River’s End

a hand. “And don’t poke at me again, okay?”
    “I told you to stay away from me.”
    “And I damn well did.” The flash in her eyes was a clear warning that had him narrowing his own. “Don’t hit me again, Liv. I mean it. I’m pretty well fed up with female abuse. Now we can sit down and discuss this like reasonable adults, or we can just stand here and snarl at each other.”
    “I don’t have anything to discuss with you. I’m telling you to go away and leave us alone.”
    “That’s not going to happen.” Deciding to play it another way, he sat, chose an apple from the bowl and stretched out his legs as he bit in. “I’m not going anywhere, Olivia. You might as well talk to me.”
    “I’m entitled to my privacy.”
    “Sure you are. That’s the beauty of it. You don’t tell me anything you don’t want to tell me.” He took another bite of the apple, then gestured with it. “We can start with something simple, like what you’ve been doing with yourself the last half dozen years.”
    Smug, smirky son of a bitch, she thought and spun away to pace. She hated that he looked the same, so much the same. The sun-streaked, wind-tossed hair, the full, firm mouth, the fascinating planes and angles of his face.
    “If you were half the man your father is, you’d have some respect for my mother’s memory.”
    That edgy little barb winged home and hooked itself bloodily in his heart. Noah studied his apple, turning it around in his hand until he was certain he could speak calmly. “You measured me by my father once before.” He lifted his gaze, and it was hard as granite. “Don’t do it again.”
    Olivia jammed her hands in her pockets, shot a withering glance over her shoulder. “You don’t care what I think of you.”
    “You don’t know what I care about.”
    “Money. They’ll pay you big bucks for this book, won’t they? Then you can bounce around on all the talk shows and spout off about yourself and the valuable insights you dug up on why my father butchered my mother.”
    “Don’t you want to know why?” He spoke quietly and watched those wonderful eyes reflect fury, misery, then snap back to fury.
    “I know why, and it doesn’t change anything. Go away, Noah. Go back and write about someone else’s tragedy.”
    “Liv.” He called out to her as she strode toward the door. “I won’t go away. Not this time.”
    She didn’t stop, didn’t look back, but slammed the door smartly enough to have the pictures rattling on the walls. Noah tossed his apple in the air. “Well, that was pleasant,” he muttered, and decided he’d more than earned that beer. She went down the back stairs, avoiding the lobby and the people who would be milling around. She cut through the kitchen, only shaking her head when her name was called. She needed to get out, get out, get away until she could fight off the hideous pressure in her chest, the vicious roaring in her ears. She had to force herself not to break out in a run, to try to outrace the panic that licked at her. She moved quickly into the forest, into the deep and the damp. Still, her breath wanted to come in pants, her knees wanted to shake. It wouldn’t be permitted.
    When she’d gone far enough, when the chances of anyone hiking down the path were slim, she sat down, there on the forest floor and rocked herself. It was stupid. She’d been stupid, Olivia admitted as she pressed her forehead to her knees. She’d known he was coming. Jamie had told her he would, told her what he intended to do. Told her that she herself had decided to cooperate with him on the book.
    That had generated the first genuine argument between them Olivia could remember. Already, Noah Brady and his book were causing rifts in her family. But she’d prepared herself to face him again. To deal with it. She wasn’t the same naive, susceptible girl who’d fallen stupidly in love with him. She hadn’t expected that rush of feeling when he’d opened the door and smiled at her. So much the way he had six years before. She hadn’t expected her heart to break again, not after she’d spent so much time and effort to heal it. Temper was better than pain.
    Still, she’d handled it—handled him—poorly.
    She’d kept her eye out for his reservation. When it had come in, she’d promised herself she would go to his room after he’d checked in, so that she could talk to him, reason with him, in private. She would be calm, explain each one of her objections.
    He