Born In Ice by Nora Roberts Page A

rest of that day and two more she didn't hear a peep out of him. She tried not to think of the state of the room, if he'd remembered to keep the fire going or if he bothered to sleep. She knew he was eating. Each time she brought up a fresh tray, the old one was outside the door. He rarely left so much as a crumb on a plate.

    She might have been alone in the house-if she hadn't been so aware of him. She doubted very much that he gave her a moment's thought.

    She'd have been right. He did sleep now and again, catnaps that were ripe with dreams and visions. He ate, fueling his body as the story fueled his mind. It was storming through him. In three days he had more than a hundred pages. They were rough, sometimes static, but he had the core of it.

    He had murder, gleeful and sly. He had hopelessness and pain, desperation and lies.

    He was in heaven.

    When it finally ground to a halt, he crawled into bed, pulled the covers over his head, and slept like the dead.

    When he woke, he took a long look at the room and decided a woman as strong as Brianna was unlikely to faint at the sight of it. The sight of him, however, as he studied himself in the bathroom mirror, was another matter. He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. He looked, he decided, like something that had crawled out of a bog.

    He peeled off his shirt, winced at the smell of it, and himself, and stepped into the shower. Thirty minutes later he was pulling on fresh clothes. He felt a little lightheaded, more than a little stiff from lack of exercise. But the excitement was still on him. He pushed open the bedroom window and took a deep gulp of the rainy morning.

    A perfect day, he thought. In the perfect place.

    His breakfast tray was outside the door, the food gone cold. He'd slept through that, he realized, and lifting it, hoped he could charm Brianna into heating it up for him again.

    And maybe she'd go for a walk with him. He could use some company. Maybe he could talk her into driving into Galway, spending the day with him in crowds. They could always-

    He stopped in the kitchen doorway, and his grin spread from ear to ear. There she was, up to her wrists in bread dough, her hair scooped up, her nose dusted with flour.

    It was such a wonderful picture, and his mood was high. He set the tray down with a rattle that had her jolting and looking up. She had just begun to smile when he strode to her, framed her face firmly in his hands, and kissed her hard on the mouth.

    Her hands fisted in the dough. Her head spun. Before she could react, he'd pulled away. "Hi. Great day, isn't it? I feel incredible. You can't count on it coming like that, you know. And when it does, it's like this train highballing right through your head. You can't stop it." He picked up a piece of cold toast from his tray, started to bite in. It was halfway to his mouth before it hit him. His eyes locked on hers again. He let the toast fall back to the plate.

    The kiss had merely been a reflection of his mood, light, exuberant. Now, some sort of delayed reaction was setting in, tightening his muscles, skimming up his spine.

    She simply stood there, staring at him, her lips still parted in shock, her eyes huge with it.

    "Wait a minute," he murmured and moved to her again. "Wait just a minute."

    She couldn't have moved if the roof had caved in. She could barely breathe as his hands framed her face again, gently this time, like a man experimenting with texture. His eyes stayed open, the expression in them not entirely pleased as he leaned toward her this time.

    She felt his lips brush hers, soft, lovely. The kind of touch that shouldn't have kindled a fire in the blood. Yet her blood heated. He turned her, just enough so that their bodies met, tipped her head back just enough so that the kiss would deepen.

    Some sound, distress or pleasure, hummed in her throat before her fisted hands went limp.

    Hers was a mouth to savor, he realized. Full, generous, yielding. A man