Nora Roberts - Black Hills

“You’re right.”

Time might be wasting, Coop thought, but he had no right pushing now.

“Willy’s been by?” Coop asked and got down a second glass.

“Yes.”

He glanced at the stove, the bottle of good white wine. “Lil, if you’re thinking of a kind of celebration dinner-”

“When did I suddenly go stupid?” She bit off the words. Snapping more out as she took the lid off the skillet and made him lift his brows when she poured the good wine over the chicken she had sautéing. “He’s no more in Wyoming than I am. He made sure he left enough signs for them to follow, and might as well have put up a ‘Here’s a Clue’ sign pointing to that wallet.”

“Okay.”

“It’s not okay. He’s trying to make fools out of us.”

“Which is worse than trying to kill us?”

“It adds insult. I’m insulted.” She grabbed up her wine and drank.

“So you’re cooking chicken using twenty-five-dollar-a-bottle wine?”

“If you knew anything about cooking you’d know if it’s not good enough to drink, it’s not good enough for cooking either. And I felt like cooking. I told you I could cook. Nobody said you had to eat it.”

After she’d slapped the lid back on the skillet he crossed to her. He said nothing, just grabbed her, tightening his hold when she tried to pull away. Drawing her in, holding her to him, saying nothing at all.

“He’s up there somewhere, laughing. It makes it worse. I don’t care how petty it is, it makes it worse. So I’m going to be pissed off.”

“That’s fine, be pissed off. Or look at it this way: He thinks we’re stupid, that you’re stupid. He thinks we bought his little game, and we didn’t. He underestimated you, and that’s a mistake. It took a lot of time and effort for him to make that trail, plant that wallet. He wasted it on you.”

She relaxed a little. “When you put it that way.”

He lifted her face to his, kissed her. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

He ran his hand down the length of her braid, wishing he could ask, demand, even beg. And let her go. “Any hail damage?”

“Nothing major. How about at your grandparents’?”

“To my grandfather’s secret pleasure, they lost most of the kale.”

“I like kale.”

“Why?”

She laughed. “No good reason. There’s a ball game on tonight. Toronto at Houston. Wanna watch?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. You can set the table.”

He got out plates, laid them with the scent of cooking, of her, filling the air. He decided it wasn’t pushing just to ask. “Is that sexy underwear still in your dresser?”

“It is.”

“Okay.” He glanced at her while he opened a drawer for flatware. “You need to pick a date this summer. I’ll give you the Yankee schedule, and you can pick whichever game works for you. I can get Brad to send the plane. We could take a couple of days, stay at the Palace or the Waldorf.”

She checked the potatoes she had roasting with rosemary in the oven. “Private planes, fancy hotels.”

“I’ve still got my box-seat season tickets.”

“Box seats, too. Just how rich are you, Cooper?”

“Really.”

“Maybe I should hit you up for another donation.”

“I’ll give you five thousand to throw away the red number in the drawer upstairs.”

“Bribery. I’ll consider it.”

“ New York and the Yankees were the first bribe. You missed it.”

She’d missed this, too, she realized. Just poking at each other. “How much to toss them all?”

“Name your price.”

“Hmm. Could be steep. I want to build a dorm for the interns.”

He turned back, head angled. “That’s a good idea. Keep them on the property. They have more time here, probably more interaction with one another and the staff. And you’d have a number of people on-site at all times.”

“The last part wasn’t a consideration until recently. Which I just don’t want to talk about right now. Housing and transportation aren’t huge problems, but they always take some work. I want to build a six-room dorm, with kitchen facilities and a community room. We’d have room for a dozen interns. Fork over enough and I’ll name it after you.”

“Bribery. I’ll consider it.”

She grinned at him. “How does it feel? To be loaded?”

“Better than it did to be broke. I grew up with money, so I never thought about it. Part of my mistake when I hit college. I never had to worry where a meal was coming from or how I’d pay for shoes, that kind of thing. I blew through my savings and then some.”

“You were just a boy.”

“You were just a girl and you made a budget, and lived by it. I remember.”

“I didn’t grow up rich. You spent plenty on me, too, back then. I let you.”

“In any case it was a come-to-Jesus when I got in a hole, which I compounded by going against my father and dropping out of college, wanting to be a cop. Still, I figured I could do it.”

He shrugged and sipped as if it didn’t matter. But she knew it did.

“I’d have the first chunk from the trust coming along so I could live thin for a while. I didn’t know what thin was. But I found out.”

“You must’ve been scared.”

“Sometimes. I felt defeated and pissed off. But I was doing what I needed to do, and I was pretty good at it. Getting good at it. When he blocked the trust payment and froze my accounts, what there was of them, it turned desperate. I had the job, so it wasn’t like I’d be on the street, but thin got thinner. I needed a lawyer, a good one, and a good one wants a good retainer. I had to borrow the money for that. Brad lent it to me.”

“I knew I liked him.”

“It took months, close to a year, before I could pay him back. It wasn’t just the money, Lil, breaking my father’s hold on the trust payment. It was, finally, breaking his hold on me.”

“His loss. And I don’t mean the control. He lost you.”

“And I lost you.”

She shook her head, turned back to the stove.

“I had to prove myself before I could be with you, and proving myself meant I couldn’t be.”

“Yet here we are.”

“And now I have to prove myself to you.”

“That’s not it.” Fresh annoyance shimmered in her voice. “That’s not right.”

“Sure it is. It’s fair. A pisser, but fair. There’s a lot of thinking time when you’re working with horses. I’ve spent a good chunk of that thinking about this. You’ve got me on probation, and that’s a pisser. You want to make sure I’m not going to leave again, and you want to make sure you want me to stay. But in the meantime, I get to have you in bed, and now and then I get a hot meal I didn’t have to make myself. And I can watch you through the kitchen window. That’s fair.”

“Sex and food and occasional voyeurism?”

“And I can look in your eyes and see that you love me. I know you can’t hold out forever.”

“I’m not holding out. I’m-”

“Making sure,” he finished. “Same thing.” He moved, fast and smooth, and had her wrapped in a kiss, layered in the warmth, in the need. He let her go slowly, and with a soft, lingering bite.

“The chicken smells good.”

She eased him back a little farther. “Sit down. It should be done.”

They ate, and by tacit agreement turned the conversation to simple things. The weather, the horses, the health of her new tiger. They did the dishes together. After he’d checked the locks-the only outward sign of trouble-they settled in to watch the ball game. They made love while the waxing moon poured its light through the windows.

And still, in the night, she dreamed of running. A panic race through the moonstruck forest with terror galloping in her chest and her breath a harsh echo. She felt the sweat of effort and fear slick her skin. Brush tore at that skin as she fought through it, and she scented her own blood.