Nora Roberts - Tribute

“No. Nothing new. Except Steve’s mother’s there.”

“Yeah. I ran into her this morning for a minute.” He dipped his hands into his pockets, hunched a little. “She’s scary.”

“She hates me. For marrying Steve, for divorcing him. She doesn’t actually like Steve all that much, but me? She hates. So I cleared the field. Deserted, actually. I don’t do well with mothers.”

“You do okay with your stepmom. She sent over that nice casserole last night.”

“Tuna noodle. I’m not sure that’s a sign of affection.”

“It is, take my word.” He stepped through and around some of the mess to get to her, to touch her cheek. “You’re working too hard, beautiful blond girl.”

“I’m not.” She pulled away, kicked at one of the boxes. “The cops want me to go through this stuff, to see if anything’s missing.”

“Yeah. I think I’ve been bumped down the suspect list, which is oddly disappointing. Tall White Guy asked me to sign a copy of The Seeker: Indestructible for his grandson.”

“Tall… oh, Urick. I told them it wasn’t about you or Steve or me. But what the hell is here? What’s here somebody would want so damn bad? It’s junk. It’s trash. It should be tossed, all of it. I’m tossing it,” she decided in an instant. “Help me toss it.”

He grabbed her, pulled her back up as she started to drag up a box. “No. You don’t toss when you’re churned up. And you know that what someone might have wanted isn’t here. Because you already found it and put it somewhere else.”

“The letters.”

“That’s right. Did you tell the cops about the letters?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Partly because all I could really think about at first was Steve. And what would they do with the letters? Thirty-five-year-old letters, unsigned, no return address.”

“Fingerprints, DNA. Don’t you watch CSI ?”

“Fact, fantasy. And it’ll leak. It always leaks, that is a fact. Letters from a lover, days before her death. Was it suicide? Was it murder? Was she carrying a love child? All the speculation, the print, the airtime, the reporters, the obsessed fans, it all pumps up. Any chance I had here, at peace, at a life, pretty much goes up in flames.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to live like that, in the crosshairs of the camera lens. I want this to be my home.” She heard the edge of desperation in her own voice but couldn’t dull it. “I wanted to bring something back from her, and for her. But I wanted it to be mine at the end of the day.”

“You don’t want to know who wrote those letters?”

“Yes, I do. I do. But I don’t want to ruin his life, Ford, or his children’s lives because he had an affair, because he broke off the affair. Even if he was cruel about it. There has to be a statute of limitations. Thirty years should cover it.”

“Agreed.”

He said nothing more, just watched her, looked into her eyes until she closed them.

“How could anyone prove it?” she demanded. “If, if, if she didn’t kill herself. If, if, if some of the conspiracy theories have been close to true and someone-this someone-made her take the pills, or slipped them to her. How could we prove it?”

“I don’t know, but the first step would be asking the right people the right questions.”

“I don’t know the people or the questions, and I can’t think about this. Not now. I need to get through today, then get through tomorrow. I need-”

She threw herself against him, locking her arms around his neck while her mouth latched on to his. He wasn’t prepared for the eruption, the bursts of desperation and appetite. Who could have been? With quick, catchy gasps, low, sexy moans, she devoured. She hooked one of those long, long legs around him, sank her teeth into his bottom lip, tugged. And he went instantly, helplessly, hard as stone.

She rubbed her body against his until he could literally feel the blood draining out of his head and heading south. “Lock the door.” Her lips moved to his ear, parted on a breathless whisper. “Lock the door.”

He quivered, felt the shock of need ram into him-head, belly, loins- like fists. “Wait.” Even as he said it his mouth collided with hers again for one more greedy gulp. But he managed to order himself to pull back, to get his hands on her shoulders to peel her away, a couple of inches.

“Wait,” he repeated, and momentarily forgot his train of thought as those brilliant blue eyes burned into his.

“No. Now.”

“Cilla. Whoa. Jeez. I can pretty much feel myself growing breasts as I say this.”

She took his hands, pulled them down, pressed. “Those are mine.”

“Yeah.” Soft, firm. “They are.”And with considerable regret, and what he considered heroic restraint, he put his hands back on her shoulders. “Where was I? I meant to say, even at the risk of sounding like a girl, this isn’t right.”

She slid her hand over his crotch. “Then what’s this?”

“The penis has a mind of its own. And boy, oh boy,” he managed as he took her wandering hand and yanked it up. “I should get an award for this. A monument. Let’s just step back.”

“Step back ?” Shock and insult leaped out with the words. “Why? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“The penis is asking those exact questions. But the thing is… wait,” he ordered, taking a firm hold of her arms when she started to jerk away. “The thing is, Cilla, you don’t toss stuff out when you’re churned up. Just like when you’re churned up, you don’t… lock the barn door.”

“It’s just sex.”

“Maybe. Maybe. But when it happens? It’s going to be just you and me. Just you.” He tested his willpower by leaning down and taking her mouth in a slow, soft kiss. “Just me. No Steve or Steve’s mom, no Janet Hardy, no letters. Just us, Cilla. I want lots of alone with you.”

She let out a sigh, gave one of the boxes a halfhearted kick. “How am I supposed to feel pissed off and rejected after that?” Hooking her thumbs in her pockets, she lowered her gaze deliberately to his crotch. “Looks like that’s still doing a lot of thinking. What are you going to do about it?”

“I just need to get a picture of Maylene Gunner in my head.”

“Maylene Gunner.”

“Maylene was mean as a snake, big as a battleship and ugly as homemade sin. She beat the living snot out of me when I was eight.”

No, she couldn’t possibly stay pissed off. “Why would Maylene do that?”

“Because I had drawn a very unflattering portrait of her. I didn’t possess the talent to draw a flattering one. Da Vinci didn’t possess that much talent. I drew her as a kind of Goodyear Blimp, soaring and farting. Very colorful. Little people on the ground clutching themselves or lying sprawled and unconscious, running for cover.”

“Cruel,” Cilla said as her lips twitched.

“I was eight. In any case, she got wind-so to speak-and ambushed me and proceeded to pound me to dust. So when I need to, I just picture that Jupiter-sized face, and…” He glanced down, smiled. “There we go. Retired from the field.”

Cilla studied him a moment. “You’re a very strange man, Ford. Yet oddly appealing. Like your dog.”

“Don’t get me started again. Even Maylene Gunner has only so much power. Why don’t I give you a hand here, then we’ll go see Steve together. Between the two of us, we can take his mama.”

Yes, she thought, a very strange and appealing man. “Okay. You can start by taking what’s left of that pole lamp out there to the Dumpster.”

SHE GOT THROUGH THE DAY, got through the night. And Cilla geared herself up for her second visit of the day, and second confrontation with Steve’s mother. Pacing in front of the hospital entrance, she gave herself a pep talk.