Carolina Moon by Nora Roberts Page B

trailed her hand over his shoulder. He had such wonderful shoulders. “She’s not likely to tell me. Never liked me.”
    “That’s not true, Faith.”
    “I oughta know.” Impatient, she rolled off him, off the bed, graceful and contrary as a cat, drawing deep on her cigarette while she paced. The moonlight shimmered over her white skin, lending it a faint and exotic blue cast. He could see fading smudges on her, the shadows of bruises.
    She’d wanted it rough.
    “Always staring at me with those spooky eyes, hardly saying boo, except to Hope. She always had plenty to say to Hope. The two of them were all the time whispering together. What’s she want to move back into the old Marsh House for? What’s she thinking?”
    “I imagine she’s thinking it’d be nice to have a familiar roof over her head.” He rose, quietly closing the curtains before one of the neighbors saw her.
    “You know what went on under that roof as well as I do.” Faith turned back, her eyes glittering when Wade switched the bedside light on low. “What kind of person goes back to a place where they were trapped? Maybe she’s as crazy as people used to say.”
    “She’s not crazy.” Weary now, Wade tugged on his jeans. “She’s lonely. Sometimes lonely people come back home, because there’s no place else.”
    That hit a little too close to the heart. She turned her eyes away from his, tapped out her cigarette. “Sometimes home’s the loneliest place of all.”
    He touched her hair, just a light stroke. It made her yearn to burrow in, cling tight. Deliberately she lifted her head, smiled brilliantly. “Why are we talking about Tory Bodeen, anyway? Let’s fix ourselves some supper, and eat in bed.” Slowly, her eyes on his, she drew down the zipper of his jeans. “I always have such an appetite when I’m with you.”
    Later, he woke in the dark. She was gone. She never stayed, never slept with him in the most simple way. There were times Wade wondered if she slept at all, or if that internal engine of hers forever ran, fueled on nerves, and on needs that were never quite met.
    It was his curse, he supposed, to love a woman who seemed incapable of returning genuine feelings. He should cut her out of his life. It was the sane thing to do. She’d only slice him open again, and every time she did, it took longer to heal. Sooner or later there’d be nothing left of his heart but scar tissue, and he’d have no one but himself to blame.
    He felt the anger building, a black heat that bubbled in the blood. Leaving the lights off, he dressed in the dark. His fury needed a target before it turned inward and imploded.
    It would have been smarter, more comfortable, God knew more sensible, to have booked a room in a hotel for the night. It would have been a simple matter to have accepted her uncle’s hospitality and slept in one of the overly fussy, decorated-to-death bedrooms Boots kept ready in the big house.
    As a child she’d often dreamed of sleeping in that perfect house on that perfect street where she’d imagined everything smelled of perfume and polish.
    Instead, Tory spread a blanket on the bare floor and lay awake in the dark.
    Pride, stubbornness, a need to prove herself? She wasn’t sure of her own motives for spending her first night in Progress in the empty house of her childhood. But she’d made her bed, so to speak, and was determined to lie in it.
    In the morning there would be a great deal to do. Already that evening she’d gone over her lists and made a dozen more. She needed to buy a bed, and a phone. New towels, a shower curtain. She needed a lamp and a table to put it on.
    Camping out wasn’t quite the adventure it used to be, and having simple tastes and needs didn’t mean she didn’t require basic comforts.
    Lying there in the dark she used her lists, in much the same way she had used the sheer white wall. Each item mentally ticked off was another brick set in place to block out images and keep herself