The Burning Point (18 page)

They drank in silence, until he said, "This spring I'm going to put the house on the market."

She gave him a startled glance. "Charles, no. This is such a wonderful place. So much you. I can't imagine you living anywhere else."

"So much me and Barbara, you mean. I took my time, like everyone advised, and didn't do anything rash after she died, but it's been two years now. This is far too much space for one person. By the time I get home, LaDonna has left for the day. I see her so seldom it's like having my housekeeping and cooking done by elves."

He finished his cocoa and set the mug on the end table. "It might be different if the girls were in and out of here, but Sandy and her family are in Chicago, and I seldom see Rachel even though she's only an hour away. I rattle around here with the dogs like a penny in a bass drum."

"I suppose you're right." She sighed. "So many changes, Charles. Inside I don't feel that differently from when I was twenty. But now my life is effectively over, even though I might live another thirty years."

"You're hurting now, but your life isn't over. You've always been an active woman with endless friends and interests."

"That doesn't help!" Suddenly she hurled her empty mug at the fireplace. It smashed on the fieldstone mantel and fell onto the hearth. "They'll all be couples, like Noah's Ark, while I'm alone. So
alone
."

Shocked by her unexpected action and aching for her grief, he put his arms around her. "It will get better, Julia, I swear it."

Her fingers dug into his arms as if she was drowning and he was a life preserver. "I can believe that in my head, but not my heart."

He stroked her hair, as if she was one of his daughters when they were small. She smelled like nutmeg. "Take it one day at a time, Julia, and don't ever be afraid to ask your friends for help. Believe me, we all want to do whatever we can."

When the policeman had come to the house to give him the news of Barbara's death, he had been so numb that the officer hadn't wanted to leave him alone and had asked for the phone number of a friend. Fifteen minutes later Julia was beside him, using one hand to anchor him to sanity and the other to call the girls and other family members to break the horrible news. And now, damnably, she was facing her own ultimate grief, and he was nowhere near as good at comforting as she had been.

Lightly he pressed his lips to her temple, not with passion but deep affection, a wordless promise that he would always be there for her. She turned her face upward, her anguished gaze meeting his.

He wasn't sure which of them moved, but their lips came together. Soft and warm and responsive, her mouth was not that of a friend. For a timeless moment, sensation blazed between them, the instinctive attraction of male and female. Then he jerked his head away. "Sorry. I...I don't know quite how that happened."

"It happened because...because I wanted it to happen." She touched his cheek with shaking fingers. "Make love to me, Charles. Please."

He wondered if he'd misheard. "I think that would come under the heading of doing something rash."

"I don't care! I feel numb to my bones." She gave a hiccup of laughter. "It isn't only missing Sam, though I do, terribly. Frankly, part of it is the fear that...that I'll never feel real intimacy again. That I'm too old and dry and unattractive. Used up and worthless. That probably shocks you. Do you know why I married Sam? Because with him I felt like the sexiest, most desirable woman on earth. When you and I were engaged, it was a passionless arrangement, something we decided on because we were fond of each other, not because we were crazy in love."

His common sense began to crack. "That was because you weren't attracted to me, Julia, not because I wasn't attracted to you. I fell in love with when I was seven years old. I kept hoping you'd feel the same way, but when we finally got engaged, you were the original ice princess, far too ladylike for passion."

"I didn't know anything about passion then." Hesitantly she laid her hand on his arm, barely denting his heavy sweater. "I've...learned a lot since then."

Doing as she asked would be a mistake, he knew it.

To hell with good sense. Sliding his fingers into her silver-touched blond hair, he bent his head for a kiss, not the chaste salute of long friendship, but an exploration and a question. She tasted of hazelnut and cocoa and tears. Her cool fingers slid around his neck, but her mouth was hot with yearning.

He had also learned a great deal since the last time they'd kissed. How to express passion, how to create it in his partner. Even so, he was stunned by the intensity of her response. She was frantic to lose herself, to drown in sensation if only for a handful of moments. This was Julia, who'd held the chubby hands of his daughters, just as he had taught her children to sail. She was the friend who'd offered good advice in the sometimes stormy early days of his marriage, who had always been there in the anguished months after Barbara's death.

And she was a woman he'd always desired. Barbara had been the light of his life, finding hidden areas in his soul that he hadn't known existed, yet he'd never stopped caring for Julia. Now the embers of desire burst into flame, as mind-hazing as if he were twenty instead of almost sixty. With his last shred of good sense, he said hoarsely, "This is a mistake."

"
I don't care
." Her hand moved down his body.

They came together with fierce urgency, heavy folds of her skirt crushing between them. Passion took command, burningly alive, wholly satisfying, as they obliterated themselves and the wounds of living in each other.

Afterward, as they panting in each other's arms, he felt more at peace than at any time since Barbara's death. He tugged an afghan over them. Julia turned away from him, her back pressed against his chest.

He smoothed her tangled hair gently, then realized that she was crying. "Julia, what's wrong?"

Not looking at him, she whispered, "You were right, this was a mistake."

"Only if you let it be." He felt chilled. "We're both well past the age of consent, and not exactly at high risk for any terrible diseases. Most important, we're not betraying anyone. We have every right to be together if that's what we want."

"Sam hasn't even been dead a month!"

"He loved you, Julia. He wouldn't have denied you what comfort you could find with a friend." He hesitated. "The last time I saw him, he...he told me to look out for you."

"I doubt that this is what he had in mind." She stood and swiftly put her appearance to rights. "I'm sorry for dragging you into my misery, Charles. It wasn't fair of me."

"For God's sake, Julia, don't apologize!"

She stepped over the dogs and bolted for the kitchen, moving with the speed of a first-class tennis player.

"And don't run away!" He went after her, and promptly tripped over Retort. By the time he disentangled himself from the dog, the Mercedes was barreling down the long drive toward Ruxton Road, blending into the moonlight silvered trees.

Swearing, he stood in the door and watched her go. The sound of her car faded away, leaving only the hard, icy rattle of twigs in the night wind and a distant hum of traffic on the Jones Falls Expressway. His hands dropped to the heads of the dogs, who had followed him to the door.

Julia was right, having sex had been a mistake. Before, one of them had been miserable.

Now they both were.

Chapter 16

∗ ∗ ∗

In Las Vegas, the twenty-four hour city, Kate was able to call for a rental car at midnight and have it waiting after she breakfasted at the coffee shop the next morning. She had sneaked out of the suite early to avoid Donovan.

Though she reached the job site before eight, he was already there. He walked out of the Palace as she parked her car, carrying a chopped broom handle in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other. "Time for your first lesson in the nuts and bolts of the business, Kate. We're going to do a test shot."

Donning her hard hat, she said, "Ready when you are!"

Together they climbed to the lowest of the shot floors and walked to a support column at the back of the building. A large pneumatic drill lay on the floor beside the column and safety equipment such as goggles and ear protection was stacked nearby.

"Ever use a feed leg drill?" Donovan asked. "These suckers weigh eighty pounds, which is why the bore holes are done by two-men crews. One person guides, the other holds the drill and keeps the pressure behind. You won't have to do this often, but you need to know how if you're going to be the boss."

Drilling holes in concrete was an aspect of explosive demolition that hadn't figured in Kate's childhood dreams, but she wasn't going to say that to Donovan. If she wanted this job, she had to be willing to be a laborer as well as an engineer. "I haven't used this type of drill, but I've operated smaller ones. I'll manage."

He gave her a brisk lesson on technique before they both donned safety equipment. Then he scooped up the drill, making it look easy, and drilled a pilot hole in the floor about six feet from the column with a shattering burst of noise.

After bracing the leg of the drill in the pilot hole, he said, "I'll guide the business end. You control the drill itself. You'll probably hit rebar, and you'll know when that happens, but keep going. The drill bit is carbide and designed to cut through steel."

She took hold of the drill, and almost dropped the damned thing. Eighty pounds was
heavy
, even with the support of a leg brace.

If Donovan was amused by her clumsiness, he had the grace not to show it. He helped her wrestle the drill into position and wrapped a gloved hand above the chuck.

Cautiously she compressed the handle grip switch. The drill kicked like a mule and made enough racket to raise the dead, but to her pleasure, she could handle it.

Boring into the column took concentration and strength. The vibrations jangled through her hands and arms while dust and pulverized concrete spat from the deepening hole.

About nine inches into the column, she hit a piece of rebar, one of the steel rods that provided the reinforcement in "reinforced concrete." Donovan had been right that she'd know when that happened--the drill shrieked and bucked, but she held on tight and kept going.

Inch by inch, she bored into the heart of the pillar. There seemed to be a
lot
of rebar. She couldn't say that she'd like doing this all day, every day, but there was a heady satisfaction in attacking concrete and steel--and winning.

When she judged that the hole was a little more than halfway through the column, she withdrew the drill and released the grip switch. Blessed silence.

Donovan helped her lower the drill, then picked up his broom handle rod and slid it into the hole. "You got the depth right. Now it's time to load your first explosive." He presented her with the stick of dynamite.

She was finally getting to play with explosives! She took the stick.

He pulled a brass punch from a loop on his belt and the thin metallic tube of a blasting cap from a pocket. "Punch a hole in one end of the stick and slide the blasting cap in. Always use brass for this, not iron, to avoid sparking."

The blasting cap was a narrow cylinder with two wires, one green and one red, attached at the end. After uncoiling the wires, she inserted the cap into the hole she'd made, leaving the wires trailing out.

Donovan showed her how to tie the wires around the stick in a half-hitch. Then she used the broom handle to push the explosive into the drilled hole. So far, so good. "Isn't a sandbag usually put in to keep the force concentrated within the column rather than blowing out the hole?"

"Your memory is good." He pulled a sandbag from a pocket and tossed it to her.

She tamped that against the stick of dynamite. "Now what?"

"Before we connect the charge, we wrap the column with chain link fencing and geo-textile fabric to keep debris from flying in all directions." Donovan ran a hand down the roughly-textured column. "The fencing holds in the large chunks of concrete. The geo-textile is for the smaller pieces."

On the other side of the column were two long rolls of pre-cut material, one a dark, synthetic looking fabric and the other chain link fencing. Donovan had been very thorough in preparing this lesson for her.

Working together, they wrapped the column in the fencing, then covered it with the coarse fabric. Donovan's tall body was only inches from hers, near enough so she could feel his warmth in the cool morning air as he secured the coverings with heavy steel wire. He looked unnervingly attractive in practical work clothes that emphasized his strength and fitness. She moved away as soon as her grip was no longer needed.

"Now connect wire from that spool to the detonator and run it outside," Donovan said. "I'll meet you there."

How many times had her father done this? Or Donovan? Now it was her turn.

By the time she'd brought the wire outdoors, Donovan was waiting with the well-worn blasting machine. "This is only a test shot, but the principles are the same as for bringing down a whole structure. The only difference is scale."