River’s End

it happened, he was going to be sure the book found its way.
    He had everything he needed. He’d stocked the kitchen with food from the resort’s grocery store. There were times he didn’t have the energy for the dining room. He had plenty of tapes and batteries to continue his story until he was able to reach Noah again.
    Where the hell is he? Sam thought with a flush of anger. Time was running out, and he needed that connection. He needed not to be alone.
    The headache began to build in the center of his skull. He shook pills out of bottles—some prescription, some he’d risked buying on the street. He had to beat the pain. He couldn’t think, couldn’t function if he let the pain take over. And he had so much to do yet. So much to do.
    Olivia, he thought grimly. There was a debt to pay.
    He set the bottles back on the table, beside the long gleaming knife and the Smith & Wesson .38.
    Noah might have felt smug about being right about the rain, but he felt even better when they reached the lowland forest. He could start dreaming of a hot shower now, a quiet room and several hours alone with his computer and a phone.
    “You’ve lost two bets to me now.” he reminded her. “It stopped raining, and I never whined for my laptop.”
    “Yes, you did. You just did it in your head.”
    “That doesn’t count. Pay up. No, forget I said that. I’ll take it in trade. We’ll call it even if you find me a room where I can work for a few hours.”
    “I can probably come up with something.”
    “And a place I can shower and change?” He smiled when she slanted him a look. “I’m on line for a room at the lodge if you get any cancellations, but meanwhile I’m relegated to a campsite and public showers. I’m very shy.”
    Delighted with her giggle, he grabbed her hand. “Except around you. You can shower with me. We take conservation very seriously in my family.”
    She scowled, but only for form’s sake. “We can swing by the house,” she said after checking her watch. “My grandmother should be out with one of the children’s groups for a while yet, then she generally goes marketing. You’ve got an hour, Brady, to get yourself cleaned up and out. I don’t want her upset.”
    “That’s not a problem.” He told himself he wouldn’t let it be. “But she’s going to have to meet me eventually, Liv. At the wedding, anyway.”
    “Ha ha.” She tugged her hand free.
    “We can make another bet. I say I can charm her inside of an hour.”
    “No deal.”
    “You’re just afraid because you know she’ll come over to my side and tell you what a blind fool you are for not throwing yourself at my feet.”
    “You really need to get a grip.”
    “Oh, I’ve got one.” And I”ve got you, he thought. We’re both just figuring that out. He saw the flickers of color first, through the trees and the green wash of light. Dabs and dapples of red and blue and yellow, then the glint that was stronger sunlight shooting off glass.
    When he stepped into the clearing, he stopped, pulling Olivia to a halt beside him. When he’d driven her home, it had been dark, deep and dark, and he’d only seen the shape of shadow against night, and the flickers of light in a window. Now, he thought the house looked like a fairy tale with its varied rooflines and sturdy old wood and stone, flowers flowing at its base and sprinkling into sweeps of pretty colors and shapes.
    There were two rockers on the porch, pots filled with more brilliant flowers and generous windows on all sides that would have opened the inside world up to the forest.
    “It’s perfect.”
    She watched his face as he said it, as surprised to see he meant just that as by the rush of pleasure it gave her.
    “It’s been the MacBrides’ home for generations,” she told him.
    “No wonder.”
    “No wonder what?”
    “No wonder it’s your place. It’s exactly right for you. This, not the house in Beverly Hills. That would never have been you.”
    “I’ll never know that.”
    He turned from the house to look into her eyes. “Yes, you do.”
    With someone else she might have shrugged it off. With anyone else, she wouldn’t have spoken of it. “Yes, I do know that. How do you?”
    “You’ve been inside me for twenty years.”
    “That doesn’t make sense.”
    “It doesn’t have to. What I know is that when I try to project twenty years from now, you’re still there.”
    Her heart did one long, slow roll. She had to look away to steady it. “God,