Nora Roberts - Sacred Sins

“Right up there with getting drunk and throwing up on your own shoes.”

“My shoes are clean, Jackson. I remember someone toppling like a goddamn redwood when he downed a half a gallon of vodka and carrot juice.”

“I was just going to take a nap.”

“Yeah, right on your face. If I hadn’t caught you-and nearly given myself a hernia in the process-you’d have broken that big nose of yours. What the hell are you smiling at?”

“If you’re bitching, you’re not feeling sorry for yourself. You know, Ben, she handled herself real good.”

“Who said she didn’t?” Ben’s teeth ground into the filter as he took another drag. “And who said I was thinking about her anyway?”

“Who?” less.

“I never mentioned her name.” Ed gunned the engine as a light turned amber, and blinked through it as it switched to red.

“Don’t play games with me, and that light was red.”

“Yellow.”

“It was red, you color-blind sonofabitch, and someone should take your license away. I take my life in my hands every time I get in the same car with you. I ought to have a suitcase full of commendations.”

“She looked good too,” Ed commented. “Great legs.”

“You’re in a rut.” He turned the heater up as the air coming in through the crack of the window cut like a knife. “Anyway, she looked as though she could freeze a man at twenty paces.”

“Clothes send out signals. Authority, indecision, composure.

Looked like she was shooting for aloof authority. Seems to me she had those reporters in hand before she opened her mouth.“

“Somebody should cancel your subscription to Reader’s Digest ,” Ben muttered. The big, old trees dotting the sides of the road were at their peak of color. Leaves were soft to the touch and vibrant in reds, yellows, and oranges. In another week they would be dry, littering the sidewalks and gutters, making scratching, empty sounds as they trailed along the asphalt. Ben pushed the cigarette through the crack, then closed it tight.

“Okay, so she handled herself. Problem is, the press is going to have this meat to chew over for days. Media has a way of bringing out the loonies.” He looked at the old sedate buildings behind the old sedate trees. They were the kind of buildings she belonged in. The kind he was used to seeing from the outside. “And damn it, she does have great legs.”

“Smart too. A man sure can admire a woman’s mind.”

“What do you know about a woman’s mind? The last one you dated had the IQ of a soft-boiled egg. And what is this crap we’re listening to?”

Ed smiled, pleased to have his partner back on track. “Tanya Tucker.”

“Jesus.” Ben slid down in the seat and closed his eyes.

You seem to feel much better today, Mrs. Halderman.“

“Oh, I do. I really do.” The dark, pretty woman didn’t lie on the couch or sit in a chair, but almost danced around Tess’s office. She tossed a sable coat over the arm of a chair and posed. “What do you think of my new dress?”

“It’s very becoming.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Mrs. Halderman ran a hand over the thin, silk-lined wool. “Red is so eye-catching. I do love to be noticed.”

“You’ve been shopping again, Mrs. Halderman?”

“Yes.” She beamed, then her pretty, china doll face drew into a pout. “Oh, don’t be annoyed, Dr. Court. I know you said maybe I should stay away from the stores for a little while. And I did really. I hadn’t been to Neiman’s for almost a week.“

“I’m not annoyed, Mrs. Halderman,” she said, and watched the pout transform into another beaming smile. “You have wonderful taste in clothes.” Which was fortunate, as Ellen Halderman was obsessive. She saw, she liked, she bought, often tossing it aside and forgetting it after one wearing. But that was a small problem. Mrs. Halderman also had the same routine with men.

“Thank you, Doctor.” Like a little girl, she twirled in a circle to show off the flare of the skirt. “I did have the most marvelous time shopping. And you’d have been proud of me. I only bought two outfits. Well, three,” she amended with a giggle. “But lingerie shouldn’t count, should it? Then I went down to have some coffee. You know that marvelous restaurant in the Mazza Gallerie where you can look up at all the people and the shops?”

“Yes.” Tess was sitting on the corner of her desk. Mrs. Halderman looked at her, caught her bottom lip between her teeth, not in shame or anxiety, but in suppressed delight. Then she walked to a chair and sat primly.

“I was having coffee. I’d thought about having a roll, but if I didn’t watch my figure, clothes wouldn’t be so much fun. A man was sitting at the table beside mine. Oh, Dr. Court, I knew as soon as I saw him. Why, my heart just started to pound.” She put a hand to it, as though even now its rhythm couldn’t be trusted. “He was so handsome. Just a little gray right here.” She touched her forefingers to her temples as her eyes took on the soft, dreamy light Tess had seen too often to count. “He was tanned, as though he’d been skiing. Saint Moritz, I thought, because it’s really too early for Vermont. He had a leather briefcase with his little initials monogrammed. I kept trying to guess what they stood for. M.W.” She sighed over them, and Tess knew she was already changing the monogram on her bath towels. “I can’t tell you how many names I’d conjured up to fit those initials.”

“What did they stand for?”

“Maxwell Witherspoon. Isn’t that a wonderful name?”

“Very distinguished.”

“Why, that’s just what I told him.”

“So, you spoke with him.”

“Well, my purse slid off the table.” She put her fingers to her lips as if to hide a grin. “A girl’s got to have a trick or two if she wants to meet the right man.”

“You knocked your purse off the table.”

“It landed right by his foot. It was my pretty black-and-white snakeskin. Maxwell leaned over to pick it up. As he handed it to me, he smiled. My heart just about stopped. It was like a dream. I didn’t hear the clatter of the other tables, I didn’t see the shoppers on the floors above us. Our fingers touched, and-oh, promise you won’t laugh, Doctor.”

“Of course I won’t.”

“It was as if he’d touched my soul.”

That’s what she’d been afraid of. Tess moved away from the desk to sit in the chair opposite her patient. “Mrs. Halderman, do you remember Asanti?”

“Him?” With a sniff Mrs. Halderman dismissed her fourth husband.

“When you met him at the art gallery, under his painting of Venice, you thought he touched your soul.”

“That was different. Asanti was Italian. You know how clever Italian men are with women. Maxwell’s from Boston.”

Tess fought back a sigh. It was going to be a very long fifty minutes.

When ben entered tess’s outer office, he found exactly what he’d expected. It was as cool and classy as her apartment. Calming colors, deep roses, smoky grays that would put her patients at ease. The potted ferns by the windows had moist leaves, as though they’d just been spritzed with water. Fresh flowers and a collection of figurines in a display cabinet lent the air of a parlor rather than a reception room. From the copy of Vogue left open on a low coffee table, he gathered her current patient was a woman.

It didn’t remind him of another doctor’s office, one with white walls and the scent of leather. He didn’t feel the hitch in his gut or the sweat on the back of his neck as the door closed behind him. He wouldn’t be waiting for his brother here, because Josh was gone.

Tess’s secretary sat at a neat enameled desk, working with a single-station computer. She stopped typing as Ben and Ed entered, and looked as calm and easy as the room. “Can I help you?”