River's End

by Nora Roberts

  “People who love me.” She leaned back, her deep amber eyes steady on his. “I thought I could be, then I thought, Well, if I’m not, I’ll enjoy myself. I’m not a child, why shouldn’t I be one of Sam Tanner’s women if I want?”

  “Julie—”

  “No, wait.” She stepped back, lifted a hand palm out to stop him. “I’m not a child, Sam, and I can deal with reality. I only want you to be honest with me. Is that where we’re heading? To me becoming one of Sam Tanner’s women?”

  She’d accept that. He could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. The knowledge both thrilled and terrified him. He had only to say yes, take her hand, and she would go with him.

  She stood, her back to the dark sea with its white edges, the moonlight spearing down to cast their shadows on the sand. And waited.

  For the truth, he thought, and realized the truth was what he wanted for both of them.

  “Lydia and I aren’t seeing each other anymore. Haven’t been for weeks now.”

  “I know.” Julie smiled a little. “I read the gossip columns like anyone else. And I wouldn’t be here with you tonight if you were still involved with someone else.”

  “It’s over between us,” he said carefully. “It was over the first minute I saw you. Because the first minute I saw you, I stopped seeing anyone else, stopped wanting anyone else. The first minute I saw you . . .” He stepped to her, slipped the straw hat away so that her hair tumbled down. “I started falling in love with you. I still am. I don’t think I’ll ever stop.”

  Her eyes filled so that the sheen of tears sparkled like diamonds against gold. “What’s the point of being in love if you’re going to be sensible? Take me home with you tonight.”

  She stepped back into his arms, and this time the kiss was dark and edged with urgency. Then she was laughing, a quick river of delight as she grabbed the hat from him and sent it sailing over the water.

  Hands clasped again, they raced back to his car like children eager for a treat.

  With another woman he might have rushed greedily into the oblivion of movement and mating, gulping it down, taking what his body craved and seeking the brutal pleasure of release.

  With another woman he might have played the role of seducer, keeping part of himself separated, like a director orchestrating each step.

  In both of those methods were power and satisfaction.

  But with Julie he could do neither. The power was as much hers as his. Nerves hummed along his skin as they walked up the stairs in his house.

  He closed the door of the bedroom behind them. He knew pieces of Lydia were still there, though she’d been viciously methodical in removing her things—and a number of his own—when she’d moved out. But a woman never shared a man’s bed without leaving something of herself behind to force him to remember.

  He had a moment to wish he’d tossed out the bed, bought a new one, then Julie was smiling at him.

  “Yesterday doesn’t matter, Sam. Only tonight matters.” She laid her hands on his cheeks. “We’re all that matters, all that’s real. Touch me.” She whispered it as her mouth cruised over his. “I don’t want to wait any longer.”

  It all slipped into place, the nerves fading away. When he swept her up, he understood this wasn’t simply sex or need or gratification. It was romance. However many times he’d set the scene before, or had scenes set for him, he’d never believed in it.

  He laid her on the bed, covering her mouth with his as this new feeling flowed through him. Love, finally, love. Her arms, soft, smooth, wrapped around him as the kiss went deep. For a moment, it seemed his world centered there. In that mating of lips.

  He didn’t tell himself to be gentle, to move slowly. He couldn’t separate himself and direct the scene. He was lost in it, and her, the scent of her hair, the taste of her throat, the sound of her breath as it caught, released, caught again.

  He slipped the thin straps of the dress from her shoulders, urged it down, down her body as he savored that lovely mouth. She shivered when he stroked her breast, gasped when he skimmed tongue and teeth over the nipple, then moaned when he drew her deep into his mouth.

  She fit beneath him, slid against him, rose and fell with him. She said his name, only his name, and made his heart tremble.

  He touched, and took, and gave more than he’d known he had to give to a woman. Her skin dewed, adding one more flavor, her muscles quivered, adding another layer of excitement.

  He wanted to see all of her, to explore everything she had, everything she was. She was long and slender and lovely, so that even the ripple of ribs against her skin was a fascination.

  When she opened for him, rose up to meet him, he slipped into her like a sigh and watched those eyes film with tears.

  Slow, silky movement built to shudders. She cried out once, her nails biting into his hips, then again, like an echo as he poured himself into her.

  • • •

  Noah blinked his vision clear and heard only silence. The tape had run out, he realized. He stared at the machine, more than a little stunned that the images had come quite so clear. And more than a little embarrassed to find himself hard and unquestionably aroused.

  With Olivia’s face in his mind.

  “Jesus, Brady.” He picked up his wine with a hand not quite steady and took a long sip.

  It was one of the side effects of crawling inside Sam Tanner, imagining what it was like to love and be loved by a woman like Julie MacBride. Remembering what it had been like to want the daughter that love had created.

  But it was damned inconvenient when he didn’t have any outlet for the sexual frustration now kicking gleefully in his gut.

  He’d write it out, he decided. He’d finish his meal, turn on the tube for noise and write it out. Since the story had a core of possessive love and sexual obsession, he’d write in Sam’s memory of the night he and Julie had become lovers.

  Maybe it was idealized, he thought, and maybe there were times, moments, connections that produced the kinds of feelings Sam had spoken of.

  For Noah, sex had always been a delightful part of life, a kind of sport that required some basic skills, a certain amount of protection and a healthy sense of team spirit.

  But he was willing to believe that for some it could contain gilded emotions. He’d give Sam that night, and all the romantic swells that went with it. It was after all how the man remembered it—or wanted to. And the shimmering romance of it would only add impact to the murder itself.

  He booted up his laptop, poured coffee from the room-service carafe that had kept it acceptably hot. But when he rose to turn on the television, he stopped by the phone, frowned at it.

  What the hell, he thought, and going with impulse dug out the number for River’s End. Within ten minutes, he’d made reservations for the beginning of the following week.

  Sam Tanner had still not spoken of his daughter. Noah wanted to see if she would speak of him.

  He worked until two, when he surfaced briefly to stare with no comprehension whatsoever at the television where a giant lizard was kicking the stuffing out of New York.

  He watched a uniformed cop, who obviously had more balls than brains, take a few plugs at the lizard with his handgun, then get eaten alive.

  It took Noah a moment to process that he was watching an old movie and not a news bulletin. That’s when he decided his brain was fried for the night.

  There was one more chore on his agenda, and though he knew it was just a little nasty to have waited until the middle of the night to deal with it, he picked up the phone and called Mike in L.A.

  It took five rings, and the slur of sleep and bafflement in his friend’s voice gave Noah considerable satisfaction.

  “Hey. Did I wake you up?”

  “What? Noah? Where are you?”

  “San Francisco. Remember?”

  “Huh? No . . . sort of. Jesus, Noah, it’s two in the morning.”

  “No kidding?” His brows drew together as he heard another
voice, slightly muffled, definitely female. “You got a woman there, Mike?”

  “Maybe. Why?”

  “Congratulations. The blonde from the club?”

  “Ah . . . hmmmm.”

  “Okay, okay, probably not the time to go into it. I’m going to be gone at least another week. I didn’t want to call my parents and wake them up, and I’m going to be pretty busy in the morning.”

  “Oh, but it’s okay to call and wake me up?”

  “Sure—besides, now that you’re both awake, you might get another round going. Remember to thank me later.”

  “Kiss my ass.”

  “That’s gratitude for you. Since you’re so fond of calling my mother, give her a buzz tomorrow and let her know I’m on the road.”

  There were some rustling sounds, making Noah imagine Mike was finally getting around to sitting up in bed. “Listen, I just thought you needed a little . . .”

  “Interference in my life. Stop pulling on your lip, Mike,” he said mildly, knowing his friend’s nervous habits well. “I’m not pissed off, particularly, but I figure you owe me. So give my mom a call and take care of my flowers while I’m gone.”

  “I can do that. Look, give me a number where I can—whoa.”

  The low smoke of female laughter had Noah raising an eyebrow. “Later. I don’t really want to have phone sex with you and the blonde. You let my flowers die, I’ll kick your ass.”

  The response was a sharp intake of breath, a great deal of rustling and whispering. Rolling his eyes, Noah hung up on a wild burst of laughter.

  Terrific, he thought and rubbed his hands over his face. Now he had two sexual adventures in his head. He decided to take a cold shower and go to bed.

  the forest

  Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare.

  —George Meredith

  seventeen

  He was surprised he remembered it so well, in such detail, with such clarity. As he drove, Noah caught himself bracing for the sensory rush as he came around a switchback, heartbeats before his field of vision changed from thick wood and sheer rock to stunning blue sky painted with the dazzling white peaks of mountains.

  It was true that he’d driven this way once before, but he’d been only eighteen, it had been only one time. It shouldn’t have been like coming home after a trip away, like waking up after a dream.

  And it had been summer, he reminded himself, when the peaks were snowcapped, but the body of them green with the pines and firs that marched up their sides to give them the look of living, growing giants rather than the cold and still kings that reigned over the valleys.

  He’d done his research, he’d studied photographs, the brochures, the travelogues, but somehow he knew they couldn’t have prepared him for this sweep, for the contrasts of deep, silent forest and wildly regal peaks.

  He continued the climb long after he passed the turnoff for River’s End. He had time, hours if he chose, before he needed to wind his way down to the lowlands, the rain forest, the job.

  Choices again. And his was to slip into a pull-off, get out of the car and stand. The air was cold and pure. His breath puffed out, and had little knives scoring his throat on the inhale. It seemed to him that the world was spread out before him, field and valley, hill and forest, the bright ribbon of river, the flash of lake.

  Even as a car grinding into low gear passed behind him, he felt isolated. He couldn’t decide if it was a feeling he enjoyed or one that troubled him, but he stood, letting the wind slap at his jacket and sneak under to chill his body, and studied the vast blue of the sky, with the white spears of mountains vivid against it like a design etched on glass.

  He thought perhaps he’d stopped just here with his parents all those years ago, and remembered standing with his mother reading the guidebook.

  The Olympic Range. And however vast and encompassing it seemed from this point, he knew that at lower elevations, in the forest where the grand trees ruled, it didn’t exist. You would walk and walk in that dimness, or clatter up rocks on the tumbling hills and not see the stunning scope of them. Then you would take a turn, step out on a ridge, and there it would be. The vast sky-stealing stretch of it snatching your breath as if it had sneaked up on you instead of the other way around.

  Noah took one last look, climbed back in his car and started down the switchback the way he’d come.

  The trees took over. Became the world.

  The detour took him a little more than an hour, but he still arrived at the lodge by three in the afternoon. He traveled up the same bumpy lane, catching glimpses of the stone and wood, the fairy-tale rooflines, the glint of glass that was the lodge.

  He was about to tell himself it hadn’t changed, when he spotted a structure nestled in the trees. It mirrored the style and materials of the lodge, but it was much smaller and not nearly as weathered.

  The wooden sign over the double doorway read RIVER’S END NATURALIST CENTER. There was a walking path leading to it from the lane and another from the lodge. Wildflowers and ferns appeared to have been allowed to grow as they pleased around it, but his gardener’s eye detected a human hand in the balance.

  Olivia’s hand, he thought, and felt a warm and unexpected spurt of pride.

  It was undoubtedly man-made, but she had designed it to blend in so well it seemed to have grown there as naturally as the trees.

  He parked his car, noted that the lot held a respectable number of vehicles. It was warmer here than it had been at the pull off. Warm enough, he noted, to keep the pansies and purple salvia happy in their long clay troughs near the entrance.

  He swung on his backpack, took out his single suitcase and was just locking his car when a dog loped around the side of the lodge and grinned at him.

  Noah couldn’t think of another term for the expression. The dog’s tongue lolled, the lips were peeled back and seemed to curve up, and the deep brown eyes danced with unmistakable delight.

  “Hey there, fella.”

  Obviously seeing this as an invitation, the big yellow lab pranced across the lot, plopped down at Noah’s feet and lifted a paw.

  “You the welcoming committee, boy?” Obligingly, Noah shook hands, then cocked his head. “Or should I say girl. Your name wouldn’t happen to be Shirley, would it?”

  At the name, the dog let out one cheerful woof, then danced toward the entrance as if to tell Noah to come on, pal, get the lead out.

  He was charmed enough to be vaguely disappointed when the dog didn’t follow him inside.

  He didn’t see any dramatic changes in the lobby. Noah thought perhaps some of the furnishings had been replaced, and the paint was a soft, toasty yellow. But everything exuded such an aura of welcome and settled comfort that it might have been exactly so for a century.

  The check-in was quick, efficient and friendly, and after having assured the clerk he could handle his baggage himself, he carried his bags, a package of information and his key up two squat sets of stairs in the main lobby and down a hallway to the right.

  He’d requested a suite out of habit and because he preferred a separate area to set up his work. It was smaller than the rooms he remembered sharing with his parents, but certainly not cramped.

  There was a nap-taking sofa, a small but sturdy desk, a table where guides and literature on the area were fanned. The art—running to watercolor prints of local flora—was better than decent, and the phone would support his modem.

  He glanced at the view, pleased to have been given the side facing the back so it was untainted by cars. He dropped his suitcase on the chest at the foot of the sleigh bed of varnished golden wood and tossed the lid open. As his contribution to unpacking, he removed his shaving gear and dumped it on the narrow shelf over the white pedestal sink in the adjoining bath.

  He considered the shower—he’d been in the car since six A.M;and thought of the beer he might find in the lobby bar. After a mild debate he decided to take the first, then go hunt up the second.

  He stripped, letting
his clothes lay where they fell, then diddled with the controls of the shower until the water came out