“Including Jordan?”
“Lets not go there, at least not yet. What Im saying is books are personal to me, the way art is to Mal. So thats why I think my key is connected to books. Ive got this gut instinct that it has to do with a book Ive read. Something personal again.”
“Im going to do another title search, one using „key, and see what books I come up with.” Her brows drew together as she tried to puzzle it out. “The whole key-in-the-title angle may be too simple, too obvious, but it gives me another place to look.”
“We could split it up,” Malory suggested. “If you make a list of the books you think might be the one, we could divide it into three and each take a chunk.”
“That would help. We dont know what were looking for,” Dana continued. “But weve got to believe well know it when we see it.”
“Maybe you should put together a list with „goddess in the title, too,” Malory told her. “My key had to do with the singing goddess, from Rowenas clue. Yours might link to the goddess who walks, or waits, in your clue.”
“Good thinking.” With her section of wall finished, Dana got to her feet. “God, our eyes are going to bleed. Theres this other thing.” Wanting to keep busy, she went back to her brush roller. “Your key had to do with this place, Mal, with the way he—or your head—transformed it into your fantasy of happy home, family, painting in your studio. So far, mines been a deserted tropical island. I dont think Im going to find its root here in the Valley.”
“You dont know where youll go next time.”
Dana set down the brush and stared. “Well, gee. Thats a happy thought.”
Chapter Eight
SHE may have been unemployed, but Dana doubted that shed ever worked harder or put in longer days.
There was Moe to deal with, which she equated with having an eighty-pound toddler on her hands. He needed to be fed, walked, scolded, entertained, and watched like a hawk.
There was the sheer physical demand of painting for several hours a day, which had considerably upped her respect for anyone who did it
for a living. But as Moe came with comfort and amusement, so did the work on the building bring satisfaction and pride.
Maybe it didnt look like much yet—theyd decided to prime all the walls before starting on color—but when you had three determined, dedicated women working as a unit, you saw considerable progress.
There was the design and strategy of the business she would debut in a matter of months. She had long, long lists of books, intriguing sidelines, possible styles for shelves and tables, for glasses and cups.
It had been one thing to fantasize about owning a bookstore, but it was another matter entirely to deal with the thousands of details involved in creating one.
Added to that were the hours of midnight oil she burned searching for the key. Reading had always been a passion, but now it was a mission. Somewhere in a book was the answer. Or at least the next question.
And what if the answer, or the question, was in one of the books shed assigned to her friends? What if they missed it because it would only resonate with her?
That way lay madness, she told herself.
On top of everything else she had to do, had to think about, had to worry about, she had to get ready for a date. A date, she reminded herself, that she should never have agreed to.
Talk about the road to madness.
If she canceled, Jordan would either nag and harangue her until she sliced him to pieces with a butcher knife and spent the rest of her life in prison, or, even worse, hed get that smug, told-youso look on his face and claim hed only proven that she was afraid to be around him.
In which case, it was back to the kitchen knife and life in the womens penitentiary.
The only choice left was to go—and to go fully armed. She would not only prove she wasnt the least bit concerned about spending a few hours with him, she would drive him mad while she was at it.
She knew he was a sucker for scent, so she slathered herself in perfumed body cream before slipping into what she thought of as her tonights-the-night underwear. Not that she would give Jordan the chance to see it, but she would know she was wearing the sexy black bra, the lacy panties, the lace-trimmed garter belt and sheer hose.
And they would make her feel powerful.
She checked herself in the mirror—front, back, sides. “Oh, yeah, I look just fine. Eat your heart out, Hawke.”
She picked up the dress shed laid on the bed. It looked deceptively simple, one long, fluid line of black. But when you put a body into it, everything changed.
She slipped it on, gave it a few tugs, then did another turn before the mirror.