River’s End

no hurry about telling her what he’d come for. “I had a couple of weeks coming, and the friend I was going to flake out at the beach with for a few days couldn’t get away after all. So I decided to head north.”
    “You’re not up here on assignment, then.”
    “No.” That was the truth, absolutely true, he told himself. “I’m on my own. I decided to look you up, since you’re the only person I know in the entire state of Washington. How do you like college?”
    “Oh, very much.” Making a deliberate effort to relax, she led him back into the living room. “I miss home off and on, but classes keep me busy.”
    She sat on the couch, assuming he’d take the chair, but he sat beside her and companionably stretched out his legs. “What are you working on?” He nodded toward the computer.
    “Fungus.” She laughed, took a nervous sip of her drink. He was wonderful to look at, the untidy sun-streaked brown of his hair, the deep green eyes that reminded her of home, the easy sensuality of his smile.
    She remembered she’d once thought he looked like a rock star. He still did.
    “I’m a natural resource science major.”
    He started to tell her he knew, stopped himself. Too many explanations, he thought, and ignored the little whisper of guilt in his ear. “It fits.”
    “Like a glove,” she agreed. “How are your parents?”
    “They’re great. You told me once I should appreciate them. I do.” He shifted, his eyes meeting hers, holding hers, until the blood that had always remained calm and cool around men heated. “More, I guess, since I moved out, got my own place. That distance of the adult child, you know?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “Do you still work at the lodge?”
    “Summers, over breaks.” Do other men look at me this way? she wondered. Wouldn’t she have noticed if one had ever looked at her as if her face were all that mattered? “I—did you ever learn to fish?”
    “No.” He grinned again and his fingers trailed lightly over the back of her hand.
    “So it’s still fish sandwiches at McDonald’s?”
    “They never miss. But I can occasionally do better. How about dinner?”
    “Dinner?”
    “As in eating, the evening meal. Even a natural resource science major must have heard of the ritual evening meal. Why don’t you have yours with me tonight?”
    Her ritual evening meal usually consisted of whatever she had time to toss together in her miniature kitchen or, failing that, what she picked up on the way home from a late class.
    Besides, she had a paper to finish, a test to study for, a lab project to prepare for. And he had the most beautiful green eyes. “That would be nice.”
    “Good. I’ll pick you up at seven. Got a favorite place?”
    “Place? Oh, no, no, not really.”
    “Then I’ll surprise you.” He got up, giving her hand an absentminded squeeze as she rose to lead him to the door. “Don’t fill up on fungus,” he told her, and grinned one last time before he left.
    Olivia quietly closed the door, quietly turned to lean back against it. She let out a long breath, told herself she was being ridiculous, that she was too old to indulge in silly crushes. Then for the first time in longer than she could remember, she had a purely frivolous thought:
    What in God’s name was she going to wear?
    He’d bring up the subject of her father, of the book, during dinner. Gently, Noah told himself. He wanted her to have time to consider it, to understand what he hoped to do and the vital part she’d play in it.
    It couldn’t be done without her cooperation. Without her family’s. Without, he thought, as he stuck his hands in his pockets and climbed the steps to her apartment again, Sam Tanner.
    She wasn’t a kid anymore. She’d be sensible. And when she understood his motivations, the results he wanted to accomplish, how could she refuse? The book he wanted to craft wouldn’t just be about murder, about blood and death, but about people. The human factor. The motivations, the mistakes, the steps. The heart, he thought.
    This kind of story began and ended with the heart. That’s what he had to make her understand.
    He was connected to it, and had been if not from the minute his father had answered the call to go to the house in Beverly Hills, then from the instant he himself had seen the image of the child on his living-room television screen.
    He didn’t just want to write about it. He had to.
    He’d be straight with her about that.
    Before he could push the