Read Online Key Of Valor by Nora Roberts - Free Book Online Page A

destinations. But they were all part of the whole. All, now, part of her.
    If the key was here, somewhere in what was her home, she would find it.
    She got in the car and took a winding path, the long way around, to Indulgence.
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    ZOE said nothing to her friends through the morning. She needed to work first, not only physically but mentally, to sort through her theory and to decipher exactly what had happened to her the night before.
    She couldn’t talk about it until she had it all straight in her head. And it was, she admitted, a different sort ofdynamic when the men were around. There were things she could say, and a way she could say them when it was just Malory and Dana that didn’t fit the same way when you added men.
    Even men she’d come to trust.
    She left Brad to the carpentry, and spent her Sunday morning regrouting bathroom tiles. It was the kind of work that left her mind free to tinker with what had happened to her, and what it might mean.
    Was it odd that her experience hadn’t been like what had happened with Malory or Dana on their first encounters with Kane? Or was it significant?
    Choose, he’d told her. That, at least, followed pattern. Each one of them had had to make a choice. And apparently the risk increased with each key.
    He hadn’t really hurt her. There’d been that moment of pain in the blizzard, but she’d had worse. Why had he shown her three different scenes, barely giving her time to settle into one illusion before tossing her into the next?
    The first had been a harmless little fantasy, hardly anything huge and life-changing. The second, more tedious and familiar, and the third . . .
    The third, she thought as she spread grout on the floor, was scary. To frighten her. You’re lost, you’re alone, you’re pregnant.
    Been there, she reflected.
    Then the pain, the blood. Like a miscarriage, she realized. Losing the baby. But she hadn’t lost her baby, and he was protected.
    What if Kane didn’t know? Struck, she sat back on her haunches. What if he didn’t know Simon was protected? Wouldn’t his first threat to her revolve around the most precious thing in her life, the one thing she would die to keep safe?
    â€œZoe.”
    The sponge she’d been using to spread the grout fell on the tiles with a plop.
    â€œSorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” Brad stayed in the doorway, one shoulder resting on the jamb. As he’d been standing for the last several minutes, watching her.
    A lot going on inside that head, he knew. He’d seen all of it run over her face.
    â€œNo, that’s okay.” She bent back to the work. “I’m nearly finished here.”
    â€œThe rest of the crew’s about to break for lunch.”
    â€œOkay. I’ll be down as soon as I’m done. It’ll give the grout a chance to dry.”
    He waited until she’d worked her way over, was half in, half out of the doorway. Then he crouched. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
    Her hand hesitated, then picked up the rhythm again. “What do you mean?”
    â€œI’ve spent enough time looking at you to know when something’s going on inside. Tell me what happened since yesterday, Zoe.”
    â€œI will.” She put the sponge in the bucket she’d set just outside the room. “But not just you.”
    â€œDid he hurt you?” He grabbed her hand, used his free one to tilt her face around.
    â€œNo. Let go. My hands are all covered with grout.”
    â€œBut he did something.” His tone had chilled, the way it did when he was chaining down temper. “Why haven’t you said anything?”
    â€œI just wanted some time to think about it, work some of it out, that’s all. It’ll be easier for me to tell everybody about it all at once.” His hand was still cupping her cheek. And his face was very close. “It’d be easier for me, too, if you