Nora Roberts - The Stanislaskis - Taming Natasha

If anyone had asked her why she had chosen a small town in which to settle, this would have been one of her answers. People here took the time—the time to carve a pumpkin, the time to take a bundle of old clothes and fashion it into a headless horseman. Tonight, before the moon rose, children could race along the streets, dressed as fairies or goblins. Their goody bags would swell with store-bought candy and homemade cookies, while adults pretended not to recognize the miniature hoboes, clowns and demons. The only thing the children would have to fear was make-believe.

Her child would have been seven.

Natasha paused for a moment, pressing a hand to her stomach until the grief and the memory could be blocked. How many times had she told herself the past was past? And how many times would that past sneak up and slice at her?

True, it came less often now, but still so sharply and always unexpectedly. Days could go by, even months, then it surfaced, crashing over her, leaving her a little dazed, a little tender, like a woman who had walked into a wall.

A car engine was gunned. A horn blasted. “Hey, Tash.”

She blinked and managed to lift a hand in passing salute, though she couldn’t identify the driver, who continued on his way.

This was now, she told herself, blinking to focus again on the swirl of leaves. This was here. There was never any going back. Years before she had convinced herself that the only direction was forward. Deliberately she took a long, deep breath, relieved when she felt her system level. Tonight wasn’t the time for sorrows. She had promised another child a party, and she intended to deliver.

She had to smile when she started up the steps of Spence’s home. He had already been working, she noted. Two enormous jack-o’-lanterns flanked the porch. Like Comedy and Tragedy, one grinned and the other scowled. Across the railing a white sheet had been shaped and spread so that the ghost it became seemed to be in full flight. Cardboard bats with red eyes swooped down from the eaves. In an old rocker beside the door sat a hideous monster who held his laughing head in his hand. On the door was a full-size cutout of a witch stirring a steaming cauldron.

Natasha knocked under the hag’s warty nose. She was laughing when Spence opened the door. “Trick or treat,” she said.

He couldn’t speak at all. For a moment he thought he was imagining things, had to be. The music-box gypsy was standing before him, gold dripping from her ears and her wrists. Her wild mane of hair was banded by a sapphire scarf that flowed almost to her waist with the corkscrew curls. More gold hung around her neck, thick, ornate chains that only accented her slenderness. The red dress was snug, scooped at the bodice and full in the skirt, with richly colored scarfs tied at the waist.

Her eyes were huge and dark, made mysterious by some womanly art. Her lips were full and red, turned up now as she spun in a saucy circle. It took him only seconds to see it all, down to the hints of black lace at the hem. He felt as though he’d been standing in the doorway for hours.

“I have a crystal ball,” she told him, reaching into her pocket to pull out a small, clear orb. “If you cross my palm with silver, I’ll gaze into it for you.”

“My God,” he managed. “You’re beautiful.”

She only laughed and stepped inside. “Illusions. Tonight is meant for them.” With a quick glance around, she slipped the crystal back into her pocket. But the image of the gypsy and the mystery remained. “Where’s Freddie?”

His hand had gone damp on the knob. “She’s…” It took a moment for his brain to kick back into gear. “She’s at JoBeth’s. I wanted to put things together when she wasn’t around.”

“A good idea.” She studied his gray sweats and dusty sneakers. “Is this your costume?”

“No. I’ve been hanging cobwebs.”

“I’ll give you a hand.” Smiling, she held up her bags. “I have some tricks and I have some treats. Which would you like first?”

“You have to ask?” he said quietly, then hooking an arm around her waist, brought her up hard against himself. She threw her head back, words of anger and defiance in her eyes and on the tip of her tongue. Then his mouth found hers. The bags slipped out of her hands. Freed, her fingers dived into his hair.

This wasn’t what she wanted. But it was what she needed. Without hesitation her lips parted, inviting intimacy. She heard his quiet moan of pleasure merge with her own. It seemed right, somehow it seemed perfectly right to be holding him like this, just inside his front door, with the scents of fall flowers and fresh polish in the air, and the sharp-edged breeze of autumn rushing over them.

It was right. He could taste and feel the rightness with her body pressed against his own, her lips warm and agile. No illusion this. No fantasy was she, despite the colorful scarfs and glittering gold. She was real, she was here, and she was his. Before the night was over, he would prove it to both of them.

“I hear violins,” he murmured as he trailed his lips down her throat.

“Spence.” She could only hear her heartbeat, like thunder in her head. Struggling for sanity, she pushed away. “You make me do things I tell myself I won’t.” After a deep breath she gave him a steady look. “I came to help you with Freddie’s party.”

“And I appreciate it.” Quietly he closed the door. “Just like I appreciate the way you look, the way you taste, the way you feel.”

She shouldn’t have been so aroused by only a look. Couldn’t be, not when the look told her that whatever the crystal in her pocket promised, he already knew their destiny. “This is a very inappropriate time.”

He loved the way her voice could take on that regal tone, czarina to peasant. “Then we’ll find a better one.”

Exasperated, she hefted the bags again. “I’ll help you hang your cobwebs, if you promise to be Freddie’s father—and only Freddie’s father while we do.”

“Okay.” He didn’t see any other way he’d survive an evening with twenty costumed first-graders. And the party, he thought, wouldn’t last forever. “We’ll be pals for the duration.”

She liked the sound of it. Choosing a bag, she reached inside. She held up a rubber mask of a bruised, bloodied and scarred face. Competently she slipped it over Spence’s head. “There. You look wonderful.”

He adjusted it until he could see her through both eyeholes, and had a foolish and irresistible urge to look at himself in the hall mirror. Behind the mask he grinned. “I’ll suffocate.”

“Not for a couple of hours yet.” She handed him the second bag. “Come on. It takes time to build a haunted house.”

It took them two hours to transform Spence’s elegantly decorated living room into a spooky dungeon, fit for rats and screams of torture. Black and orange crepe paper hung on the walls and ceiling. Angel-hair cobwebs draped the corners. A mummy, arms folded across its chest leaned in a corner. A black-caped witch hung in the air, suspended on her broom. Thirsty and waiting for dusk, an evil-eyed Dracula lurked in the shadows, ready to pounce.

“You don’t think it’s too scary?” Spence asked as he hung up a Pin-the-Nose-on-the-Pumpkin game. “They’re first-graders.”

Natasha flicked a finger over a rubber spider that hung by a thread and sent him spinning. “Very mild. My brothers made a haunted house once. They blindfolded Rachel and me to take us through. Mikhail put my hand in a bowl of grapes and told me it was eyes.”

“Now that’s disgusting,” Spence decided.

“Yes.” It delighted her to remember it. “Then there was this spaghetti—”

“Never mind,” he interrupted. “I get the idea.”