“Don’t you dare answer that phone,” Emma gasped, twisting her fingers through Rooke’s thick, unruly hair. “I’m going to come any second. You just keep your mouth right on that spot.” She arched her back as Rooke obediently attended to her demands. “God, you are so good at that. I can’t believe…I went…three whole months…without this.”

The phone stopped ringing, at least Rooke thought it did, but she wasn’t certain because all she could hear was Emma screaming to God or maybe that she was God. She smiled, resting her cheek against the inside of Emma’s thigh. She never tired of hearing Emma’s pleasure, no matter how many times they did this.

“Oh, honey,” Emma sighed, brushing Rooke’s hair back from her forehead with trembling fingers. “I am going to miss you something fierce when you finally get yourself a girlfriend.”

Rooke stood, ignoring the cramps in the backs of her thighs, while Emma arranged her skirt. Then she clasped Emma around the waist and helped her down. “What makes you think I’m looking for one?”

“You might not be looking, but I expect someone will find you.”

Emma opened the hair clip at the back of her neck, smoothed the loose chestnut tendrils laced with gray back into order, and reclipped it. She braced her hands on Rooke’s shoulders, leaned up on her tiptoes, and

• 24 •

SecretS in the Stone

kissed her on the cheek. “You’re too good looking and just plain too damn good every other way to be running around loose. If my ex-husband had been half as talented with any of his body parts as you are, I’d probably still be married to him.”

“You’ll find another one someday. Maybe even one who knows what to do with his…parts.”

Emma laughed. “You’ve spoiled me, although I do tend to be drawn to those extra bits by nature. Can’t really imagine why.”

Rooke grinned and stretched, checking the big metal, plain-faced clock that hung over her workbench. Almost eight. She still had a lot of night left ahead of her to work.

“I’m keeping you from something, aren’t I?” Emma asked, glancing toward the door to the rear of the garage where Rooke worked.

In all the dozens of times they’d trysted in this small front room, she’d never been in the back room.

“That’s okay,” Rooke said. “There’s plenty of time.”

The garage had once been used to house heavy machinery, but when a newer, bigger building had been built to accommodate a larger fleet of backhoes and Bobcats to meet the cemetery’s needs, Rooke had claimed for herself the building next to the groundskeeper’s house where her grandfather lived. She’d grown up in the big house next door with him, but by the time she was twenty and this place became available, she was ready to live on her own. In the five years since, she hadn’t changed anything about it, other than finishing the second floor for her living space. The first floor was still just two rooms with concrete floors, rough wood paneling, and an unfinished ceiling with exposed pipes and heating ducts. The small room in the front where she stored most of her tools had a counter along one wall with pegs above for hanging tools and shelves underneath for storage of her bigger items and toolboxes, a potbellied stove in the corner with a small black-and-white TV on a high shelf behind it, and a big overstuffed chair in the middle of the room. She only used the double roll-down doors when she brought in large materials, coming and going through the side door by the exit sign. The forty by sixty foot room in the back was where she worked, and off-limits to visitors. Even her grandfather was rarely admitted.

“I guess I was lucky I caught you when I did,” Emma said,

• 25 •

RADcLY fFe

gathering up her coat and purse. She linked her arm through Rooke’s.

“I just had such an urge. Forty-three is too young for menopause, isn’t it? They say women want more sex during menopause.”

Rooke’s eyebrows rose. “Um.”

“Of course, you won’t have to worry about that for a long time.”

Emma stopped next to the door beneath the big red exit sign. For a second, she looked uncomfortable. “Ronald playing bridge?”

“Uh-huh.”

She sighed. “Do you think that was him calling?”

“Not likely.” Rooke took Emma’s coat and held it while Emma slipped into it. “It’s okay. Don’t worry.”

“You know what he’d think,” Emma said, her hand on the doorknob. “That I seduced you…well, I did seduce you. But—”

“I was willing. And legal.”

Emma snorted and stroked Rooke’s cheek. “Barely. But my goodness, you are something special. I never dreamed of a woman doing what you do to me. But, oh my.” She kissed Rooke’s cheek again.

“You should get out more. It’s Friday night. Have some fun.”

“I just had fun,” Rooke said gently.

“Oh darlin’,” Emma whispered. “Thank you for saying that.”

She traced her fingers along Rooke’s shoulder. “You’re sure you’re all right? Because you know if you wanted—”

“I’m great, Emma.” Rooke smiled. “Really.”

Emma nodded. “Good night, then.”

“’Night, Emma.”

Rooke stood in the open door until Emma drove off. She stopped in the tiny bathroom off the front room to wash up, then went into the back of her shop. She found her iPod, sorted through the images until she came to the New York Times bestseller her grandfather had downloaded earlier that day, and pulled on her safety goggles. Then she picked up her hammer and chisel and got to work, ignoring the tension her encounter with Emma had stirred in the pit of her stomach. The rhythm of steel on stone, like another heartbeat in the room, and the melodic voice of the narrator were all the company she needed.

v

• 26 •

SecretS in the Stone

Six hours later, Rooke headed back to the small bathroom, unlaced her workboots, kicked them aside, and stripped off her sweat-soaked T-shirt and jeans. She stepped into the hot shower, lathered her body and hair, and stood under the steaming spray until her skin tingled with a rush of blood. The image she’d carved still lingered in her mind, the seductive curves and tempting hollows coming to life beneath her hands. She hadn’t known what the stone would reveal until she’d begun to explore it with hammer and chisel, following its natural planes at the same time as her mind guided her hands, bringing the essence of the woman who flirted along the edges of her consciousness into being. She didn’t know her name, she couldn’t see her face, but she felt her energy and passion. And when she touched the stone, hot from the strike of her steel, she knew her more intimately than she knew Emma, the only woman she’d ever touched in the flesh. Emma, a woman she liked and admired, but a woman she didn’t love and who didn’t love her. The woman who haunted her dreams, who drove her into the late hours of the night in search of a glimpse of her, lived only in her imagination.

And in the stone.

Rooke flipped off the faucets and stepped out into the tiny bathroom, blindly reaching for the towel on the back of the door. After drying off briskly and efficiently, she pulled clean jeans and a T-shirt from a stack she kept on the shelf above the sink and dressed. She stepped into her boots, not bothering with socks, and walked back through the shop to the rear staircase that led to her apartment.

Upstairs, she dumped her soiled clothing in the alcove by the stacked washer and dryer and wandered into the galley kitchen at the far end of the room that made up the living and dining area. She’d partitioned off part of the space for a small bedroom. Since she was hardly ever there, preferring to spend her time in her shop, she had never bothered to decorate. She pulled a beer from the refrigerator, popped the top, and finished half of it in three long swallows. The yeasty taste made her think of pizza, and she realized she hadn’t eaten since lunch. Living alone, working alone, she didn’t follow any kind of regular schedule and often forgot to eat. Her grandfather constantly complained that she was too skinny for the strenuous work she did, even though he knew she was stronger than most of the men in the grounds crew because she spent her days and most of her nights moving stone.

Noticing the blinking light on her answering machine, she went

• 27 •

RADcLY fFe

to clear the message she hadn’t answered earlier. By now, whoever had called would have called back and reached her grandfather. Everyone in town knew he played bridge on Friday nights. With her finger poised over the first button in the row beneath the display, she looked out the kitchen window to be sure his red Chevy pick-up was parked behind the house where she’d grown up. She could make out the shape of the truck through the sheet of snow that had gotten heavier since Emma left. Several inches already covered the hood. The house was dark.

He’d probably been in bed for hours. She hesitated with her finger over the first button, then pressed the middle button instead. She opened the refrigerator while she finished her beer, expecting to hear someone from the funeral home letting her grandfather know they needed to schedule an internment.

“Hi,” a woman said. “This is Adrian Oakes, Elizabeth Winchester’s granddaughter.”

For just a second, Rooke thought she was listening to one of the narrators of an audio book. The caller’s voice was so full timbred and vibrant, the air around Rooke practically shimmered with energy.

Intent on hearing more, she closed the refrigerator and bent over the machine.

“I’m at the Winchester farm, and I’ve got a problem. A tree came down and there’s a hole in the roof, I think. I was given your name as a possible contractor. Could someone call me as soon as possible?”

Rooke didn’t recognize the woman who was calling, but she knew the Winchester place. She also knew that the woman probably had not called back, likely assuming she’d reached a business answering machine and that no one would be available to get the message until at least the morning, if not after the weekend. Which meant that Rooke had left her with no help in the middle of a raging storm while she finished making love to Emma.