by Nora Roberts
“You want to know what we are to each other?” Riled up again, Aubrey leaned on the counter. “We’re family. And if you don’t know family loves each other and sticks up for each other and worries when one of them looks to be getting in deep where he doesn’t belong, then I’m sorry for you. And if the way I look at you makes you unhappy, too bad. I’m going to keep right on looking at you, because I’m not sure you’re good for him.”
“Neither am I,” Dru said calmly and stopped Aubrey in her tracks. “There we have a point of agreement.”
“I just don’t get you,” Aubrey admitted. “But I get Seth. He already cares about you. I’ve known him . . . I don’t remember ever not knowing him, and I can see it when he’s gone soft on someone. You hurt him yesterday, and I can’t stand to see him hurting.”
Dru looked down, saw that her hands were gripping the counter. Deliberately, she relaxed them. “Let me ask you something. If you found yourself getting involved with a man—at a point in your life where it’s really the last thing you want, but it’s happening anyway—and you see that man has a relationship with another woman—a really attractive, vibrant, interesting woman—that you can’t define—all you can see is that it’s special and it’s intimate and beyond your scope—how would you feel?”
Aubrey opened her mouth, shut it again. She had to take another moment before she answered. “I don’t know. Damn it. Damn it, Dru, I love him. I love him so much that when he was in Europe it was like a piece of me was missing. But it’s not sexual or romantic or anything like that. He’s my best friend. He’s my brother. He’s my Seth.”
“I never had a best friend, or a brother. My family doesn’t have the . . . vitality of yours. Maybe that’s why it’s hard for me to understand.”
“You’d have gotten a clue if you’d seen the two of us cracking up after kissing yesterday.” Aubrey’s lips twitched. “That’s Seth for you. You planted that seed and so he worries over it, picks at it. ‘Gee, am I screwing around with her, am I messing up people I care about? How can I fix it?’ So he tracks me down and gives me the big picture, tells me he needs to kiss me—a real guy-girl smackeroo—so we can make sure there’s nothing going on in that direction.”
“Oh God.” Dru closed her eyes. “And he didn’t see that was insulting to you?”
“Nope.” Surprised, and rather pleased Dru had seen that angle, Aubrey leaned more companionably on the counter. “I didn’t let it bother me that way because he was so stupid about the whole thing, so worried and flustered. So we had our little experiment. He gets major points in the lip-lock department. He knows how to kiss.”
“Yes, he does.”
“There was relief all around because the earth did not move. It didn’t even tremble. Then we laughed ourselves silly, and we’re fine. I wasn’t going to tell you that part,” Aubrey added. “I thought letting it hang would make you suffer more. But since you said I was attractive and vibrant and interesting, I’m cutting you a break.”
“Thanks. And I’m sorry. It was beginning to . . .” Dru trailed off, shook her head. “Never mind.”
“We’ve come this far, don’t hold back now.”
She started to shake her head again, then realized that was one of her flaws. She held back. “All right. What’s happening between Seth and me was beginning to worry me a little. I had someone I cared about, very much, cheat on me. I started to see myself as that woman, with some sympathy for her position. I didn’t want to have any sympathy for her. I prefer despising her.”
“Well, sure.” Nothing could have been clearer to Aubrey’s way of thinking. “You can relax. The field’s all yours. Are we square on that?”
“Yes. Yes, we are. I appreciate your coming in to talk to me, and not punching me.”
“Punching you would’ve pissed off Seth, not to mention my parents, so it’s just as well. I guess I’d better get going.”
“Aubrey.” It was always a terrifying thing for Dru to go with impulse. “I don’t make friends easily. It’s not one of my skills. I’m terrific at making acquaintances, at social small talk and casual conversation. But I don’t have many friends.”
She took a long breath. “I’m going to close a little early today. It’ll take me a few minutes to close out and lock up. Are you in a hurry, or would you like to go have a drink?”
Seth was a goner, Aubrey realized. He’d never hold out against those hints of vulnerability and need hiding under the polish. “Got any good wine at your place?”
“Yes.” Dru’s lips curved. “I do.”
“I’ll swing by home, grab a shower. Meet you there.”
* * *
FROM his studio window, Seth watched Aubrey stride back out to her truck. He’d seen her stride in nearly a half hour before. And though he hadn’t been able to see her face, he’d read her body language clearly.
She’d been ready to brawl.
He hadn’t gone down. Until he’d seen Gloria, and locked that entire business back in his mental vault, he was keeping a distance from his family.
But he’d listened for the sounds of shouts or breaking glass. If it had come to that, he’d have run down to pull them apart.
But it hadn’t come to that, he noted as Aubrey jumped nimbly into the cab of her truck and zipped off without any indication of temper.
One less worry, he supposed, as he walked into the kitchen to look at the clock on the stove. A little more than five hours left to obsess, he thought. Then he’d meet Gloria, give her the cash he’d withdrawn from his account.
And get back to his life.
* * *
DRU had barely walked through the door when Aubrey pulled into the drive. It gave her no time to fuss with the crackers and cheese she’d planned to set out, or to wash the fat purple grapes she’d picked up on the way home.
However casual the invitation, she was accustomed to entertaining a certain way. That certain way wasn’t having her guest walk in, push a brown bag into her hand, then look around and whistle.
“Cool. Front page, House & Garden.” She sent Dru a cheeky grin. “That wasn’t really a dig. Man, my mother would love this. She’s been itching to get a look at the inside. You got a cleaning service?” Aubrey asked and smoothed a finger over a tabletop. No dust.
“No. It’s just me, and I don’t—”
“Ought to. Working woman and blah, blah. Mom can give you the whole pitch. Big place.” Aubrey began to wander without invitation as Dru stood holding the bag. “I want a big one when I get out on my own. Rattle around a bit, you know? Change from living with what feels like a million people sometimes. Then I’ll be lonely and miss them and spend half my time at the house anyway.”
She looked up. “High ceilings,” she commented. “Must cost you some to heat this place in the winter.”
“Would you like to see the bills?” Dru said dryly and made her laugh.
“Maybe later. I’d rather have wine. Oh, those are cookies in the bag. Mom baked some yesterday. Double chocolate chip. Awesome. Kitchen this way?”
“Yes.” Dru sighed, then followed, decided to try to go with the flow.
“Nancy Neat, aren’t you?” Aubrey said after one glance, then opened the back door. “Man, this is great! It’s like your own little island. Do you ever get spooked out here all alone, city girl?”
“No. I thought I might,” Dru said as she set the bag on the counter and got out a bottle of Pinot Grigio. “But I don’t. I like listening to the water, and the birds and the wind. I like being here. I don’t want the city. And I realized the first morning I woke up here, in the quiet, with the sun coming in the windows, I never did. Other people wanted it for me.”
She poured the wine. “Do you want to sit out on the patio?”
“That’d be good. I’ll bring the cookies.”
So they had tart white wine and fat-filled cookies while the sun slid slo
wly down behind the trees.
“Oh.” Aubrey swallowed a mouthful. “I should tell you, Seth and I made a pact not to tell anybody about the big experiment.”
“The . . . oh.”
“I don’t figure you count, since it was your idea. Sort of. But since I spilled it, I’ve either got to kill you, or you have to swear not to tell anybody.”
“Does this oath involve my blood in any way?”
“I usually do it with spit.”
Dru thought about it for about two seconds. “I’d rather not involve any bodily fluids. Is my word good enough?”
“Yeah.” Aubrey picked up another cookie. “People like you keep their word.”
“People like me?”
“Yeah. Breeding,” she said with a broad wave of a hand. “You’re a fucking purebred.”
“I’ll assume that’s a compliment of some sort.”
“Sure. You’ve got this ‘I’m much too cultured and well-bred to make an issue of it’ air. You always look perfect. I admire that even when I hate it. It’s not like you’re all fussy and girly and stuff. You just always look good.”
Aubrey stopped, mouth full. Then swallowed fast. “Oh hey, listen, I’m not coming on to you or anything. I like guys.”
“Oh, I see. Then I suppose there’s no point in us having a big experiment of our own.” After two long beats, Dru’s laughter burst out. She had to lean back, hold her sides as they ached from the force of it. “Your face. Priceless. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen you speechless.”
“That was good.” Nodding approval, Aubrey picked up her wine. “That was damn good. I might just like you after all. So, are you going to talk Seth out of the watercolor portrait when he’s finished?”
“I don’t know.” Would he finish it? she wondered. Or was he too angry with her to see her as he had? No, he’d finish, she decided. The artist would have no choice.
“If it were me, I’d wheedle it out of him.”
“I think I’d feel strange having a painting of myself hanging on the wall. Besides, I haven’t seen it. He was too angry to let me.”
“Yeah, he gets all tight-assed when he’s mad. Okay, here’s a tip.” Watching Dru, Aubrey rested her elbows on the table. “You don’t want to cry. What you want to do is bravely battle back tears. You know, so your eyes get all shiny and wet and your lip quivers a little. Hold on.”
She leaned back again, closed her eyes, took a couple of deep breaths. Then she opened them again, stared at Dru with a kind of wide-eyed, pitiful expression as tears swam into her eyes.
“My God,” Dru murmured in admiration. “That’s really good. In fact, it’s brilliant.”
“Tell me.” Aubrey sniffled. “You can let one spill over if you have to, but that’s it.” A single tear dripped down her cheek. Then she giggled. “You start to flood, and he’s all about patting your head and stuffing a paint rag or whatever in your hand before he goes into full retreat. Then you’ve lost him. But you give him the shimmery-eyes, quivery-lip deal, and he’ll do anything. It destroys him.”
“How did you learn to do that?”
“Hey, I work with guys.” Aubrey swiped the single tear off her cheek. “You develop your weapons. You can bite the tip of your tongue to get started if you have to. Me, I can turn it on and off. Speaking of guys, why don’t you tell me about that creep you were engaged to, then we can trash him.”
“Jonah? Assistant communications director. West Wing staff, a man with the president’s ear. Brilliant mind, smooth style, gorgeous face and a body made for Armani.”
“This isn’t making me hate him. Get to the dirt.”
“It’s not far under the surface. Washington social circles—my grandfather remains a strong force in Washington, and my family is influential. Socially active. We met at a cocktail party, and things moved from there. Smoothly and at a reasonable pace. We enjoyed each other, and we liked each other. Had interests and people and philosophies in common. Then, I thought we loved each other.”
It was never anger she felt when she thought of that. But sadness.
“Maybe we did. We became lovers—”
“How was he? In the sack?”
Dru hesitated, then poured more wine. She didn’t discuss this sort of thing. Then again, she realized, she’d never had anyone who made her feel able to discuss this sort of thing.
Aubrey made it seem easy.
“What the hell. He was good. I thought we were good—but then again, lovers fall into the same category as friends with me. I don’t make them easily.”
“That’d make it hurt more when it gets messed up,” Aubrey offered.
“Yeah, I guess it does. But I thought Jonah and I were good together, in bed and out of it. I was ready when he asked me to marry him. We’d been moving in that direction, and I was prepared. I’d thought it through.”
Curious now, Aubrey tilted her head. “If you had to think it through, maybe you weren’t in love with him.”
“Maybe not.” Dru looked away, watched the fluttering flight of a butterfly, listened to the quiet hum of a boat motor as someone cruised by on the river. “But I need to think things through. The bigger the step, the longer and more carefully I think. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be married. My parents’ marriage—well, it’s not like your parents’ marriage. But I felt, with Jonah, it would be different. We never quarreled.”
“Never?” Pure shock covered Aubrey’s face. “You never had a good shouting fight?”
“No.” She smiled a little now as she realized how dull that would seem to anyone named Quinn. “When we disagreed, we discussed.”
“Oh yeah, that’s how we handle things in my family. We discuss our disagreements. We just do it at the top of our lungs. So you and this guy were good in bed, you didn’t fight and you had a lot in common. What happened?”
“We got engaged, we had a round of parties and began making plans for a wedding set for the following summer. July because that was most convenient for our schedules. He was busy with work, and I was busy letting my mother drag me around to bridal shows. We house-hunted—Jonah and me, my mother and me, my father and me.”
“That’s a lot of hunting.”
“You have no idea. Then one night, we were at his apartment. We went to bed. While we were making love, I kept feeling something scrape at the small of my back. Eventually I had to stop. It was funny, really, I made a joke out of it. Then we turned on the lights and I went over the sheets. And came up with another woman’s earring.”
“Oh.” Aubrey’s face filled with sympathy. “Ouch.”
“I even recognized it. I’d seen her wearing them at some event or other. I’d admired them, commented on them. Which is probably why she made sure to leave it there, where I’d find it at the worst possible moment.”
“Bitch.”
“Oh yes.” Dru lifted her glass in a half toast. “Oh yes indeed. But she loved him, and that was a discreet and sure-fire way to get me out of the picture.”
“No excuses.” Aubrey wagged a finger. “She was trespassing on another woman’s man, even if the man wasn’t worth jack shit. She was as sneaky as he was, and just as guilty.”
“You’re right. No excuses. They deserve each other.”
“Damn straight. So, did you tie his dick in a knot? What?”
Dru let out a long sigh. “God, I wish I could be you. I wish I could, even for one single day. No, I got up, and I got dressed, while he started making excuses. He loved me. This other thing was just physical, it didn’t mean anything.”
“Christ.” Disgust was ripe in her voice. “Can’t they ever come up with something original?”
“Not in my experience.” The instant, unqualified sympathy and support eased some of the rawness she still carried over it all. “He had needs, sexual needs that I was just too restrained to meet. He’d just wanted
to get it out of his system before settling down. Basically, he said that if I’d been hotter, more responsive or creative in bed, he wouldn’t have had to look elsewhere for that kind of satisfaction.”
“And yet he lives,” Aubrey murmured. “You let him turn the thing around on you instead of cutting off his balls and hanging them on his ears.”
“I wasn’t a complete doormat,” Dru objected, and told her about the systematic destruction of Jonah’s prized possessions.
“Nuked his CDs. That’s a good one. I feel better now. Just as a suggestion, instead of cutting up his cashmere coat? I’d have filled the pockets with, oh, I don’t know, say a nice mixture of raw eggs, motor oil, a little flour to thicken it up, maybe a hint of garlic. All easily accessed household items. Then, I’d’ve folded it up really neat, with the pockets to the inside. Wouldn’t he have been surprised when he pulled it out of the box?”
“I’ll keep that in mind, should the occasion ever come up again.”
“Okay. But I really like the CDs, and the bit with the shoes. If the guy was anything like Phil about his shoes, that one really hurt. What do you say we take a walk, work off some of these cookies? Then we can order some Chinese.”
It wasn’t, Dru realized, so hard to make a friend after all. “That sounds terrific.”
* * *
THE diner was lit like a runway, and business wasn’t exactly booming. Seth sat on the sun-faded red vinyl of the booth in the very back. Gloria wasn’t there. She would be late.
She always came late. It was, he knew, just another way for her to show she had the upper hand.
He ordered coffee, knowing he wouldn’t drink it. But he needed the prop. The ten thousand in cash was in an old canvas bag on the seat beside him.
There was a man with shoulders wide as Montana sitting on a stool at the counter. His neck was red from the sun, and his hair shaved so sharp and close it looked as if it could slice bread. He was wearing jeans, and the tin of tobacco he must have carried habitually in his pocket had worn a white circle in the fading denim.
