Black Rose - NRoberts - G2 Black Rose

He laughed at her dry tone, and rubbed his cheek over her hair. “I put that in the extremely personal column and am hoping to fill a lot of pages in that file. But I’ve got a point. She manifested—that would be the word, right?”

“Can’t think of a better.”

“She blew open doors, slammed them shut, set the clocks off, and so on. Without question showed her feelings about what was going on between us, and has since we started that personal file.”

“And so?”

“I’m not the first man you’ve been personal with in that house.”

“No, you’re not.”

“But you haven’t mentioned her having similar tantrums over you and John Ashby or you and Bryce Clerk—or anyone you might have had a relationship with otherwise.”

“Because it never happened before.”

“Okay. Okay.” He got up, walking back and forth as he talked. “You lived in the house when you and John Ashby were dating, when you became engaged.”

“Yes, of course. It’s my home.”

“And you lived here, primarily, after you were married, exclusively after your parents died.”

She could see him working something out in his head. No, she corrected. It’s already worked out, he was just going through the steps of it for her benefit.

“We stayed here often—my mother wasn’t well, and my father couldn’t cope with her half the time. When he died, we lived here, in an informal sort of way. When she died, we moved permanently into the house.”

“And during all that time, Amelia never objected to him? To John.”

“No. I stopped seeing her when I turned, oh, eleven, I’d say, and didn’t see her again until after I was married. We hadn’t been married long, but were already trying to have children. I thought I might be pregnant, and I couldn’t sleep. I went outside, sat in the garden, and I saw her. I saw her and I knew I was carrying a child. I saw her at the onset of every pregnancy. Saw or heard her, of course, when the boys were little.”

“Did your husband ever see her?”

“No.” She frowned. “No, he didn’t. Heard her, but never saw her. I saw her the night he died.”

“You never told me that.”

“I haven’t told you each and every time I . . .” She trailed off, shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you. I’ve never discussed it with anyone. It’s very personal, and it’s painful still.”

“I don’t know what it’s like to love and lose someone the way you loved and lost your John. I know it must seem like prying, and it is. But it’s all of a piece, Roz. I have to know, to do the job, I have to know this sort of thing.”

“I didn’t think you would, when I hired you. That you’d have to know personal things. Wait.” She lifted a hand before he could speak. “I understand better now. How you work, I think, how you try to see things. People. The board in the library, the pictures on it so you can see who they were. All the little details you accumulate. It’s more than I bargained for. I think I mean that in a good way.”

“I need to be immersed.”

“Like you were with a brilliant and twisted poet,” she said with a nod. “I also believe you have to know, and that I’m able to tell you these things, because of what we’re becoming to each other. Conversely, that may be why it’s hard for me to tell you. It’s not easy for me to feel close to someone, to a man. To trust, and to want.”

“Do you want it easy?”

She shook her head. “How do you know me so well already? No, I don’t want it easy. I suspect easy. I’m having a time with you inside myself, Mitchell. That’s a compliment.”

“Same goes.”

She studied him, standing there, vital and alive, with the arbor and its sleeping roses behind him. With warmth and sun, the roses would wake. But John, her John, was gone.

“John was coming home from his office in Memphis. Coming home late from a meeting. The roads were slick. It had been raining and the roads were slick, and there was fog.”

Her heart gave a little hitch as it did, always, when she remembered.

“There was an accident. Someone driving too fast, crossed the center line. I was up, waiting up, and dealing with the boys. Harper had a nightmare, and both Mason and Austin had colds. I’d just settled them down, and was going to bed, irritated a little that John wasn’t home yet. And there she was, standing there in my room.”

She gave a half laugh, brushed a hand over her face. “Gave me a hell of a jolt, thinking oh, hell, am I pregnant, because believe me, I wasn’t in the mood for it right at the moment after dealing with three restless, unhappy children. But something in her eyes didn’t look right. Too bright, and I want to say too mean. It scared me a little. Then the police came, and well, I wasn’t thinking about her anymore.”

Her voice had remained steady throughout. But her eyes, her long, lovely eyes, mirrored the grief.

“It’s a hard, hard thing. I can’t even imagine it.”

“Your life stops right there. Just stops. And when it starts up again, it’s different. It’s never what it was before that moment. Never.”

He didn’t touch her, didn’t comfort, didn’t support. What was in her heart, for this moment, in this winter garden belonged to someone else.

“You had no one. No mother, no father, no sister, no brother.”

“I had my sons. I had this house. I had myself.” She looked away, and he could see her draw herself back, close that door to the past. “I understand where you’re going with this, and I don’t understand it. She never bothered to object before, not to John, or anyone I was with after, not to Bryce. She did, occasionally express some disapproval—I’ve told you that before. But nothing on the scale she has recently. Why would that be?”

“I’ve been trying to work that out. I have a couple of theories. Let’s go inside first. The light’s going and you’re going to be chilled straight through. Not much meat on you. That wasn’t a complaint,” he added when she narrowed her eyes.

Deliberately she bumped up the southern in her voice. “I come from a line of women with delicate builds.”

“Nothing delicate about you,” he corrected and took her hand as they walked toward the house. “What you are is a long wild rose—a black rose with plenty of thorns.”

“Black roses don’t grow wild. They have to be cultivated. And no one’s ever managed a true black.”

“A black rose,” he repeated and brought their joined hands to his lips. “Rare and exquisite.”

“You keep talking like that, I’ll have to invite you up to my private quarters.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

THIRTEEN

“ITHOUGHT I should tell you,” Roz began as they walked toward the house, “that my . . . household is very interested in my more personal relationship with you.”

“That’s all right, so am I. Interested in my personal relationship with you.”

She glanced down at their joined hands and thought what a lovely design it was that fingers could link so smoothly together. “Your hand’s bigger than mine, considerably. Your palm’s wider, your fingers longer. And see how your fingers are blunt at the tip where mine taper some?”

She lifted her arm so their hands were eye level. “But it makes such a nice fit.”

With a soft laugh, he said her name. Said it tenderly. Rosalind. Then paused briefly to angle his head down and touch his lips to hers. “So does that.”

“I was thinking the same. But I’d as soon keep those thoughts, and that personal interest, between you and me.”

“Hard to do, since we have other people in our lives. My son wanted to know where I came up with the brunette babe I was with at the Ole Miss game.”

“And you told him?”

“That I’d finally managed to get Rosalind Harper to give me a second look.”

“I gave you plenty of looks,” she said, and sent him another as they started up the steps to her terrace. “But I’ve gotten into the habit of being selfish with my private life, and I don’t see any reason we can’t enjoy each other without filing regular bulletins on our sex life.”

She reached for the terrace door. It blew open, barely missing striking her face. A blast of frigid wind gushed out of her room, knocking her back a full step before Mitch managed to grab her, then block her body with his.

“Good luck!” he shouted over the scream of air.

“I will not tolerate this.” Furious, she shoved him aside and bulled her way through the door. “I will not tolerate this sort of thing in my house!”

Photographs flew off tables like missiles while lamps flashed on and off. A chair shot across the room, slamming into a chest of drawers with a force that had the vase of hothouse orchids spinning. When she saw the vanity mirror her sons had given her start to slide, she leaped forward to grab it.

“Stop this idiotic bullshit right now. I’m not going to put up with it.”

There was pounding, monstrous fists of fury, on the walls, in the walls, and the floor trembled under her feet. A large Baccarat perfume bottle detonated, a crystal bomb that spewed jagged shards like shrapnel.

In the midst of the whirlwind, Roz stood, clutching the vanity mirror, and her shout over the explosions of shattering glass, the ferocious banging, was Arctic ice.

“I’ll stop every attempt to find out who you are, to right whatever wrong was done to you. I’ll do whatever it takes to remove you from this house. You won’t be welcome here.

“This is my house,” she called out as fire erupted in the hearth and the candlestick on the mantel spiraled up into the air. “And I will, by God, clear you out of it. I swear on my life, I will remove you.”

The air died at once, and what had been spinning in it fell with thuds or crashes to the floor.

The door burst open instantly. David, Logan, and Stella pushed through it an instant before Harper barreled through the terrace doors.

“Mama.” Harper lifted her right off her feet, his arms banded around her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“We couldn’t get in.” Stella touched Roz’s back with a trembling hand. “Couldn’t get the doors open.”

“It’s all right now. Where are the children?”

“Hayley. Hayley’s got them downstairs. When we heard—God, Roz, it sounded like a war.”

“Go tell her everything’s all right.” She pressed her cheek to Harper’s before she pulled back. “Go on now.”

“What happened here?” David demanded. “Roz, what the hell happened?”

“We started to come in, and she objected . . . strongly.”

“Your mother slapped her back for it,” Mitch told Harper. “Let her know who runs this house.”

“You’re bleeding,” Harper said dully.

“Oh, my God.” Roz shoved the vanity mirror into Harper’s hands and moved quickly to Mitch to touch the cut on his cheek.

“Some flying glass. Nothing major.”

“Got some nicks on your hands, too.” She lowered her own before they could shake. “Well, let’s clean them up.”

“I’ll pick up in here,” Stella offered.

“No, leave it be. Go down, make sure Hayley and the kids are okay. Logan, you ought to take them to your place.”

“I’m not leaving you.” Stella stood firm, shook her head. “That’s not negotiable.”

“I’ll stay here.” Logan draped an arm around Stella’s shoulders. “If that’s all right with you.”

“That’s fine.” Letting out a breath, she took the mirror back from Harper. “She’d’ve gotten more than a tongue-lashing if she’d broken this.” She set it back in place, then turned to give Harper’s hand a squeeze. “It’s all right, baby. I promise.”