Текст книги "Tasting Fear"

Автор книги: Shannon McKenna

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

“Yes,” she heard herself say. Sealing her own doom.

“Let’s go.” He started down the stairs, Edna scrambling after.

“You mean, right now? This minute? Don’t we need towels, bathing suits? Anything?”

“Bring what you want, but wear jeans. The poison oak is thick.”

“One minute.” Vivi closed the door, shucked her clothes, and pulled on her old one-piece. She yanked her clothes on, tossed a towel over her shoulder. About to do the stupidest thing she’d ever deliberately done, and she couldn’t even breathe, she was so excited.

The path was difficult. They hopped boulders by the rushing river for a mile or so, until sheer cliffs rose up from the swift, green glacial water. She followed Jack into a thicket of dense bushes, clambering up one steep hill and down another, through a narrow cleft between two towering boulders, and under the draped fronds of a blackberry bush.

A tendril snarled in her hair. She was struggling to untangle it when he appeared beside her. He took the long, thorny vine in his hand. Vivi stared at the hollow at the base of his throat. He was so warm. He smelled so good. Her body ached to know how it would feel to lean against that solid chest. What would she do if he kissed her?

Oh, please. Duh. She’d jump all over him. Eat him for lunch.

He let go of the lock of hair, laying it over her shoulder. He turned without saying a word and started to climb. Vivi scrambled after him, relief warring with disappointment.

The path merged with a smaller streambed from the hillside above that had carved a gully leading down to the river. The walls of the gully were steep, the rocks covered with moss, thick with wild mint and luxuriant, spotted yellow flowers with heavy heads like snapdragons, and tufts of fragrant wild mint. Vivi picked her way from boulder to boulder, Edna splashing ahead of her. At the mouth of the spring, Jack pointed upriver. “Look there, past that tall rock.”

Her eyes followed his hand. There were several pools, sunken into the huge, flat gray rocks of the riverbank. They were surrounded by the nodding yellow flowers and mint. The last rays of sun that still managed to slant into the river canyon lit up the water, the multicolored pebbles, and the glittering sand. Faint curls of steam rose from the water. The river rushed noisily by a few yards away.

He watched her face, intently. “Like it?”

She looked around, enchanted. “Oh, my God. It’s superb.”

Her delight was shattered when she realized that Jack had stripped off his shirt and was unbuckling his belt. Oh, God. Jack Kendrick fully clothed was already too much voltage for her circuits to handle. Jack Kendrick naked would blow her fuses to hell and gone.

“Hey, you! Just wait a damn second!” she said sharply.

His hands stopped on his waistband. “Yeah?”

“Are you wearing swimming trunks?” she demanded.

“No.” He waited patiently as she processed this.

“I’m not comfortable with that,” she said. “Things are already funny between us. I’d rather not, uh…”

“See me stark naked,” he finished.

She blew out a sharp, nervous sigh. “Right on, buddy.”

“Do you want me to leave? Can you find your way back alone?”

Ow. That would be so flat. So blah. She did not want him to leave.

Damn, she didn’t know what she wanted. She wanted the world to be different. She wanted him to be different. She wanted…aw, shit.

She just wanted him to want her. Her, Vivi D’Onofrio. The whole damn tattooed, itinerant, sexpot, complicated, prickly package.

That was too extravagant a thing to hope for. Besides being way too soon. For Pete’s sake, she’d just met the guy the day before. She just had so much intense, scary emotion about sex backed up in her system. After six years of celibacy anyone would be climbing the freaking walls. She had Brian Wilder to thank for that, too. The jerk.

“No, don’t leave,” she murmured, abashed. “Can’t you just, um, keep your underwear on?”

His lips twitched, making her feel foolish and prissy. “Yeah, whatever,” he said. “If it really bothers you.”

He pulled off his jeans. He was wearing white briefs. The muscles in his torso were finger-licking delicious. Luxurious curling dark hair tapered down to his belly and turned into a furry mat that disappeared into those briefs. Narrow hips, powerful thighs. She might not survive this visual sensory experience even if he did keep his briefs on.

He stepped into the water, descending until he sat in the pool cross-legged, clouds of glittering sand wafting up from the bottom to swirl and turn in the water, glinting in the sunlight. The water reached to his collarbone. He leaned against the rim of the pool and closed his eyes. A nice show of delicacy, while she undressed. He was in perfect gentleman mode now—but she knew his tricks. If she relaxed and let down her guard for one instant, he’d turn on her for sure.

She pulled off her jeans and T-shirt, wishing her bathing suit were less thin and worn, and stepped into the water. Deliciously hot. Like an enormous, full-body kiss. A sprig of mint dangled over her shoulder, brushing her cheek. She was blushing furiously.

“Why are you blushing?” His voice was silky, amused.

“The water is hot,” she snapped. “And how did you know that with your eyes closed, anyway? That’s sneaky.”

He smiled briefly and made no reply.

They sat there, listening to the river rushing by, for a very long time. He kept his eyes closed, until it felt as if he were hiding from her.

She wanted to make him reveal something about himself. She’d bared her soul in the restaurant the night before. He owed her some freaking personal history, too. “So. Nudity doesn’t embarrass you?”

“I grew up around people who weren’t embarrassed about it,” he said. “The sexual revolution. Let it all hang out.”

Interesting factoid, that. Vivi pinched off a mint leaf and chewed it, letting the fresh, clean flavor clear her head. Jack dunked his head under the water and smoothed his hair back from his square forehead, and she noticed once again the white streak of the scar that disappeared into his hairline. “How’d you get that scar?”

He didn’t open his eyes. “Long story.”

“I’m not in a hurry,” she said.

His forehead contracted, and then he wiped his face clean of expression once again. “Another time.”

She plucked another mint sprig. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s okay. Talk all you want. Just don’t expect me to be scintillating when I respond. Or even coherent.”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

He opened his eyes, and looked at her, with that bright, clear timber wolf gaze that made shivers of delicious terror race through her.

“I can’t concentrate,” he said. “I can barely hear you talk. All I can hear is my own heart pounding.”

The flat statement hung between them. The force of his gaze burned against her face. She closed her eyes, counted to ten.

She opened them, and gazed at him. A lock of hair was clinging to his forehead. A drop of water rolled down his cheek. Vivi leaned forward and touched it with her fingertip. His face was so hot, his skin so resiliant, velvety.

He caught her wrist in his hand and pulled. She floated effortlessly, inevitably closer to him. For a few breathless moments, they were face-to-face, staring at each other. Her breasts brushed his chest. He touched her lips. Slid his finger into her hair. Kissed her, hungrily.

She went nuts in his arms. An explosion of emotions, sensations, bursting into being from deep inside. Achingly sweet, and tinged with desperation, and something fierce, like anger, but brighter, hungrier. Twisting, twining, growing. She wound her arms around his neck and hung on, digging her fingers into those thick muscles.

He drew back for a moment, his eyes dilated and full of wonder. “You taste like mint,” he said huskily, and then that huge vortex sucked them right back into another desperate, twining kiss.

Oh, wow. He was outrageously beautiful close up. His eyes, the incredible length of his wet black eyelashes. Water drops trickling along the crest of the graceful, angled sweep of his eyebrows.

His lips were hot and soft, as wonderful and kissable as she had imagined, and his breath tasted so sweet. His skin was so supple and beautiful, with that delicate rasp of new beard shadow over strong, graceful bones, over chiseled manly angles. God. So fine.

She was charged with emotion. She explored his muscular back with her fingers, wound her arms around his neck, and opened to his kiss. An opening from somewhere deep inside her, someplace vast and beautiful. A universe of bright, open space.

She barely noticed the shoulder straps of her bathing suit being peeled down. She arched back, abandoning herself to his strong grasp, letting her head fall back and her hair float out in the water like a lily pad. She cried out with pleasure as he hungrily suckled her breasts.

So sweet, so shivering melting hot for him. Her nipples felt like points of glowing light. Her breasts had always felt so deplorably small, insignificant even, but under his hot mouth, they felt plumper, bigger. Swollen with eagerness, alive to pleasure. Her whole chest was melting and soft, as if he drank some magic elixir from her body as he licked her, and the more he took, the more she had to give.

And the breathless aching pull of want between her legs grew keener every moment.

Jack pulled her down onto his lap and slipped his finger under her bottom and into the stretchy fabric of her bathing suit, dragging in a sharp breath to find her slick and hot. He slid the tip of his finger slowly inside her. She squirmed, clenched around him, making a keening sound almost too high for herself to hear.

“Oh, wow,” he muttered. “You’re…”

“Yes,” she said. “No hair. I do a Brazilian wax whenever I get the chance. I like the way it feels.”

“Me, too,” he rasped.

She hid her face against his neck, her breath jerking in and out in short, hard sobs. Her bathing suit was floating away, forgotten. She had to slow this down. “Um, Jack? Wait.”

“Why? You’re ready. I’ve never seen anyone so ready in my life.” He bent his head to her chest again, pulling her nipple into a wet, silken vortex of sensation, his hot tongue rasping, swirling.

“But I…b-b-but I can’t—”

“Shhhh.” He thrust a finger inside her slick pussy, penetrating, pressing and swirling deep inside as he licked and lapped, and ah…

She cried out, arching back in his grasp as a totally unexpected climax pumped violently through her.

When she opened her eyes, she was floating in his arms, staring up into the bright blue sky. Her eyes were awash with tears.

Jack rose to his feet. Water sloshed and slopped as he hoisted her up and set her on the edge of the pool. The cool air felt delicious on her pink, overheated flesh. Heat steamed off her wet body. She felt poppy red, feverish, weak in the knees. Terribly exposed.

He pressed her legs apart, and stared down at her. “Oh, yeah,” he whispered. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

He pushed her gently back, until her back was pressed to the flat rock, her legs wide. Laid out like a sacrifice on the altar of sexual misbehavior. Open to the sky. A warning to foolish, unwary girls.

But she wasn’t choking up, she wasn’t panicking, like usual. It was magic. She couldn’t stop. At least not yet. It was too wonderful.

“I knew that your pussy would be like this.” He knelt down in the pool to get closer, and kissed the inside of her thigh. “Those dark red folds, bursting out of your slit like some hothouse flower. Exotic.”

She laughed, shakily. “You’ve got flowers on the brain, Jack.”

“No.” His teeth flashed, in one of his rare, gorgeous grins. “I’ve got your pussy on the brain.” He nuzzled her labia, light kisses that promised and teased. “I was half expecting your clit to be pierced.”

She jerked up onto her elbows. “Hah! You won’t catch me sticking a metal pin through the most nerve-dense part of my entire body!” She peered at him, eyes narrowed. “I bet you’re disappointed, right? I’m not quite as wild as you’d fantasized?”

He played with her inner pussy lips, spreading them tenderly wide like butterfly wings, and the tickling caresses were driving her mad.

“Actually, no,” he said. “I’m relieved, to tell the truth. We’re on the same page about how we like to treat those nerve-dense parts of our bodies. That bodes well.”

“Yeah? For what?”

“Orgasms,” he said, and leaned down, pressed his lips against her clit. Swirled his tongue. Oh, God. He was so…good.

She jerked helplessly against his face. She wasn’t ready. It was too intense. She was scared to death. She pushed his face away.

He rose up, kissing his way up over her mons, the tiny swatch of decorative red pubic hair, over her clit hood. Then over her belly, her rib cage, her breasts.

“Get comfortable with it,” he said, resolutely. “I’m going to lick your pussy until you’re a lake of lube.”

“Jack.” She grabbed his hair to hold him there, licked her lips, and dragged in a jerky breath. “I don’t know if this is such a good—”

“I have to.” He unwound her hands, sank down. “It’s going to be a really tight fit.” He slid his tongue boldly between her pussy lips.

The rasp of his plunging tongue, his matter-of-fact words, the thought of him inside her, it kicked her over the top and into a powerful orgasm. Her pussy pulsed around his thrusting fingers, throbbed against his swirling tongue. Long, sweet, echoing ripples went on and on.

He pulled her back down into the pool after the spasms had moved through her, and she sank into his arms as if she had no bones. He held her so she floated right over the thick, prominent jut of his erect cock against her thigh. In silent pleading.

She draped herself over his shoulder. Trying to catch her breath.

“Jack. Um, I hate to say it, but we can’t have sex,” she whispered.

He stiffened, nuzzling her shoulder. “No?”

“We have no latex,” she pointed out. “I certainly didn’t bring any.”

Breath hissed in sharply, between his teeth. “Ah, yes. That.”

“A small detail, but an important one. I don’t have contraception, either. And we haven’t even discussed our sexual histories yet. I’m sorry. I don’t know how I let things go so far.” She couldn’t stop herself from apologizing, even though the situation was only half her fault. “Just for the record. I’m, ah, fine,” she offered. “No STDs of any kind.”

“Me neither,” he said.

“No lovers, either. For a really long time,” she added.

“I noticed that,” he replied. “You’re tiny. Like a virgin.”

“But I’m not, ah…I’m not babyproof,” she said.

He stared at the river. Wiped water off his face, expressionless. “Forget it.” His voice was remote. “I’m disappointed, but I’ll live.”

His cool tone made her feel punished, and frustrated. “Besides, it’s just too soon for going all the way,” she rattled on. “Call me silly and old-fashioned if you want, but I barely know you, and things are really weird between us anyway, and I just don’t want to give it all up to you if you just want to…ah, I mean, if the relationship has no future.”

His eyes narrowed. “I should think you would be good at those.”

She stiffened, suspicious. “At what?”

“Relationships with no future. What other kind could your type possibly have?”

She shoved away from him, her boneless languor gone. A wave of hot water splashed up into Jack’s chest and face.

“Screw you, Kendrick,” she said savagely, leaping up.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“Oh? You want to know a secret? A couple of minutes ago, I truly, sincerely wanted to suck your dick. You want to know something else? I don’t want to suck your dick anymore.” She yanked her jeans up over her bare ass. She couldn’t seem to make her trembling fingers work. He got out of the pool and moved toward her. She kept her face averted. “Don’t touch me,” she snarled.

“Aw, shit,” he muttered. “What a mess.”

“Yes. My feelings, exactly. I’ve known you for about one day, and every time you see me, you insult me. Big, nasty, mortal insults. And it’s ten times worse when you seduce me first. Freaking sadist.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you. Nor did I succeed in seducing you, evidently.” He got up out of the pool, and she whipped her gaze away.

“Keep your back turned,” he said. “I want to take this wet underwear off before I put on my jeans.”

“Do as you like. I’m leaving.”

Vivi made her way up the flower-lined, moss-choked streambed. She could barely see where she was going. Slowly, the path came back into focus. The cleft of rock she had to clamber past. The thicket of posion oak. The tunnel of blackberry brambles to slither through. Then back down to the riverbed, for the rock hopping.

She was mortified. He melted her down. Turned her into hot goop. And then made her feel cheap and easy for giving in to it.

Hell with him. It was a mistake she would not make again.

Her knee-jerk instinct was to gather up her stuff and her dog and get the hell out of there, but her van was still stuck, and the Fiend was still out there, and she had no place to go, except back to New York, to park on her sisters’ lives. Once she’d started planning her hideout in the flower bower, she’d ceased to send in registration fees for upcoming crafts fairs, or to churn out new stock. So she couldn’t even do the circuit, at least not for a while. Working the crafts fairs took a certain amount of lead time and advance planning.

So even if her van were unstuck, if she left now it would just be for aimless, money-draining, gas-guzzling wandering the road. And she would be too scared to stop. The gas would run out when the money did. And it wouldn’t take very long.

And there she’d be, a sitting duck.

No. She was a grown-up. She’d been through hell in her life, and come out battered, but okay. She would not be chased away like a stray cat. Her safety was more important than her hurt feelings.

But neither would she play the nymphet sex toy for that arrogant prick. Thank God she hadn’t gone down on him. She’d be feeling ten times worse about it all if she had the taste of his come in her mouth.

And she’d come so close, too. Her mouth had been watering. Bad enough that he’d spent all that time with his face between her legs.

That took the strength out of her wobbly legs. She sat down heavily on a rock. Clenching her thighs around pulses of remembered pleasure.

Only the thought of him finding her there on his way back was scary enough to nudge her up off her ass and get her stumbling home.

Chapter

5

“So. Your own store, hmm? What a lovely idea. Jewelry, pottery, art objects, gift items? Pebble River is just right for a place like that, now that the windsurfers found it. Lots of tourism. Windsurfers have money, you see.” Margaret poured Vivi another cup of tea out of a rose-spattered teapot and nudged the plate of pecan puffs toward her. “Come on, dearie! Indulge! Heaven knows, you can afford the calories!”

“Margaret, I’ve eaten five already, and they’re not small.” Vivi gazed appreciatively at the heap of sugar-glazed cookies.

“I could help you find a place, you know,” Margaret offered. “I ran a cross-stitch shop in Pebble River for thirty-five years. We can get started right away.”

“I would, but my van’s still stuck,” Vivi explained. “Dwayne keeps putting me off because of the rain, but it’s been sunny for days, so—”

“Well, now! Speak of the devil. Look what’s coming up the road!”

Vivi peered through the floral print swags of Margaret’s window. A tractor chugged up the road. A big, round man with a cowboy hat was behind the wheel. “Is that Dwayne?”

Margaret hobbled to the window and lifted her spectacles. “It is. I told him all about you. He runs the gas station at the exit for Pebble River. Put some cookies in a napkin for him, would you, dear?”

Vivi soon found herself on the road, shaking the hand of a smiling guy with several chins. “You’re the artist? Good to meet you.”

“Same here.” She handed him the cookies with a smile.

“I thought you might be coming by, Dwayne, so I baked your favorite,” Margaret said. “Vivi, let me know when you want to go to Pebble River. Maybe we should all go together.”

“All? All meaning who?” Vivi asked.

“You, me, and Jack,” Margaret said brightly. “I’m sure Jack will have wonderful ideas.”

“Oh, no. I don’t want to bother Jack,” Vivi said hastily.

“Bother me about what?”

Her heart jumped up, to her throat. She turned. Oh, boy.

She’d managed to avoid him since the hot springs incident, and she’d been fondly imagining that her feelings were back under control. Nope. Vivid images of the hot springs incident blazed through her body.

Her face turned pink. No. Her whole body was turning pink.

“Hi.” Jack nodded to Dwayne and Margaret. “Heard the tractor.”

“I figured it was dry enough by now,” Dwayne said.

“I’ll walk down with you,” Jack said.

Oh, God. All she needed. Vivi swallowed her dismay. “Okay.”

Fortunately, the rumble of the tractor chugging ahead of them made their silence less embarrassing on the walk. Vivi had been using the quiet days while the weather dried up to hang pictures, write down goals, make shopping wish lists for some future when she had money to spend. She’d set up her portable studio on the floor, and had made several trips back and forth to the van to haul back her work supplies.

It was a new artistic era. She had to beef up her stock, dream up new designs. Scrounge for pretty rubbish. She liked to incorporate what people thought of as garbage into her work. Part of her artistic philosophy. Making garbage beautiful. All in the attitude.

Her first investment would be a big worktable. Then some metalworking equipment. Big pieces of stained glass to play with. She was eager to spread out. Everything in her life for the past six years had been miniature; from her income to her camper-van home all the way to her artistic ambitions. She was sick of being miniature. She wanted to sprawl. Take up space. Breathe big breaths.

Not that she regretted the choices she’d made. Her back straightened up at the thought. The traveling jewelry business had been good to her. Her jewelry sideline had started one day when Nancy admired a sculpture Vivi was making out of beads, wire, and glass.

“This is beautiful,” Nancy had said. “If it were jewelry, I would wear it.”

The comment had given her an idea, and for each of her sisters’ and Lucia’s next birthdays, she’d made personalized earrings. Then necklaces to match. Then she’d tried a couple of brooches. It was fun. Ideas for designs flowed easily.

Her art school buddy Rafael had persuaded her to try selling them in his booth at the open-air market down on Sixth Avenue. She had sold several, to her surprise and Rafael’s glee. The profit had almost paid her rent that month.

Brian had been disdainful of her “craftsy hobby,” and resentful of the time it took from the work he demanded from her, but she’d kept quietly on with her sideline. And after things exploded with Brian, the jewelry gave her something to fall back on. Not what she’d dreamed of, but it was creative, and it paid for her gas, her car insurance, her food.

She’d been trying to use some of these long, silent days to churn out some more work, but she’d had no luck. She’d chalked it up to exhaustion, worry, and unsatisfied lust. And Haupt, and John the Fiend, of course. That zesty pinch of mortal dread, just to liven things up.

She hoped it wasn’t artist’s block. She’d experienced a bad period of that some time after she’d signed the contract with Brian’s gallery.

Working with Brian had been great, at first. He sold a bunch of her pieces, the wilder, angrier ones. Money started coming in, and she’d quit her cocktail-waitressing job and basked in the thrill of being the hot new thing on the art scene. She spent a lot of the money she made on clothes, preapproved by Brian, of course. Then she started experimenting with another style. Brian didn’t like the new pieces. He demanded that she make more of the old series that sold so well.

“But I’m bored with them,” Vivi protested. “They’re so angry and negative. I’m not as pissed off now as I was a year ago.”

“They sell, babe. The new ones aren’t right for our catalog, and they’re not right for our clients. I need more pieces like Scream and Howling Skeleton. You’re making your name. Ride the market trend.”

Vivi chose her words carefully, already afraid of making him angry. “But inspiration doesn’t depend on market trends. It—”

Slam. Brian’s hand slapped down into his desk. “Don’t even start,” he snarled. “I’m already bored.”

She jumped back. An ebony goddess figurine teetered and almost fell on her substantial behind. He stared at her, his gaze menacing. “Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “You’d better fulfil your contractual obligations to me. Or else.”

She was shocked by his ugly tone. “But…but I just—”

“You signed that contract, Viv. Don’t forget. Your future as an artist depends on it.”

She gaped at him. Brian leaned back in his chair and leafed casually through a big glossy catalog of Wilder Gallery artwork.

“What do you mean?” she finally managed to force out.

His smile did not reach his eyes. “We discussed this, remember? Before you signed. You agreed not to play the diva.”

“Yes, but I didn’t mean that I would be a—”

“I need more pieces like the old series. End of discussion.” He slapped the catalog shut. “Another thing. Our date tonight. I can’t make it. Something’s come up. Since you have the evening free, I suggest you get to work. I have clients asking for your work. I mean to satisfy them.”

He got up and stood in front of his desk, hands twitching in the pockets of his tailored suit. He sighed and tilted her face up to his. His cold, hard lips brushed hers. She flinched from his touch. “I know you’re upset, but it will have to wait,” he said, sounding bored. “I’m busy today.”

She’d done as she was told. Trotted to her studio, tried to make pieces that would please him. Vivi cringed at the memory of how hard she’d tried to satisfy his demands. How pointless her efforts had been.

She’d run dry immediately. She’d cranked out a few things, but they were obviously bad, flat. Her output ground to a total halt.

Brian had been furious. He was convinced that she was doing it on purpose, to spite him. That was when sex with him started to go from tense and problematic to outright scary. Brian used sex to punish.

The only thing she’d still been able to work on was the jewelry. It was the one thing that Brian had never tried to control, so she’d gone with it. Thrown herself into it, heart and soul. What else could she do?

She cast a covert sideways glance at Jack, walking silently beside her, trying not to think about how he looked soaking wet. How he tasted. The solidity of his shoulders when she sank her nails into him.

Brian might have derailed her artistic career and given her a closetful of stupid sexual complexes. But he had never driven her out of her mind with breath-stealing, toe-curling lust.

The tractor chugged on until the van came into view. Dwayne and Jack attached the chain, and Vivi got in the van and started the engine.

They pulled and pulled. The van shuddered and strained. Dwayne whooped in triumph when it rolled out of the deep ruts.

Vivi felt like cheering herself when she felt those wheels turning, bumping over the ruts. She got out and strode over to the tractor with a huge smile of relief. “Thanks so much, Dwayne. How much do I owe you?”

“Ah, nah,” Dwayne said bashfully. “Just being neighborly.”

He pushed away the banknotes she held out, so she folded them back into her wallet, peeking to make sure he had a wedding ring.

“Well, bring your wife over one of these days to pick out a necklace or a pair of earrings,” she offered. “I’d love to meet her.”

Dwayne agreed to that plan cheerfully, and Vivi and Jack watched the tractor chug up the road and disappear around the bend.

Vivi got into the driver’s seat. Jack climbed in. They sat in silence. “So?” she said finally. “Where do we stand? I’m mobile again. Do I need to get lost? I could be out of here in ten minutes. Just say the word.”

“Please don’t be so defensive,” Jack said.

Vivi put the van in gear. It lurched forward, bumping over ruts, and crawled gamely up the hill. “That’s hard, under the circumstances.”

“I have an understanding with Duncan. You’re welcome to stay for as long as you have this security problem,” he said. “If you can stand it, that is. I doubt you’ll be staying that long anyway.”

“And why is that?”

“Your kind never do,” he said calmly.

The van crested the hill. Vivi stared out the windshield with hot eyes. “My ‘kind’?” she repeated.

“I don’t mean that the way you’re taking it. But I can see from the kind of person you are that you won’t settle in one place for long.”

“Ah.” The van lurched violently over the deep ruts, making her teeth jar painfully in her head. “Indeed.”

“It’s a valid lifestyle choice,” he went on. “I’m not judging you.”

“The hell you’re not.” They crawled slowly up another steep hill. “I’m going in to Pebble River after lunch,” she announced. “I’m going to a furniture store. I’m buying a bed. A table. A bookcase. And I’m going start looking for a place to open my shop.”

“Shop?” He turned to her, frowning. “What’s this about a shop?”

“I mean to open a shop. Pebble River is a perfect place for the kind of business I have in mind—”

“Hold on, here. Wait a fucking minute. I thought you were in hiding. I thought these bastards were trying to kill you. I thought that was the whole point of being here. Now you’re talking about opening a shop? Public records, databases, the Internet? What the fuck are you thinking? You’re out of your mind!”

She blew out a long breath. She’d been going back and forth about this issue into the wee hours every night. “How long can I huddle in a hole and shiver?” she exploded. “I can’t afford this! I have to support myself somehow, and this is the—”

“Are you doing this to prove something to me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, you self-absorbed jerk!” she yelled at him. “This isn’t about you! I’m just going about my business!”

They arrived at the house. Vivi pulled in next to Jack’s truck, got out, and slapped the door shut. Her eyes glanced over the painting on the side and winced away. Jack was looking at it. And judging her for it, too.