Tribute by Nora Roberts Page B

room again. “I’m going to take advantage first thing tomorrow. Why don’t I take you out to dinner to seal the deal?”
    “I’ll rain-check that, as I’ve got the menu planned up in Chez Sawyer.”
    “You’re going to cook.”
    “My specialty.” He took her arm to turn her toward the steps. “I only have the one that doesn’t involve nuking. It involves tossing a couple steaks on the grill, stabbing a bunch of peppers on a skewer and baking a couple of potatoes. How do you like your steak?”
    “So I can hear it faintly whisper moo.”
    “Cilla, you’re a woman after my own heart.”
     
     
    SHE WASN’T. She wasn’t after anything but the pursuit of her own goals, and the satisfaction of finding them. But she had to admit, Ford made it tempting. He engaged her mind, putting it at ease and keeping it on alert. It was, Cilla thought, a clever skill. She enjoyed his company, more than she felt was altogether wise, particularly since she’d planned to spend more of her time alone.
    And he looked damn good standing over a smoking grill.
    They ate on his back veranda, with the well-fed Spock snoring in table-scrap bliss. And she found the down-to-basics meal exactly right. “God, it’s so beautiful here. Peaceful.”
    “No urges for club crawls or a quick foray down Rodeo Drive?”
    “I had my fill of both a long time ago. Seems like fun at the time, but it goes sour fast if it’s not really your place. It wasn’t mine. What about you? You lived in New York for a while, didn’t you? No urges to take another bite out of the Big Apple?”
    “It was exciting, and I like going back now and then, soaking up that energy. The thing was, I thought I was supposed to live there, given what I wanted to do. After a while, I realized I was doing more work when I came down to visit my parents for a few days, hang with friends, than I was in the same stretch of time up there. I finally figured out there were just too many people thinking up there, all hours of the day and night. And I thought better down here.”
    “That’s funny,” she replied.
    “What is?”
    “In an interview once, a reporter asked my grandmother why she bought this little farm in Virginia. She said she could hear her own thoughts here, and that they tended to get drowned out with everyone else’s when she was in L.A.”
    “I know exactly what she meant. Have you read many of her interviews?”
    “Read, reread, listened to, watched. I can’t remember a time she didn’t fascinate me. This brilliant light, this tragic icon, who I came from. I couldn’t escape her, so I needed to know her. I resented her when I was a kid. Being compared to her, and always falling short.”
    “Comparisons are designed to make someone fall short.”
    “They really are. By the time I was twelve or thirteen, they actively pissed me off. So I started to study her, very purposefully, looking for the trick, the secret. What I found was a woman who was stupendously and naturally talented. Anyone compared to her would fall short. And realizing that, I didn’t resent her anymore. It would be like resenting a diamond for sparkling.”
    “I grew up hearing about her, because she had the place here. Died here. My mother would play her records a lot. She went to a couple of parties at the farm,” he added. “My mother.”
    “Did she?”
    “Her claim to fame is kissing Janet Hardy’s son, that would be your uncle. A little odd, isn’t it, you and me sitting out here like this, and back years, my mother and your uncle made out in the shadows across the road. Might be odder still when I tell you my mama did some of the same with your daddy.”
    “Oh God.” On a burst of laughter, Cilla picked up her wine, took a quick drink. “You’re not making that up?”
    “Pure truth. This would be, of course, before she settled on my father, and your father went out to Hollywood after your mother. Complicated business, now that I think about it.”
    “I’ll