Night Moves

by Nora Roberts

  Joyce’s pumps were trim and stylish. Maggie felt the glue pull at the bottom of her old sneakers. “We can talk outside, if you don’t mind.” Taking the initiative, Maggie walked out into the sunshine. “Things are a little confused around here right now.”

  “Yes.” They heard one of the workers call to a companion, punctuating his suggestion with good-natured swearing. Joyce glanced over in their direction before she turned back to Maggie. “You’re not wasting any time, I see.”

  “No.” Maggie laughed and eyed the crumbling dirt wall beside them. “I’ve never been very patient. For some reason, I’m more anxious to have the outside the way I want it than the inside.”

  “You couldn’t have picked a better company,” Joyce murmured, glancing over at one of the trucks with Delaney’s on the side.

  Maggie followed her gaze but kept her tone neutral. “So I’m told.”

  “I want you to know I’m really glad you’re doing so much to the place.” Joyce began to fiddle with the strap of her shoulder bag. “I can hardly remember living here. I was a child when we moved, but I hate waste.” With a little smile, she looked around again and shook her head. “I don’t think I could live out here. I like being in town, with neighbors close by and other children for my children to play with. Of course, Stan, my husband, likes being available all the time.”

  It took Maggie a moment; then she remembered. “Oh, your husband’s the sheriff, isn’t he?”

  “That’s right. Morganville’s a quiet town, nothing like Los Angeles, but it keeps him busy.” She smiled, but Maggie wondered why she sensed strain. “We’re just not city people.”

  “No.” Maggie smiled, too. “I guess I’ve discovered I’m not, either.”

  “I don’t understand how you could give up—” Joyce seemed to catch herself. “I guess what I meant was, this must be such a change for you after living in a place like Beverly Hills.”

  “A change,” Maggie agreed. Was she sensing undercurrents here, too, as she had with Louella’s dreaminess? “It was one I wanted.”

  “Yes, well, you know I’m glad you bought the place, and so quickly. Stan was a little upset with my putting it on the market when he was out of town, but I couldn’t see it just sitting here. Who knows, if you hadn’t come along so fast, he might’ve talked me out of selling it.”

  “Then we can both be grateful I saw the sign when I did.” Mentally, Maggie was trying to figure out the logistics of the situation. It seemed the house had belonged exclusively to Joyce, without her husband or her mother having any claim. Fleetingly, she wondered why Joyce hadn’t rented or sold the property before.

  “The real reason I came by, Miss Fitzgerald, is my mother. She told me she was here a few days ago.”

  “Yes, she’s a lovely woman.”

  “Yes.” Joyce looked back toward the men working, then took a deep breath. Maggie no longer had to wonder if she was sensing undercurrents. She was sure of it. “It’s more than possible she’ll drop in on you again. I’d like to ask you a favor, that is, if she begins to bother you, if you’d tell me instead of her.”

  “Why should she bother me?”

  Joyce let out a sound that was somewhere between fatigue and frustration. “Mother often dwells on the past. She’s never completely gotten over my father’s death. She makes some people uncomfortable.”

  Maggie remembered the discomfort she’d felt on and off during Louella’s brief visit. Still, she shook her head. “Your mother’s welcome to visit me from time to time, Mrs. Agee.”

  “Thank you, but you will promise to tell me if—well, if you’d like her to stay away. You see, she’d often come here, even when the place was deserted. I don’t want her to get in your way. She doesn’t know who you are. That is—” Obviously embarrassed, Joyce broke off. “I mean, Mother doesn’t understand that someone like you would be busy.”

  Maggie remembered the lost eyes, the unhappy mouth. Pity stirred again. “All right, if she bothers me, I’ll tell you.”

  The relief in Joyce’s face was quick and very plain. “I appreciate it, Miss Fitzgerald.”

  “Maggie.”

  “Yes, well …” As if only more uncertain of her ground, Joyce managed a smile. “I understand that someone like you wouldn’t want to have people dropping by and getting in the way.”

  Maggie laughed, thinking how many times the phone calls from California had interrupted her that morning. “I’m not a recluse,” she told Joyce, though she was no longer completely sure. “And I’m not really very temperamental. Some people even consider me normal.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know you didn’t. Come back when I’ve done something with that floor, and we’ll have some coffee.”

  “I’d like to, really. Oh, I nearly forgot.” She reached into the big canvas bag on her shoulder and pulled out a manila envelope. “Mother said you wanted to see these. Some pictures of the property.”

  “Yes.” Pleased, Maggie took the envelope. She hadn’t thought Louella would remember or bother to put them together for her. “I hoped they might give me some ideas.”

  “Mother said you could keep them as long as you liked.” Joyce hesitated, fiddling again with the strap of her bag. “I have to get back. My youngest gets home from kindergarten at noon, and Stan sometimes comes home for lunch. I haven’t done a thing to the house. I hope I see you sometime in town.”

  “I’m sure you will.” Maggie tucked the envelope under her arm. “Give my best to your mother.”

  Maggie started back into the house, but as she put her hand on the doorknob, she noticed Cliff crossing to Joyce. Curiosity had her stopping to watch as Cliff took both the brunette’s hands in his own. Though she couldn’t hear the conversation over the din of motors, it was obvious that they knew each other well. There was a gentleness on Cliff’s face Maggie hadn’t seen before, and something she interpreted as concern. He bent down close, as if Joyce were speaking very softly, then touched her hair. The touch of a brother? Maggie wondered. Or a lover?

  As she watched, Joyce shook her head, apparently fumbling with the door handle before she got into the car. Cliff leaned into the window for a moment. Were they arguing? Maggie wondered. Was the tension she sensed real or imaginary? Fascinated with the silent scene being played out in her driveway, Maggie watched as Cliff withdrew from the window and Joyce backed out to drive away. Before she could retreat inside, Cliff turned, and their gazes locked.

  There were a hundred feet separating them, and the air was full of the sounds of men and machines. The sun was strong enough to make her almost too warm in the sweatshirt, yet she felt one quick, unexpected chill race up her spine. Perhaps it was hostility she felt. Maggie tried to tell herself it was hostility and not the first dangerous flutters of passion.

  There was a temptation to cross those hundred feet and test both of them. Even the thought of it stirred her blood. He didn’t move. He didn’t take his eyes from her. With fingers gone suddenly numb, Maggie twisted the handle and went inside.

  Two hours later, Maggie went out again. She’d never been one to retreat from a challenge, from her emotions or from trouble. Cliff Delaney seemed connected with all three. While she’d scraped linoleum, Maggie had lectured herself on letting Cliff intimidate her for no reason other than his being powerfully male and sexy.

  And different, she’d admitted. Different from most of the men she’d encountered in her profession. He didn’t fawn—far from it. He didn’t pour on the charm. He wasn’t impressed with his own physique, looks or sophistication. It must have been that difference that had made her not quite certain how to handle him.

  A very direct, very frank business approach, she decided as she circled around the back of the house. Maggie paused to look at the bank fronting her house.

  The vines, briars and thick sumac were gone. Piles of rich, dark topsoil were being spread over what had been a tangled jungle of neglect. The tree that had leaned toward her house was gone, stump and al
l. Two men, backs glistening with sweat, were setting stone in a low-spreading wall where the edge of the slope met the edge of the lawn.

  Cliff Delaney ran a tight ship, Maggie concluded, and made her way through the new dirt toward the side yard. Here, too, the worst had been cleared out. An enormous bearded man in bib overalls sat atop a big yellow backhoe as easily as another might sit in an armchair. At the push of a lever, the digger went down into the gully, bit into earth and rock and came up full.

  Maggie shaded her eyes and watched the procedure while the puppy circled her legs and snarled at everything in sight. Each time the digger would open its claws to drop its load, the dog would send up a ruckus of barks. Laughing, Maggie crouched down to scratch his ears and soothe him.

  “Don’t be a coward, Killer. I won’t let it get you.”

  “I wouldn’t get any closer,” Cliff said from behind her.

  She turned her head, squinting against the sun. “This is close enough.” Disliking the disadvantage of looking up and into the sun, Maggie stood. “You seem to be making progress.”

  “We need to get the plants in and the wall of this thing solid—” he gestured toward the gully “—before the rain hits. Otherwise, you’ll have a real mess on your hands.”

  “I see.” Because he wore the frustrating tinted glasses again, she turned from him to watch the backhoe work. “You certainly have a large staff.”

  Cliff’s thumbs went into his pockets. “Large enough.” He’d told himself he’d imagined that powerful sexual pull hours before. Now, feeling it again, he couldn’t deny it.

  She wasn’t what he wanted, yet he wanted her. She wasn’t what he would have chosen, yet he was choosing her. He could turn away logic until he’d learned what it was like to touch her.

  Maggie was very aware of how close they stood. The stirring she’d felt hours before began to build again, slowly, seductively, until she felt her whole body tense with it. She understood that you could want someone you didn’t know, someone you passed on the street. It all had to do with chemistry, but her chemistry had never reacted this way before. She had a wild urge to turn into his arms, to demand or offer the fulfillment, or whatever it was, that simmered between them. It was something that offered excitement, and pleasure she had only glimpsed before. So she did turn, completely uncertain as to what she would say.

  “I don’t think I like what’s happening here.”

  Cliff didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. Neither of their minds was on the pond or the machine. “Do you have a choice?”

  Maggie frowned, wishing she was more certain of her moves. He wasn’t like the men she’d known before; therefore, the standard rules didn’t apply. “I think so. I moved here because it was where I wanted to live, where I wanted to work. But I also moved here because I wanted to be on my own. I intend to do all those things.”

  Cliff studied her a moment, then gave the backhoe driver an absent wave as he shut off the machine to take his lunch break. “I took this job because I wanted to work this land. I intend to do it.”

  Though she didn’t feel the slightest lessening of tension, Maggie nodded. “Then we understand each other.”

  As she started to turn away, Cliff put a hand on her shoulder, holding her still. “I think we both understand quite a bit.”

  The muscles in her stomach tightened and loosened like a nervous fist. With his fingers so light on the bulky sweatshirt, she shouldn’t have felt anything. But hundreds of pulses sprang to life in her body. The air seemed to grow closer, hotter, the sounds of men more distant. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Yes, she did. “I don’t know anything about you,” Maggie managed.

  Cliff caught the tips of her hair in his fingers. “I can’t say the same.”

  Maggie’s temper flared, though she knew when she was being baited. “So, you believe everything you read in the tabloids and glossies.” She tossed her head to free her hair from his fingers. “I’m surprised that a man who’s obviously so successful and talented could be so ignorant.”

  Cliff acknowledged the hit with a nod. “I’m surprised a woman who’s obviously so successful and talented could be so foolish.”

  “Foolish? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It seems foolish to me to encourage the press to report every area of your life.”

  She clenched her teeth and tried deep breathing. Neither worked. “I don’t encourage the press to do anything.”

  “You don’t discourage them,” Cliff countered.

  “Discouragement is encouragement,” she tossed back. Folding her arms under her breasts as she’d done earlier, she stared out over the open gully. “Why am I defending myself?” she muttered. “You don’t know anything about it. I don’t need you to know anything about it.”

  “I know you gave an interview about yourself and your husband weeks after his death.” He heard her quick intake of breath even as he cursed himself for saying something so personal, and so uncalled-for.

  “Do you have any idea how the press hammered at me during those weeks?” Her voice was low and strained, and she no longer looked at him. “Do you know all the garbage they were printing?” Her fingers tightened on her own arms. “I chose a reporter I could trust, and I gave the most honest, most straightforward interview I could manage, knowing it was my only chance to keep things from sinking lower. That interview was for Jerry. It was the only thing I had left to give him.”

  He’d wanted to prod, perhaps even to prick, but he hadn’t wanted to hurt. “I’m sorry.” Cliff put his hand on her shoulder again, but she jerked away.

  “Forget it.”

  This time he took both of her shoulders, turning her firmly to face him. “I don’t forget blows below the belt, especially when I’m the one doing the punching.”

  She waited to speak until she was certain she had some control again. “I’ve survived hits before. My advice to you is not to criticize something you have no capacity for understanding.”

  “I apologized.” He didn’t release her shoulders when she tried to draw away. “But I’m not very good at following advice.”

  Maggie became still again. Somehow they had gotten closer, so that now their thighs brushed. The combination of anger and desire was becoming too strong to ignore. “Then you and I don’t have any more to say to each other.”

  “You’re wrong.” His voice was very quiet, very compelling. “We haven’t begun to say all there is to say.”

  “You work for me—”

  “I work for myself,” Cliff corrected.

  She understood that kind of pride, admired it. But admiration wouldn’t remove his hands from her shoulders. “I’m paying you to do a job.”

  “You’re paying my company. That’s business.”

  “It’s going to be our only business.”

  “Wrong again,” he murmured, but released her.

  Maggie opened her mouth to hurl something back at him, but the dog began to bark in quick, excited yelps. She decided turning her back on him to investigate her pet was a much grander insult than the verbal one she’d planned. Without a word, she began to make her way around the slope of the gully to the pile of earth and rock and debris the backhoe had dumped.

  “All right, Killer.” The going was so rough that she swore under her breath as she stumbled over stones. “You’ll never find anything worthwhile in that pile, anyway.”

  Ignoring her, the puppy continued to dig, his barking muffled as his nose went farther in, his backside wriggling with either effort or delight in the new game.

  “Cut it out.” She bent to pull him out of the heap and ended up sitting down hard. “Damn it, Killer.” Staying as she was, she grabbed the dog with one hand, dragging him back and unearthing a small avalanche of rock.

  “Will you be careful?” Cliff shouted from above her, knowing she’d been lucky not to have one of the rocks bounce off her shin.

  “It’s the stupid dog!�
� Maggie shouted back as she lost her grip on him again. “God knows what he thinks is so fascinating about this mess. Nothing but dirt and rocks,” she muttered, pushing at the pile that had landed near her hip.

  “Well, grab him and get back up here before you’re both hurt.”

  “Yeah,” she muttered under her breath. “You’re a big help.”

  Disgusted, she started to struggle up when her fingers slid into the worn, rounded rock her hand had rested on. Hollow, she thought curiously. Her attention torn between the gully and the dog’s unrelenting barks, Maggie glanced down.

  Then she began to scream, loud and long enough to send the puppy racing for cover.

  Cliff’s first thought as he raced down the slope to her was snakes. When he reached her, he dragged her up and into his arms in an instinctive move of protection. She’d stopped screaming, and though her breathing was shallow, Maggie grabbed his shirt before he could carry her back up the slope. “Bones,” she whispered. Closing her eyes, she dropped her head on his shoulder. “Oh, my God.”

  Cliff looked down and saw what the machine and dog had unearthed. Mixed with the rock and debris was a pile of what might have been mistaken for long white sticks layered with dirt.

  But lying on the bones, inches from where Maggie had sat, was a human skull.

  Chapter Four

  “I’m all right.” Maggie sat at the kitchen table and gripped the glass of water Cliff had handed her. When the pain in her fingers finally registered, she relaxed them a bit. “I feel like an idiot, screaming that way.”