by Nora Roberts
“Thank you. I brought some wine.”
“I will take it.”
With only a little sigh, Natasha watched Vera walk away. The more the housekeeper held firm, the more determined Natasha was to win her over.
She heard Freddie’s giggles as she approached the music room. And others, she realized. When she reached the door, she spotted Freddie and JoBeth clinging to each other and squealing. And why not? Natasha thought with a grin. Spence was wearing a ridiculous helmet and aiming a cardboard spool like a weapon.
“Stowaways aboard my ship are fed to the Beta Monster,” he warned them. “He has six-foot teeth and bad breath.”
“No!” Eyes wide, heart pounding with delight and dread, Freddie scrambled for cover. “Not the Beta Monster.”
“He likes little girls best.” With an evil laugh, he scooped the squealing JoBeth under one arm. “He swallows little boys whole, but he chews and chews and chews when I feed him girls.”
“That’s gross.” JoBeth covered her mouth with both hands.
“You bet.” So saying, Spence made a dive and came up with a squirming Freddie. “Say your prayers, you’re about to be the main course.” Then with a muffled “Oomph,” he tumbled onto the couch with both of them.
“We vanquished you!” Freddie announced, climbing over him. “The Wonder Sisters vanquished you.”
“This time, but next time it’s the Beta Monster.” As he blew the hair out of his eyes, he spotted Natasha in the doorway. “Hi.” She thought his smile was adorably sheepish. “I’m a space pirate.”
“Oh. Well, that explains it.” Before she could step into the room, both girls deserted the space pirate to launch themselves at her.
“We always beat him,” Freddie told her. “Always, always.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I wouldn’t want anyone I know to be eaten by the Beta Monster.”
“He just made it up,” JoBeth said wisely. “Dr. Kimball makes things up real good.”
“Yes, I know.”
“JoBeth’s going to stay for dinner, too. You’re going to be Daddy’s guest and she’s going to be mine. You get to have seconds first.”
“That’s very polite.” She bent to kiss Freddie’s cheeks, then JoBeth’s. “How is your mama?”
“She’s going to have a baby.” JoBeth screwed up her face and shrugged her shoulders.
“I heard.” Natasha smoothed JoBeth’s hair. “Are you taking care of her?”
“She doesn’t get sick in the mornings anymore, but Daddy says she’ll be fat soon.”
Miserably envious, Freddie shifted from one foot to the other. “Let’s go up to my room,” she told JoBeth. “We can play with the kittens.”
“You will wash your hands and faces,” Vera told them as she came in with the ice bucket and glasses. “Then you will come down to dinner, walking like ladies, not running like elephants.” She nodded to Spence. “Miss Stanislaski brought champagne.”
“Thank you, Vera.” Belatedly he remembered to remove his helmet.
“Dinner in fifteen minutes,” she stated, then went out.
“Now she knows I have designs on you,” Natasha muttered. “And is certain I’m after your great wealth.”
With a laugh, he pried the cork free. “That’s all right, I know you’re only after my body.” Wine frothed to the lip of the glasses, then receded.
“I like it very much. Your body.” With a smile she accepted the flute of champagne.
“Then maybe you’d like to enjoy it later.” He touched the rim of his glass to hers. “Freddie twisted my arm and got me to agree to a sleep-over at the Rileys’. So I don’t feel left out, maybe I can stay with you tonight. All night.”
Natasha took her first sip of wine, letting the taste explode on her tongue. “Yes,” she said, and smiled at him.
CHAPTER NINE
Natasha watched the shadows dancing from the lights the candles tossed around the room. Soothing, they played over the curtains, the top rung of the old ladder-back chair in the corner, over the coxcomb she had impulsively slipped into an empty milk bottle and set on her dresser. Her room, she thought. It had always been very much hers. Until…
With a half sigh she let her hand rest on Spence’s heart.
It was no longer quiet; the wind had risen to toss a late, cold rain against the panes. Outside it was a chilled, gusty night that promised a chilled, frosty morning. Winter often came early to the little town snuggled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. But she was warm, beautifully warm, in Spence’s arms.
The silence between them was easy, as the loving had been. Curled close, they lay still, content to let the hours pass, one lazy second at a time. Each of them quietly celebrated the knowledge that in the morning they wouldn’t wake alone. His hand skimmed over her thigh, her hip, until it linked with hers.
There was music playing inside her head—the song he had given her that morning. She knew she would remember each note, each chord, for the rest of her life. And it was only the beginning for him, or a new beginning. The idea of that delighted her. In the years to come she would hear his music and remember the time they had had together. On hearing it she would celebrate again, even if his music took him away.
Still, she had to ask.
“Will you go back to New York?”
He brushed his lips through her hair. “Why?”
“You’re composing again.” She could imagine him there, in evening dress, attending the opening of his own symphony.
“I don’t need to be in New York to compose. And if I did, there are more reasons to stay here.”
“Freddie.”
“Yes, there’s Freddie. And there’s you.”
Her restless movement rustled the sheets. She could see him after the symphony at some small intimate party, the Rainbow Room perhaps, or a private club. He would be dancing with a beautiful woman.
“The New York you lived in is different from mine.”
“I imagine.” He wondered why that should matter to her. “Do you ever think of going back?”
“To live, no. But to visit.” It was silly, she thought, to be nervous about asking such a simple thing. “My mother called me today.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes. She only called to remind me about Thanksgiving. I’d almost forgotten. Every year we have a big dinner and eat too much. Do you go home for the holiday?”
“I am home.”
“I mean to your family.” She shifted to watch his face.
“I only have Freddie. And Nina,” he added. “She always goes out to the Waldorf.”
“Your parents. I’ve never asked you if you still have them, or where they live.”
“They’re in Cannes.” Or was it Monte Carlo? It occurred to him suddenly that he didn’t know for certain. The ties there were loose, comfortably so for everyone involved.
“Won’t they come back for the holidays?”
“They never come to New York in the winter.”
“Oh.” Try as she might, she couldn’t picture the holidays without family.
“We never ate at home on Thanksgiving. We always went out, were usually traveling.” His memories of his childhood were more of places than people, more of music than words. “When I was married to Angela, we usually met friends at a restaurant and went to the theater.”
“But—” She caught herself and fell silent.
“But what?”
“Once you had Freddie.”
“Nothing changed.” He shifted onto his back to stare at the ceiling. He’d wanted to tell her about his marriage, about himself—the man he had been—but had put it off. For too long, he reflected. How could he expect to build, when he had yet to clear away the emotional rubble of his past? “I’ve never explained to you about Angela.”
“It’s not necessary.” She took his hand again. She’d wanted to invite him to a meal, not dredge up old ghosts.
“It is for me.” Sitting up, he reached for the bottle of champagn
e they had brought back with them. Filling both glasses, he handed her one.
“I don’t need explanations, Spence.”
“But you’ll listen?”
“Yes, if it’s important to you.”
He took a moment to gather his thoughts. “I was twenty-five when I met her. On top of the world as far as my music went, and to be honest, at twenty-five, very little else mattered to me. I had spent my life traveling, doing exactly what I pleased and being successful in what was most important to me. I don’t believe anyone had ever told me, ‘No, you can’t have that. No, you can’t do that.’ When I saw her, I wanted her.”
He paused to sip, to look back. Beside him Natasha stared into her glass, watching bubbles rise. “And she wanted you.”
“In her way. The pity was that her attraction for me was as shallow as mine for her. And in the end just as destructive. I loved beautiful things.” With a half laugh he tilted his glass again. “And I was used to having them. She was exquisite, like a delicate porcelain doll. We moved in the same circles, attended the same parties, preferred the same literature and music.”
Natasha shifted her glass from one hand to the other, wishing his words didn’t make her feel so miserable. “It’s important to have things in common.”
“Oh, we had plenty in common. She was as spoiled and as pampered as I, as self-absorbed and as ambitious. I don’t think we shared any particularly admirable qualities.”
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
“You didn’t know me then.” He found himself profoundly grateful for that. “I was a very rich young man who took everything I had for granted, because I had always had it. Things change,” he murmured.
“Only people who are born with money can consider it a disadvantage.”
He glanced over to see her sitting cross-legged, the glass cupped in both hands. Her eyes were solemn and direct, and made him smile at himself. “Yes, you’re right. I wonder what might have happened if I had met you when I was twenty-five.” He touched her hair, but didn’t dwell on the point. “In any case, Angela and I were married within a year and bored with each other only months after the ink had dried on the marriage certificate.”
“Why?”
“Because at that time we were so much alike. When it started to fall apart, I wanted badly to fix it. I’d never failed at anything. The worst of it was, I wanted the marriage to work more for my own ego than because of my feelings for her. I was in love with the image of her and the image we made together.”
“Yes.” She thought of herself and her feelings for Anthony. “I understand.”
“Do you?” The question was only a murmur. “It took me years to understand it. In any case, once I did, there were other considerations.”
“Freddie,” Natasha said again.
“Yes, Freddie. Though we still lived together and went through the motions of marriage, Angela and I had drifted apart. But in public and in private we were…civilized. I can’t tell you how demeaning and destructive a civilized marriage can be. It’s a cheat, Natasha, to both parties. And we were equally to blame. Then one day she came home furious, livid. I remember how she stalked over to the bar, tossing her mink aside so that it fell on the floor. She poured a drink, drank it down, then threw the glass against the wall. And told me she was pregnant.”
Her throat dry, Natasha drank. “How did you feel?”
“Stunned. Rocked. We’d never planned on having children. We were much too much children, spoiled children ourselves. Angela had had a little more time to think it all through and had her answer. She wanted to go to Europe to a private clinic and have an abortion.”
Something tightened inside Natasha. “Is that what you wanted?”
He wished, how he wished he could have answered unequivocably no. “At first I didn’t know. My marriage was falling apart, I’d never given a thought to having children. It seemed sensible. And then, I’m not sure why, but I was furious. I guess it was because it was the easy way again, the easy way out for both of us. She wanted me to snap my fingers and get rid of this…inconvenience.”
Natasha stared down at her own balled fist. His words were hitting much too close to home. “What did you do?”
“I made a bargain with her. She would have the baby, and we would give the marriage another shot. She would have the abortion and I would divorce her, and make certain that she didn’t get what she considered her share of the Kimball money.”
“Because you wanted the child.”
“No.” It was a painful admission, one that still cost him. “Because I wanted my life to run the way I’d imagined it would. I knew if she had an abortion, we would never put the pieces back. I thought perhaps if we shared this, we’d pull it all together again.”
Natasha remained silent for a moment, absorbing his words and seeing them reflected in her own memories. “People sometimes think a baby will fix what’s broken.”
“And it doesn’t,” he finished. “Nor should it have to. By the time Freddie was born, I was already losing my grip on my music. I couldn’t write. Angela had delivered Freddie, then passed her over to Vera, as though she were no more than a litter of kittens. I was little better.”
“No.” She reached out to take his wrist. “I’ve seen you with her. I know how you love her.”
“Now. What you said to me that night on the steps of the college, about not deserving her. It hurt because it was true.” He saw Natasha shake her head but went on. “I’d made a bargain with Angela, and for more than a year I kept it. I barely saw the child, because I was so busy escorting Angela to the ballet or the theater. I’d stopped working completely. I did nothing. I never fed her or bathed her or cuddled her at night. Sometimes I’d hear her crying in the other room and wonder—what is that noise? Then I’d remember.”
He picked up the bottle to top off his glass. “Sometime before Freddie was two I stepped back and looked at what I’d done with my life. And what I hadn’t done. It made me sick. I had a child. It took more than a year for it to sink in. I had no marriage, no wife, no music, but I had a child. I decided I had an obligation, a responsibility, and it was time to pull myself up and deal with it. That’s how I thought of Freddie at first, when I finally began to think of her. An obligation.” He drank again, then shook his head. “That was little better than ignoring her. Finally I looked, really looked at that beautiful little girl and fell in love. I picked her up out of her crib, scared to death, and just held her. She screamed for Vera.”
He laughed at that, then stared once more into his wine. “It took months before she was comfortable around me. By that time I’d asked Angela for a divorce. She’d snapped up my offer without a blink. When I told her I was keeping the child, she wished me luck and walked out. She never came back to see Freddie, not once in all the months the lawyers were battling over a settlement. Then I heard that she’d been killed. A boating accident in the Mediterranean. Sometimes I’m afraid Freddie remembers what her mother was like. More, I’m afraid she’ll remember what I was like.”
Natasha remembered how Freddie had spoken of her mother when they had rocked. Setting aside her glass, she took Spence’s face in her hand. “Children forgive,” she told him. “Forgiveness is easy when you’re loved. It’s harder, so much harder to forgive yourself. But you must.”
“I think I’ve begun to.”
Natasha took his glass and set it aside. “Let me love you,” she said simply, and enfolded him.
It was different now that passion had mellowed. Slower, smoother, richer. As they knelt on the bed, their mouths met dreamily—a long, lazy exploration of tastes that had become hauntingly familiar. She wanted to show him what he meant to her, and that what they had together, tonight, was worlds apart from what had been. She wanted to comfort, excite and cleanse.
A sigh, then a murmur, then a low, liquid moan. The sounds were followed by a light, breezy touch. Fingertips trailing on flesh. She knew his body now as well as her own, every angle, every plane,
every vulnerability. When his breath caught on a tremble, her laughter came quietly. Watching him in the shifting candlelight, she brushed kisses at his temple, his cheek, the corner of his mouth, his throat. There a pulse beat for her, heavy and fast.
She was as erotic as any fantasy, her body swaying first to, then away from his. Her eyes stayed on him, glowing, aware, and her hair fell in a torrent of dark silk over her naked shoulders.
When he touched her, skimming his hands up and over, her head fell back. But there was nothing of submission in the gesture. It was a demand. Pleasure me.
On a groan he lowered his mouth to her throat and felt the need punch like a fist through his gut. His open mouth growing greedy, he trailed down her, pausing to linger at the firm swell of her breast. He could feel her heart, almost taste it, as its beat grew fast and hard against his lips. Her hands came to his hair, gripping tight while she arched like a bow.
Before he could think he reached for her and sent her spiraling over the first crest.
Breathless, shuddering, she clung, managing only a confused murmur as he laid her back on the bed. She struggled for inner balance, but he was already destroying will and mind and control.
This was seduction. She hadn’t asked for it, hadn’t wanted it. Now she welcomed it. She couldn’t move, couldn’t object. Helpless, drowning in her own pleasure, she let him take her where he willed. His mouth roamed freely over her damp skin. His hands played her as skillfully as they might a fine-tuned instrument. Her muscles went lax.
Her breath began to rush through her lips. She heard music. Symphonies, cantatas, preludes. Weakness became strength and she reached for him, wanting only to feel his body fit against her own.
Slowly, tormentingly, he slid up her, leaving trails of heat and ice, of pleasure and pain. His own body throbbed as she moved under him. He found her mouth, diving deep, holding back even when her fingers dug into his hips.
