by Nora Roberts
feel. She was my only child. My only child.” Rising, she sent Ariel an icy stare that shimmered with tears. “I won’t discuss Barbara with you, or Barbara’s son.” She walked from the office in quick controlled steps that were silent on the carpet.
“I won’t have you upsetting my wife.” Mr. Anderson stood erect and unyielding. “We’ve known nothing but misery since the first time we heard the name Kirkwood.”
Though her knees had begun to shake, Ariel rose to face him. “Scott’s name is Kirkwood, Mr. Anderson.”
Without a word, he turned and strode out of the room.
“My clients are understandably emotional on this issue.” Ford’s voice was so calm Ariel barely heard it. With the slightest nod of agreement, she wandered to stare out the window.
She didn’t register the subdued conversation the attorneys carried on behind her. Instead, she concentrated on the flow of traffic she could see but not quite hear from thirty floors below. She wanted to be down there, surrounded by cars and buses and people.
Strange how she’d nearly convinced herself that she was resigned to her brother’s death. Now, the helpless anger washed over her again until she could have screamed with it. Screamed just one word. Why?
“Ariel.” Bigby put a hand on her shoulder and repeated her name before Ariel turned her head. Ford and his clients had left. “Come sit down.”
She lifted a hand to his. “No, I’m all right.”
“Like hell you are.”
With a half laugh, she rested her forehead against the glass. “I will be in a minute. Why is it, Charlie, I never believe how hard or how ugly things can be until they happen? And even then—even then I can’t quite understand it.”
“Because you look for the best. It’s a beautiful talent of yours.”
“Or an escape mechanism,” she murmured.
“Don’t start coming down on yourself, Ariel.” His voice was sharper then he’d intended, but he had the satisfaction of seeing her shoulders straighten. “Another of your talents is being able to pull in other people’s emotions. Don’t do it with the Andersons.”
Letting out a long sigh, she continued to stare down to the street. “They’re hurting. I wish there was a way we could share the grief instead of hurling it at one other. But there’s nothing I can do about them,” she whispered and closed her eyes briefly, tightly. “Charlie, Scott doesn’t belong with them. He’s all I care about. Not once, not one single time did either of them call him by name. He was always the boy, or my grandchild, never Scott. It’s as though they can’t give him his own identity, maybe because it’s too close to Jeremy’s.” For an extra moment she rested her palms against the window ledge. “I only want what’s right for Scott—even if it’s not me.”
“It’s going to go to court, Ariel, and it’s going to be very, very hard on you.”
“You’ve explained all that before. It doesn’t matter.”
“I can’t give you any guarantees on the outcome.”
She moistened her lips and turned to face him. “I understand that, too. I have to believe that whatever happens will be what’s best for Scott. If I lose, I was meant to lose.”
“At the risk of being completely unprofessional”—he touched the tips of her hair—“what about what’s best for you?”
With a smile, she cupped his face in her hand and kissed his cheek. “I’m a survivor, Charlie, and a whole hell of a lot tougher than I look. Let’s worry about Scott.”
He was capable of worrying about more than one thing at a time, and she was still pale, her eyes still a bit too bright. “Let me buy you a drink.”
Ariel rubbed her knuckles against his beard. “I’m fine,” she said definitively. “And you’re busy.” Turning, she picked up her purse. Her stomach was quivering. All she wanted to do was to get out in the air and clear her head. “I just need to walk for a bit,” she said half to herself. “After I think it all the way through again I’ll feel better.”
At the door she paused and looked back. Bigby was still standing by the window, a frown of concern on his face. “Can you tell me we have a chance of winning?”
“Yes, I can tell you that. I wish I could tell you more.”
Shaking her head, Ariel pulled open the door. “It’s enough. It has to be enough.”
Chapter Six
Booth considered taking everything he’d written that day and ditching it. That’s what sensible people did with garbage. Leaning back in his chair, he scowled at the half-typed sheet staring back at him, and at the stack of completed pages beside his machine. Then again, tomorrow it might not seem quite so much like garbage and he could salvage something.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hit a wall like this in his work. It was like carving words into granite—slow, laborious, and the finished product was never perfectly clear and sharp. You got sweaty, your muscles and eyes ached, and you barely made a dent. He’d given the script ten hours that day, and perhaps half of that with his full concentration. It was out of character. It was frustrating.
It was Ariel.
What the hell was he going to do about it? Booth ran his hands over his face with a weariness that came from lack of production rather than lack of energy. There’d never been a woman he couldn’t block out of his mind for long periods of time—even Liz at the height of their disastrous marriage. But this woman . . . With a sound of annoyance, Booth pushed away from the typewriter. This woman was breaking all the rules. His rules—the ones he’d formed for personal survival.
The worst of it was he just wanted to be with her. Just to see her smile, hear her laugh, listen to her talk about something that didn’t have to make sense.
And the hardest part of it was the desire. It shifted and rippled continually under the surface of his thoughts. He had the blessing/curse of a writer’s imagination. No effort was needed for Booth to feel the way her skin would heat up under his hands, the way her mouth would give and take. And it took no effort to mentally project how she could foul up his life.
Because they’d be working together, he could only avoid her so much. Making love with her was inevitable—so inevitable that he knew he’d have to weigh the consequences. But for now, with his rooms quiet around him and thoughts of Ariel crowding his mind, Booth couldn’t think beyond having her. Prices always had to be paid. . . Who would know that better than he?
Glancing down at his work, Booth admitted that he was already paying. His writing was suffering because he couldn’t control his concentration. His pace, usually smooth, was erratic and choppy. What he was producing lacked the polish so integral to his style.
Too often, he caught himself staring into space—something writers do habitually. But it wasn’t his characters who worked in his mind. Too often, he found himself awake before dawn after a restless night. But it wasn’t his plot that kept him from sleep.
It was Ariel.
He thought of her too much, too exclusively for comfort. And he was a man who hoarded his comfort. His work was always—and had always been—of paramount importance to him. He intended it to continue to be. Yet he was allowing someone to interfere, intrude.
Allowing? Booth shook his head as he lit a cigarette. He was a man of words, of shades of meanings, and knew that wasn’t the proper one. He hadn’t allowed Ariel into his mind—she’d invaded it.
The smoke seared his throat. Too many cigarettes, he admitted as he took another drag. Too many long days and nights. He was pushing it—and there were moments, a few scattered moments when he took the time to wonder why.
Ambition wasn’t the issue. Not if ambition equaled the quest for glory and money. Glory had never concerned him, and money had never been a prime motivation. Success perhaps, in that he had always sought then insisted on quality when anything was associated with his name. But it was more a matter of obsession—that was what his writing had been since he’d first put pen to paper.
When a man had one obsession, it was easy to have two. Booth stared a
t the half-typed page and thought of Ariel.
The doorbell rang twice before he roused himself to answer it. If his work had been flowing at all, he would have ignored it completely. Interruptions, he thought ruefully as he left the littered desk behind, sometimes had their advantages.
“Hi.” Ariel smiled at him and kept her hands in her pockets. It was the only way she could keep them from lacing together. “I know I should’ve called, but I was walking and took the chance that you wouldn’t be frantically writing some monumental scene.” You’re babbling, she warned herself and clenched both hands.
“I haven’t written a monumental scene in hours.” He studied her a moment, perceptive enough to know that beneath the smile and animated voice there was trouble. A week before, perhaps even days before, he’d have made an excuse and shut her out. “Come in.”
“I must’ve caught you at a good time,” Ariel commented as she crossed the threshold. “Otherwise you’d’ve growled at me. Were you working?”
“No, I’d stopped.” She looked ready to burst, he mused. The casualness, the glib remarks didn’t mask the outpouring of emotion. It showed in her eyes, in her movements. A quick glance showed him that her hands were fists in her pockets. Tension? One didn’t associate the word with her. He wanted to touch her, to soothe, and had to remind himself that he didn’t need anyone else’s problems. “Want a drink?”
“No—yes,” she amended. Perhaps it would calm her more than the two-hour walk had done. “Whatever’s handy. It’s a beautiful day.” Ariel paced to the window and found herself reminded too much of standing in Bigby’s office. She turned her back on the view. “Warm. Flowers are everywhere. Have you been out?”
“No.” He handed her a dry vermouth without offering her a chair. In this mood he knew she’d never sit still.
“Oh, you shouldn’t miss it. Perfect days are rare.” She drank, then waited for her muscles to loosen. “I was going to walk through the park, then found myself here.”
He waited a moment as she stared down into her glass. “Why?”
Slowly, Ariel lifted her eyes to his. “I needed to be with someone—it turned out to be you. Do you mind?”
He should have. God knows he wanted to. “No.” Without thinking, Booth took a step closer—physically, emotionally. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Yes.” The word came out on a sigh. “But I can’t.” Turning away, she set down her glass. She wasn’t going to level. Why had she been so sure she would? “Booth, it isn’t often I can’t handle things or find myself so scared that running away looks like the best out. When it happens, I need someone.”
He was touching her hair before he could stop himself, was turning her to face him before he’d weighed the pros and cons. And he was holding her before either of them could be surprised by the simplicity of it.
Ariel clung as relief flowed over her. He was strong—strong enough to accept her strength and understand the moments of weakness. She needed that very basic human support, without question, without demands. His chest was hard and firm against her. Over her back his hands ran gently. He said nothing. For the first time in hours, Ariel felt her balance return. Kindness gave her hope; she was a woman who’d always been able to survive on that alone.
What’s troubling her, Booth wondered. He could feel the panic in the way her hands gripped him. Even when he felt her begin to relax he remembered that first frantic grip. Her work, he thought. Or something more personal? Either way, it had nothing to do with him. And yet . . . While she was soft and vulnerable in his arms he felt it had everything to do with him.
He should step back. His lips brushed through her hair as he breathed in her fragrance. It was never safe to lower the wall. His lips skimmed along her temple.
“I want to help you.” The words ran through his mind and spilled out before he was aware of them.
Ariel’s arms tightened around him. That phrase meant more, infinitely more, than I love you. Without knowing it, he’d just given her everything she needed. “You have.” She tilted her head back so that she could see his face. “You are.”
Lifting a hand, she ran her fingers over the long firm bones in his face, over the taut skin roughened by a day’s growth of beard. Love was something that moved in her too strongly to be ignored. She needed to share it, if not verbally, then by touch.
Softly, slowly, she closed the distance and brushed his lips with hers. Her lids lowered, but through her lashes she watched his eyes as he watched hers. The intensity in his never altered. Ariel knew he was absorbing her mood, and testing it.
It was he who shifted the angle, without increasing the pressure. He toyed with her mouth easily, nipping into the softness of her bottom lip, tracing the shape with just the tip of his tongue until the flutter in her stomach spread to her chest. He needed to draw in the sensation of her as a woman, as an individual. He wanted to know her physically; he needed to understand the subtleties of her mind. As she felt her body give, her mind yield, Ariel wondered how it was he didn’t hear the love shouting out of her.
He was struck by the emotion that raced from her. He’d never held a woman capable of such feeling, or one who, by possessing it, demanded it in return. It wasn’t a simple matter of response. Even as his senses began to swim, Booth understood that. He wanted to give to her. And though he wanted, he knew he couldn’t. Risks were for the foolish, and he couldn’t afford to play the fool a second time.
Compassion, however, touched off compassion. If nothing else, he could give her a few hours’ relief from whatever plagued her mind. He ran his hands up her arms for the sheer pleasure of it. “How nice a day is it?” he asked.
Ariel smiled. Her fingers were still on his face, her lips only inches from his. “It’s spectacular.”
“Let’s go out.” Booth paused only long enough to take her hand before he headed for the door.
“Thank you.” Ariel touched her head briefly to his shoulder in one more simple show of affection he wasn’t accustomed to. It warmed him—and cautioned him.
“What for?”
“For not asking questions.” Ariel stepped into the elevator, leaned back against the wall and sighed.
“I generally stay out of other people’s business.”
“Do you?” She opened her eyes and the smile lingered. “I don’t. I’m an inveterate meddler—most of us are. We all like to get inside other people. You just do it more subtly than most.”
Booth shrugged as the elevator reached lobby level. “It’s not personal.”
Ariel laughed as she stepped out. Swinging her purse over her shoulder, she moved in her habitual quick step. “Oh, yes, it is.”
He stopped a moment and met the humor in her eyes. “Yes,” he admitted. “It is. But then, as a writer I can observe, dissect, and steal other people’s thoughts and feelings without having to get involved enough to advise or comfort or even sympathize.”
“You’re too hard on yourself, Booth,” Ariel murmured. “Much too hard.”
His brow quirked in puzzlement. Of all the things he’d ever been accused of, that wasn’t one of them. “I’m a realist.”
“On one level. On another you’re a dreamer. All writers are dreamers on some level—the same way all actors are children on one. It has nothing to do with how clever you are, how practical, how smart. It goes with the job.” She stepped out into the warmth and the sun. “I like being a child, and you like being a dreamer. You just don’t like to admit it.”
Annoyance. He should’ve felt annoyance but felt pleasure instead. As long as he could remember, no one else had ever understood him. As long as he could remember, he’d never cared. “You’ve convinced yourself you know me very well.”
“No, but I’ve made a few scratches on the surface.” She sent him a saucy look. “And you’ve a very tough surface.”
“And yours is very thin.” Unexpectedly he cupped her face in his hand for a thorough study. His fingers were firm, as if he expected resistance and wou
ld ignore it. “Or seems to be.” How could he be sure, he wondered. How could one person ever be sure of another?
Ariel was too used to being examined, and already too used to Booth to be disconcerted. “There’s little underneath that doesn’t show through.”
“Perhaps that’s why you’re a good actress,” he mused. “You absorb the character easily. How much is you, and how much is the role?”
He was far from ready to trust, she realized when he dropped his hand. “I can’t answer that. Maybe when the film’s over, you’ll be able to.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment. It was a good answer—perhaps the best answer. “You wanted to walk in the park.”
Ariel tucked her arm companionably through his. “Yeah. I’ll buy you an ice cream.”
Booth turned his head as they walked. “What flavor?”
“Anything but vanilla,” Ariel said expansively. “There’s nothing remotely vanilla about today.”
She was right, Booth decided. It was a spectacular day. The grass was green, the flowers vivid and pungent. He could smell the park smells. Peanuts and pigeons. Enthusiastic joggers pumped by in colorful sweatbands and running shorts, streaks of sweat down their backs.
Spring would soon give way to early summer. The trees were full, the leaves a hardy shade rather than the tender hue they’d been only weeks before. Shade spread in invitation while the sun baked the benches and paths. He knew Ariel would choose the sun. And he wondered, as he strolled along beside her, why he’d gone so long without seeking it himself.
As Ariel bit into an ice cream confection coated with chocolate and nuts, she thought of Scott. But this time, the apprehension was
