Trying to put herself in Rooke's place, she pictured what it would be like being transported from a small village of a few thousand people, where everything was familiar and safe-at least on the surface-to a teeming city of millions where simply negotiating the streets to find her hotel would be a challenge. Rooke would need help, and she doubted Rooke would ask for it. She respected Rooke's need for independence-she certainly guarded her own, but she couldn't let concern for Rooke's pride place Rooke in danger. And she had a feeling if she didn't offer her a.s.sistance, Melinda would be all too eager to help. As it was, Rooke would be spending most of her time in Manhattan in Melinda's world, under the full force of Melinda's seductive influence.

Thinking fast, Adrian said, "You told me there's no huge rush on the roof, so you can spend the rest of this week taking care of the jobs you have lined up at the cemetery." Hurrying on before Melinda could jump in, she added, "I've got to go back to the city soon to take care of some business. Why don't we go down together next Monday?"

"Perfect," Melinda said. "You can bring Rooke by the gallery. She can stay with me while she's in the city."

Rooke stood up, shaking her head. "I don't think so. I'll go to a hotel."

"How about staying with me," Adrian said quietly. "I have a condo within walking distance of Melinda's gallery. I'll be doing research on my new project while I'm there, and you can help with the background work. It looks like you're going to be too busy the rest of this week for us to spend time on that."

Melinda's eyebrows rose and she studied Adrian pensively. All of a 165 a Melinda's attention had been focused on Rooke since they'd arrived, but now Adrian felt the force of her gaze. Melinda's full lips lifted in a knowing smile and a whisper of heat fluttered along the pulse bounding in Adrian's throat, as if a warm mouth had deposited a trail of kisses.

Adrian fought back, determined not to be aroused against her will, and although the room remained silent, soft laughter echoed through her mind. Deliberately, Adrian turned her body away from Melinda and concentrated on Rooke. She immediately felt more centered, more balanced, despite the fact that any time she looked at Rooke she experienced a frisson of pleasure. This was pleasure she welcomed.

Pleasure she chose.

"What do you say?" Adrian asked, not wanting to push Rooke but knowing Melinda would if she didn't.

"I need to think about it," Rooke said. If she talked to her grandfather, she could figure out how to manage traveling by herself.

She didn't need someone to help her. But when she thought about the possibility of being in Manhattan with Adrian, her head swam with excitement. She was going to let Melinda display some of her sculptures because she didn't ever want to wonder if she'd resisted out of fear.

Fear of being exposed, fear of failing, fear of discovering once again that she didn't fit anywhere. Her head said she should try, but even the slim possibility of the success Melinda kept promising didn't excite her as much as the idea of spending time with Adrian. Ever since she'd met Adrian, when they were apart she thought about her. When they were together, she didn't want to leave. When Adrian smiled at her, she felt braver, stronger, and less alone. She'd do anything for Adrian's smile.

Almost as if she had been reading her mind, Adrian smiled. "Just say yes, Rooke."

"How could you possibly resist," Melinda murmured, regarding Adrian through heavy-lidded eyes as she brushed her hand over Rooke's shoulder.

Rooke inched away. Adrian's face was flushed, her eyes the blistering blue of the sky after a hard summer rain. Her lips were slightly parted, that same smile flickering there, teasing her. If Melinda hadn't been so close, so close Rooke sensed tendrils of heat stretching out from her, wrapping around her like an embrace, she would have closed the distance between her and Adrian and...and what? Held her?

Kissed her? She didn't know what she was doing. She'd never been a 166 a so out of her depth before in her life-not even when she'd sat in a cla.s.sroom full of children her age and understood for the first time they could do things she couldn't. They could see things, interpret things, understand things, that she could not. All her life, she'd not understood the simplest signals that existed everywhere in the world around her.

All her life she'd been apart, unable to read any messages except those in the stone.

Now she could run. Or she could risk being wrong. Disappointment versus loneliness.

"Yes," Rooke said. "I say yes. Monday. We'll go Monday."

Adrian's heart leapt even though it was just a simple trip on a train. She wanted to show Rooke the city. Her condo. Some of the photojournalism articles she'd done with Jude. She wanted...she caught herself. Oh G.o.d, she wanted things she'd never wanted with another woman before. With superhuman effort, she clamped down on her excitement. Keep it simple.

"I'll make the train reservations today," Adrian said. "I'll call you with the details."

"Okay." Rooke jumped when Melinda grasped her hand.

"Time to take me to the station, love." Melinda winked at Adrian.

"I can't wait to see you both next week."

Adrian walked them out and stood in the doorway, watching until Rooke's truck disappeared. She refused to contemplate if Melinda would kiss Rooke good-bye at the station. She refused to voice the question she had not asked, but ached to have answered. Did you sleep with her?

a 167 a a 168 a

ChapTER ninETEEn.

Rooke set the final few nails into the top of the packing crate, loaded the box onto the hand truck, and delivered the item to the waiting FedEx driver. Together, they lifted the last of her four sculptures into the truck. She signed for the pickup and, watching him drive away, hunched her shoulders inside her denim jacket against a sudden blast of frigid air and shoved her hands in her pockets. The storm had finally ended two days before, and the blue sky overhead blazed with sunlight and not a whisper of clouds. The grounds at Stillwater sparkled under a blanket of diamond-bright snow. Rooke scarcely noticed the perfect morning. She was asking herself for the hundredth time that week if she might've made a mistake. She felt the loss of her work keenly, and the empty s.p.a.ces in her shop where the sculptures had stood echoed in the hollow place in the center of her chest.

"You get everything sent off okay?" Pops asked as he walked up behind her. Hatless in a red sweatshirt and his neat khakis, he seemed oblivious to the sharp, subzero temperatures.

"Yeah. It was just the four." Rooke was glad she'd decided to hold back the others, at least for a while. Melinda had urged her on the phone just the day before to send them all. Rooke had compromised, promising photographs of the others for Melinda's catalog instead. She hadn't told Melinda about her current work, the largest piece she'd ever done. She wasn't sure why, but she knew instinctively Melinda would want it if she knew about it. And the way things had been going for the last week, she wasn't likely to finish it anytime soon. She'd spent hours in her shop, hammer and chisel in hand, but the figure in the stone remained unchanged. She hadn't heard the call, hadn't felt the a 169 a pull, hadn't sensed the life br.i.m.m.i.n.g just below the surface-waiting for her to cut it free. The last two nights, when she hadn't slept, she'd searched her memory for a time when she hadn't been able to hear the voices, sense the beings in the stone, and she couldn't. She'd never known a time when the stone didn't speak to her. She'd never known a time when she felt quite so lonely.

"Haven't seen much of you this week," Pops said.

"Had a lot of stuff to finish if I'm gonna be away for a while,"

Rooke said, following him back to the house. He'd been cooking something, chicken, it smelled like, and the windows were so steamed up that once inside, she couldn't see through them. She pulled off her jacket and dropped it over the back of a chair.

"Early for lunch, isn't it?" Rooke asked.

"Your stomach's probably on dinner time since you missed it last night."

Rooke wasn't hungry, but arguing wouldn't get her anywhere.

"All set to leave, come Monday?" Pops handed her a gla.s.s of iced tea, and she drank it without tasting it.

"I think so. Adrian said nine o'clock." And that's all Adrian had said during a brief conversation three days before that left Rooke feeling as if she'd been talking to a stranger. Adrian had been pleasant, her tone casual, without a single hint of banter or tease. None of the temper she'd displayed the first time they'd met, either. Rooke much preferred Adrian with her edges, because the softness that surfaced on the wings of her smile always felt like a gift. Rooke swiped her palm across the window and stared out through the blur at the driven snow.

"Worried about the trip?" Pops asked.

Rooke shrugged. "Not really. If I get into trouble, I'll call you. I know how to use a phone."

"You know how to do plenty." Pops sighed. "I should have taken you down there before this."

"Why?" Rooke turned and braced her back against the window frame.

"Because the world's a lot bigger than Ford's Crossing, and you ought to say for yourself how much of it you want to see."

Rooke laughed. "You think you would've stopped me if I wanted to go?"

a 170 a Pops grinned. "No, but maybe you should have had that chance before now."

"I never thought I wanted anything bad enough to go somewhere else looking for it."

"Do you now?" Pops slid the chicken out of the oven and set the tray on top of the stove.

Rooke's first instinct was to say she wasn't looking for anything, but she didn't think that was exactly true. She'd always known something was missing by the quiet ache that followed her around all the time, as if there were an empty place inside her where something belonged, but she couldn't say what. Most of the time she filled that s.p.a.ce with the solid comfort of the figures she carved, and sometimes when she needed more, with the sounds of Emma's pleasure. She hadn't been able to find solace in the stone all week, and even if Emma had come to her, she would not have been able to lose herself in the simple comfort they'd once shared. She feared if she touched Emma now she would not be able to bear the loneliness of remaining untouched.

"I don't know what I want," Rooke said hoa.r.s.ely, wondering if she would find the answers in New York City. Melinda seemed to believe she would. She'd called every day, checking on the plans to ship the sculptures, explaining to Rooke some of the events she had lined up to promote the launch, and teasing Rooke about becoming a star. Melinda kept telling her she was special. Sometimes the way she said it, her voice husky and slow, made Rooke tighten inside.

"Sit down and eat," Pops said. "You haven't been out of your shop more than a few hours in the last four days."

"I had those markers to finish," Rooke said, doing what she was told. She hadn't realized she was hungry until she started to eat.

"Things at the Winchester place going to be okay until you get back?"

"I need to clear that tree before I leave and check the roof."

Pops gave her an inquisitive look. "Getting kind of late in the day, isn't it?"

"I'll take care of it." Rooke was afraid to see Adrian, afraid to feel the distance that had been there the last time she'd seen her. It hurt, and she didn't know how to change it.

v a 171 a Adrian paused, trying to place the sound that had intruded on her silence. In the city she was surrounded by the noise of millions of people, and she automatically relegated it to the periphery of her consciousness. On a.s.signment she was completely different, always hyperalert to any change in the resonance of wildlife and humans that might signal danger. Today she'd been pulled from her work as if an unseen presence whispered her name. Setting aside the copy she'd been reviewing, she went to the kitchen window and scanned the yard.

Rooke's truck was parked at the foot of the drive, and Adrian now recognized the rumble of the chainsaw Dominic used to dismember the fallen oak. She braced her arms on the counter and watched them work. She hadn't expected to see Rooke until Monday, and she hadn't let herself think about how much she missed her. She didn't want to examine the meaning behind her restless nights and fractured days, or why she'd never felt this way before. But with Rooke just outside, she couldn't resist the pure pleasure of looking at her. So, safe inside the house, she indulged herself.

Rooke was hatless and her hair blew around her angular face like a dark halo as she lifted a thick branch Dominic had cut free from the tangle of fallen limbs and dragged it out of the driveway. After a few minutes, Rooke removed her jacket and worked in nothing but a close-fitting flannel shirt and jeans. She looked even more slender than Adrian remembered, but the strength in her shoulders and back was obvious as she bent, and lifted, and tossed the fresh-cut logs aside with ease. Muscles bunched inside her jeans, and Adrian couldn't help but remember the way the hard curves of Rooke's a.s.s had fit so naturally to her pelvis when they'd stood close together on top of the dresser in the attic that first night. The whispered memory of Rooke's thumb brushing over the top of her hand triggered a kaleidoscope of images and sensations, ambushing her. Her vision flared red with the crimson of Rooke's blood running over her hands, the scarlet flames from the hearth in the Great Hall, the claret drops of rain on a window. Ruby tears streaking her face in the shadows on a midnight train. Adrian shuddered, aching to be touched, to be filled, for the fires of pa.s.sion to purify her.

"G.o.d," Adrian gasped. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were tight, her s.e.x wet and hollow with urgency. She kept her hands anch.o.r.ed on the cool tile counter. The wild filaments of her need and desire coalesced into a 172 a a single hard, hot fist in the center of her being. And then, Say yes, Melinda whispered. Adrian jerked, her knees buckling with the keening pressure, and o.r.g.a.s.m threatened to flow on the river of sharp, swift pain. She fought the swell of release, staring through dry, unblinking eyes at Rooke, who had stopped work and was fixed on her, framed in the window.

"Please," Adrian implored, her words barely audible. Rooke's face swam in her hazy consciousness as she fought to expel other voices, other hands. The shadow of the warrior flickered in the firelight on the towering stone walls. A great sword, shimmering with power, cleaved her in two and the chaos that had almost consumed her faded.

"Thank you," Adrian sighed, pressing her palm to the gla.s.s. She started to smile, started to say, Come inside, I've missed you, but every thought, every intention, died on a tide of horror as a spear, glinting golden in the sunlight, struck Rooke in the temple, and she fell.

a 173 a a 174 a

ChapTER TwEnTy.

f.u.c.k!" Dominic dropped to his knees next to Rooke's supine form. "f.u.c.k. f.u.c.k. f.u.c.k! "

"Don't touch her!" Adrian shouted, flying down the icy drive. She threw herself between Rooke's body and Dominic, striking him on both shoulders with her outstretched arms, knocking him backward into the snow. "Don't you touch her!"

Terrified at what she might find, Adrian bent over Rooke, shielding her from dangers she felt but couldn't see. Garnet jewels lay scattered on the snow around Rooke's head, glinting brilliantly. Rooke's blood.

Shiny maroon trails snaked down Rooke's still face from a gash just above her right eyebrow. Something white gleamed in the depth of the wound. Bone. A scream lodged in Adrian's throat.

"Rooke. Rooke, sweetheart." She hovered over Rooke's body, afraid to touch her. What would she find? Oh G.o.d, let her not be gone.

"Rooke, please."

"She okay?" Dominic yelled frantically.

"She's not moving!" Adrian's voice came out a broken whisper.

Oh G.o.d. Oh G.o.d, baby, who did this to you?

"Adrian?" Dominic yelled in a panic.

"Call nine-one-one," Adrian called more forcefully, pulling herself together. When she had needed Rooke, Rooke was there. Now Rooke needed her. She'd seen plenty of emergencies, and she concentrated on doing what she could. She stretched for Rooke's jacket hanging from a nearby branch of the downed tree, pulled it free, and covered her.

"You're going to be all right. Do you hear me? You're going to be all right."

a 175 a Rooke's lids flickered open and she jerked, as if surprised to be awake. "Adrian?"

"Yes, yes-I'm right here." Adrian's fingers shook as she caressed Rooke's cheek. She was wonderfully warm, magnificently alive, perfectly beautiful. "Do you know where you are?"

"Your front yard. Why is Dom sitting in a s...o...b..nk?"

"I knocked him on his a.s.s." Adrian's laugh came out on a sob of relief. She found Rooke's hand and clutched it between both of hers.

Rooke's fingers were ice cold. For a heartbeat Adrian saw the ruins of a great castle, crumbling stones lying half buried under gra.s.sy mounds of earth, the huge hearth empty and barren. Nowhere could she sense the sword bearer, no guardian stood on the parapets. She swallowed around the choking loss and smiled at Rooke. "You have to start wearing gloves."

"Never liked them." Rooke shuddered. "What hit me?"

"A tree branch masquerading as a spear."

"Are you all right?"

"Just a little scared." Adrian held Rooke's hand against her heart.

"How are you?"

"Okay, I think." Rooke squeezed Adrian's hand. "Shouldn't have left my shield at home, I guess."

"Next time you forget, I'll lend you mine," Adrian tried to joke.

Rooke was as white as the snow that pillowed her head, and Adrian couldn't help but think about the scar on her forehead. She'd suffered a terrible head injury once already, and another blow like this one could seriously damage her.

Rooke must have read her fears, because she started to sit up. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"No, stay still." Adrian quickly pressed a hand to Rooke's shoulder.

"We should wait for the ambulance."

"I'll freeze to death by then." Rooke smiled as Dominic scrambled over and crouched down on Rooke's opposite side. "Hey, Dom? How about helping me up here."