Nora Roberts - Dance Upon the Air

By the time Pamela managed to drag her husband back to the market, Nell was unpacking her single bag of groceries and trying to decide between couscous and a spicy new sauce she wanted to try out on red potato wedges.

She decided to decide later, and flipping on the portable stereo Zack had left at her cottage, she settled down with Alanis Morissette and her issue of Saveur.

While she crunched on an apple from the basket on her table, she pulled over her notepad and began to scribble ideas sparked from an article on artichokes.

She moved from there to a feature on Australian wines and noted the writer's opinion of the best values.

The sound of footsteps didn't jolt her now, but gave her a warm feeling as she glanced over to watch Zack come in.

"A little early for the upholder of law and order to call it a day, isn't it?"

"I swapped some time with Ripley."

"What's in the box?"

"A present."

"For me?" Shoving her notebook aside, she got up, stepped hurriedly to the counter. Her mouth fell open. Love and lust tangled and burned inside her.

"A food processor. Commercial grade, top of the line." With reverent hands, she stroked the box the way some women might stroke mink. "Oh, my God."

"According to my mother, if a man gives a woman anything that plugs into an electric socket for a gift, he'd better be fully paid up on his life insurance. But I didn't think that rule applied here."

"It's the best on the market. I've wanted it forever."

"I've seen you ogling it in the catalog a few times." He caught her when she launched herself into his arms to cover his face with kisses. "I guess I'm not going to need that life insurance."

"I love it, I love it, I love it." She finished with a hard, smacking kiss, then leaped down to attack the box. "But it's outrageously expensive. I shouldn't let you give me an outrageously expensive present right out of the blue. But I'm going to because I can't stand the idea of not having it."

"It's rude to turn down a gift, and anyway, it's not out of the blue. A day early, but I didn't think that mattered. Happy birthday."

"My birthday's in April, but I'm not arguing because…"

She caught herself. The pulse began to throb in her temples, hot and hard. Helen Remington's birthday was in April. Nell Channing's was listed clearly on all identification as September nineteenth.

"I don't know what I was thinking. Slipped my mind." Because her palms sprang with damp, she wiped them hastily on her jeans. "I've been so busy, I forgot about my birthday."

All of his pleasure of giving her the gift curdled, left a sour ball in his belly. "Don't do that. Keeping things to yourself is one thing. Lying to my face is another."

"I'm sorry." She bit down hard on her lip, tasted shame.

"So am I." Because he wanted her to look at him, he cupped her chin, lifted it.

"I keep waiting for you to take the step, Nell, but you don't. You sleep with me, and you don't hold anything back there. You talk to me about what you hope to do tomorrow, and you listen when I talk to you. But there're no yesterdays."

He'd tried not to dwell on that, tried to tell himself, as he'd told Ripley, that it wasn't important. But now, slapped in the face with it, he couldn't pretend.

"You let me into your life from the day you stepped onto the island."

It was true, perfectly true. What point would there be in denying it? "For me, my life started from there. Nothing before then matters anymore."

"If it didn't, you wouldn't have to lie to me."

Panic wanted to climb into her throat. She countered it with a snap of temper. "What difference does it make if my birthday's tomorrow, or a month from now, or six months ago? Why does it have to matter?"

"What matters is you don't trust me. That's hard on me, Nell, because I'm in love with you."

"Oh, Zack, you can't-"

"I'm in love with you," he repeated, taking her arms to hold her still. "And you know it."

And of course, that was perfectly true as well. "But I don't know what to do about it. I don't know what to do with what I feel for you. Trusting that, trusting you, it's not that simple. Not for me."

"You want me to accept that, but you don't want to tell me why it's not that simple. Play fair, Nell."

"I can't." A tear spilled over, shimmered down her cheek. "I'm sorry."

"If that's the way it is, we're both fooling ourselves."

He let her go and walked away.

Knocking on Zack's front door was one of the hardest things Nell had ever done. She'd spent so much time stepping back from anger. Now she would have to face it, head on. And with little defense. This was a turmoil she'd caused, and only she could resolve it.

She walked to the front of the house because it seemed more formal than strolling across the beach and up the stairs to the back. Before she knocked, she rubbed her fingers over the turquoise stone she'd slipped into her pocket to aid her verbal communication.

Though she wasn't convinced such things worked, she didn't see how it could make her situation any worse.

She lifted her hand, cursed herself as she lowered it again. There was an old rocker on the front porch, and a pot of geraniums that were frost-burned and pathetic. She wished she'd seen them before the weather had turned so she could have urged Zack to carry them inside.

And she was stalling.

She squared her shoulders, knocked.

Was torn between relief and despair when no one answered.

Just as she'd given up and turned away, the door swung open.

Ripley stood in leggings cropped just below the knee and a T-shirt marked with a vee of sweat between her breasts. She gave Nell one long, cool stare, then leaned on the doorjamb.

"Wasn't sure I heard anyone knock. I was lifting, and had the music up."

"I was hoping to talk to Zack."

"Yeah, I figured. You pissed him off good. It takes work to do that. Me, I've had years of practice, but you must have an innate talent for it."

Nell slipped her hand in her pocket, fingered the stone. She would have to get through the shield to get to the target. "I know he's angry with me, and he has a right to be. Don't I have a right to apologize?"

"Sure, but if you do it with choking little sobs and flutters, you're going to piss me off. I'm a lot meaner than Zack."

"I don't intend to cry and flutter." Nell's own temper bubbled up as she stepped forward. "And I don't think Zack would appreciate you getting in the middle of this. I know I don't."

"Good for you." Satisfied, Ripley shifted to let Nell in. "He's up on the back deck, brooding through his telescope and drinking a beer. But before you go up and say whatever you have to say to him, I'm going to tell you something. He could've looked into your background, picked the pieces apart. I would have. But he's got standards, personal standards, so he didn't."

The guilt that had settled on her since he'd walked out her door took on more weight. "He would've considered that rude."

"Right. I don't mind being rude. So you square this with him, or deal with me."

"Understood."

"I like you, and I respect someone who takes care of business. But when you mess with a Todd, you don't get off free. Fair warning."

Ripley turned toward the stairs leading to the second floor. "Help yourself to a beer on the way through the kitchen. I've got to finish my reps."

Nell skipped the beer, though she'd have relished a tall glass of ice water to ease the burn in her throat. She walked through the comfortably untidy living room, through the equally untidy kitchen, and took the outside steps up to the deck.

He sat in a big chair faded to gray by the weather, a bottle of Sam Adams nestled between his thighs and his scope tilted starward.