The Novels of Nora Roberts Volume 1

by Nora Roberts

  She wished she could harden her heart, but part of her wept for him. “You want to touch me.” She steeled herself and lifted his hand, placed it on her breast. “Like this.”

  “You’re soft. So soft.” There was something pathetic and terrifying about the way his hand shook against her, even as his fingers moved to caress.

  “If I let you touch me, the way you want, will you let me go outside?”

  He jerked back as though she’d burned him. Bitter betrayal welled in his throat. “You’re trying to trick me.”

  “No, Jeff.” It was all right for her desperation to show, she told herself. Let him see her weakness. “I don’t like being closed in. It frightens me. I only want to go outside for a few minutes, get some air. You want me to be happy, don’t you?”

  “It’s going to take time.” His mouth set in a stubborn line. “You’re not ready.”

  “You know how I have to keep busy, Jeff.” She stepped toward him, careful to keep her eyes fixed on his. When she slid her arms up his chest, his eyes clouded, darkened. “Sitting here like this, hour after hour, is upsetting me. I know how much you’ve done for me.” And she felt the outline of the syringe in his pocket. “I know you want us to be together.”

  “We are together.” He brought his unsteady hand back to her breast. When she didn’t flinch, he smiled. “We’ll always be together.”

  He lowered his head to kiss her. She slipped the needle from his pocket.

  “Deanna,” he murmured.

  Her sharp indrawn breath betrayed her. She twisted, fighting to plunge the needle into him as they grappled to the floor.

  Searching for Jeff finally brought Finn back to the bookcase. He had seen what he and Jenner had missed on their first search. The dimensions, he thought, as the spit in his mouth dried to dust. The dimensions were wrong. The bookcase couldn’t be an end wall. Couldn’t be.

  She was in there, he realized. Deanna was in there. And she wasn’t alone. He had one panicked notion of hurling himself bodily against the shelves. His body quivered with the effort of holding back. It wasn’t the way. God knew what Jeff would do to her in the time it took him to break through.

  Struggling for calm, he began to search methodically for a mechanism.

  She was losing. The hypo squirted out of her fingers when he rolled over her. She screamed as her head rapped hard against the floor. Though her vision blurred, she could see him above her, his face distorted, his tears running. And she knew he could kill. Not only others, but her.

  “You lied,” he cried out in an agony of despair. “You lied. I have to punish you. I have to.” And sobbing, he closed his hands around her throat.

  She used her nails to rake his face. The blood surged to the surface and ran like his tears. When he howled in pain, she squirmed free. Her fingers brushed over the syringe as he snagged her ankle.

  “I loved you. I loved you. Now I have to hurt you. It’s the only way you’ll understand. It’s for your own good. That’s what Uncle Matthew says. It’s for your own good. You’ll have to stay in here. You’ll have to stay and have bread and water until you’re ready to behave.” He chanted the words as he dragged her back toward the bed. “I’m doing my best for you, aren’t I? I gave you a roof over your head. I put clothes on your back. And this is the way you thank me? You’ll just have to learn. I know best.”

  He snagged her hand, yanked up her arm.

  She plunged the needle into him.

  Finn heard the sound of sirens in the distance, but they meant nothing. Every ounce of concentration was focused on the puzzle at hand. There was a way in. There was always a way. And he would find it.

  “It’s here,” he murmured to himself. “Right here. The son of a bitch didn’t walk through the wall.” His finger hit a nub. He twisted. The panel opened in well-oiled silence.

  Deanna stood beside the bed, the syringe gripped in one hand. Eyes glazed, murmuring her name, Jeff crawled across the mattress toward her.

  “I love you, Deanna.” His hand brushed hers before he went limp.

  “Oh, Jesus. Deanna.” In one leap, Finn had her in his arms.

  She swayed, the needle dropping from her loose fingers. “Finn.” His name burned her bruised throat and felt like heaven. From what seemed like a long, long distance, she heard him swear when her body jerked with a shudder.

  “Did he hurt you? Tell me if you’re hurt.”

  “No. No, he wanted to take care of me.” She buried her face in Finn’s shoulder. “He only wanted to take care of me.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” He carried her through the opening, down the hall, where he dragged at the locks.

  “I kept asking him to let me go outside.” She breathed in the raw air like wine. “He shot you, Finn. He was the one who shot you. And he killed Tim.”

  She jolted at the sound of screeching brakes.

  “Well.” Jenner climbed out of his car, moments ahead of two black-and-whites. The picture of Finn carrying Deanna down the front steps wasn’t what he’d expected to see after he’d gotten the frantic call from Fran Myers. But it was an image that satisfied. “Went off on your own again, Mr. Riley.”

  “You can’t trust a reporter, Lieutenant.”

  “Guess not. Good to see you, Miss Reynolds. Merry Christmas.”

  Deanna studied her reflection in the dressing room mirror. The bruises had faded from her throat, and the haunted look had ebbed from her eyes.

  But her heart was still sore.

  As Joe had often told her during her reporting days, she had one that bled too easily.

  She couldn’t afford for it to bleed now. She had a show to do in thirty minutes.

  “Hey.”

  She glanced over, saw Finn. Smiled. “Hey back.”

  “Can you spare a minute?”

  “I’ve got several for you.” She swiveled in her chair, held out her hands. “Don’t you have a plane to catch?”

  “I called the airport. My flight is delayed two hours. I’ve got time on my hands.”

  Suspicion gleamed in her eyes. “You’re not going to miss that plane.”

  “I know, I know. You’ve already laid down the law. I’ve got a job to do, and you’re not going to support me if I screw it up. I’m going to Rome. Only a week off schedule.” He bent down, kissed her. “I figured I had time to give one more shot at talking you into coming with me.”

  “I’ve got a job to do, too.”

  “The press is going to be all over you.”

  She arched her brows. “Promises, promises.” She stepped off the chair, turned a circle. “How do I look?”

  “Like something I don’t want to be several thousand miles away from.” He tipped up her chin, looked deep into her eyes. “You’re hurting.”

  “I’m better. Finn, we’ve been through this.” She saw his face change, harden. “Don’t.”

  “I don’t know how long it’s going to take before I close my eyes and stop seeing you in that room. Knowing you were there all those hours, and I’d walked right by you.” He pulled her roughly against him. “I still want to kill him.”

  “He’s sick, Finn. All those years of emotional abuse. He needed to escape, and he used television. And one day, the day he found his uncle dead, I walked out of the screen and into his life.”

  “I don’t give a damn how sick he is, how warped or how pathetic.” He drew her back. “I can’t, Deanna. I don’t have it in me to care. And I can’t stand hearing you blame yourself.”

  “I’m not. Really, I’m not. I know it wasn’t my fault. Nothing he did was my fault.” Still, she thought of Tim, whose body had been found in the trunk of her company car in a downtown parking lot. “I was never real to him, Finn. Even all the time we worked together, I was never anything but an image, a vision. Everything he did he did because he’d twisted that image. I can’t blame myself for that. But I can still be sorry.”

  “Dee.” Fran stepped into the doorway, winked at Finn. “We need the star in five.”
>
  “The star’s ready.”

  “I can postpone the flight, stick around for the press conference after the show.”

  “I can handle reporters.” She kissed Finn firmly, on the mouth. “I’ve had plenty of experience.”

  “Want to get married, Kansas?” With his arm around her, he walked her into the corridor, down toward the set.

  “You bet I do. April third. Be there.”

  “I never miss a deadline.” He turned her around to face him. “I’m crazy about you.” And winced. “Bad choice of words.”

  She wasn’t surprised that she could laugh. Nothing surprised her now. “Call me from Rome.” Marcie leaped forward to repair Deanna’s lipstick. “And don’t forget, you have to handle the flowers for the church and reception. You have the list I made you?”

  Behind her back, he rolled his eyes. “Which one?”

  “All of them.”

  “No you don’t.” Marcie threw up a hand before Deanna could lean into another kiss. “You’ve got thirty seconds, and I don’t want my work smeared.”

  “Stay tuned, Kansas. I’ll be back.”

  Deanna took another step toward stage. “The hell with it.” She whirled around, flew into Finn’s arms. Over Marcie’s groan, she clamped her lips to his. “Hurry back,” she told him, and rushed toward the stage, nailing her cue.

  The floor director stabbed a finger toward her. Over the sound of applause, she smiled into the camera’s glass eye and slipped seamlessly into millions of lives.

  “Good morning. It’s good to be home.”

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  HIDDEN RICHES

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1994 by Nora Roberts

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  ISBN: 1-101-14615-X

  A JOVE BOOK®

  Jove Books first published by The Jove Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  Jove and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: May, 2002

  To Mom,

  because she loves trinkets,

  and a good bargain

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  PROLOGUE

  He didn’t want to be there. No, he hated being trapped in the elegant old house, prodded and pinched by restless ghosts. It was no longer enough to shroud the furniture in dustcovers, lock the doors and walk away. He had to empty it and, by emptying it, purge himself of some of the nightmares.

  “Captain Skimmerhorn?”

  Jed tensed at the title. As of last week he was no longer captain. He’d resigned from the force, turned in his shield, but he was already weary of explaining it. He shifted aside as two of the movers carried a rosewood armoire down the staircase, through the grand foyer and out into the chilly morning.

  “Yes?”

  “You might want to check upstairs, make sure we got everything you wanted put in storage. Otherwise, looks like we’re all done here.”

  “Fine.”

  But he didn’t want to go up those stairs, walk through those rooms. Even empty they would hold too much. Responsibility, he mused as he reluctantly started up. His life had been too crowded with responsibility to ignore one now.

  Something nudged him along the hallway toward his old room. The room where he had grown up, the room he had continued to inhabit long after he’d lived here alone. But he stopped in the doorway just short of crossing the threshold. Hands jammed into tight fists in his pockets, he waited for memories to assault him like sniper fire.

  He’d cried in that room—in secret and in shame, of course. No Skimmerhorn male ever revealed a weakness in public. Then, when tears had dried, he’d plotted in that room. Small, useless childish revenges that had always boomeranged back on him.

  He’d learned to hate in that room.

  Yet it was only a room. It was only a house. He’d convinced himself of that years before when he had come back to live there as a man. And hadn’t he been content? he asked himself now. Hadn’t it been simple?

  Until Elaine.

  “Jedidiah.”

  He flinched. He’d nearly brought his right hand out of his pocket to touch a weapon that was no longer there before he caught himself. The gesture, and the fact that he’d been so lost in his own morbid thoughts that someone could have come up behind him, reminded him why the weapon no longer hung at his side.

  He relaxed and glanced back at his grandmother. Honoria Skimmerhorn Rodgers was neatly wrapped in mink, discreet daytime diamonds winking at her ears, her snowy hair beautifully coiffed. She looked like a successful matron on her way out for lunch at her favorite club. But her eyes, as vivid a blue as his own, were filled with concern.

  “I’d hoped I’d convinced you to wait,” she said quietly, and reached out to lay a hand on his arm.

  He flinched automatically. The Skimmerhorns simply weren’t touchers. “There was no reason to wait.”

  “But there’s a reason for this?” She gestured toward the empty room. “There’s a reason to empty out your home, to put aside all of your belongings?”

  “Nothing in this house belongs to me.”

  “That’s absurd.” The faint whisper of her native Boston crept into her tone.

  “By default?” He turned his back on the room to face her. “Because I happen to still be alive? No, thanks.”

  If she hadn’t been so worried about him, the curt answer would have earned him a ringing reprimand. “My dear, there’s no question of default. Or any kind of fault.” She watched him close in, shut off, and would have shaken him if it would have helped. Instead, she touched his cheek. “You only need some time.”

  The gesture left his muscles taut. It took all of his willpower not to jerk away from the gentle fingers. “And this is my way of taking it.”

  “By moving out of the family home?”

  “Family?” He laughed at that, and the sound of it echoed nastily down the hall. “We were never a family here, or anywhere.”

  Her eyes, previously soft with sympathy, hardened. “Pretending the past doesn’t exist is as bad as living in it. What are you doing here? Tossing away everything you’ve earned, everything you’ve made of yourself? Perha
ps I was less than enthusiastic about your choice of profession, but it was your choice and you succeeded. It appears to me that you made more of the Skimmerhorn name when you were promoted to captain than all your ancestors did with their money and social power.”

  “I didn’t become a cop to promote my damn name.”

  “No,” she said quietly. “You did it for yourself against tremendous family pressure—including my own.” She moved away from him to walk down the hall. She had lived here once, years before as a bride. An unhappy one. “I saw you turn your life around, and it awed me. Because I knew you did it for no one but yourself. I often wondered how you were strong enough to do that.”

  Turning back, she studied him, this son of her son. He had inherited the bold good looks of the Skimmerhorns. Bronzed hair, tousled by the wind, swept around a lean, rawboned face that was taut with stress. She worried, woman-like, because he had lost weight, though the fining down of his features only heightened their power. There was strength in the tall, broad-shouldered build that both accented and defied the romantic masculine beauty of pale gold skin and sensitive mouth. The eyes, a deep striking blue, had come from her. They were as haunted and defiant now as they had been in the young, troubled boy she remembered so well.

  But he was no longer a boy, and she was afraid there was little she could do to help the man.

  “I don’t want to see you turn your life around again, for the wrong reasons.” She shook her head, walking back toward him before he could speak. “And I might have had reservations when you moved back in here alone after your parents died, but that, too, was your choice. And for some time, it seemed you’d made the right one again. But this time your solution to a tragedy is to sell your home, throw away your career?”

  He waited a beat. “Yes.”

  “You disappoint me, Jedidiah.”

  That stung. It was a phrase she rarely used, and had more bite than a dozen of his father’s raging insults. “I’d rather disappoint you than be responsible for the life of a single cop. I’m in no shape to command.” He looked down at his hands, flexed them. “I may never be. And as for the house, it should have been sold years ago. After the accident. It would have been sold if Elaine had agreed to it.” Something backed up in his throat. Guilt was as bitter as bile. “Now she’s gone too, and it’s my decision.”