Nora Roberts - The Hollow

His brother’s, she imagined, or his mother’s. He’d shown her his younger brother’s pottery business from the road once. She turned when she sensed Fox come in again.

“I love the art, and the pottery. This piece.” She trailed a finger along a long, slender bottle in dreamy shades of blue. “It’s so fluid.”

“My mother’s work. My brother, Ridge, did that bowl on the table under the window.”

She walked to it. “It’s gorgeous.” She traced the gentle curve of its lip. “And the colors, the shapes of them. It’s like a forest in a wide cup.”

She turned back to take the glass of wine. “How about the art?”

“My mother, my brother, my sister-in-law. The photographs are Sparrow’s, my younger sister.”

“A lot of talent in one family.”

“Then there are the lawyers, my older sister and me.”

“Practicing law doesn’t take talent?”

“It takes something.”:.Your father’s a carpenter, isn’t he?"

She sipped her wine. “Your father’s a carpenter, isn’t he?”

“Carpentry, cabinetmaking. He made the table Ridge’s bowl’s on.”

“Made the table.” Now she crouched to get a closer look. “Imagine that.”

“No nails, no screws. Tongue and groove. He’s got magic hands.”

She swiped a finger over the surface, through the dust. “The finish is like satin. Beautiful things.” Eyebrows lifted, she rubbed her finger clean on the sleeve of Fox’s shirt. “I’m forced to say you should take better care of them, and their environment.”

“You wouldn’t be the first. Why don’t I distract you with food?” He held out a paper menu. “Han Lee’s China Kitchen.”

“It’s a little early for dinner.”

“I’ll call ahead, tell them to deliver at seven. That way we can get some work done.”

“Sweet and sour pork,” she decided after a glance at the menu.

“That’s it?” he asked when she handed it back to him. “Pitiful. Sweet and sour pork. I’ll take care of the rest.”

He left her again to make the call. A few minutes later she heard the sound of water running, dishes clinking. Rolling her eyes, she walked into the kitchen where he was attacking the dishes.

“Okay.” Layla took off her jacket.

“No. Really.”

“Yes.” Rolled up her sleeves. “Really. One-time deal, since you’re buying dinner.”

“Should I apologize again?”

“Not this time.” Her eyebrows lifted. “No dishwasher?”

“See, that’s the problem. I keep thinking I should take out that bottom cabinet there, have one installed, but then I think, hey, it’s just me, and I use paper plates a lot.”

“Not often enough. Is there a clean dish towel somewhere?”

“Oh. Well.” He gave her a befuddled frown. “Be right back.”

Shaking her head, Layla stepped up to the sink he’d deserted and took over. She didn’t mind. It was a mindless chore, oddly relaxing and satisfying. Plus there was a nice view from the window over the sink, one that stretched out to the mountains where the sunlight sprinkled over the steely peaks.

The wind was still kicking at the trees, and it billowed the white sheets hanging on a line in the yard below. She imagined the sheets would smell like the wind and the mountains when they were tucked onto their bed.

A little boy and a big black dog ran around a fenced yard with such joy and energy in the gallop she could almost feel the wind on her own cheeks, rushing through her hair. When the boy in his bright blue coat leaped up to stand on his swing, his fingers tight on the chains, the thrill of height and speed pitched into Layla’s belly.

Is his mother in the kitchen making dinner? she wondered dreamily. Or maybe it’s the dad’s turn to cook. Better, they’re cooking together, stirring, chopping, talking about their day while the little boy lifts his face to the wind and flies.

“Who knew washing dishes could be so sexy?”

She laughed, glanced over her shoulder at Fox. “Don’t think that’s going to convince me to repeat the favor.”

He stood where he was, a badly wrinkled dishcloth in his hand. “What?”

“Washing dishes is only sexy when you’re not the one with your hands in the soapy water.”

He came forward, put a hand on her arm. His eyes locked on hers. “I didn’t say that out loud.”

“I heard you.”

“Apparently, but I was thinking, not talking. I was distracted,” he continued when she took a step away from him, “by the way you looked, the way the light hit your hair, the line of your back, the curve of your arms. I was distracted,” he repeated. “And open. What were you, Layla? Don’t think, don’t analyze. Just tell me what you were feeling when you ‘heard’ me.”

“Relaxed. I was watching the little boy on the swing in the yard. I was relaxed.”

“Now you’re not.” He picked up a plate, began to dry it. “So we’ll wait until you are.”

“You can do that, with me? Hear what I’m thinking?”

“Emotions come easier than words. But I wouldn’t, unless you let me.”

“You can do it with anyone.”

He looked into her eyes. “But I wouldn’t.”

“Because you’re the kind of man who puts a dollar in a jar, even if no one’s around to hear you swear.”

“If I give my word, I keep my word.”

She washed another dish. The charm of sheets flapping in the wind, of a little boy and his big dog dissolved. “Did you always control it? Resist the temptation?”

“No. I was ten when I started tapping in. During the first Seven, it was scary, and I could barely keep a handle on it. But it helped. When it was over, that first time, I figured it would be gone.”

“It wasn’t.”

“No. It was very cool to be ten and be able to sense what people were thinking, or feeling. It was big, and not just in the wow, I’ve got a superpower kind of thing. It was big because maybe I wanted to ace a history test, and the smartest kid in history was right there in the next row. Why not reach in, get the answers?”

Since he was drying dishes, he decided to take the extra step and actually put them away. She’d be calmer if they continued with the chore, if all hands were busy. “After a few times, a few aces, I started feeling guilty about it. And weird because I might take a peek into a random teacher’s head to see what they were planning to toss at us. And I’d get stuff I shouldn’t have known about. Problems at home, that kind of thing. I was raised to respect privacy, and I was invading it right and left. So I stopped.” He smiled a little. “Mostly.”

“It helps that you’re not perfect.”

“It took time to figure out how to deal. Sometimes if I wasn’t paying enough attention, things would slip through-sometimes if I was paying too much attention, ditto. And sometimes it was deliberate. There were a couple of events with this asshole who liked to razz me. And… when I got a little older, there was the girl thing. Take a quick sweep through and maybe I’d see if I had a shot at getting her shirt off.”

“Did it work?”

He only smiled, and slid a plate into its cabinet. “Then a couple weeks before we turned seventeen, things started happening again. I knew-we knew-it wasn’t finished after all. It came home to me that what I had wasn’t something to play around with. I stopped.”

“Mostly?”

“Almost entirely. It’s there, Layla, it’s part of us. I can’t control the fact that I might get a sense from someone. I can control pushing in, pulling out more.”

“That’s what I have to learn.”

“And you may have to learn to push. If it comes down to someone’s privacy or their life, or the lives of others, you have to push in.”

“But how do you know when-when, if, who?”