by Nora Roberts
“Some package.” He set her down, but he didn’t let go.
“I hoped you’d like it.”
“Where’s Ty?”
She lifted her hands to his cheeks, and now she kissed him. “You say exactly the right things at the right times. He’s spending a couple of days with his grandparents in Baltimore. He’s over the moon about it. Why don’t we go up to your room? I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
“Sure.” He looked down at her feet where she’d set her briefcase, a wheeled carry-on, her laptop case. She was carrying a purse the size of Idaho. “All this? How long were you planning to stay?”
“Now that’s not the right thing to say.” She sailed past him, pressed the Up button on the elevator.
“How about if I say I’m really glad to see you?”
“Better.”
He hauled her bags inside, pushed the button for his floor. “But I also wonder what you’re doing here.”
“Acceptable. First, I wanted Ty tucked away right now, and I felt Digger would do more good with Callie and Jake than with me. I also felt I might be able to give you a hand. You deserve a sidekick.”
“I’d say I got top of the line, sidekick wise.”
“Bet your ass.” She stepped out with him on his floor and walked down the hall beside him. “I could only clear my calendar for a couple of days. But I thought I’d be more useful here than there. So I’m here.”
“So, it wasn’t because you were pining away for me and your life wasn’t worth living if you had to spend another moment away from me?”
“Well, that factored in, of course.” She stepped into the room, glanced around. It had two full-sized beds—one still unmade—a small desk, a single chair and one stingy window. “You do live spare.”
“If I’d known you were coming, I’d’ve gotten something . . . else.”
“This is fine.” She set her purse down on the second bed. “I need to tell you what happened yesterday.”
“Is telling me right now going to change anything?”
“No. But you need to—”
“Then first things first.” He drew the jacket she wore off her shoulders. “Nice material,” he said, and tossed it on the bed beside her purse. “You know one of the first things I noticed about you, Lana?”
“No. What?” She stood very still while he unbuttoned her blouse.
“Soft. Your looks, your skin, your hair. Your clothes.” He slid the blouse away. “A man’s just got to get his hands on all that soft.” He trailed a fingertip down the center of her body to the hook of her slacks.
“Maybe you should put the Do Not Disturb sign out.”
“I did.” He lowered his mouth, nibbled on hers as the fluid material pooled at her feet.
She tugged his shirt up, over his head. “You’re a clear-thinking, careful man. That’s one of the first things I noticed about you. I find that kind of thing very attractive.” Her breath caught when he swept her up into his arms. “And there’s that, too.”
“We’re practical, straightforward people.”
“Mostly,” she managed when he laid her on the bed.
He covered her body with his. “Nice fit.”
She let herself go, let the anxiety and excitement of the past hours melt away. He smelled of his shower, the hotel soap. She found even that arousing. To be here, so far from home in this anonymous room on sheets where he’d slept without her.
She could hear the drone of a vacuum cleaner being run in the corridor outside. And the slam of a door as someone went on their way.
She could hear her own heart beat in her throat as his lips nuzzled there.
The long, loving stroke of his hands over her warmed her skin. Her blood, her bones. So she sighed his name when his lips came back to hers. And yielded everything.
He’d dreamed of her in the night, and he rarely dreamed. He’d wished for her, and he rarely wished. All that, it seemed, had changed since she’d slipped into his life. What he’d once stopped himself from wanting was now everything he wanted.
A home, a family. A woman who would be there. It was all worth the risk if she was the woman.
He pressed his lips to her heart and knew if he could win that, he could do anything.
She moved under him, a shuddering, restless move as he sampled her with his tongue. Now the need to excite her, to hear her breath thicken and catch, to feel that heart he wanted so much to hold thunder, rose up in him.
Not so patient now, not so easy. As her breath went choppy, he dragged her up so they were kneeling on the bed, struggling to strip away the rest of their clothes.
When she bowed back, an offering, his mouth raced over her.
This is what she wanted now. Speed and need. A wild, wet ride. The thrill sprinted through her, turning her body into a quaking mass that craved more. She reared up, clamping her legs around him, curling over him to fix her teeth on his shoulder.
When he filled her, body and heart, she spoke his name. Just his name.
Spent, sated, he held on to her. The temptation was great to simply snuggle down on the bed, drag the covers over their heads and shut out everything else.
“I want time with you, Lana. Time that’s not part of anything else.”
“Normal time.” She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “We’ve hardly had any of that. What would it be like, do you think?”
“Quiet.”
She laughed. “Well, there’s not a lot of that in my house.”
“Yes, there is. There’s a nice sense of quiet with a kid running around.”
“Dogs barking, phones ringing. I’m an organized soul, Doug, but there are a lot of compartments in my life. A lot to handle.”
“And because you make it look easy, I shouldn’t think it is. I’ve never thought it was.” He drew back. “I admire what you’ve done with your life, and Ty’s. How you’ve done it.”
“There you go, saying the right thing again.” She eased away, rising to unzip her bag.
He noted that the short, thin robe was neatly folded and right on top. It made him smile. “Were you born tidy?”
“I’m afraid so.” She belted the robe, then sat on the side of the opposite bed. “And practical. Which is why when I’d prefer to snuggle up on that bed with you for the next hour or so, I’m going to spoil the mood. Something happened yesterday.”
She told him about Rosie, watched his relaxed expression chill, then heat. Though he rose, yanked on his jeans, paced, he didn’t interrupt with comments or questions until she was finished.
“Did you talk to Callie today?”
“Yes, before I left, and when I got to the airport here. She’s fine, Doug, if a little irritated with me for interrupting her work with the second call.”
“This can’t be put down to accident or impulse, or even a vicious kind of distraction. This was premeditated, with her as the specific target.”
“She knows that, just as she knows whoever laced the tea was one of her own team. She won’t be careless. Right now, we have to leave it to her to handle that end. We’ll handle this one.”
“I’ve got a list of Spencers—the secretary’s last name. As far as we know. I got them out of the phone book, and I’ve been running Internet searches. I’m down to six who might work. The others have lived here too long to fit. I was working out how best to approach them when the desk called me downstairs.”
“We could use the telemarketing angle, do phone surveys and try to eliminate a few more.”
“Are you now or have you ever been a part of an organization that markets infants?”
She was opening her briefcase now, taking out a pad. “I was thinking more along the lines of targeting the woman of the house—do you now or have you ever worked outside the home? In what field and so on.”
“It’ll take time. And you have to figure a lot of people just hang up on phone solicitations and surveys.”
“Yes. I’d be one of them.” She doodled absently on the pad. She could read
him now, and nodded. “And yes, there’s something to be said for the more direct approach. Just go knock on doors and ask if we’re speaking to Marcus Carlyle’s former secretary.”
“That was my plan. Tell you what, since I’ve got a sidekick, we can play both angles. I’ll knock on doors, you stay here and play annoying telemarketer.”
“So you can keep me safely locked up in a hotel room? I don’t think so. We go together, Douglas. Side being the operative part of sidekick.”
“Just stop and think for a minute.” He followed her as she went into the bathroom, worked the shower controls until she was satisfied with the temperature. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with. You’ve already had your office destroyed, been scared enough to send Ty away. Think about him if something happens to you.”
She slipped out of the robe, hung it neatly on the hook behind the door, then stepped under the spray. “You’re trying to scare me, and that’s the right button to push.”
“Good.”
“But I can’t and won’t live that way. It took me two months after Steve was killed to work up the courage to go into a goddamn convenience store, in broad daylight. But I did it because you can’t constantly be afraid of what might happen. If you do, you lose control of what is happening, and all the joy and pain it holds for you.”
“Damn.” He pulled off his jeans, stepped into the shower behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist. “You don’t leave me any room to argue.”
She patted his hand, then stepped out before her hair got wet. “I’m a professional.”
“The list is out there on the desk. There’s a city map with it. We might as well plot out the most convenient route.”
“I’ll start that.” She dried off, put the robe back on.
But when he came out to join her, she wasn’t working on anything. Instead she stood by the desk holding a little Boston Red Sox ball cap in her hands. “You got this for Tyler.”
“Yeah, I thought he’d get a kick out of it. When my grandfather used to travel, he’d always bring me a ball cap or a toy. Some little thing.”
He picked up his shirt again, uneasy with the way she simply stood, running the bill of the cap through her fingers. “I didn’t get it for him to score points with him, or you. Well, not entirely.”
“Not entirely.”
A ripple of irritation crossed his face. “Having been a small boy once, I know the value of a ball cap. I saw it at the airport and picked it up. When I was paying for it, the point angle occurred to me.”
“He asked when you’d be back.”
“Yeah?”
It was the instant delight in Doug’s voice that struck her first. Instant, natural and true. Her heart tripped. “Yes, he did. And he’ll love this. Points or not, it was very sweet of you to think of it.”
“I didn’t forget you either.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Nope.” He opened a drawer. “I didn’t leave it out because I wasn’t sure what the maid might make of it.”
Lana stared as he pulled out a can of Boston baked beans. When he dropped it into her hand, grinned at her, her heart not only tripped, it fell with a splat.
“That just tears it. I’m done in by a can of beans.” She pressed it against her heart and began to weep.
“Oh Jesus, Lana, don’t cry. It was a joke.”
“You sneaky son of a bitch. This was not going to happen to me.” She waved him away, opened her purse and pulled out a pack of travel tissues. “I knew I was in trouble when you stepped off the elevator. You got off, and when I saw you, my heart . . .”
She tapped the silly can of beans against her breast. “My heart leaped. I haven’t felt that jolt since Steve. I never expected to feel it again. I thought, I hoped, that one day I’d find someone I could love. Someone I was comfortable with, who I could live with. But if I didn’t, that was all right. Because I’d had something so extraordinary already. I never believed I’d feel anything this strong again. Not for anyone. No, don’t say anything. Don’t.”
She had to sit, steady herself. “I didn’t want to feel like this again. Not like this. Because when you do, there’s so much to lose. It would’ve been so much easier, so much easier if I could have loved you a little. If I could’ve been content and have known you’d be good to Ty. Good for him. That would’ve been enough.”
“Somebody told me that you can’t live your life worrying about what could happen, or you miss what’s happening.”
She sniffled. “Clever, aren’t you?”
“Always have been. I will be good to Ty.” He sat beside her. “I’ll be good to you.”
“I know it.” She laid a hand on his knee. “I can’t change Ty’s name. I can’t take that away from Steve.”
Doug looked down at her hand. At the wedding ring she continued to wear. “Okay.”
“But I’ll change mine.”
He looked up, met her eyes. The flood of emotion was so huge, it almost swamped him. But he took her hand, the one that wore another man’s ring. “You know, this is starting to tick me off. First, you beat me to asking for a date, then you seduce me before I make my move. You follow me here. And now you propose to me.”
“Is that your way of saying I’m pushy?”
“No, I can just say you’re pushy. It’s my way of saying I’d like to ask you this time.”
“Oh. Well, that’s all right then. Forget what I said.”
He opened her hand, kissed her palm. “Marry me, Lana.”
“I’d love to, Douglas.” She rested her head on his shoulder, sighed. “Let’s get this job done so we can go home.”
They had a nice working rhythm, Lana decided as they drove to house number four. She imagined they looked like a very safe, all-American couple. Which was why those first three doors had opened to them so easily.
When they found the right door, she doubted it would open quite so smoothly.
“Lovely neighborhood,” she considered as they drove streets lined with big, well-tended homes, rolling lawns. The cars in the driveways were all late models.
“Money,” he said.
“Yes, money. She’d have that. And would probably be smart enough to spend it well, and discreetly. Nothing big and splashy to draw too much attention. Just quiet class. It should be coming up on your left.”
It was a rosy old brick with a white veranda with flowering vines trailing up both sides to shield it from its neighbors. The drive was flanked by two tall magnolias. And in it sat a vintage Mercedes sedan in soft yellow.
There was a realtor’s sign in the yard.
“It’s on the market. Interesting. Pulling up stakes?” he considered. “Nobody but you and my family know we’re here, but somebody knew I was poking around in Boston.”
“Mmm.” Lana played the angles in her head as he pulled to the side of the shady street. “If she’s in any way connected to what’s happening now, she’d know we’re pulling the threads. Relocating would be a natural step. And it certainly gives us a logical way inside.”
“House hunting.”
“The affluent and happy young couple, looking for their dream house.” She tossed her hair, then took out a tube of lipstick. Flipping down the vanity mirror on the visor, she applied it in smooth, meticulous strokes. “We’ll be the Beverlys—that’s my maiden name—from Baltimore. Keep it simple.”
She capped the tube, replaced it. “We’re relocating here because you’ve accepted a position at the university. Wear your glasses.”
“Teaching positions don’t pay that well.”
“It’s family money.”
“Cool. We’re loaded, huh?”
“Modestly. And I’m a lawyer. We’ll stick with that because it may present an opening. Corporate law. I rake in the dough. We’ll ad-lib. We’ve been doing fine so far. If we can get into the house.”
They walked toward the house, holding hands. They rang the bell. After a short wait a woman in trim black pants and a white shirt answered; Lana
’s hopes skidded. She was entirely too young to be Dorothy Spencer.
“May I help you?”
Stuck, she decided to play it out. “I hope so. My husband and I saw the house was for sale. We’re looking for a house in the area.”
“I don’t think Mrs. Spencer has a showing scheduled for this afternoon.”
“No.” Hopes lifted a level. “No, we don’t have an appointment. We were driving by, admiring the homes. I suppose it might be inconvenient to see the inside right now. Are you the owner? Could we make an appointment for later today or tomorrow?”
“No, I’m the housekeeper.” As Southern hospitality won out, she stepped back. “If you’d like to wait here, I’ll check with Mrs. Spencer.”
“Thank you so much. Roger,” Lana continued as the housekeeper started down the hall, “isn’t it lovely?”
“Roger?” he queried.
“I did fall for him first. Such nice light,” she continued. “And look at the floors.”
“The other place was closer to the university.”
She beamed, delighted with him. “I know, honey, but this one has such character.” She turned, acknowledged the woman in the slim beige suit who came toward them.
Could be the right age, Lana thought. Looked younger, but women often found ways to look younger. “Mrs. Spencer?” She took a step forward, extending her hand. “We’re the incredibly rude Beverlys. I’d apologize for intruding, but I’m too delighted to get even this small glimpse of your home.”
“The realtor didn’t mention she was sending anyone by.”
“No, we haven’t been there yet. We were driving through the area and spotted the sign. When we decided to move south, this is exactly the sort of house I dreamed of.”
“Tiffany.” Doug squeezed Lana’s hand. “We’ve just started to look. I won’t be transferring until the first of the year.”
“You’re just moving to Charlotte?”
“We will be,” he confirmed. “From Baltimore. It is a beautiful house. Big,” he added with a wary glance at Lana.
“I want big. And we need the room to entertain. How many bedrooms—” She shook her head as if stopping herself, laughed a little. “I’m sorry. I know we should let you go, and make an appointment. I’m pushing a bit. Roger thinks January gives us plenty of time. But when I think about having everything packed and moved, learning a new area—new stores, new doctors, new everything—all while still dealing with two careers, it’s daunting. And I’m in a rush to start.”
