Key Of Knowledge (18 page)

She bit her lip, glanced toward the doorway.

That meant whatever he'd been writing was still on the screen, and if she just happened to give the mouse a little shake, it would pop right up. And if she just happened to read what he'd written, what was the harm?

Keeping an ear out for footsteps, she slid out of bed, tiptoed over to the desk. She tapped the mouse gently with a fingertip to flick the screen saver off.

With one last glance toward the doorway, she scrolled back two pages in the document, then began to read.

She was caught up quickly, though she hit what was obviously the middle of a descriptive paragraph. He had a way of pulling you into the scene, surrounding you with it.

And this one was dark and cold and quietly terrifying. Something lurked. By the first page she was in the hero's head, knowing his sense of urgency and the underlying fear. Something hunted, and was already feeding off pain.

When she came to the end of what he'd written, she swore. “Well, damn it, what happens next?”

“That's a hell of a compliment from a naked woman,” Jordan commented.

She jumped. She cursed herself, but she all but jumped out of her skin, which was all she was wearing. And she flushed, which was considerably worse. She felt the heat spread over her as she whirled to see Jordan standing in the doorway, jeans carelessly unbuttoned, hair mussed, a bag of Fritos, a can of Coke, and an apple in his hands.

“I was just . . .” There wasn't any way out of it, she realized, and so she simply told the embarrassing truth. “I was curious. And rude.”

“No big deal.”

“No, really, I shouldn't have poked around in your work. But it was just there, which is your fault for not closing the file.”

“Which would make it your fault for interrupting me, then distracting me with sex.”

“I certainly didn't use sex just so I could . . .” She broke off, heaved out a breath. He was grinning at her, and she could hardly blame him. “Hand over the Fritos.”

Instead, he walked to the bed, sat back against the pillow.
“Come and get them.” He reached into the bag, took out a handful, and began to munch.

“Anyway, it was the screen saver. It was making me cross-eyed.” Casually, she thought, she sat back down on the bed and tugged the bag of chips out of his hand.

“I hate that bastard.” He crunched into the apple, handed her the soda. “So, you want to know what happens next?”

“I was mildly interested.” She popped the top of the Coke, took a long sip. She ate some Fritos, traded them for the apple, traded them back. And, she thought in disgust, he wasn't going to crack.

“Okay, who is he? What's after him? How did he get there?”

He took the Coke. Was there anything more satisfying than having someone who shared your love of books being so interested in one of yours? he wondered.

If you added the fact that your literary partner was a very sexy, very naked woman, it was just gravy.

“It's a long story. Let's just say he's a man who's made mistakes, and he's looking for a way to fix them. Along the way he finds out there aren't any easy answers, that redemption—the real thing—carries a price. That love, the kind that matters, makes the price worth paying.”

“What did he do?”

“Betrayed a woman, killed a man.” He ate more chips, listened to the rain drum and patter—outside the window, and in the forest in his mind. “He thought he had reasons for both. Maybe he did. But were they the right reasons?”

“You're writing it, you ought to know.”

“No,
he
has to know. That's part of the price of redemption. The not-knowing haunts him, hunts him as much as what's with him in the woods.”

“What is with him in the woods?”

He chuckled. “Read the book.”

She bit into the apple again. “That's a very underhanded method of making a sale.”

“A guy's gotta make a living. Even if it is with ‘mundane and predictable commercial fiction.' One of your pithy reviews of my work.”

She felt a twang of guilt, but shrugged it off. “I'm a librarian. Former librarian,” she corrected. “And I'm about to become a bookstore owner. I value all books.”

“Some more than others.”

“That would be a matter of personal taste rather than a professional outlook.” Now she wanted to squirm. “Certainly your commercial success indicates you write books that satisfy the masses.”

He shook his head and abruptly craved a cigarette. “Nobody damns with faint praise better than you, Dana.”

“I didn't mean it that way.” She was, she realized, digging a hole for herself. But she could hardly confess to being a fan of his work when she was sitting in his bed naked and eating corn chips. It was a sure way to make both of them feel ridiculous.

And would make any honest praise seem like pandering.

“You're doing what you always wanted to do, Jordan, and successfully. You should be proud of yourself.”

“No argument there.” He polished off the Coke, set the can aside. Wrapped his fingers around her ankle. “Still hungry?”

Relieved that the topic had been tabled, she rolled up the bag of chips, tossed it on the floor beside the bed. “As a matter of fact,” she began, then jumped him.

IT shouldn't bother him so much, and it irritated the hell out of him that it did. He didn't expect everyone to like his work. He'd long ago stopped being bruised or deflated by a poor review or a disgruntled comment from a reader.

He wasn't some high-strung, temperamental artist who fell into funks at the slightest criticism.

But damn it, Dana's dismissal of his work dug holes in him.

It was worse now, Jordan thought as he gazed out the bedroom window and brooded. Worse that she'd been kind about it. It had been easier to take her scathing and unsolicited opinions of his talent, her snotty, elitist dismissal of his field than her gentle and kindly meant pat on the head.

He wrote thrillers, often with a whiff of something
other
, and she dismissed them as hackneyed commercialism that appealed to the lowest common denominator.

He could handle that, if she
was
an elitist book snob, but she was far from it. She simply loved books. Her apartment was crammed with them and there was plenty of genre fiction on her shelves.

Though he'd noted there was nothing on them by Jordan Hawke.

And, yeah, he thought, it stung more than a little.

He'd been ridiculously pleased to come back into the bedroom and see her bent over his laptop, to see what he'd believed had been avid interest in the story he was building.

Curiosity, as she'd said. Nothing more.

Best to put that one away, he told himself. Lock it away in a box before it dug in too deep and started to fester.

They were lovers again, and thank God for it. They were, he hoped, halfway to being friends again as well. He didn't want to lose her, lover and friend, because he couldn't get past her disinterest or disapproval of his work.

She didn't know what it meant to him to be a writer. How could she? Oh, she knew it was what he'd wanted and hoped for. But she didn't know why it was so vital to him. He'd never shared that with her.

There was a great deal that he hadn't shared with her, he admitted.

His work, yes. He'd often asked her to read something he'd done, and naturally had been pleased and satisfied
when she'd praised it—intrigued and interested when she'd discussed the story and offered her opinions.

The fact was, on a purely practical level, hers was one of the opinions he valued most.

But he'd never told her how much he'd needed to make something of himself. As a man, as a writer. For himself, certainly. And for his mother. It was, for Jordan, the only way he knew to pay his mother back for all she'd done for him, all she'd given up for him, all she'd worked for.

But he'd never shared that with Dana, or anyone else. Never shared with anyone that private grief, the drowning guilt or the desperate need.

So, he would put it away again and concentrate on rebuilding what he could and starting fresh with what he couldn't rebuild.

His current hero wasn't the only one looking for redemption.

DANA waited until she'd painted an entire wall in what was to be Zoe's main salon area. She'd bitten her tongue half a dozen times that morning, had talked herself out of saying anything, then had taken the internal debate full circle again.

In the end she convinced herself that it was an insult to friendship not to speak.

“I slept with Jordan.” She blurted it out, kept her eyes trained on the wall she was painting, and waited for her friends to burst out with comments and questions.

When five long seconds ran by in silence, she turned her head and caught the look passing between Malory and Zoe.

“You knew? You already knew? You mean to tell me that arrogant, self-satisfied son of a bitch ran right to Flynn to brag that he'd banged me?”

“No.” Malory barely swallowed a laugh. “At least not that I know of. And I'm sure if Jordan had said anything
about it to Flynn, Flynn would've told me. Anyway, we didn't know. We just . . .” She trailed off, then studied the ceiling.

“We were wondering how long it would take before the two of you jumped each other,” Zoe put in. “Actually, we thought about starting a pool on it, but decided that would be a little crass. I'd've won,” she added. “I had today as spontaneous combustion day. Malory figured you'd hold out another week.”

“Well.” Dana fisted her hands on her hips. “That's a hell of a note.”

“We didn't actually bet.” Malory chimed back in. “And see what good friends we are, not even pointing out that you're telling us, though Jordan telling Flynn would make him an arrogant, self-satisfied son of a bitch.”

“I'm rendered speechless.”

“Oh, no, you don't.” Zoe shook her head. “At least not until you tell us how it was. You want to use the scale of one to ten, or do a descriptive retrospective?”

The laugh escaped before Dana could stop it. “I don't know why I like the two of you.”

“Sure you do. Come on,” Zoe urged. “Tell. You're dying to.”

“It was great, and not just because I was ready to spontaneously combust. I missed being with him. You think you forget what it's like to feel so . . . connected to somebody. But you don't. You really don't. We were always good in bed. We're even better now.”

Zoe let out a long sigh. “Was it romantic or insane?”

“Which time?”

“Now you're bragging.”

With a laugh Dana started painting again. “Been a while since I had anything to brag about.”

“How are you planning to handle it?” Malory asked her.

“Handle what?”

“Are you going to tell him you're in love with him?”

The question brought a little shadow creeping in on the edge of her bright mood. “What's the point of it? He'd either back off or feel guilty about not backing off.”

“If you're honest with him—”

“That was your way,” Dana interrupted. “It's the way you needed to deal with what you felt for Flynn. It was right for you, Mal, and for him. But for me . . . well, I don't have any expectations of Jordan this time around, and I'm willing to take responsibility for my own emotions and the consequences. What I'm not willing to do is put my big, gooshy heart in his hands and force him into making a choice. What we've got right now is good enough for me. For now. We'll worry about tomorrow when it gets here.”

“Um . . . I'm not going to disagree with you,” Zoe began. “Maybe you need to take some time, let things settle or evolve. But more, maybe you're meant to. Maybe it's part of the quest.”

The roller jumped in Dana's hand. “My sleeping with Jordan is part of the quest? Where the hell does that come in?”

“I don't mean the sex, specifically. Though sex is, let's face it, powerful magic.”

“Yeah, well, maybe the gods sang and the faeries wept.” Dana ran her roller over the wall again. “But I'm not buying that doing the wild thing with Jordan's going to lead me to the key.”

“I'm talking about the relationship, the connection, however you want to say it. What was between you, what
is
between you, what's going to be.”

Zoe paused as Dana lowered the roller, turned with a speculative look on her face. “Isn't that following along with what Rowena said to you about the key?” she continued. “Couldn't it be part of the whole thing?”

Dana said nothing for a moment, then dredged her roller in paint. “Well, that's another hell of a note. It's got some logic to it, Zoe, but I don't see how it helps. Somehow I
don't think I'm going to find the key to the Box of Souls tangled in the sheets the next time Jordan and I make love, but it's an interesting angle, which should also be fun to explore.”

“Maybe it's more something, or some place, that meant something to you, or both of you, before. And now. And later.” Zoe threw up her hands. “I'm not making sense.”

“Yeah, you are,” Dana corrected as a line formed between her brows. “I can't think of anything right offhand, but I'm going to think harder. Maybe talk to Jordan about it. No way to deny he's an integral part of this, so he might as well be useful.”

“I'm just going to say one thing.” Malory squared her shoulders. “Love's not a burden, not to anyone. And if he feels otherwise, he's not worthy of you.”

After a moment's surprise, Dana set down her roller. She walked over, bent down and kissed Malory's cheek. “You're a sweetheart.”

“I love you. I love both of you. And anyone who doesn't love you back is a moron.”

“Jeez, for that you get a hug, too.” Dana gave Malory a squeeze. “Whatever the hell happens, I'm glad I've got the two of you.”