River's End (34 page)

“My head’s clear.” And his rage was cold. “Clear enough to know if I find him before the cops do, I’ll do more than talk. He’s terrorizing her, and he brought Mom into it. He’s used me for part of it.”

He strode around the edge of the garden, where the last soft light lay like silk over the celebration of flowers. “Goddamn it.
I sat with him. I looked him in the eye. I listened to him. I’m supposed to know what’s inside people, when they’re stringing me along. And I’d started to believe he’d been innocent.”

“So had I at one point. Why did you?”

Noah jammed his hands into his pockets, stared into the trees. “He loved her. However fucked-up he was, he loved her. He still does. You can see it when he talks about her. She was it for him. I know what that feels like now. When you have that inside you, how can you get past it to kill?”

He shook his head before Frank could speak. “And that’s stupid because it happens all the time. Drugs, alcohol, obsession, jealousy. But a part of me bought into it, wanted to buy into it.”

“You love her. He’s her father. There’s something else, Noah. They found Caryn.”

“What?” For a minute the name meant nothing. “Doesn’t matter now.”

“It might. She turned up in New York. Hooked up with a photographer she met at a party. A rich photographer.”

“Good for her. Hope she stays there. A whole continent between us ought to be enough.” Then he thought of Mike. “Did they pull her in?”

“She was questioned. Denied it. Word is she got pretty violent in denying it.”

“Typical.”

“She also has an alibi for the night Mike was hurt. The party. A couple of dozen people saw her at this deal up in the hills.”

“So she slipped out for a while.”

“It doesn’t look like it. The alibi’s holding. We have the time of the attack narrowed to thirty minutes between when Mike got to the house and Dory found him. During that half-hour period, Caryn was snuggled up to the photographer in front of twenty witnesses.”

“That doesn’t . . .” He trailed off, felt his insides lurch. “Tanner? God.” He dragged his hands free, pressed his fingers to his eyes. “He knew where I lived. He was out by then, and
he knew where to find me. The son of a bitch, what was the point?”

“Did you let him see any of your work?”

“No, of course not.”

“Could be as simple as that. He wanted to see where you were heading with it. Top billing was important to him, probably still is. And you’d have names, addresses in your files. Notes, tapes.”

“Revenge? Does it come down to that? Getting back at the people who testified against him?”

“I don’t know. But he’s dying, Noah. What does he have to lose?”

He had nothing to lose. So he sat, sipping his drink and watching night fall. The pain was nicely tucked under the cushion of drugs, and the drugs were dancing with alcohol.

Just like old times.

It made him want to laugh. It made him want to weep.

Time was running out, he thought. Wasn’t it funny, wasn’t it wonderfully funny how it had crawled for twenty years, only to sprint like a runner at the starting block now that he was free?

Free to do what? To die of cancer?

Sam studied the gun, lifted it, stroked it. No, he didn’t think he’d let the cancer kill him. All he needed was the guts.

Experimentally he turned the gun, looked keenly into the barrel, then slipped it like a kiss between his lips.

It would be fast. And if there was pain, it would be over before it really began. His finger flirted with the trigger.

He could do it. It was just another kind of survival, wasn’t it? He’d learned all about survival in prison.

But not yet. First there was Livvy.

Most of all, there was Livvy.

Through the meal, no one spoke of it. Conversation ran smoothly, gliding over underlying tensions. After the first ten
minutes, Noah gazed at his mother with admiration. She drew Olivia out, chattering on about the Center, asking her opinion about everything from the plight of the northern pocket gopher—where did she get this stuff—to the mating habits of osprey.

He decided either Olivia was as skilled an actress as her mother had been, or she was enjoying herself.

Val lifted a bowl of herbed potatoes and passed them to Frank. “Have some more.”

“I’m going to have to make serious use of your health club tomorrow.” But he accepted the bowl and helped himself to another serving. “This is a fantastic meal, Val.”

“Frank tolerates my cooking,” Celia put in.

“Cooking?” Frank winked at Noah and handed off the bowl. “When did you start cooking?”

“Listen to that,” she said as she gave him a playful punch. “All the years I’ve slaved over a hot stove for my men.”

“All the tofu that gave their lives,” Noah murmured, and earned a punch of his own. “But you sure are pretty, Mom. Isn’t she pretty?” He grabbed her hand and kissed it.

“You think that gets around me?”

He scooped up potatoes. “Yeah.”

And that’s what did it for Val. How could she hold back against a boy who so clearly loved his mother? She lifted a basket, offered it. “Have another roll, Noah.”

“Thanks.” This time when he smiled at her, she smiled back.

They lingered over coffee. Under different circumstances, Noah mused, the MacBrides and the Bradys would have slipped into an easy friendship, without complications, with no shadows.

But the shadows were flickering back. He could see them in the way Olivia would glance at the windows, quick glimpses at the dark. The way his father studied the house, a cop’s assessment of security.

And he saw the strain on Val MacBride’s face when his parents got ready to leave.

“I’ll be at your naturalist talk at the Center tomorrow.” Celia slipped on a light jacket on. “And I’m hoping there’s still room for one more on your guided hike.”

“We’ll make room.”

Celia ignored Olivia’s extended hand and caught her up in a hard hug. “I’ll see you in the morning, then. Val, Rob, thanks for a wonderful meal.” And when she embraced Val, she murmured in her ear. “Stay strong. We’re right here.”

She gave Val’s back a bolstering pat, then took Noah’s arm. “Walk your mother to the car.” It would, they both knew, give Frank a chance to reassure the MacBrides.

Celia breathed deep of the night and wondered how Frank would feel about buying a little holiday cabin in the area. They were used to having their chick close by, after all.

It was a good place for roots, she thought, drawing in the scent of growing things. A good place for her son.

She turned to him, took his face in her hands. “You’re smart and you’re clever and you’ve always been a joy to me. If you let that girl get away, I’ll kick your butt.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you know everything?”

“About you, I do. Have you asked her to marry you?”

“Sort of. She’s work. Yeah, just as you said she would be,” he added when Celia rolled her eyes. “But she’s not going to get away from me. And I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”

“I always wondered who you’d fall in love with and bring into our lives. And I always promised myself that whoever it was, no matter how irritated I might be by her, I’d be a quiet, noninterfering mother-in-law. And you can wipe that smirk off your face right now, young man.”

“Sorry. I thought I heard you say something about you being quiet.”

“I’ll ignore that, and tell you how much I appreciate you choosing a woman I can admire, respect and love.”

“I didn’t choose her. I think I ran out of choices the minute I saw her.”

“Oh.” Celia stepped back, sniffling. “That’s going to make me cry. I want grandbabies, Noah.”

“Is that from the quiet, noninterfering part of you?”

“Shut up.” Then she hugged him, held on fierce and tight. “Be careful. Please, be very careful.”

“I will. With her. With all of it.” He stared over his mother’s shoulder, into the shadows. “He’s not going to harm us.”

He waited until the house was quiet to go to her. He knocked softly but didn’t wait for her answer. And saw the moment she turned from the window that she hadn’t expected him.

“Did you really think I’d leave you alone tonight?”

“I don’t think it’s appropriate that we sleep together in my grandparents’ house.”

He had to give himself a minute. “Are you saying that to make me mad or because you actually believe the only reason I’m here is to sleep with you?”

She shrugged, then turned away again. The wind had risen to sing through the treetops. That, and the sound of the night birds, was a music that always soothed her.

But not tonight.

She’d tried a hot bath, the herbal tea her grandmother enjoyed before bedtime. They’d added yet another layer of fatigue to her body and did nothing to soothe her mind.

“I don’t have any objections to sex,” she said coolly, willing him to leave before she pulled him in any deeper. “But I’m tired, and my grandparents are sleeping at the end of the hallway.”

“Fine, go to bed.” He walked to her shelves, scanned the titles of books and plucked one at random. “I’ll just sit here and read awhile.”

She closed her eyes while her back was to him, then composing her features carefully, faced him. “Maybe we should straighten this out before it goes any further. The few days in the backcountry was fun. More fun than I’d expected. I like you, more than I anticipated. Because I do, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Yes, you do.” He set the book aside, sat down. “The question is why.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Noah.” Some of the emotion
pumping inside her leaked into her voice. “We had an interesting time together, we had great sex. Now I’ve got a lot more on my mind. And the simple fact is I don’t want what you seem to believe you want from us. I’m not built for it.”

“You’re in love with me, Olivia.”

“You’re deluding yourself.” She shoved open the French doors and stepped out onto the narrow terrace.

“The hell I am.”

She hadn’t expected him to move that quickly, certainly not that quietly, but he was beside her, spinning her around, and the temper in his eyes was ripe and hot. “Do I have to make you say it?” He yanked her against him. “Is that the only way? You can’t even give me the words freely?”

“What if I am in love with you? What if I am?” She fought her way free, stood back with the wind whipping at her thin robe. “It won’t work. I won’t let it.” Her voice rose. With an effort, she controlled it before she gave in to the urge to shout. “Maybe if I didn’t care, I’d let it happen.”

“That makes sense, that explains everything. If you didn’t love me, we could be together.”

“Because it wouldn’t matter. I’m afraid, and you’d see to it I wasn’t alone. I’d let you do what you seem so hell-bent on doing and take care of me, at least until this is over.”

A little calmer, he reached out to touch the ends of her hair. “I knew it was a mistake to say that. Taking care of you isn’t taking you over, Liv.”

“You’ve got this nurturing streak. You can’t help yourself.”

The idea so completely baffled him, he could only stare. “No, I 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.”