by Nora Roberts
“Nice. So do you know where we can get a pizza around here?”
Pizza was a key word for Spock, who lifted his shamed head and did his happy dance. “Eat in or delivery?”
“Delivery, man. I’m buying.”
“I’ve got the pizzeria’s number,” Cilla told him. “Do you want the usual?”
“Stick with a winner.”
“Ford?”
“Whatever you want’s fine.”
“I’ll call it in.”
When Cilla went in, Steve tipped back his beer. “Did you rehab the place yourself?”
“No, I bought it that way.”
“So what’s your line? What do you do across the street?”
“I write graphic novels.”
“No shit.” Steve bumped Ford in the arm with his beer. “Like The Dark Knight and From Hell?”
“More Dark Knight than Campbell. You into graphic novels?”
“Ate comic books for breakfast, lunch and dinner when I was a kid. But I didn’t discover the graphics until a few years ago. Maybe I’ve read some of yours. What . . . damn, are you Ford Sawyer?” The brown eyes went child-like wide, and full of thrill. “Are you the fucking Seeker?”
So maybe the guy wasn’t a complete asshole, Ford decided. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“This is unreal. It’s like surreal. Check this out.” Standing, Steve yanked off his T-shirt, turned his back. There, among the other art decorating Steve’s back, was a tattoo of the Seeker striding over the left shoulder blade.
“Well . . . wow.” Ford’s usually active mind switched off.
“Your dude is completely awesome. I mean, he totally rocks. He suffers, and I feel that.” Steve punched a fist into his chest. “But he keeps going. Picks it up and goes, does what he has to do. And the bastard can walk through freaking walls! How do you come up with that shit?”
“Jesus, Steve, are you stripping again?” Cilla demanded as she came back out.
“You’ve got Ford Freaking Sawyer living across the street. Man, he’s the Seeker.”
Cilla studied the tattoo Steve tapped as he looked over his shoulder. “When are you going to stop that?”
“When my whole body tells a story. Still got you on my ass, doll.”
“Do not pull down your pants,” she said, knowing him. “Pizza will be here, thirty minutes or less.”
“I’m going to grab a shower.” Steve punched Ford’s shoulder, gave the delighted Spock a quick scratch. “This is way, over-the-top cool.”
As the screen door slammed behind Steve, Ford studied his beer. “That was just weird.”
“That was just Steve.”
“To whom you were married for five minutes.”
“Technically, five months.” She sat again, stretched out long legs. “You’re looking for the story.”
“I’d be a fool not to.”
“There isn’t that much of one. We met, we clicked. He wanted to be a rock star, and I was, at seventeen, an actor already trying for a comeback. Except, even then, I didn’t really want one. And Steve was exactly the opposite image of what everyone expected from me. So he was perfect.”
“Good girl meets bad boy.”
“You could say. Still, I wasn’t so good, and he wasn’t so bad. We loved each other, made each other laugh and had really good sex. What else could you ask for? So the minute I turned eighteen, we ran off and got married. It took us about that five minutes to wonder, what the hell did we do this for?”
She tipped back her head and laughed. “We didn’t want to be married, to each other or anyone else. We wanted to be friends, to hang out, and maybe have good sex now and then. So we fixed it, way before there was any ugliness or damage, and we still love each other. He’s the best friend I ever had. And, tattoos aside, the most stable and solid.”
“He didn’t let you down.”
Cilla looked over, nodded. “Not once. Not ever. I couldn’t do what I’m doing here if it wasn’t for Steve. He taught me. He’s a fifth-generation contractor. Part of the rock star bit was a rebellion against that, you could say. Man, I’m banging a guitar, not a hammer. But he eventually figured out he was better, and let me say a hell of a lot better, with the hammer. I lent him some money for his first flip, this sad little dump in South L.A. He made it sweet, and paid me back, bought another. He asked me if I wanted in, and, well, one thing led to another. Now he owns his own company and has the TV gig. He still turns sad little dumps, and he turns million-dollar properties. He’s launching a branch in New York, and there’s talk about a spin-off for the show for the East Coast. He was up there, doing the business, so he swung by before he heads back to L.A.”
“And he has you tattooed on his ass.”
“For old time’s sake. Got any?”
“Tattoos?” Oddly, he felt foolish. “No. You?”
She smiled, sipped her beer. “A lot happens in five minutes of marriage.”
Ford ended up eating pizza, and wondering what sort of tattoo Cilla had chosen, and where she’d had it inked.
Because the idea wouldn’t leave him alone, he decided Brid should probably have one. Researching symbols gave him something to do once he returned home other than obsess as to whether or not Cilla and Steve were talking rehab plans or having good sex.
By two A.M. both his eyes and his energy gave out. Still, curiosity had him wandering to one of his front windows to take a last look at the house across the road. A slow smile curved his lips when he spotted the beam of a flashlight cutting through the dark toward the barn.
If Steve was bunking in the barn, good sex wasn’t on the night’s agenda.
“Let’s keep it that way,” Ford muttered, stripped off his clothes and fell facedown on the bed.
“ YOU HEAR THAT?” Steve poked Cilla awake, an easy job as they were sharing her sleeping bag.
“What? No. Shut up.” Rolling over, Cilla vowed Steve would find other sleeping arrangements the next night.
“I heard something. Like a moan, like the way a door sounds when it opens in an abandoned house in a creepy movie. We ought to go check it out.”
“Do you remember what I said when you proposed we have sex?”
“That was a no.”
“Same answer for this. Go to sleep.”
“I don’t know how you can sleep with all this quiet.” He rolled, rolled again until she snarled at him. “You need a white-noise machine.”
“I need to get you your own sleeping bag.”
“Harsh.” He kissed the top of her head. “You’ll be sorry when some wild-eyed mountain dude runs in here with a meat cleaver.”
“When that happens, I promise to apologize. Now shut up or go away. Crew’s coming at seven.”
THE ELABORATE BRASS headboard banged rhythmically against the red wall, the sound punctuated by her cries of pleasure. A shaft of moonlight illuminated those blue crystal eyes, glazed now as he plunged into her. She called out his name, nearly sang it while her body surged under his.
Ford. Ford.
Yo, Ford.
He woke with a spectacular morning hard-on, the sun beaming into his eyes and a vague sense of embarrassment that it was Steve calling his name. But at least the realization was already doing the job of deflating the hard-on.
Ford stuck his head out the window, yelled, “Hold on.” He dragged on the jeans he’d stripped off the night before, then stumbled his way downstairs.
“Got doughnuts,” Steve said when Ford pulled open the door.
“Huh?”
“Hey, man, were you still in the sack?”
Ford stared at Steve’s affable smile, at the box of Krispy Kremes. “Coffee.”
“I hear that.” When Ford turned and groped his way to the kitchen, Steve followed. “Great house, man. Seriously. Use of space, choice of materials. Figured you were up since Cilla’d been over to use your gym. Thought I’d try trading doughnuts for some gym time.”
“Okay.” Ford set a mug in place, punched on the coffeemaker
, then opened the box Steve set on the counter. The smell hit him like a lightning bolt.
“Caffeine and sugar.” Steve grinned as Ford grabbed a jelly-filled. “Best way to start the day, after nooky anyway.”
Ford grunted, got down a second mug.
“Things are hopping at Cill’s this morning, so I cut out for the doughnuts. Guys in construction dig on the doughnuts. Hey, man, look at your dog.”
Ford glanced toward the window, saw Spock running, leaping, nosing down to stalk. “Yeah, it’s cats.”
“What is?”
“He’s hunting cats. Magic cats only he can see.”
“Son of a bitch, that’s just what he’s doing.” Steve grinned out the window, a ringed thumb hooked in his belt loop. “So it’s cool if I catch a workout with Cill in the A.M., or hit it late in the day? Not cramping your style?”
“It’s fine.” The sugar rush got Ford’s eyes open, and the first hit of coffee did the rest. “I figured you’d sleep in later today. Long day for you yesterday, and you probably didn’t get the best night sleeping in the barn.”
“I like long days.” Steve took the coffee Ford gave him, then dumped in the milk Ford sat on the counter. “What barn? Cill’s barn? Cill wouldn’t make me bunk in the barn. I got a corner of her sleeping bag.”
“Oh.” Damn. “I was working late, saw you head out there. I just figured—”
“I didn’t go out there. Man, it’s dark out there. In-the-sticks dark. I’m a city boy.” He cocked his head. “You saw somebody out there?”
“I saw a flashlight, the beam. I think. It was late, maybe I—”
“No freaking way!” He slammed a hand to Ford’s arm hard enough to make Ford stumble back. “I told her I heard something, but she’s all shut up and go to sleep. What time was this?”
“I don’t know. Ah . . . little after two.”
“That’s it. Going for the barn? We gotta go check this out.”
“Crap.” Ford downed more coffee. “I guess we do. I need to get a shirt, shoes.”
“Can I come up? I’m digging on the house.”
“Whatever.” It was annoying to feel himself tugged into friendship with the guy who was having sex with the woman he wanted to have sex with. But there didn’t seem to be a way to dig in his heels and hold it off. “So . . . you didn’t bring your own sleeping bag, I guess.”
“Shit, man, I stay in hotels. Room service, bars, pillow-top mattresses. Cill’s the one for roughing it. You don’t have a spare, do you?”
“Actually—”
“Whoa! Holy shit! That’s Cilla.”
Before Ford could respond, Steve strode into his office and to the sketches pinned and hanging.
“Super Cilla. Dude.” Steve tapped a finger to a corner of a sketch. “These are awesome. You’re a genius. This isn’t Seeker stuff.”
“No. New character, new series. I’m just getting started.”
“With Cill as the . . . what, like, model? Does she know?”
“Yeah. We worked it out.”
Nodding, Steve continued to grin at the sketches. “I got the vibe when you came over there yesterday. But seeing this? I totally get why she turned down the on-site booty call last night.”
“She—” Mentally, Ford pumped his fist. “So . . . the two of you aren’t . . .”
“Road’s clear there, man. I’m going to say, straight out, doing her’s one thing—if she’s down with that. Messing with her? That’s another. Do that, I’ll rip your still-beating heart out. Otherwise? We’re cool.”
Ford studied Steve’s face and decided every word spoken was the silver truth. “Got it. I’m going to get my shoes.”
Steve poked his head in the bathroom, then into Ford’s bedroom. “You’ve got good light in here. How come you’re not tapping that yet?”
“What? Tapping the light?”
“Come on.” Steve shook his head as Ford pulled on a T-shirt. “Cilla. How come you’re not tapping that yet? I’d know if you were. And she’s been over there about a month now.”
“Listen, I don’t see how that’s your business. No offense.”
“None taken. Except I see how it is, because there’s nobody who matters more to me. I don’t want to say she’s like my sister, because that would just be sick, considering.”
Ford sat on the side of the bed to pull on his shoes. “The lady seems to want to take it slow. So I’m taking it slow. That’s it.”
“That’s solid. I like you, so I’m going to give you a tip. She’s tough, and what you’d call resilient. She handles herself and what comes at her. But she’s got depths, and in some of those deep places she hurts. So you’ve got to be careful there.”
“She wouldn’t be doing what she’s doing over there if she didn’t have depths, and if some of them didn’t hurt.”
“Okay. Let’s go be men and check out the barn.”
IN WHAT WOULD be her laundry/mudroom, Cilla straightened to stretch out her back. As she’d suspected, the old and yellowing linoleum covered a scarred but salvageable hardwood floor. She’d rather be upstairs having fun with power tools, but it made more sense for her to focus her sweat equity into ripping up the linoleum. Her carpenter didn’t need her up there, especially with Steve on site, so . . .
Through the window she spotted Steve, who obviously wasn’t upstairs, walking toward her barn with Ford. Setting aside her tools, she headed out to find out why Steve was out for a morning stroll instead of supervising the master suite rebuild.
The barn door stood open, and the two men were inside by the time she got there. They appeared to be debating which one of them should climb the ladder into the hayloft.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.
“Checking it out,” Steve told her. “Can you tell if anything’s missing?”
“No, and why should it be?”
“Ford saw somebody skulking around out here last night.”
“I didn’t say ‘skulking.’ I said I saw someone out here with a flashlight last night.”
“You’re out on somebody else’s property in the middle of the night, with a flashlight, that’s skulking.” Steve pointed at Cilla. “I told you I heard something.”
Cilla shook her head at Steve, turned to Ford. “From all the way across the road, in the dead of night, you saw someone skulking around my barn?”
“While I have to agree with the definition of ‘skulking,’ what I said was I saw a light, the beam of it. The beam of a flashlight, moving toward the barn.”
“It was probably a reflection. Moonlight or something.”
“I know what a flashlight beam looks like.”
“Plus,” Steve interrupted, “when we opened the door, it groaned. That’s the sound I heard last night. Somebody came in here. You’ve got a lot of shit in here, Cill.”
“And it’s pretty clear the lot of shit is still here.”
“Maybe something, or some things, aren’t,” Ford pointed out. “There’s a lot of inventory here, and I’d say a valiant attempt to
