Free Whiskey Beach by Nora Roberts

case, a bulging tote.
    “Hi. Don’t mind me. You just stand there while I drag all this in by myself. No, no problem at all.”
    She’d nearly managed it by the time he crossed over. “I’m sorry. I meant to get in touch, to tell you this just isn’t a good time.”
    She leaned back against the door to close it, let out an audible
whew
. “Too late,” she began, then her easy smile faded when she focused on his face. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
    “Nothing.” Not much more than usual, he thought. “This just isn’t a good time.”
    “Do you have another appointment? Are you going out dancing? Do you have a naked woman upstairs waiting for hot sex? No?” she answered before he could. “Then it’s as good a time as any.”
    Depression spun into annoyance on a finger snap. “How about this? No means no.”
    Now she blew out a breath. “That’s an excellent argument, and I know I’m being pushy, even obnoxious. Chalk it up to keeping my promise to Hester to help, and the fact that I can’t stand seeing anyone—anything—in pain. Let’s make a deal.”
    And damn it, that reminded him of his earlier one with his grandmother. “What are the terms?”
    “Give me fifteen minutes. If after fifteen minutes on the table you don’t feel better, I’ll pack it up, get out and never bring up the subject again.”
    “Ten minutes.”
    “Ten,” she agreed. “Where do you want me to set up? There’s plenty of room up in your bedroom.”
    “Here’s fine.” Stuck, he gestured toward the main parlor. He could push her out of the house faster from there.
    “All right. Why don’t you start a fire while I set up? I’d like the room warm.”
    He’d intended to light a fire. He’d gotten distracted, lost track of time. He could start a fire, give her ten minutes—in exchange for her leaving him the hell alone.
    But it still pissed him off.
    He hunkered down by the hearth to stack kindling. “Aren’t you worried about being here?” he demanded. “Alone with me?”
    Abra unzipped the cover on her portable table. “Why would I be?”
    “A lot of people think I killed my wife.”
    “A lot of people think global warming is a hoax. I don’t happen to agree.”
    “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I might do under any given set of circumstances.”
    She set up her table, folded away the cover, movements precise and practiced—and unhurried. “I don’t know what you’d do under any given set of circumstances, but I know you didn’t kill your wife.”
    The calm, conversational tone of her voice infuriated him. “Why? Because my grandmother doesn’t think I’m a murderer?”
    “That would be one reason.” She smoothed a fleece cover on the table, covered it with a sheet. “Hester’s a smart, self-aware woman—and one who cares about me. If she had even the smallest doubt, she would have told me to stay away from you. But that’s just one reason. I have several others.”
    As she spoke she set a few candles around the room, lit them. “I work for your grandmother, and have a personal friendship with her. I live in Whiskey Beach, which is Landon territory. So I followed the story.”
    The lurking black cloud of depression rolled back in. “I’m sure everybody did around here.”
    “That’s natural, and human. Just as disliking, and resenting, the fact that people are talking about you, reaching conclusions about you, is natural and human. I reached my own conclusion. I saw you, on TV, in the paper, on the Internet. And what I saw was shock, sadness. Not guilt. What I see now? Stress, anger, frustration. Not guilt.”
    As she spoke she took a band from around her wrist and, with a few flicks, secured her hair in a tail. “I don’t think the guilty lose much sleep. One other—though as I said I have several—you’re not stupid. Why would you kill her the same day you argued with her in public? The same day you learned you had a lever to dump some dirt on her in the