River's End

by Nora Roberts

  don’t.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” She stormed past him, back into the room. “You want to look after everyone you care about. Listen to yourself sometime when you talk about Mike. You’re always coming to his rescue. You don’t even realize it. It’s second nature. It’s the same with your parents.”

  “I don’t rescue my parents.”

  “You tend to them, Noah. It’s lovely, really lovely. Just tonight, I’m listening to your mother talk about how you come by their house and try to save her flowers. Or how you go hang out with your father at the youth center, take him pizza.”

  “He might starve otherwise. It’s not tending.” It was a word that made him want to squirm. “It’s just family.”

  “No, it’s just you.” And she could have drowned in love with him for no other reason. He was beautiful—inside and out.

  “You focus,” she continued. “You listen, and you make things matter. All the things I wanted to believe about you, all the ways I tried to tell myself you were shallow or careless were just ways to stop myself from feeling. Because I can’t.”

  “Won’t,” he corrected. “I sound like a pretty good catch.” He started toward her. “Why are you trying to shake me off the hook?”

  “I don’t come from the kind of people you come from. My mother was a victim, my father a murderer. That’s what I have inside me.”

  “So everyone who comes from a difficult or violent background isn’t capable of love?”

  “This isn’t a debate. I’m telling you the way it is. I’m telling you I don’t want to be involved with you.”

  “How are you going to stop it?”

  “I already have.” Her voice went flat and cool now as she turned toward the door. “We’re done. I’ve given you all I can give you on the book. There’s no need for you to stay past morning.”

  He walked toward the door she opened. Her heart was bleeding as she shifted aside. Later she would tell herself she should have seen it coming, should have recognized the cool, reckless light in his eye.

  He gripped her wrist to move it away from the knob. Closed the door. Turned the lock. “If we play it your way and I go along with the idea that you can turn your feelings on and off as easily as I turned that lock, then all we really had between us was business—which is concluded—and sex. Would that be an accurate statement?”

  He had her backed against the door, trapped there. When the first shock passed, she realized he frightened her. And along with the fear rode a terrible excitement. “Close enough. It’s better that way, for both of us.”

  “Sure, let’s keep it simple. If it’s just about sex—” He yanked the tie of her robe away. “Then let’s take it.”

  She jerked her chin up, forced herself to meet his eyes. “Fine.”

  But his mouth was already crushed to hers, tasting of fury and violence. His fingers plunged into her, ripping her over a brutal peak before her mind could keep pace with her body. She cried out, shock, denial, delight, and the sound was muffled against his ruthless mouth.

  He tore her robe aside even as he drove her deeper, faster, into the pumping heat.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s just sex.” Hurt and anger speared through him, and he let the keener edge of desire rule.

  His hands were rough when he dragged her to the bed, his body hard and demanding when he pressed down on hers. He gave her no time, no choice. But he gave her pleasure.

  Her nails dug into his shoulders, but not in protest. Beneath his, her body shuddered and writhed, and the sounds in her throat were the low animal moans of mating.

  This was not the playful tumble he’d shown her or the gentle thoroughness of seduction. Heat instead of warmth, greed unbalanced by generosity.

  She tore at his clothes, and raked her nails down his sweat-slicked back. With oaths instead of promises, he jerked up her hips and slammed himself into her. She was hot and wet and fisted around him urgently as her body bowed up, a quaking bridge.

  Her skin glinted with damp in the lamplight, her eyes stared, dark with shock, into his. She couldn’t survive it. It was one terrified thought that raced through her spinning brain. No one could survive this brutal heat, these battering fists of sensation.

  She fought to swallow air and breathed out his name.

  The orgasm sliced through her, twin edges of pleasure and pain. It opened her, left her helpless and exposed.

  He hung on, like a man clinging to a ledge by his fingertips as the blood beat like thunder in his head, his heart, his loins. “Say it.” He panted it out, gripping her hips so that she had no choice but to take more of him. “Give me the words. Damn it, Liv, tell me now.”

  His face filled her vision. There was nothing else. “I love you. Oh God.” Her hand slid away from him to lie limply on the bed. “Noah.”

  He let go of the ledge, and when the last desperate thrust emptied him, he collapsed on her.

  He could feel her trembling, and the staccato beat of her heart against his. Who won? he wondered and rolled away from her.

  “I’m trying to be sorry for treating you that way,” he said. “But I’m not.”

  “There wouldn’t be any point in it.” She was cold, she realized, growing cold because he was moving away.

  “I won’t leave in the morning. I won’t leave until this is resolved. You’ll have to find a way to deal with that.”

  “Noah.” She sat up, then began to shiver. “The lack’s in me. It’s not you.”

  “That makes it just fine, then.” He rolled off the bed, scooped up his jeans. “I told my mother you were work. That’s not the half of it. You’re a battle, Liv. You’re a fucking combat zone, and I never know if you’re going to wave the white flag, attack, or just turn tail and retreat. And maybe you’re right.” He jammed his legs into the pants and dragged them up. “Maybe it’s just not worth it.”

  It was the first time in six years he’d hurt her, really hurt her. She stared, speechless as the shock wave of it shook through her. The words were lethal enough, but he’d said them with such steely finality, with such a wintry indifference that she wrapped her arms tight to ward off the vicious chill.

  “You’re cold.” He reached down for her robe, tossed it onto the tangled sheets. “Go to bed.”

  “You think you can speak to me like that, then walk away?”

  “Yeah, I do.” He found what was left of his shirt and stuffed it in his pocket.

  “You son of a bitch.” He only lifted a brow when she scrambled off the bed, punched her arms through the sleeves of her robe. “I’m a combat zone? Well, who the hell asked you to sign up for the fight?”

  “I guess we can say I was drafted. Lock those outside doors,” he instructed and turned to leave.

  “Don’t you dare walk out. You started this. You can’t possibly understand. You have no idea what it’s like for me. You pop into my life whenever you damn well please, and I’m just supposed to go along?”

  “You kick me out of your life whenever you damn well please,” he retorted. “And I’m just supposed to go along.”

  “You want to talk about love and marriage, building houses, having children, and I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

  “Is that all? Well, just let me consult my crystal ball.”

  Ordinarily, the killing look she shot him would have made him want to grin. Now he simply studied her with mild interest as she swore at him and spun away to pace. “Always a slick answer, always a joke. I just want to slap you.”

  “Go ahead. I don’t hit girls.”

  He knew that would do it. She stopped on a dime, swung around all balled fists, quivering muscles and fiery eyes. Her breath heaved as she fought for control, and her cheeks flushed with furious color.

  Under the wall of temper he’d built leaked a stream of sheer admiration for her willpower. She wanted to wale into him but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. God, what a woman.

  “I prefer being civilized,” she told him.
>
  “No, you don’t. But you’re probably smart enough to know if you take a swipe at me we’ll just end up in bed again. You lose control there, when I’m touching you, when I’m inside you. You forget to pick up all the emotional baggage you’ve carted around all your life, and it’s just you and me.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re exactly right. But I can’t spend my life in bed with you, and the baggage is right there waiting when I get up.”

  “So throw some of it out, Liv, and travel light.”

  “You’re so smug, aren’t you?” She detested the bitter taste of the words. “With your nice, cozy suburban childhood? Mom and Dad puttering around the house on weekends and you and all your pals ready to ride your bikes to the park after school.”

  Progress, he thought, and settled into the fight. Finally, she was cutting through the shield. “I’d say it wasn’t quite like Beaver Cleaver, but you wouldn’t know who the hell I was talking about since you didn’t watch TV.”

  “That’s right, I didn’t. Because my grandmother was afraid they’d run a story on my mother, or I’d turn it on and see one of her movies or one of the movies made about her. I didn’t go to school because someone might have recognized me, and there’d be talk. Or there’d be an accident. Or God knows. I didn’t have my parents lazing around the house on a Sunday afternoon because one was dead and the other in prison.”

  “So how can you have a normal life now? That’s a pitiful excuse for being afraid to trust your own feelings.”

  “And what if it is?” Shame tried to wash through her temper, but she damned it up. “Who are you to judge me? Who have you lost? You can’t know what it’s like to lose one of the most vital people in your life to violence. To see it. To be part of it.”

  “For Christ’s sake, my father was a cop. Every time he strapped on his weapon and left the house, I knew he might not come back. Some nights when he was late, I’d sit by the window in the dark and wait for his car.” He’d never told anyone that, not even his mother. “I lost him a thousand different ways over a thousand different nights in my head. Don’t tell me I don’t understand. My heart breaks for you, for what you lost, but goddamn it, don’t tell me I don’t understand.”

  Because it ripped at him, he swung around toward the door. “The hell with this.”

  “Wait.” She would have rushed to the door to stop him, but her knees were shaking. “Please. I didn’t think. I didn’t think of it.” Her eyes were damp and bleak. “I’m sorry. Don’t go. Please, don’t go. I need air.”

  She made it through the terrace doors, reached out for the banister and held on to it. When she heard him step out behind her, she closed her eyes. Relief, shame, love ran through her in a twisting river.

  “I’m a mess, Noah. I’ve always set goals and marched right toward them. It was the only way I could get through everything. I could put what happened out of my head for long periods of time and just focus on what I was going to do, what I would accomplish. I didn’t make friends. I didn’t put any effort into it. People were just a distraction. No, don’t.” She said it quietly and shifted aside when he brushed a hand over her hair. “I don’t think I can tell you if you’re touching me.”

  “You’re shivering. Come inside and we’ll talk.”

  “I’m better outside. I’m always better outside.” She drew a deep breath. “I took my first lover two weeks after you came to see me at college. I let myself think I was a little in love with him, but I wasn’t. I was in love with you. I fell in love with you when you sat down beside me on the riverbank, near the beaver dam, and you listened to me. It wasn’t a crush.”

  She gathered the courage to turn then, to face him. “I was only twelve, but I fell in love with you. When I saw you again, it was as if everything inside me had just been waiting. Just waiting, Noah. After you left, I closed all that off again. You were right, what you said about my turning my feelings on and off. I could. I did. I went to bed with someone else just to prove it. It was cold, calculated.”

  “I’d hurt you.”

  “Yes. And I made sure I remembered that. I made sure I could pull that out so you couldn’t do it again. Even after all this time, I didn’t want to believe you could understand what I felt. About what happened to my mother, to me, to my family. But I think a part of me always knew you were the only one who really could. The book isn’t just for you.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “I don’t know if—I’m not sure—” She broke off again, shook her head in frustration. “I wanted to make you go. I wanted to make you mad enough to go because no one’s ever mattered to me the way you do. It terrifies me.”

  “I won’t hurt you again, Liv.”

  “Noah, it’s not that.” Her eyes glowed against the dark. “It’s the other way around this time. What’s inside of me, what could be in there and could leap out one day and—”

  “Stop it.” The order cut her off like a slap. “You’re not your father any more than I’m mine.”

  “But you know yours, Noah.” Still, for the first time she reached out to touch him, laid a hand on his cheek. “Everything I feel for you . . . it fills me up inside. All the places I didn’t know were empty, they’re just full of you.”

  “Christ, Liv.” His voice went rough and thick. “Can’t you see it’s the same for me?”

  “Yes. Yes, I can. I’ve been happier with you than I thought I could be. More with you than I thought I wanted to be. But even with that, I’m afraid of the things that you want. The things you have a right to expect. I don’t know if I can give them to you or how long it’ll take me. But I do know I love you.”

  She remembered the words he’d used to tell her and gave them back to him. “I’m so completely in love with you. Can that be enough for now?”

  He reached up to take the hand that rested on his cheek, to press his lips to the center of her palm like a promise. “That’s exactly enough for now.”

  Later, he dreamed of running through the forest, with the chill damp soaking through the fear sweat on his skin and his heart galloping in wild hoofbeats in his chest. Because he couldn’t find her, and the sound of her scream was like a sword slicing through his gut.

  He woke with a jerk to the pale silver of oncoming dawn with the last fierce call of an owl dying in the air. And Olivia curled warm against him.

  The rain was holding off. But it would come before nightfall. Olivia could just smell the testing edge of it in the air as she guided her group into the trees. She’d done a head count of fifteen and had been foolishly grateful to see Celia among them.

  The fact that she was there had been enough to help Olivia convince Noah to take some time in his quiet room to work.

  She explained the cycle of survival, succession, tolerance of the rain forest. The give and take, the nurturing of life by the dead.

  It was the trees that always caught the attention first, the sheer height of them. Out of habit, Olivia took the time to let her audience crane their necks, murmur in awe, snap their pictures while she talked of the significance and purpose of the overstory. It always took a while before people began to notice the smaller things.

  Her talks were never carved in stone. She was good at gauging the pace and rhythm of her group and gearing a talk to suit it. She moved along to point out the deep grooves that identified the bark of the Douglas fir, the faint purple cast of the cones of the western hemlock.

  Every tree had a purpose, even if it was to die and become a breeding ground for saplings, for fungi, for lichen. If it was to fall, striking others down, it would leave a tear in the overstory so that busy annuals could thrive in the swath of sunlight.

  It always amused her when they moved deeper and the light became dimmer, greener, that her groups would become hushed. As if they’d just stepped into a church.

  As she lectured, she followed the familiar pattern, scanning faces to see who was listening, who was simply there because their parents or spouse had nagged them into it. She l
iked to play to those especially, to find something to intrigue them so that when they stepped out into the light again, they took something of her world with them.

  A man caught her eye. He was tall, broad at the shoulders, with a fresh sunburn on his face that indicated someone unused to or unwise in the sun. He wore a hat and a long-sleeved shirt with jeans so obviously new they could have stood on their own. Despite the soft light, he kept his sunglasses in place. She couldn’t see his eyes through the black lenses but sensed they were on her face. That he was listening.

  She smiled at him, an automatic response to his attentiveness. And her gaze had already moved on when his body jerked in reaction.

  She had an avid amateur photographer in the group who was crouched by a nurse log, lens to fungi. She used his interest as a segue, identifying the oyster mushroom he was trying to capture on film.

  She shifted over, pointed out a ring of lovely pure white caps. “These are called Destroying Angels and while rare here are deadly.”

  “They’re so beautiful,” someone commented.

  “Yes. Beauty is often deadly.”

  Her gaze was drawn back to the man in the sunglasses. He’d moved closer, and while most of the others were hunting up other groups of mushroom and chattering, he stood still and silent. As if waiting.