by Nora Roberts
whatever she needed now, apologize later.
If she wept a little as hot water beat down on her, as she watched the dirt—that quick washes in streams and creeks hadn’t touched—spiral down the floor drain, she told herself she was entitled to a few tears.
She indulged—who knew how long this bounty would last?—wrapped her hair in a towel, her body in another.
Soft, so blissfully soft.
Turning, she studied herself in the mirror. Her breasts, her belly, so ripe. She must be at thirty-three or thirty-four weeks now. With all her heart she believed her daughter remained healthy and strong. She felt that light, that life—both depending on her.
If that meant she had to depend on the largess of a stranger, she would. Cautiously, but she would.
She eyed the baskets on the open shelves beside the mirror.
Body lotion, skin cream, all so wonderfully female.
“Madeline Swift,” she murmured. “I’m grateful, and hope you don’t mind.”
She slathered herself, all but felt her thirsty skin gulp in the moisture. As nothing in her pack resembled clean, she borrowed the robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door.
Trembling with gratitude, she turned down the duvet, slid into the sheets. She slept, and slept dreamlessly.
Awoke with a jerk, her heart pounding as she tried to remember where she was.
The farmhouse, the man with the tough face and careless generosity. She got up as quickly as her heavy belly allowed, tidied the bed, rehung the robe. Dressed.
The sun told her it was after noon—she’d gotten good at gauging the time. So she’d slept at least two hours. If she wanted to stay the night—God, she wanted to stay the night—she had to earn her keep.
Curious, she moved quietly along the second floor, found another bathroom, smaller than what he’d allowed her, and obviously what he used.
A towel hung over the shower door, a toothbrush stood in a cup on a small vanity.
She found a guest room—as she didn’t imagine Simon Swift slept under a cover dotted with pretty violets—another room, a spare bedroom and sitting room combination, she supposed, with a sewing station under the window.
Lastly, his room—unmade bed, a shirt tossed over a chair back, and air that carried the faint hints of earth and grass.
She noted the shotgun propped in the corner, respected his choice to keep a weapon close while he slept.
She didn’t find him downstairs, so she looked out windows until she spotted him working in the garden. Sweat dampened his shirt as he hoed between rows. The dogs slept under the apple tree, by the grave markers, and the horses watched him with their heads over the fence.
Her first thought was to go out and offer to help, but she noted the dishes they’d used that morning sat, clean, dry now, beside the sink. She saw no other signs he’d made a meal while she’d showered, slept, explored.
So she’d earn her keep by scouting through the kitchen and making him lunch.
When he came in, hot and hungry, the dogs bursting in ahead of him, he saw her at the stove. Something smelled damn good, and some of that, he realized, was woman.
She’d wrapped her hair up somehow or other, and it shined like butterscotch candy. When she turned, her face struck him. Quiet and wary beauty.
The wariness for him, he thought, as the charge of the dogs, their manic tail flapping didn’t appear to bother her.
He kept it light. “What’s cooking?”
“Stir-fry—vegetables and rice. I thought you could use lunch more than a hand in the garden.”
“Good thinking.” He moved to the sink, washed the dirt off his hands and arms. “Where’d you cook? For a living?”
“New York.”
“Big city.”
“It was.” She plated the food, added one of the cloth napkins she’d found in a drawer, handed him both. “I saw some sourdough starter in your refrigerator.”
“Yeah, my father liked to bake bread. He couldn’t cook anything else worth a damn, but he liked baking bread. I’ve been feeding it, but…”
“I’ll bake some bread if you want.”
“That’d be good.” He sat. “Aren’t you eating?”
She nodded, but didn’t get a plate, or sit. “I want to thank you—”
“You already did.”
“I haven’t had a real shower in … I’ll apologize if I get emotional. Some of it’s hormones. But being able to wash my hair … I used your mother’s shampoo, and her shower gel. And she has—had—skin cream. It was open, and I used some. I just used it without…”
“You could do me a favor and not cry over that.”
He looked at her as he ate with annoyed hazel eyes. Eyes that blurred green and gold together. “It’ll put me off this stir-fry, and it’s damn good. She wouldn’t care, and I sure don’t. Look, I dealt with my dad’s stuff like that. I couldn’t seem to go through hers. So use what you want.”
“She has backups. Unopened. You could barter them.”
“Use it.” This time his tone snapped a bit. “If I’d wanted to barter her damn face cream, I would have.”
Understanding pain, and loss, she said nothing more until she’d plated some lunch for herself and sat.
“If you’d tell me if there are any off-limits rooms in the house while I’m here.”
“Other than the locked room in the basement full of the mutilated bodies of my victims, no.”
She scooped up some stir-fry. He was right. It was damn good. “All right, I’ll stay out of there. Do you have any food allergies?”
“I’m temperamentally allergic to spinach.”
“Then I won’t put any in the meatloaf.”
* * *
Simon gave Lana plenty of space. He expected she’d stay for a couple days, pull herself together. He didn’t have a problem giving her that time and space, especially since, Jesus, the woman could cook.
Plus, she carried her weight, no question, during those couple of days. Maybe he hadn’t noticed the dust and dog hair—but he noticed when it was gone. Maybe he hadn’t had a problem snagging clothes or towels out of a laundry basket, but it didn’t hurt his feelings to find them all folded and where they belonged.
The dogs liked her. He’d walked by the library late one night and had seen her sitting in the dark—grieving for her husband—with Harper’s head on her knee, Lee sprawled over her feet.
He figured to take her into the settlement once she’d gathered herself, turn her over to one of the women he knew. Any one of them would know more about dealing with a pregnant woman and delivering a baby than he did.
As for her insistence that the baby she carried was both special and a target of dark forces, he’d reserve judgment. While he couldn’t deny he’d gotten used to looking out for himself alone, and the farm, he couldn’t just turn her out.
He’d been raised better than that. He was better than that.
She wasn’t much for conversation, and that was fine, too, as he’d grown accustomed to the quiet.
He thought of her as a kind of temporary, live-in farmhand who put together three solid meals a day, and dealt with the house so he didn’t have to.
One who didn’t look to be entertained, one who wasn’t hard on the eyes, especially since after a couple of days she’d lost most of the living-on-raw-nerves edge that had haunted her eyes.
In truth, he had to admit he’d miss knowing he’d come in after the early chores to a hot breakfast—and having someone who knew their way around tending crops.
She wouldn’t go near the cornfield, and he didn’t ask why.
By day four, they’d fallen into a routine, one comfortable enough it worried him. Routines led to depending on each other.
Best thing all around? Nudge her into moving to the settlement, nesting there until she had her kid.
He started to ease her in that direction over a dinner of fried chicken and potato salad—his request.
“I’m going to take a load of pro
duce into the settlement tomorrow.”
“If you’re bartering, you could use more flour.”
“You’ve got a better sense by now what we’re low on in the pantry. You ought to come in with me. It’d give you a sense of things.”
Her gaze shifted up—deep, sad blue—met his. “I can make you a list.”
“You could. There’re probably things you need. Personal things.”
“I don’t need anything. If you’re ready for me to move on—”
“I didn’t say that.” Thought it maybe, but that was different. “Look, there are women in there who’ve been through what you’re going through. Who’ve, you know, had babies. Plus, people pass through. Some stay. Maybe somebody’s come in who has medical experience.”
Her fingers moved restlessly over the ring she wore around her neck. “I’ve still got time. I can do more until—”
“Christ, Lana.” He rarely used her name, and did so now in pure frustration. “Give me a small break. I’m saying you’d be better off with people who know what they’re doing when the kid decides she wants to come out. If you’re not nervous about that, you’re made of fucking steel.”
“I’m scared to death. Terrified. Even knowing, absolutely knowing, she’s meant to be born, meant to live and shine and do amazing things, I’m terrified.”
Studying her face, he sat back. “You don’t look scared.”
She kept her gaze steady, laid a hand on the baby mound. “Before I looked down, saw the farm, whenever I was tired and hungry, I couldn’t let myself be scared. If it snuck through, I had to shove it away again or I’d have stopped. Just stopped and given up. I told myself I’d find a place, a safe place to bring her into the world. Then I looked down, and saw the farm. The house, the fields, the animals—like a painting of before the world stopped.”
Now her hand made slow circles over the baby.
“Still, I didn’t let myself hope. It was just the immediate. Tomatoes on the vine, bees humming, chickens clucking. I thought, Food, because I needed it. I didn’t let myself think shelter or rest. Until you spoke to me. You told me to come inside and eat, and then I began to hope.
“It’s not fair to put my hopes on you, but I am. Because she needs me to.”
No, she didn’t look afraid, he thought. Neither her voice nor her face held a plea. He’d never have resisted a plea. Instead they held a quiet, steady strength.
That, to him, was even more irresistible.
“How about we compromise on it? I’ll bring one of the women back with me—her name’s Anne. Grandmotherly type, and she’d probably kick my ass for saying that. You could meet her, see how you feel then. I know she’s had kids. When the time comes I could go get her, have her help you out.”
“She comes into your hands first.”
“Huh?”
Her eyes changed, seemed to stare straight into him, now dark as midnight.
“Into yours on the windswept night. And lightning heralds the birth of The One. Will you teach her to ride, and think she was born knowing? I teach her the old ways, what I can, but she has so much more. Safe, time out of time, while the dark rages. Until in the Book of Spells, in the Well of Light she takes her sword and shield. And with the rise of magicks she takes her place. She will risk all to fulfill her destiny, this precious child of the Tuatha de Danann. For this she grows in me, for this she comes into your hands.”
She’d gone very pale, and now reached an unsteady hand for her water glass.
“What was that?”
“It’s her.” Lana sipped slowly until the dizziness passed. “I don’t know how to explain it. Sometimes I see her, as clearly as I see you. She’s so beautiful.” As she sipped again, Lana’s eyes filled, but the tears didn’t spill. “So strong and fierce and lovely. Sometimes I hear her, a voice in my head. I think I might have given up a dozen times without that voice telling me to keep going. And sometimes, like now, she speaks through me. Or lets me know enough to speak for her.”
In that moment, Simon believed her. Absolutely. “What is she?”
“The answer. When I’m afraid, I’m afraid for her, for what’s going to be asked of her. I know what I’m asking of you,” she began, and the dogs scrambled up from their evening naps.
“Yeah, I hear it.” With his eyes still on hers, Simon rose. “Somebody’s coming. You should go down into the root cellar until I see who it is. Take the shotgun with you,” he added as he retrieved the 9mm he’d set on top of the fridge for the meal.
Walking to the front of the house, he grabbed the rifle propped by the door. Stepped out on the porch to watch the unfamiliar truck spit gravel on its way down the farm lane.
He ordered the dogs to sit, to hold, waiting until two men, both armed, got out of either side of the truck.
“Evening,” he said easily, watching their gaits, their hands, their expressions.
He recognized trouble, prepared to deal with it.
One had a viciously scarred face, as if claws had raked across it, right to left, just under the right eye to the jawline under his left ear.
It twisted his mouth into a curled sneer.
“Nice place you got here.” The one with a scraggly, graying beard spoke first.
“Yeah. I like it.”
“A lot of stock, a lot of crops for one man to handle.”
“Keeps me busy. Something I can do for you?”
“We’re looking for a woman.”
Simon flashed a grin. “Who isn’t?”
The bearded one laughed, took a paper out of his front pocket, unfolded it. “This one in particular.”
Simon looked at the paper, at the excellent sketch of Lana. “She’s a looker. I wouldn’t mind finding her myself.”
“She’s pregnant, ’bout seven or eight months. We got word she might be wandering around this way.”
“I think I’d remember seeing that face, and a pregnant woman, wandering around here. How’d you lose her?”
“Ain’t none of your business,” the scarred man snapped.
“Just making conversation. I don’t get many visitors.”
The bearded one pulled his nose. “It must get lonely, out here on your own.”
“Like I said, I keep busy.”
“Still. You’re pretty out of the way, kind of … cut off. Looks like you’ve got enough food going here to feed an army. It happens we’ve got one. We’ll take that trailer of yours, along with two of those cows.”
“I’m not looking to trade, thanks all the same.”
“Nobody said nothing about trading.” The scarred man pulled his gun. “We’re taking. Now you go on and hitch that trailer up to the truck.”
“You know, that’s not very friendly of you.”
Simon moved fast. The scarred one held his gun like some B-movie cowboy, all show, no sense. Simon slapped his forearm out, jabbed his other elbow into the bearded face, and had the scarred man’s gun in his own hand in three smooth moves.
“I’d shoot you both where you stand,” he said, his tone pleasant and skimmed with ice. “But I’m not in the mood to dig the graves. You’re going to want to think before you reach for that gun,” he warned the bearded man. “Now take it out slow—two fingers—and set it down on the porch. Otherwise I’ll just gut shoot your friend and let you haul him away to bleed out in your truck.”
“Didn’t say he was my friend.”
Simon could have handled it, intended to. Then he heard Lana’s voice.
“I don’t mind digging graves.”
Lana’s voice, Simon thought, trying not to react, as the woman standing with the shotgun pointed at the uninvited guests looked nothing like her.
A sturdy build—not a pregnant one—short, dark hair instead of the long butterscotch-candy blond. Wearing a sneer that suited the tough, lean face.
“It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”
“Now, don’t shoot them unless you have to, honey.” Putting amusement into his voice, Simon yanked the
gun out of the second man’s holster. “We just painted the damn porch last spring. She’s meaner than I am,” Simon commented. “And the men upstairs, out in the barn? The ones with guns trained on you? They’re meaner than she is—that takes doing. An army you said. Yeah, we eat pretty well here. Now, we’d’ve been happy enough to give you some food to take on your way, but bad manners can’t be rewarded. Right, honey?”
“You know how I feel about it, and that one’s already bleeding on the damn porch. Maybe I’ll just shoot the other one in the leg.”
“Told you she’s mean. Now, if I were you, I’d get back in the truck and head back the way you came. Otherwise, she’s going to get irritated and shoot you. That’ll whip up the rest of them, and they’ll Bonnie and Clyde the shit out of you.”
“I’d like my gun back.”
“Consider the loss a consequence of poor manners. Get the fuck off my land or I’ll let her put a hole in you. Then I’ll sic the dogs on you.”
At the word sic, both dogs bared teeth, growled.
The men backed off the porch, got into the truck. Simon saw the move, and still waited until the scarred man jerked another gun up to the side window.
He shot him, center of the forehead, tracked his aim toward the driver. The truck reversed fast, tossing up gravel and smoke, spun around to speed up the lane. When he stopped, Simon switched handgun for rifle, then held off when the passenger door opened, and the driver shoved his dead companion out.
“Hell, looks like I’ll be digging after all.”
He waited until the truck vanished over the rise.
“You didn’t say you were a shapeshifter.”
“I’m not.” Lana lowered the shotgun, then staggered the few steps toward the porch. Dropped heavily on the step. “It’s an illusion,” she said as it faded. “Just like a … costume. I’ve never tried it before. It took a lot.
“You killed him.”
“His choice, not mine.”
She nodded. “They were in New Hope, part of the attack. His face—the dead one—I did that to his face. I don’t know how. They nearly found me awhile back.”
“I told you to go down to the root cellar.”
“And do what?” The fierceness snapped back as her head jerked up. “Tremble and wait, expect somebody to protect me and mine? I’ve been finished with that for a long time now. Feels like a lifetime ago. I thought if I let them see me—the illusion—they’d have more reason to believe you hadn’t seen me. They’d leave you alone. Then I heard what they said about taking, and knew they weren’t going to leave.”
She sat in silence when he released the dogs and sat beside her as the dogs bumped against them for attention.
“I’ll leave in the morning. I’d like to be sure he’s a good distance away first.”
He’d been careful not to touch her, not once since she’d walked into his world, but now he took her chin in his hand, turned her face to his. “You’re not going anywhere. I offered you a place to stay because you needed it. God knows you’ve earned it. I believed you believed people were after you and the kid. But I’m going to admit, I thought you were mostly being paranoid. I was wrong.”
“He could come back, bring others back.”
Shifting to scrub hands over the dogs, Simon shook his head. “That type looks for easy pickings. Now he knows we’re not. You can put your hopes on me. I can handle it.”
He rose. “Like I could’ve handled those two,” he added.
“I know. I saw that. What did you do in the army?”
He smiled. “Followed orders.”
“And gave them. Captain, you said.”
“It’s been awhile. Now I’m a farmer.” Sitting back down on the step, he looked out at the fields, the crops. “But I know how to protect my land, my home. What’s in it.”
