by Nora Roberts
“How do you know I don’t already have a date for Saturday night?”
He grinned at her. “I asked Flynn if you were seeing anybody. I know how to do my research, Stretch.”
“Flynn doesn’t know everything,” she retorted as Jordan strolled away. “Wait just a damn minute.” She rushed out into the living room, caught up with him at the door. “There are some basic requirements. The meal’s in an actual restaurant. No fast food, and not the Main Street Diner. And when you say you’ll pick me up at seven-thirty, that doesn’t mean you get here at seven-forty-five.”
“Agreed.” He paused. “I know there’s no point in asking if you want me to stay, bunk on the couch. But you could call Malory, and I could hang out until she got here.”
“I’m okay.”
“You always were, Stretch. See you.”
Thoughtfully, she locked the door behind him before wandering back to the kitchen to pour the warm beer down the sink. It seemed to be her night to waste beer.
She didn’t know if any of it brought her closer to the key, but she’d certainly learned some new things this evening. Kane already knew she was searching for the second key, and hadn’t wasted any time putting the whammy on her. He’d wanted her to know he was watching.
And didn’t that mean he was worried that she had a good chance of succeeding?
Yeah, that made sense. Malory had shut him down once. So maybe he would be less cocky this time up. And more vicious, she mused.
She’d learned that Jordan still had that core of decency that had always attracted her. She’d been scared, nearly ill with fear, and he’d given her exactly what she needed to find her feet again without making her feel foolish or weak.
She had to give him credit for that.
More, she admitted as she went to clean up the mess she’d left in the bathroom, she had to give him credit for being honest enough to say he’d been selfish.
She could still hate him for it, but she had to respect the fact that he acknowledged it.
She had to bear down hard just to cross the threshold into the bathroom. It gave her the willies to see the book still floating, bloated with water, in the tub.
It was symbolic, she thought, that he’d invaded this most personal of rooms. It told her there was no place that she would be completely safe until the key was found or the month was over.
She pulled the plug, watched the water begin to drain.
“Just have to deal,” she ordered. “And it won’t be so easy to scare me next time. I’ll deal with you. With Jordan. With myself. Because I learned one more thing tonight. Goddamn it, I’m still in love with the jerk.”
It didn’t make her feel any better to say it out loud, but it did help to put her bathroom to rights again. Her apartment, her things, her life, she thought as she went into the bedroom.
As far as Jordan was concerned, it was much more likely that it was the memory she still loved. The boy, the young, wounded man who’d been her first love. Didn’t every woman have a soft spot for her first true love?
She settled on the bed, took her bed book out of the nightstand drawer. The paperback she kept there was only a front. The one she opened was Cold Case, by Jordan Hawke.
Wouldn’t he crow if he knew she was reading his latest book? Worse, if he knew she was enjoying every damn word.
Maybe she was still in love with the memory of the boy, but she would rather eat live slugs than have the man discover that she’d read every one of his books.
Twice.
Chapter Six
THEY started work on the porch, taking advantage of the fine fall weather and Zoe’s experience.
By unanimous agreement, Dana and Malory had elected her the goddess of remodel. In their oldest clothes, and with new tools for Dana and Malory, they worked at Zoe’s direction prepping the porch for paint.
“I didn’t know it would be so much work.” Malory sat back on her heels and examined her nails. “I’ve ruined my manicure. And you just gave it to me a couple of days ago,” she reminded Zoe.
“I’ll give you another. If we don’t scrape and sand off the peeling paint, the new paint won’t stick right. It needs a good, smooth, porous surface, or we’ll be doing this again in the spring.”
“We bow to you,” Dana told Zoe, and watched her wield the little electric sander. “I always thought you just sort of slopped the paint on, then waited for it to dry.”
“That kind of thinking is why you bow to me.”
“It’s already gone to her head,” Dana grumbled and attacked curls of peeling paint with her scraper.
“I wouldn’t mind having a little crown, something delicate and tasteful.” Even as she spoke, Zoe kept one eye on her underlings. “It’s going to look great. You’ll see.”
“Why don’t you entertain us during the drudgery?” Malory suggested. “Tell us about dinner with Brad last night.”
“It was no big deal. He just played some video games with Simon, ate, then left. I shouldn’t have gotten so worked up about it. I just haven’t had a guy over in a while. And I’m not used to cooking for millionaires. I felt like I needed finger bowls or something.”
“Brad’s not like that,” Dana protested. “A guy with money can still be normal. Brad used to eat at our place all the time when we were kids. And we hardly ever used the finger bowls.”
“It’s not the same. We didn’t grow up together, for one thing. And your family and his have more in common. A hairdresser who grew up in a trailer in West Virginia doesn’t have a lot to say to the heir to an American empire.”
“You’re not being fair to him, or yourself,” Malory told her.
“Maybe not. Just realistic. Anyway, he makes me nervous. I guess it’s not only the money, really. Jordan has money, he must with all those bestsellers. But he doesn’t make me so nervous. We had a nice, easy time together when he came over and fixed my car.”
Dana lost her rhythm and ended up with a splinter in her thumb. “Your car?” Scowling, she sucked viciously at the thumb. “Jordan fixed your car?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know he used to work on cars. He really knows his way around an engine, too. He just came by the other afternoon with all these tools and said why didn’t he have a look at my car for me. It was really sweet of him.”
“He’s just a big sugar cookie,” Dana said with a smile that clamped her teeth together.
“Oh, don’t be like that, Dana.” Zoe switched off the sander, angled her head. “He didn’t have to bother, and he spent over two hours messing with it, and wouldn’t take anything but two glasses of iced tea.”
“I bet he ogled your ass when you walked in the house to get it.”
“Maybe.” Zoe worked hard to keep her face sober. “But only in a healthy, friend-of-the-family sort of way. A small price to pay for saving me another trip to the garage. And the fact is, my car hasn’t run this well since I bought it. Actually, it didn’t run this well then, either.”
“Yeah, he always was good with cars.” And generous with his time, Dana was forced to admit. “You’re right, it was considerate.”
“And sweet,” Malory added with a meaningful look at Dana.
“And sweet,” she mumbled.
“He let Simon hang around him when he got home from school, too.” Zoe flipped the sander back on, bent to her work. “It’s fun to see Simon pal around with a man. I guess I have to say Bradley was nice to Simon too, and I appreciate that.”
“So neither of them put the moves on Simon’s mother?” Dana wanted to know.
“No.” With a half laugh, Zoe scooted farther down the porch. “Of course not. Jordan was just doing a favor for a friend, and Bradley . . . it’s not like that.”
Dana’s opinion was a long hmmm as she got back to work.
By lunchtime the porch was sufficiently prepped to pass Zoe’s inspection. They gave their tired muscles a rest and sat on the sanded boards eating tuna sandwiches.
With a morning’s work behind them, the sun
bright, and the mood mellow, Dana decided it was time to tell them her experience of the night before.
“So . . . I had a little run-in with Kane last night.”
Malory choked, grabbed for her bottle of water. “What? What? We’ve been here for over three hours, and you’re just getting around to telling us that?”
“I didn’t want to start off the morning with it. I knew we’d all get freaked again.”
“You’re okay?” Zoe laid a hand on Dana’s arm. “You’re not hurt or anything?”
“No, but I’ve got to tell you, the little brush I had with him before was nothing compared to this. I knew what happened with you, Mal, but I still didn’t get it. I do now.”
“Tell us.” Malory shifted so she and Zoe flanked Dana.
It was easier this time. She was able to relate the experience more calmly and with more detail than she’d done with Jordan. Still, her voice shook at times, and she had to reach for her Thermos of coffee, sip slowly to ease her throat.
“You could’ve drowned.” Zoe put her arm around Dana’s shoulder. “In the tub.”
“I wondered about that. But I don’t think so. If he could just, well, eliminate us, why not have us walk off a cliff, or step in front of a truck? Something like that.”
“Boy, that’s really cheery.” Zoe stared out at the street, nearly winced when a car drove by. “I’m so glad you mentioned it.”
“Come on. Seriously. It seems to me he can only go so far. Like it was with Malory. It comes down to us making a choice—to reaching down inside, holding on to enough of ourselves to recognize the illusion and reject it.”
“But he hurt you just the same,” Zoe pointed out.
“Oh, man.” Remembering, Dana rubbed a hand over her heart. “I’ll say. Even if the pain was an illusion, it did the job. Worse than the pain was knowing what the pain meant, then the fear that he could take that from me.”
“You should’ve called.” There was as much exasperation as concern in Malory’s voice. “Dana, you should have called me, or Zoe. Both of us. I know what it’s like to be caught in one of those illusions. You didn’t have to be alone.”
“I wasn’t. Exactly. Afterward, I mean. I was going to call. In fact, I think I was just going to stand in the bedroom and scream for both of you, but then Jordan knocked on the door.”
“Oh.”
Dana stared at Malory. “There’s no ‘oh’ in that meaningful tone. He just happened to be there at a moment when I’d have welcomed a visit from a two-headed dwarf as long as he could chase the bogeyman away.”
“Funny coincidence, though,” Malory said with a flutter of lashes. “I mean when you figure the elements of fate and destiny and connections.”
“Look, just because you’re all mush-brained over Flynn, don’t assume the rest of the world has to fall in line. He came by, and he behaved very decently. At first.”
“Let’s hear about at second, then,” Zoe insisted.
“Unlike Brad, apparently, Jordan rarely hesitates to make his move. He cornered me in the kitchen.”
“Really?” Malory gave a sigh. “The first time Flynn kissed me was in the kitchen.”
“Anyway, I’m going out with him Saturday night.” She waited, then scowled when no one spoke. “Well?”
Zoe braced her elbow on her thigh, propped her chin on her fist. “I was just thinking that it’d be nice if the two of you could at least be friends again. And that maybe, from an entirely different perspective, becoming friends again is part of what you have to do to find the key.”
“I think I need to get into this a little more before I start multitasking. I don’t know if I can be friends with Jordan again, because . . . I’m still sort of in love with him.”
“Dana.” Malory took her hand, but Dana broke free, pushed off the steps.
“I don’t know if I’m still in love—more or less—with him him, or with the him that I fell for all that time ago. You know, like this memory of him. This image, and it’s no more than an illusion now. But I’ve got to find out, don’t I?”
“Yeah.” Zoe unwrapped the brownies she’d brought along and held one out to Dana. “You need to find out.”
“And if I am in love with him, I can get over it.” She took a huge bite of brownie. “I got over it before. If I’m not in love with him, then everything gets back to normal. Or as back to normal as possible until I find the key.”
“What about his feelings?” Malory asked her. “Aren’t they a factor?”
“He had it his way once. This time around it’s my way.” She rolled her shoulders, pleased that the weight seemed to shrug off with the statement. “Let’s paint our porch.”
WHILE they broke out brushes and rollers, Jordan relayed Dana’s experience to Flynn and Brad.
They sat in Flynn’s living room, set up as an informal think tank. Jordan paced as he spoke, and Flynn’s dog, Moe, watched every movement in hopes that Jordan might detour to the kitchen, and cookies.
Now and again, if Jordan’s direction veered closer to the doorway, Moe’s big black tail would thump in anticipation. So far it hadn’t netted him any treats, but it did get him a few rubs on the back with Flynn’s foot.
“Why the hell didn’t you bring her back here?” Flynn demanded.
“I guess I could have. If I’d knocked her unconscious and hog-tied her. This is Dana we’re talking about.”
“Okay, okay, point taken. You could’ve told me all this last night.”
“I could’ve—and you’d have rushed over there. Which would’ve annoyed her. You’d have tried to make her come here, which would have meant the two of you would’ve ended up fighting. I just figured she’d had enough for one night. Added to that, I wanted to tell you both about it at once, when Malory wasn’t around.”
“Now that we do know,” Brad put in, “what do we do about it?”
“There you go.” Jordan walked back to the couch, and burst Moe’s cookie fantasy by sitting down on the crate that served as coffee table. “We can’t get her, or any of them, out of this. Even if we could, I don’t know if we should. There’s a lot at stake.”
“Three souls,” Brad murmured. “I don’t think I’ve adjusted to that yet. Even knowing what happened with Malory, it doesn’t compute in my head. But I’ll go along with this. We can’t get them out of it. So the question comes down to two parts. What can we do to keep them safe, and how do we help them find the key?”
“We make sure none of them is alone any more than necessary,” Flynn began. “Even though we know that he got to Malory when she was with Dana and Zoe, it’s a precaution we ought to take.”
“She won’t move in here, Flynn. I offered to move out, and she still wouldn’t go for it.” Absently Jordan rubbed his chin, reminding himself that he hadn’t shaved. “But one of us could move into her place. At least stay there with her at night.”
“Oh, yeah, she’ll go for that.” Sarcasm dripped from Flynn’s voice. “The minute I say I’m going to sleep at her place, she’ll get her back up, or just brain me with the handiest blunt instrument. And she sure as hell isn’t going to let you move in with her. Or Brad either.”
“I was thinking of Moe.”
The annoyance on Flynn’s face changed to bafflement. “Moe?”
At the sound of his name, Moe leaped up happily, knocking magazines off the crate with the enthusiastic sweep of his tail before trying to climb into Flynn’s lap.
“You said Moe sensed Kane, or danger at least, when you went into the building where he’d separated Malory from Dana and Zoe.”
“Yeah.” Remembering it, Flynn rubbed Moe’s big head. “And he charged up those stairs ready to rip out throats. Didn’t you, you wild thing?”
“So, he could be a sort of early-warning system. And if he carried on the way you said he did before, he would alert the neighbors. Potentially, he could keep Dana grounded.”
“It’s a good idea,” Brad agreed, and began to pick a few of Moe’s hairs off his
trousers. “But just how are you going to talk Dana into taking Moe as a roommate?”
“I can cover that,” Flynn said smugly. “I’ll tell her I’m moving in at her place, and we’ll have the expected argument. I’ll give in, then ask her if she won’t at least compromise by taking Moe so I can sleep at night. She’ll feel sorry for me and agree so she doesn’t come off as bitchy.”
“I’ve always admired your sneaky, serpentine methods,” Brad commented.
“Just gotta keep your eye on the goal. Which brings us back to the key.”
“My schedule’s still the most flexible,” Jordan began. “I can take all the time needed to dig into this. Research, brainstorming, legwork. You’ve got your journalist’s resources,” he said to Flynn. “Plus Malory’s willing and able to work with you, and Dana and Zoe have already let you in—as far as women ever let men in—to their group. Brad’s got the HomeMakers’ advantage. He can drop by their building most anytime—How’s it going, ladies? Looks good. Can I give you a hand with that?”
“I can do that. Maybe you could casually mention to Zoe that I’m not now, nor have I ever been, an axe murderer.”
“I’ll see if I can work it into our next conversation,” Flynn promised.
IT was time, Dana told herself, to roll up her sleeves and get to work. To do something positive, something to offset the nasty seed of helplessness Kane had planted inside her.
She’d be damned if she would let it take root.
If her key was knowledge, then she’d get smart. And what better place to seek knowledge than the library?
It galled her to go back as a patron rather than an employee. But she would just swallow the bile and do the job.
She didn’t bother to go home first, to change, but in her paint-splattered clothes walked straight into what had been a key in her life.
The smell caught her instantly. Books, a world of books. But she buried the sentimentality. Inside books, she reminded herself as she headed straight to one of the computer stations, were answers.
She’d read everything available on Celtic lore and mythology, so now she would expand on that. She ran a search for titles that related to sorcery. Know your enemy, she thought. Knowledge isn’t just a defense. Knowledge is power.
Noting down her top choices, she ran other searches using what she thought of as the main code words from Rowena’s clue. Satisfied that she’d made a good start, she headed toward the stacks.
“Did you forget something?” Her irritating toothy smile in place, Sandi stepped into her path.
“I keep trying to, but it’s tough when you keep getting in my face. Fuck off, Sandi,” she said in her sweetest tone.
“We don’t appreciate that kind of language here.”
With a shrug, Dana skirted around her and kept going. “I don’t appreciate your overly rosy perfume, but there you go.”
“You don’t work here anymore.” Chasing after her, Sandi snatched at Dana’s arm.
“This is a public building, and it happens I have a library card. Now take your hand off me, or I’m going to mess up those pearly whites that your daddy probably paid a lot of money for.”
She took a deep breath to find her calm. She wanted to get her books and get the hell out. “Why don’t you run up and tell Joan I’m here, nefariously checking out library books. Unless she’s off in Oz picking on a scarecrow.”
“I can call the police.”
“Yeah, do that little thing. It’ll be interesting to see what my brother writes in the Dispatch about how card-carrying patrons are treated these days in the local library.”
She flipped a little wave at Sandi’s face and swung into the stacks. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he spells your name right.”
Bile was a little harder to swallow than she’d thought, Dana admitted as she began selecting her books. It was painful, every bit as much as it was maddening, not to be able to come here, even as a patron, without being hassled.
But she wasn’t going to be chased away by the yappy little pom-pom queen. And she wasn’t going to be frightened off by some hell-bent sorcerer.
They had a lot in common as far as she was concerned. They were both riddled with petty jealousy that lashed out and caused pain.
Jealousy, she thought, pursing her lips. It was, in a way, the opposite of love. As lies were to truth, as cowardice to valor, and so on. Another angle, she
