Nora Roberts - Dance Upon the Air

"Ripley, please."

"Not having intimacy," she said in a prissy tone after Mia's reprimand, "is going to make him edgy. If he's going to deal with your L.A. asshole, he should be in top form."

"He's been very careful to keep me at a distance, in that area."

"Then close the distance, in that area," Ripley said simply. "Here's what we do. You drop me off at your place. I'll bunk there tonight. You go over to the house and take care of business. You've been hanging out with him long enough to know what buttons to push."

"That's sneaky, deceitful, and manipulative."

Ripley cocked her head at Nell. "What's your point?"

Despite herself, Nell laughed. "Maybe I will go over. To talk," she added.

"Whatever you want to call it." Ripley polished off her wine. "Maybe you could take these glasses and things back into the kitchen, get your stuff together."

"Sure." She rose, began to gather the glasses. "I'll just be a minute."

"Take your time."

Mia waited until Nell was out of the room. "It won't take her long, so say what you didn't want to say in front of her."

"What I did tonight doesn't change anything."

"That's redundant."

"Just shut up." She paced again. She'd opened herself-only for a short time, but that's all that had been needed. She'd felt that heaviness in the air, the pressure. "Okay, trouble's coming. I'm not going to pretend I don't feel it, and I'm not going to pretend I haven't tried to figure a way to deal with it. Maybe I could, but I won't bet Zack on it. I'm going to sign up for this, Mia." She turned back. "But just for this."

Mia didn't rub it in. In fact, it didn't occur to her to do so. "We'll light the balefires at midnight on Samhain eve. We'll meet at ten on the Sabbat. Zack already wears Nell's talisman, but I'd protect your house if I were you. Do you remember how?"

"I know what to do," Ripley snapped. "Once this passes, things go back the way they were. This is-"

"Yes, I know," Mia retorted. "A one-time-only."

Zack had given up on paperwork, given up on his telescope, and pretty much given up on the idea that he could will himself to sleep. He was trying to bore himself to sleep now, by reading one of Ripley's gun magazines.

Lucy was sprawled beside the bed in a deep sleep that he envied. Every now and then her legs would twitch as she chased dream gulls or swam in her dream inlet. But she lifted her head, one sharp motion, let out a soft, warning woof seconds before Zack heard the front door open.

"Relax, girl. It's just Ripley."

At the sound of the name, Lucy was up and scrambling for the door, where she stood wagging her entire body.

"Forget it. It's too late to play."

The knock on the bedroom door had Lucy barking joyfully and Zack cursing. "What?"

Lucy whipped herself into happy circles as the door opened, then she leaped enthusiastically on Nell.

Zack shot up in bed. "Lucy, down! Sorry. I thought it was Rip." He nearly threw back the covers, then remembered he was buck naked. "Is something wrong?"

"No. Nothing." She bent over to pet Lucy, wondering which of them was more embarrassed, and decided it was a tie. "I just wanted to see you. Talk to you."

He peeked at the clock, noted it was coming onto midnight. "Why don't you go downstairs? I'll be right there."

"No." He wasn't going to treat her like a guest. "This is fine." She came over, sat on the side of the bed. He still wore the locket, and that meant something. "I made fire tonight."

He studied her face. "Okay."

"No." She laughed a little, and scratched Lucy's head. "I made it. Not with wood and a match. With magic."

"Oh." There was a tickling inside his chest. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say to that. Congratulations? Or… wow?"

"It made me feel strong, and excited. And… complete. I wanted to tell you. It made me feel something like I do when I'm with you. When you touch me. You don't want to touch me because I have a legal tie to someone else."

"It doesn't stop the want, Nell."

She nodded, let the relief of that come. "You won't touch me because I have a legal tie to someone else. But the fact is, Zack, the only man I have a real tie to is you. When I ran, I told myself I would never tie myself to another man. Never risk that again. Then there was you. I have magic in me." She lifted a hand, fisted, to her heart. "And it's amazing and thrilling and sweet. Still, it's nothing-nothing, Zack-to what I have in me for you."

Any defense, any rational reason he may have had quite simply crumbled. "Nell."

"I miss you. Just being with you. I'm not asking you to make love with me. I was going to. I was going to try to seduce you."

He skimmed his fingers through her hair. "What changed your mind?"

"I don't want to ever lie to you again, even in a harmless way. And I won't use one set of your feelings against another set. I just want to be with you, Zack, just be. Don't tell me to go."

He drew her down until her head was cradled on his shoulder, and he felt her long, long sigh of contentment echo his own.

It wasn't easy for an important, successful man to get away by himself for a few days. It was a complicated and tedious business to reschedule meetings, postpone appointments, inform clients, alert staff.

There was a whole world of people dependent upon him.

More tedious yet was making travel arrangements personally rather than using the services of an assistant.

But after careful thought, Evan decided there was nothing else to be done. No one was to know where he was, or what he was doing. Not his staff, not his clients, not the press. Naturally, he could be reached via cell phone if there was a crisis of any sort. Otherwise, until he'd done what he set out to do, he would remain incommunicado.

He had to know.

He hadn't been able to get the information his sister had so casually passed on to him out of his mind.

Helen's double. Helen's ghost.

Helen.

He would wake up at night in a cold sweat from images of Helen, his Helen, walking along some picturesque beach. Alive. Laughing at him. Giving herself to any man who crooked his finger.

It couldn't be borne.

The terrible grief he'd felt upon her death was turning slowly, inexorably, into a cold and killing rage.

Had she tricked him? Had she somehow planned and executed the faking of her own death?

He hadn't thought her smart enough, certainly not brave enough, to try to leave him, much less succeed. She knew the consequences. He had made them perfectly clear.

Till death do us part.

Obviously she couldn't have done so alone. She'd had help. A man, a lover. A woman, especially a woman like Helen, could never have devised such a scheme on her own. How many times had she sneaked off to lie with some wife-stealing bastard, working out the details of her deception?

Laughing and fucking, plotting and planning.

Oh, there would be payment made.

He could calm himself again, continue about his business and his life without an outward ripple. He could nearly convince himself again that Pamela's claims were nonsense. She was, after all, a woman. And women, by nature, were given to flights of fancy and foolishness.

Ghosts didn't exist. And there was only one Helen Remington. The Helen who had been meant for him.

But at times in that big, glamorous house in Beverly Hills, he thought he heard ghosts whispering, or caught the bright sound of his dead wife's taunting laughter.

What if she wasn't dead?

He had to know. He had to be careful, and clever.

"Ferry's loading."

His eyes, pale as water, blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

The ferry worker stopped blowing on his take-out cup of coffee and instinctively stepped back from that blank stare. It was, he would think later, like staring into an empty sea.