by Nora Roberts
She wanted to sit on her porch, to feel that quiet satisfaction after a long day’s work. She wanted to know Seth was beside her, or would be.
How strange it was that she could see that image so clearly, could see it spinning on, day after day. Year after year. And she could barely make out the shape and texture of the life she’d led before. All she knew was the weight of it at moments like this.
“Drusilla?”
She glanced over her shoulder, managed to suppress the sigh—and the oath—when Angela stepped up to her. “Let’s not pretend we have something to say to each other, Angela. We played for the crowd.”
“I have something to say to you. Something I’ve wanted to say for a long time. I owe you an apology.”
Dru lifted an eyebrow. “For?”
“This isn’t easy for me. I was jealous of you. I resented you for having what I wanted. And I used that to justify sleeping with the man you were going to marry. I loved him, I wanted him, so I took what was available.”
“And now you have him.” Dru lifted a hand, palm up. “Problem solved.”
“I didn’t like being the other woman. Sneaking around, taking whatever scraps he had left over. I convinced myself it was your fault, that was the only way I could live with it. All I had to do was get you out of the way and Jonah and I could be together.”
“You did do it on purpose.” Dru turned, leaned back against the railing. “I wondered.”
“Yes, I did it on purpose. It was impulse, and one I’ve regretted even though . . . well, even though. You didn’t deserve to find out that way. You hadn’t done anything. You were the injured party, and I played a large role in hurting you. I’m very sorry for it.”
“Are you apologizing because your conscience is bothering you, Angela, or because it’ll tidy up the path before you marry Jonah?”
“Both.”
Honesty at least, Dru thought, she could respect. “All right, you’re absolved. Go forth and sin no more. He wouldn’t have had the guts to apologize, to come to me this way, face-to-face, and admit he was wrong. Why are you with someone like that?”
“I love him,” Angela said simply. “Strong points, weak points, the whole package.”
“Yes, I think you do. Good luck. Sincerely.”
“Thank you.” She started back in, then stopped. “Jonah’s never looked at me the way I saw Seth Quinn look at you. I don’t think he ever will. Some of us settle for what we can get.”
And some of us, Dru realized, get more than we ever knew we wanted.
HE was worn out when they got back to Dru’s. From the drive, from the tension, from the thoughts circling like vultures in his mind.
“I owe you big.”
He turned his head, stared at her blankly. “What?”
“I owe you for tolerating everything. My grandfather’s interrogation, my ex-fiancé’s smugness, my mother’s prancing you around for over an hour like you were a prize stallion at a horse show, for all the questions, the intimations, the speculations. You had to run the gauntlet.”
“Yeah, well.” He jerked his shoulders, shoved open the car door. “You warned me.”
“My father was rude, several times.”
“Not especially. He just doesn’t like me.” Hands in his pockets, Seth walked with her toward the front door. “I get the impression he’s not going to like any guy, particularly, who touches his princess.”
“I’m not a princess.”
“Oh, sugar, when your family’s got themselves a couple of business and political empires, you’re a princess. You just don’t want to live in an ivory tower.”
“I’m not what they assume I am. I don’t want what they persist in believing I want. I’m never going to please them in the way they continually expect. This is my life now. Will you stay?”
“Tonight?”
“To start.”
He stepped inside with her. He didn’t know what to do with the despair, with the sudden, urgent fear that he was going to lose everything he’d tried so hard to hold on to.
He pulled her close, as if to prove he could hold on to this. And could hear the mocking laughter rising in his brain.
“I need . . .” He pressed his face into the curve of her neck. “Goddamn it. I need—”
“What?” Trying to soothe, she stroked her hands over his back. “What do you need?”
Too much, he thought. More, he was sure, than fate would ever let him have. But for now, for tonight, all needs could be one.
“You.” He spun her around, shoved her back against the door in a move as sharp and shocking as a whiplash. His mouth cut off her gasp of surprise in a kiss that burned toward the savage.
“I need you.” He stared down into her wide, stunned eyes. “I’m not going to treat you like a princess tonight.” He dragged her dress up to the waist, and his hand, rough and intimate, pressed between her legs. “You’re not going to want me to.”
“Seth.” She gripped his shoulders, too dazed to push him away.
“Tell me to stop.” He stabbed his fingers into her, drove up her hard and fast.
Panic, excitement, burst inside her with the darkest of pleasures. “No.” She let herself fly, vowed to take him with her. “No, we won’t stop.”
“I’ll take what I need.” He snapped one of the thin jeweled straps so the material slithered down to cling to the tip of her breast. “You may not be ready for what I need tonight.”
“I’m not fragile.” Her breath clogged in her throat. “I’m not weak.” Though she shuddered, her gaze stayed on his. “You might not be ready for what I need tonight.”
“We’re about to find out.” He whipped her around, pressed her against the door and fixed his teeth on the nape of her neck.
She cried out, her hands fisting against the door as his raced over her.
They had loved urgently, with great tenderness, even with laughter. But she’d never known the kind of desperation he showed her now. A desperation that was ruthless, reckless and rough. She hadn’t known she could revel in it, could feel that same whippy violence herself. Or that she could rejoice in the snapping of her own control.
He assaulted her senses, and left her writhing on the wreckage.
He yanked the second strap, broke the elegant jeweled length in half so the dress slid down into a red puddle on the floor.
She wore a strapless bra and a garter of champagne lace, sheer, sheer hose and high silver heels. When he turned her, looked at her, his fingers dug into her shoulders.
She was quivering now, her skin flushed and damp. And that power, that knowledge were in her eyes. “Take me to bed.”
“No.” He molded her breasts. “I’m going to take you here.”
Then his hands were on her hips, lifting her up, bringing her to him. He ravaged her mouth while he took his hands on an impatient journey over lace and flesh and silk. While his blood pounded, he ran the same hot trail with his mouth.
He wanted to eat her alive, to feed on her until this grinding hunger was finally sated. He wanted to lose his mind so he could think of nothing but this driving primal need.
The delicacy of her skin only made him mad to possess it. Her fresh female scent only stirred feral appetites.
When she exploded against him, he knew only a bright and burning triumph.
She dragged at his jacket, her fingers fumbling in her rush, her choked cries muffled against his mouth. Dizzy, desperate, she yanked at his tie.
“Please.” She no longer cared that she was reduced to begging. “Please. Hurry.”
He was still half dressed when he pulled her to the floor. And she was arching up in demand when he drove himself into her.
Her nails raked over his shirt, under it to dig into flesh gone hot and damp. Racing with him now, she met him thrust for frantic thrust.
Their breath in rags, their hearts slamming to the same primal beat, they surrendered to the frenzy.
Rider and ridden, they plunged off the edge together.
She lay spent, and used, and blissful on the bare, polished floor with the light from her prized Tiffany lamp spreading jewels in the air. As the pounding of blood in her ears faded, she could hear the night sounds coming through her open windows.
The water, the lazy call of an owl, the song of insects.
The heat still pumped from him, and spread through her like a drug. She rubbed her foot indolently against his ankle.
“Seth?”
“Hmm.”
“I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I’m so very glad we went to that tedious, irritating party tonight. In fact, if they put you in this kind of mood, I think we should go to one at least once a week.”
He turned his head, saw the bright pool of red on the floor. “I’ll pay to have your dress fixed.”
“Okay, but it might be awkward to explain the damage to a tailor.”
He came from violence, he thought. He knew how to control it, channel it. He recognized the difference between passions and punishments. He knew sex could be mean, just as he knew what had just happened between them was a world away from what he’d known and seen during the first years of his life.
And still . . .
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Dru.”
“I imagine there’s a lot we don’t know about each other yet. We’ve both been with other people, Seth. We’re not children. But I know I’ve never felt like this about anyone else. And for the first time in my life, I don’t seem to need to plan every detail, to know every option. That’s . . . liberating for me. I like discovering who you are, who I am. Who we are together.”
She stroked her fingers through his hair. “Who we will be together. For me, it’s a wonderful part of being in love. The discovery,” she said as he lifted his head to look down at her. “The knowing there’s time to discover more.”
He was afraid time was the problem, and that it was running out.
“You know what I’d like you to do now?” she asked him.
“What would you like me to do now?”
“Carry me up to bed.” She hooked her arms around his neck. “Here’s something you didn’t know about me. I’ve always, secretly, of course, fantasized about having some strong, gorgeous man carry me up the stairs. It goes against my sense of intellect, but there you are.”
“A secret romantic fantasy.” Determined to have this one night of peace, he laid his lips lightly on hers. “Very interesting. Let’s see if I can fulfill that for you.”
He rose, then glanced down at himself. “I’m going to lose the shirt first. It’s a pretty silly image, some guy wearing nothing but a tuxedo shirt, carrying a naked woman upstairs.”
“Good idea.”
He dealt with the studs, the cuff links, then tossed the shirt over by her dress. He reached down for her; she reached up for him.
“How’s it going so far?”
“Perfectly,” she said, nuzzling his neck as he carried her toward the stairs. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
It broke his stride, but he shifted her and continued up the stairs. “I’ve been dreaming about my grandfather’s wife. I never met her. She died before I came to Saint Chris.”
“Really? What kind of dreams?”
“Very detailed, very clear dreams where we have long conversations. I used to listen to the guys talk about her and wish I’d gotten a chance to know her.”
“I think that’s lovely, and loving.”
“The thing is, I don’t think they’re dreams. I think I’m having these conversations with her.”
“You think that when you’re dreaming?”
“No.” He laid Dru on the bed, stretched out beside her, then drew her against his side. “I think that right now.”
“Oh.”
“That got you.”
“I’m thinking.” She shifted until her head rested comfortably in the nook of his neck. “You think they’re some sort of visitation? That you’re communicating with her spirit?”
“Something like that.”
“What do you talk about?”
He hesitated, and evaded. “Family. Just family stuff. She told me things I didn’t know, stuff that happened when my brothers were kids. Stuff that turned out to be true.”
“Really?” She snuggled against him. “Then I suppose you’d better listen to her.”
“THAT’S a smart woman you’ve got there,” Stella commented.
They walked through the moist, heavy night air near the verge of Dru’s river. The lamp in the living room window sent pretty colored light against the glass.
“She’s got a strong, complicated brain. Everything about her’s on the strong and complicated side.”
“Strong’s sexy,” Stella said. “Don’t you think she looks to you for the same? Strength of mind, of character, of heart? All the rest is just glands—not that there’s anything wrong with glands. Makes the world go round.”
“I fell for her so fast. One minute I’m standing up, the next I’m flat on the ground. I never thought it would be the same for her. But it is. Somehow.”
“What’re you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.” He picked up a stone, skipped it out over the ink-black river. “You take somebody on, for the long haul, you take up their baggage, too. My baggage is damn heavy, Grandma. I have a feeling it’s about to get a lot heavier.”
“You’ve handcuffed yourself to that baggage, Seth. You’ve got the key, you always have. Don’t you think it’s time to use it and pitch that load overboard?”
“She’ll never go away and stay away.”
“Probably not. What you do about it is what makes the size of the load. Too damn stubborn to share it. Just like your grandfather.”
“Really?” The idea simply warmed his heart. “Do you think I take after him in some ways?”
“You got his eyes.” She reached up, touched his hair. “But you know that already. And his stubborn streak. Always figured he could handle things himself. Irritating. Had a calm way about him—until he blew. You’re the same. And you’ve made the same damn mistakes he made with Gloria. You’re letting her use your love for your family, and for Dru, as a weapon.”
“It’s just money, Grandma.”
“Hell it is. You know what you have to do, Seth. Now go on and do it. Though being a man, you’ll find a way to screw it up some first.”
His jaw set. “I’m not dragging Dru through this.”
“Hell. That girl doesn’t want a martyr.” She planted her hands on her hips and scowled at him. “Stubborn to the point of stupid. Just like your grandfather,” she muttered.
And was gone.
SEVENTEEN
THE BAR WAS a dive, the sort of place where drinking was a serious, mostly solitary occupation. The blue curtain of smoke, thick enough to part with your hands, turned it all into a poorly produced black-and-white movie scene. The lights were dim, encouraging patrons to mind their own, with the added benefit of hiding the stains when someone decided to mind his neighbor’s.
It smelled of last year’s cigarettes and last week’s beer.
The recreation and socializing area consisted of a stingy strip of space along the side where a pool table had been jammed. A bunch of guys were playing a round of eight ball while a few more stood around sucking beers, the expressions of bored disgust on their faces showing the world what badasses they were.
The air-conditioning unit was framed in a window with a sheet of splintered plywood, and did little more than stir the stink and make noise.
Seth took a seat at the end of the bar and, playing it safe, ordered a Bud in the bottle.
He supposed it was fitting she’d dragged him out to a place like this. She’d dragged him into them often enough when he was a kid—or if she’d had transportation, he’d slept in the car while she’d gone in.
Gloria might have been raised in a solid upper-class environment, but all the benefits and advantages of that upbringing had been
wasted on a spirit that continually sought, and found, the lowest level.
He’d stopped wondering what it was inside her that drove her to hate, to despise anything decent. What compelled her to use anyone who’d ever had reason to care for her until she’d sucked them dry or destroyed them.
Her addictions—men, drugs, liquor—didn’t cause it. They were only one more form of her absolute self-indulgence.
But it was fitting it would be here, he thought, as he sat and listened to the sharp smack of balls, the rattling whine of the failing AC, and smelled the smells that pulled him back into the nightmare of his childhood.
She’d have come in to pick up a john, he remembered, if she needed cash. Or if she’d had money, to drink herself drunk—unless booze hadn’t been her drug of choice for that night. Then she’d have come in to score.
If the john was the target, she’d take him back to whatever hole they were living in. Sex noises and wild laughter in the next room. If it was drink or drugs, and they put her in a good mood, there would’ve been a stop at some all-night place. He’d have eaten that night.
If the mood had turned nasty, there would have been fists instead of food.
Or so it had been until he’d been big enough, fast enough, mean enough to avoid the punches.
“You gonna drink that beer?” the bartender demanded, “or just look at it all night?”
Seth shifted his gaze, and the cold warning on his face had the bartender easing back a step. Keeping his eyes level, Seth pulled a ten out of his pocket, dropped it on the bar by his untouched beer.
“Problem?” His voice was a soft threat.
The bartender shrugged and got busy elsewhere.
When she walked in, a couple of the pool players looked over, checked her out. Seth imagined Gloria considered their leering smirks a flattering assessment.
She wore denim cutoffs that hugged her bony hips and frayed at the hem just below crotch level. The snug top was hot pink, left several inches of midriff bare. She’d had her belly button pierced and added a tattoo of a dragonfly beside the gold bar. Her nails, fingers and toes were coated in a glitter polish that looked black in the ugly light.
