like this—it had never been like this. They’d come home. But home, each discovered, wasn’t always a peaceful place.

  There was silence, stunned, awkward silence. They lay tangled in the covers as the log Michael had set to fire broke apart and showered sparks against the screen. They knew each other well, too well to speak of what had happened just yet. So they lay in silence as their skin cooled and their pulses leveled. Michael shifted to pull the spread up over them both.

  “Merry Christmas,” he murmured.

  With a sound that was both sigh and laugh, Pandora settled beside him.

  Chapter Eight

  They left the Folley in the hard morning light the day after Christmas. Sun glared off snow, melting it at the edges and forming icicles down branches and eaves. It was a postcard with biting wind.

  After a short tussle they’d agreed that Pandora would drive into the city and Michael would drive back. He pushed his seat back to the limit and managed to stretch out his legs. She maneuvered carefully down the slushy mountain road that led from the Folley. They didn’t speak until she’d reached clear highway.

  “What if they don’t let us in?”

  “Why shouldn’t they?” Preferring driving to sitting, Michael shifted in his seat. For the first time he was impatient with the miles of road between the Folley and New York.

  “Isn’t that like counting your chickens?” Pandora turned the heat down a notch and loosened the buttons of her coat. “We don’t own the place yet.”

  “Just a technicality.”

  “Always cocky.”

  “You always look at the negative angles.”

  “Someone has to.”

  “Look…” He started to toss back something critical, then noticed how tightly she gripped the wheel. All nerves, he mused. Though the scenery was a print by Currier and Ives, it wasn’t entirely possible to pretend they were off on a holiday jaunt. He was running on nerves himself, and they didn’t all have to do with doctored champagne. How would he have guessed he’d wake up beside her in the cool light of dawn and feel so involved? So responsible. So hungry.

  He took a deep breath and watched the scenery for another moment. “Look,” he began again in a lighter tone. “We may not own the lab or anything else at the moment, but we’re still Jolley’s family. Why should a lab technician refuse to do a little analysis?”

  “I suppose we’ll find out when we get there.” She drove another ten miles in silence. “Michael, what difference is an analysis going to make?”

  “I have this odd sort of curiosity. I like to know if someone’s tried to poison me.”

  “So we’ll know if, and we’ll know why. We still won’t know who.”

  “That’s the next step.” He glanced over. “We can invite them all to Folley for New Year’s and take turns grilling them.”

  “Now you’re making fun of me.”

  “No, actually, I’d thought of it. I just figure the time’s not quite right.” He waited a few minutes. In thin leather gloves, her fingers curled and uncurled on the wheel. “Pandora, why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?”

  “Nothing is.” Everything was. She hadn’t been able to think straight for twenty-four hours.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing other than wondering if someone wants to kill me.” She tossed it off arrogantly. “Isn’t that enough?”

  He heard the edge under the sarcasm. “Is that why you hid in your room all day yesterday.”

  “I wasn’t hiding.” She had enough pride to sound brittle. “I was tending to Bruno. And I was tired.”

  “You hardly ate any of that enormous goose Sweeney slaved over.”

  “I’m not terribly fond of goose.”

  “I’ve had Christmas dinner with you before,” he corrected. “You eat like a horse.”

  “How gallant of you to point it out.” For no particular reason, she switched lanes, pumped the gas and passed another car. “Let’s just say I wasn’t in the mood.”

  “How did you manage to talk yourself into disliking what happened between us so quickly?” It hurt. He felt the hurt, but it didn’t mean he had to let it show. His voice, as hers had been, was cool and hard.

  “I haven’t. That’s absurd.” Dislike? She hadn’t been able to think of anything else, feel anything else. It scared her to death. “We slept together.” She managed to toss it off with a shrug. “I suppose we both knew we would sooner or later.”

  He’d told himself precisely the same thing. He’d lost count of the number of times. He’d yet to figure out when he’d stopped believing. For himself. “And that’s it?”

  The question was deadly calm, but she was too preoccupied with her own nerves to notice. “What else?” She had to stop dwelling on a moment of impulse. Didn’t she? She couldn’t go on letting her common sense be overrun by an attraction that would lead nowhere. Could she? “Michael, there’s no use blowing what happened out of proportion.”

  “Just what is that proportion?”

  The car felt stuffy and close. Pandora switched off the heat and concentrated on the road. “We’re two adults,” she began, but had to swallow twice.

  “And?”

  “Dammit, Michael, I don’t have to spell it out.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “We’re two adults,” she said again, but with temper replacing nerves. “We have normal adult needs. We slept together and satisfied them.”

  “How practical.”

  “I am practical.” Abruptly, and very badly, she wanted to weep. “Much too practical to weave fantasies about a man who likes his women in six packs. Too practical,” she we
nt on, voice rising, “to picture myself emotionally involved with a man I spent one night with. And too practical to romanticize what was no more than an exchange of normal and basic lust.”

  “Pull over.”

  “I will not.”

  “Pull over to the shoulder, Pandora, or I’ll do it for you.”

  She gritted her teeth and debated calling his bluff. There was just enough traffic on the road to force her hand. With only a slight squeal of tires, Pandora pulled off to the side of the road. Michael turned off the key then grabbed her by the lapels and pulled her half into his seat. Before she could struggle away, he closed his mouth over hers.

  Heat, anger, passion. They seemed to twist together into one emotion. He held her there as cars whizzed by, shaking the windows. She infuriated him, she aroused him, she hurt him. In Michael’s opinion, it was too much for one man to take from one woman. As abruptly as he’d grabbed her, he released her.

  “Make something practical out of that,” he challenged.

  Breathless, Pandora struggled back into her own seat. In a furious gesture, she turned the key, gunning the motor. “Idiot.”

  “Yeah.” He sat back as she pulled back onto the highway. “We finally agree on something.”

  It was a long ride into the city. Longer still when you sat in a car in tense silence. Once they entered Manhattan, Pandora was forced to follow Michael’s directions to the lab.

  “How do you know where it is?” she demanded after they left the car in a parking garage. The sidewalk was mobbed with people hurrying to exchange what had been brightly boxed and wrapped the day before. As they walked, Pandora held her coat closed against the wind.

  “I looked the address up in Jolley’s files yesterday.” Michael walked the half block hatless, his coat flapping open, clutching the box with the champagne under one arm. He wasn’t immune to the cold but found it a relief after the hot tension of the drive. With a brisk gesture to Pandora, he pushed through revolving doors and entered the lobby of a steel-and-glass building. “He owned the whole place.”

  Pandora looked across the marble floor. It sloped upward and widened into a crowded, bustling area with men and women carrying briefcases. “This whole place?”

  “All seventy-two floors.”

  It hit her again just how complicated the estate was. How many companies operated in the building? How many people worked there? How could she possibly crowd her life with this kind of responsibility? If she could get her hands on Uncle Jolley—Pandora broke off, almost amused. How he must be enjoying this, she thought.

  “What am I supposed to do with seventy-two floors in midtown?”

  “There are plenty of people to do it for you.” Michael gave their names to the guard at the elevators. With no delay, they were riding to the fortieth floor.

  “So there are people to do it for us. Who keeps track of them?”

  “Accountants, lawyers, managers. It’s a matter of hiring people to look after people you hire.”

  “That certainly clears that up.”

  “If you’re worried, think about Jolley. Having a fortune didn’t seem to keep him from enjoying himself. For the most part, he looked at the whole business as a kind of hobby.”

  Pandora watched the numbers above the door. “A hobby.”

  “Everyone should have a hobby.”

  “Tennis is a hobby,” she muttered.

  “The trick is to keep the ball moving. Jolley tossed it in our court, Pandora.”

  She folded her arms. “I’m not ready to be grateful for that.”

  “Look at it this way then.” He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “You don’t have to know how to build a car to own one. You just have to drive steady and follow the signs. If Jolley didn’t think we could follow the signs, he wouldn’t have given us the keys.”

  It helped to look at it that way. Still it was odd to consider she was riding on an elevator she would own when the six months were up. “Do we know whom to go to?” Pandora glanced at the box Michael held, which contained the bottle of champagne.

  “A man named Silas Lockworth seems to be in charge.”

  “You did your homework.”

  “Let’s hope it pays off.”

  When the elevator stopped, they walked into the reception area for Sanfield Laboratories. The carpet was pale rose, the walls lacquered in cream. Two huge split-leaf philodendrons flanked the wide glass doors that slid open at their approach. A woman behind a gleaming desk folded her hands and smiled.

  “Good morning. May I help you?”

  Michael glanced at the computer terminal resting on an extension of her desk. Top of the line. “We’d like to see Mr. Lockworth.”

  “Mr. Lockworth’s in a meeting. If I could have your names, perhaps his assistant can help you.”

  “I’m Michael Donahue. This is Pandora McVie.”

  “McVie?”

  Pandora saw the receptionist’s eyebrows raise. “Yes, Maximillian McVie was our uncle.”

  Already polite and efficient, the receptionist became gracious. “I’m sure Mr. Lockworth would have greeted you himself if we’d known you were coming. Please have a seat. I’ll ring through.”

  It took under five minutes.

  The man who strode out into reception didn’t look like Pandora’s conception of a technician or scientist. He was six-three, lean as a gymnast with blond hair brushed back from a tanned, lantern-jawed face. He looked, Pandora thought, more like a man who’d be at home on the range than in a lab with test tubes.

  “Ms. McVie.” He walked with an easy rolling gait, hand outstretched. “Mr. Donahue. I’m Silas Lockworth. Your uncle was a good friend.”

  “Thank you.” Michael accepted the handshake. “I apologize for dropping in unannounced.”

  “No need for that.” Lockworth’s smile seemed to mean it. “We never knew when Jolley was going to drop in on us. Let’s go back to my office.”

  He led them down the corridor. Lockworth’s office was the next surprise. It was plush enough, with curvy chairs and clever lithographs, to make you think of a corporate executive. The desk was piled high with enough files and papers to make you think of a harried clerk. It carried the scent from the dozens of leather-bound books on a floor-to-ceiling shelf. Built into one wall was a round aquarium teeming with exotic fish.

  “Would you like coffee? I can guarantee it’s hot and strong.”

  “No.” Pandora was already twisting her gloves in her hands. “Thank you. We don’t want to take too much of your time.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Lockworth assured her. “Jolley certainly spoke often of both of you,” Lockworth went on as he gestured to chairs. “There was never a doubt you were his favorites.”

  “And he was ours,” Pandora returned.

  “Still you didn’t come to pass the time.” Lockworth leaned back on his desk. “What can I do for you?”

  “We have something we’d like analyzed,” Michael began. “Quickly and quietly.”

  “I see.” Silas stopped there, brow raised. Lockworth was a man who picked up impressions of people right away. In Pandora he saw nerves under a sheen of politeness. In Michael he saw violence, not so much buried as thinly coated. He thought he detected a bond between them though they hadn’t so much as looked at each other since entering the room.

  Lockworth could have refused. His staff was slimmed down during the holidays, and work was backlogged. He was under no obligation to either of them yet. But he never forgot his obligation to Jolley McVie. “We’ll try to accommodate you.”

  In silence, Michael opened the box and drew out the bottle of champagne. “We need a report on the contents of this bottle. A confidential report. Today.”

  Lockworth took it and examined the label. His lips curved slightly. “Seventy-two. A good year. Were you thinking of starting a vineyard?”

  “We need to know what’s in there other than champagne.”

  Rather than showing surprise, Lockworth leaned back on
the desk again. “You’ve reason to think there is?”

  Michael met the look. “We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  Lockworth only inclined his head. “All right. I’ll run it through the lab myself.”

  With a quick scowl for Michael’s manners, Pandora rose and offered her hand. “We appreciate the trouble, Mr. Lockworth. I’m sure you have a great many other things to do, but the results are important to Michael and me.”

  “No problem.” He decided he’d find out why it was important after he’d analyzed the wine. “There’s a coffee shop for the staff. I’ll show you where it is. You can wait for me there.”

  “There was absolutely no reason to be rude.” Pandora settled herself at a table and looked at a surprisingly varied menu.

  “I wasn’t rude.”

  “Of course you were. Mr. Lockworth was going out of his way to be friendly, and you had a chip on your shoulder. I think I’m going to have the shrimp salad.”

  “I don’t have a chip on my shoulder. I was being cautious. Or maybe you think we should spill everything to a total stranger.”

  Pandora folded her hands and smiled at the waitress. “I’d like the shrimp salad and coffee.”

  “Two coffees,” Michael muttered. “And the turkey platter.”

  “I’ve no intention of spilling, as you put it, everything to a total stranger.” Pandora picked up her napkin. “However, if we weren’t going to trust Lockworth, we’d have been better off to buy a chemistry set and try to handle it ourselves.”

  “Drink your coffee,” Michael muttered, and picked up his own the moment the waitress served it.

  Pandora frowned as she added cream. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.”

  “He didn’t look like one, either, did he?”

  “Bronc rider.” Michael sipped his black coffee and found it as strong as Lockworth had promised.