The Key Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  “Hmm? Oh, she had to get home to Simon.” She studied the list, began to calculate, then glanced up. “Why?”

  “What?”

  “Why was he wondering?”

  “Why do you think?” He looked over her shoulder at the list, surprised when she turned it over and he saw that it continued on the back of the sheet.

  “Jesus, you’re going to need a flatbed. Then Brad took a trip back to high school and asked me to ask you if Zoe had said anything about him.”

  “No, she didn’t, but I’d be happy to pass her a note for him in study hall tomorrow.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  They loaded up the paint, the supplies, the equipment. Dana blessed Brad at checkout when even with the discount the total made her gulp. But it wasn’t until she was outside that she realized the real dilemma.

  “How the hell am I going to fit all this in my car?”

  “You’re not. We’re going to fit it into your car and mine.”

  “Why didn’t you say something about me buying more than I could handle when I was loading up in there?”

  “Because you were having fun. Where do you want to store all this stuff?”

  “Jeez.” Baffled with herself, she scooped a hand through her hair. “I didn’t think about it. I got caught up.”

  And, he thought, it had been a pleasure to watch her get caught up—and forget she hated him.

  “I can’t store all this at my place, and I didn’t think to see if we could keep the keys and store it at the building. What the hell am I going to do with it?”

  “Flynn’s got plenty of room at his place.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “Yeah, he does. I guess that’s the way it’ll have to be. He can’t get pissed, because Malory will just bat her eyelashes and turn him into putty.”

  They divvied up, loaded up. The drive back to Flynn’s gave her time to wonder how they’d managed to be in each other’s company for the best part of an hour without a fight.

  He hadn’t been a jerk, which, she decided, was a rare thing.

  And, she was forced to admit, she hadn’t been one either. Equally rare when Jordan was involved.

  Maybe, just maybe, they could manage to coexist, even cooperate, for the short term. If, as everyone else insisted, he was part of the quest, she needed him around.

  Added to that, he had a good brain and a fluid imagination. He could be more than an annoyance through this. He could be an actual asset.

  When they arrived at Flynn’s, she had to concede that it helped to have a man around who was willing to play pack mule with a dozen gallons of paint and the supplies that went with it.

  “Dining room,” she said, straining a little under the load she carried. “He never uses it.”

  “He’s going to.” Jordan wound his way through the house, veered off into the dining room. “Malory has major plans.”

  “She always does. She makes him happy.”

  “No question about that.” He headed back out for the next load. “Lily put some serious holes in his ego,” he added, referring to Flynn’s ex-fiancée.

  “It wasn’t just his ego.” She pulled out a bag loaded with extra paint rollers, brushes, shiny metal pans. “She hurt him. When somebody dumps you and runs off, it hurts.”

  “Best thing that could’ve happened to him.”

  “That isn’t the issue.” She could feel the resentment, the hurt, the anger starting to brew in her belly. Struggling to ignore it, she hauled out more cans. “The issue is pain, betrayal, and loss.”

  He said nothing as they carried the rest of the supplies to the dining room. Nothing until they set them down, and he turned to face her. “I didn’t dump you.”

  She could actually feel the hair on the back of her neck rise. “Not every statement I make involves you.”

  “I had to go,” he continued. “You had to stay. You were still in college, for Christ’s sake.”

  “That didn’t stop you from getting me into bed.”

  “No, it didn’t. Nothing could have. I had a hunger for you, Dana. There were times I felt like I’d starve to death if I couldn’t get a bite of you.”

  She stepped back, gave him an up-and-down study. “Looks like you’ve been eating well enough the last few years.”

  “Doesn’t mean I stopped thinking about you. You meant something to me.”

  “Oh, go to hell.” It didn’t explode out of her, but was said flatly, which gave it more power. “Meant something to you? A goddamn pair of shoes can mean something to you. I loved you.”

  If she’d delivered a bare-knuckled punch to his face, he’d have been no less shocked. “You . . . you never said that. You never once said the L word to me.”

  “Because you were supposed to say it first. The guy’s supposed to say it first.”

  “Hold on just a minute. Is that a rule?” Panic was trickling down the back of his throat like acid. “Where’s it written down?”

  “It just is, you stupid jerk. I loved you, and I’d have waited, or I’d’ve gone with you. But you just said, Listen, Stretch, I’m pulling up stakes and going to New York. It’s been fun, see you around.”

  “That’s not true, Dana. It wasn’t like that.”

  “Close enough. Nobody’s ever hurt me like that. You’ll never get the chance to do it again—and you know what, Hawke? I’d’ve made a man out of you.”

  She turned on her heel and walked out.

  Chapter Four

  BEING alone was something Jordan did very well, under most circumstances. When he was working, thinking about working, thinking about not working, he liked to fold himself into the isolation of his SoHo loft.

  Then, the life, the noise, the movement and color on the street outside his windows were a kind of film he could watch or ignore depending on his mood.

  He liked seeing it all through the glass, more, very often more, than he liked being a part of it.

  New York had saved him, in a very real way. It had forced him to survive, to become, to live like a man—not someone’s son, someone’s friend, another student, but a man who had only himself to rely on. It had pushed and prodded him with its impatient and sharp fingers, reminding him on a daily basis during that jittery first year that it didn’t really give a goddamn whether he sank or swam.

  He’d learned to swim.

  He’d learned to appreciate the noise, the action, the press of humanity.

  He liked its selfishness and its generosity and its propensity for flipping the bird to the rest of the world.

  And the more he’d learned, the more he’d observed and adjusted, the more he’d realized that at the core he was just a small-town boy.

  He would forever be grateful to New York.

  When work was upon him, he could drop into that world. Not the one outside his window, but the one inside his own head. Then it wasn’t like a film at all, but more like life than life itself for however many hours it gripped him.

  He’d learned the difference between those worlds, had come to appreciate the subtleties and scopes of them in a way he knew he might never have done if he hadn’t stripped away the safety nets of the old and thrown himself headlong into the new.

  Writing had never become routine for him, but remained a constant surprise. He was always surprised at how much fun it was, once it all got moving. And never failed to be surprised at how bloody hard it was. It was like having an intense, frustrating love affair with a capricious, gorgeous, and often mean-spirited woman.

  He loved every moment of it.

  Writing had carried him through the worst of his grief when he’d lost his mother. It had given him direction, purpose, and enough aggravation to pull himself out of the mire.

  It had given him joy and bitterness, and great personal satisfaction. Beyond that, it had provided him with a kind of financial security he’d never known or really expected to know.

  Anyone who said money didn’t matter had never had to count the coins that fell between the cushi
ons of the couch.

  He was alone now, with the afterburn of Dana’s words still singeing the air. He couldn’t enjoy the solitude, couldn’t fold himself into it or into his work.

  A man was never so lonely, he thought, as when he was surrounded by the past.

  There was no point in going out for a walk. Too many people who knew him would stop and speak, have questions, make comments. He couldn’t lose himself in the Valley as he could in New York.

  Which was one of the reasons he’d bolted when and how he had. And one of the reasons he’d come back.

  So, he would go for a drive, get away from the echoes still bouncing off the walls.

  I loved you.

  Jesus! Jesus, how could he not have known? Had he been that clueless—or had she been that self-contained?

  He walked out and climbed into his Thunderbird, gunned the engine. He felt like speed. A long, fast ride to no particular destination.

  He punched in the CD player, cranked it up. He didn’t care what pumped out, as long as it was loud. Clapton’s blistering guitar rode with him out of town.

  He had known he’d hurt Dana all those years ago. But he’d assumed the nip had been to her ego, exactly where he thought he’d aimed. He’d known he pissed her off—she made that crystal-clear—but he assumed that was pride.

  If he had known she loved him, he’d have found a way to break things off more gently.

  Wouldn’t he?

  Christ, he hoped so. They’d been friends. Even when they had been consumed with and by each other, they’d been friends. He would never deliberately wound a friend.

  He’d been no good for her, that’s what it came down to. He’d been no good for anybody at that time in his life. She was better off that he had ended it.

  He headed for the mountains and began the steep, twisty climb.

  But she’d loved him. There was little to nothing he could do about that now. He wasn’t at all sure there was anything he could have done at the time. He wasn’t ready for the Big Love then. He wouldn’t have known how to define it, what to think about it.

  Hell, he hadn’t been able to think at all when it came to Dana. After one look at her when he’d come home from college, every single thought of her had shot straight to his glands.

  It had terrified him.

  He could smile over that now. His initial shock at his own reaction to her, his overwhelming guilt that he was fantasizing about the sister of his closest friend.

  He’d been horrified, and fascinated, and ultimately obsessed.

  Tall, curvy, sharp-tongued Dana Steele, with her big, full bodied laugh, her questing mind, her punch-first temper.

  Everything about her had pulled at him.

  Damn if it still didn’t.

  When he’d seen her again on this trip back, when she yanked open the door of Flynn’s house and stood there snarling at him, the sheer want for her had blown straight through him.

  Just as her sheer dislike for him had all but taken off his head.

  If they could work their way around to being friends again, to finding that connection, that affection that had always been between them, maybe they could work their way forward to something more.

  To what, he couldn’t say. But he wanted Dana back in his life.

  And, there was no point in denying it, he wanted her back in his bed.

  They’d made progress toward friendship during that shopping stint. They’d been easy with each other for a while, as if the years between hadn’t happened.

  But, of course, they had. And as soon as he and Dana had remembered those years, the progress had taken an abrupt turn and stomped away in a huff.

  So now he had a mission, Jordan decided. He had to find a way to win her back. Friend and lover—in whatever order suited them both best.

  The search for the key had, among other things, given him an opening. He intended to use it.

  When he realized that he’d driven to Warrior’s Peak, he stopped, pulled to the side of the road.

  He remembered climbing that high stone wall as a teenager with Brad and Flynn. They had camped in the woods, with a hijacked six-pack that none of them was old enough to drink.

  The Peak was untenanted then, a big, fanciful, spooky place. The perfect place to fascinate a trio of boys with a couple of beers in them.

  A high, full moon, he recalled as he climbed out of the car. A black-glass sky and just enough wind, just a hint of wind, to stir the leaves and whisper.

  He could see it all now, as clearly as he’d seen it then. Maybe more clearly, he thought, amused at himself. He was older, and stone-cold sober, and he had—admittedly—added a few flourishes to the memory.

  He liked to think of the scene with a layer of fog drifting over the ground, and a moon so round and white it looked carved into the glass of the sky. Stars sharp as the points of darts. The low, haunting call of an owl, and the rustle of night prey in the high grass. In the distance, with an echo that rolled through the night, the baying of a dog.

  He’d added those beats when he used that house and that night in his first major book.

  But for Phantom Watch there’d been one element of that night he hadn’t had to imagine. Because it had happened. Because he’d seen it.

  Even now, as a man past thirty with none of the naïveté of the boy left in him, he believed it.

  She’d walked along the parapet, under the hard, white moon, sliding in and out of shadows like a ghost, with her hair flying, her cape—surely it had been a cape—billowing.

  She’d owned the night. He’d thought that then and he thought it now. She had been the night.

  She’d looked at him, Jordan remembered as he wandered to the iron gates, as he stared through them at the great stone house on the rise. He hadn’t been able to see her face, but he’d known she looked down, straight into his eyes.

  He’d felt the punch of it, the power, like a blow meant to awaken rather than to harm.

  His mind had sizzled from it, and nothing—not the beer, not his youth, not even the shock—had been able to dull the thrill.

  She’d looked at him, Jordan remembered again as he scanned the parapet. And she’d known him.

  Flynn and Brad hadn’t seen her. By the time his mind had clicked back into gear and he shouted them over, she was gone.

  It had spooked them, of course. Deliciously. The way sightings of ghosts and fanciful creatures are meant to.

  Though years later, when he wrote of her, he made her a ghost, he’d known then—he knew now—that she was as alive as he.

  “Whoever you were,” he murmured, “you helped me make my mark. So, thanks.”

  He stood there, hands in his pockets, peering through the bars. The house was part of his past, and oddly, he’d considered making it part of his future. He’d been toying with calling to see if it was available just days before Flynn had contacted him about the portrait of the young Arthur of Britain. He’d bought that painting on impulse five years ago at the gallery where Malory used to work, though he hadn’t met her then. Not only had it been a major element of Malory’s quest, but they’d discovered the painting, along with The Daughters of Glass and one Brad had bought separately had all been painted by Rowena, Jordan thought, centuries ago.

  New York, his present, had served its purpose for him. He’d been ready for a change. Ready to come home. Then Flynn had made it so very easy.

  It gave him the opportunity to come back, test the waters, and his feelings. He’d known, this time he’d known, as soon as he saw the majestic run of the Appalachians, that he wanted them back.

  This time—surprise—he was back to stay.

  He wanted those hills. The riot of them in fall, the lush green of them in summer. He wanted to stand and see them frozen in white, so still and regal, or hazed with the tender touch of spring.

  He wanted the Valley, with its tidy streets and tourists. The familiarity of faces that had known him since his youth, the smell of backyard barbecues and the snippets of
local gossip.

  He wanted his friends, the comfort and the joy of them. Pizza out of the box, a beer on the porch, old jokes that no one laughed at the same way a childhood friend did.

  And he still wanted that damn house, Jordan realized with a slow, dawning smile. He wanted it now every bit as much as he had when he was a sixteen-year-old dreamer with whole worlds yet to be explored.

  So, he would bide his time there—he was cagier than he’d been at sixteen. And he would find out what Rowena and Pitte planned to do with the place when they moved on.

  To wherever they moved on.

  So, maybe the house was both his past and his future.

  He ran bits of Rowena’s clue through his head. He was part of Dana’s past, and like it or not, he was part of her present. Very probably he would be part—one way or another—of her future.

  So what did he, and the Peak, have to do with her quest for the key?

  And wasn’t it incredibly self-serving to assume that he had anything to do with it.

  “Maybe,” he said quietly to himself. “But right at the moment, I don’t see a damn thing wrong with that.”

  With one last look at the house, he turned and walked back to his car. He would go back to Flynn’s and spend some time thinking it through, working out the angles.

  Then he would present them to Dana, whether she wanted to hear them or not.

  BRADLEY Vane had some plans and plots of his own. Zoe was a puzzlement to him. Prickly and argumentative one minute, scrupulously polite the next. He would knock, and the door to her would crack open. He could detect glimmers of humor and sweetness, then the door would slam shut in his face with a blast of cold air.

  He’d never had a woman take an aversion to him on sight. It was especially galling that the first one who did happened to be the one he was so outrageously attracted to.

  He hadn’t been able to get her face out of his mind for three years, since he’d first seen After the Spell, the painting he’d bought—the second one Rowena had painted of the Daughters of Glass.

  Zoe’s face on the goddess who slept, three thousand years, in a coffin of glass.

  However ridiculous it was, Brad had fallen in love at first sight with the woman in the portrait.