Whiskey Beach by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online

two.”
    Abra held up her hands. “Fasting.”
    “Yeah, yeah. I’m just saying should the opportunity arise—he’s got great lips. See you tomorrow.”
    Abra watched from the door while her friend hustled through the thick snow, and until she saw the back door light on the house next door shut off.
    She’d build a fire, she decided, have a little soup, and give Eli Landon some serious thought.

Three
    M AYBE HE’D LOST SOME PROGRESS OVERALL, E LI ADMITTED, but he’d stuck with the book for the best part of the day, and he’d produced there.
    If he could keep his brain fired up, he’d write from the time he woke until the time he crashed. And okay, maybe that wasn’t healthy, but it would be productive.
    Besides, the snow hadn’t relented until mid-afternoon. His vow to get out of the house at least once every day had to bow to two feet of snow and counting.
    At one point when he simply couldn’t think clearly enough to put coherent words on the page, he continued his exploration of the house.
    Tidy guest rooms, pristine baths—and to his surprise and puzzlement, the former upstairs parlor, north wing, now held a cross trainer, free weights, a massive flat-screen. He wandered the room, frowning at the yoga mats neatly rolled on a shelf, the towels tidily stacked, the large case of DVDs.
    He opened that, flipped through the pages. Power yoga? His
grandmother
? Seriously? Tai chi, Pilates . . .
Getting Ripped
?
    Gran?
    He tried to imagine it. He had to believe he owned a damn good imagination or he’d never make a decent living writing novels. But when he tried to picture his watercoloring, pencil-sketching, garden-clubbing grandmother pumping iron, it failed him.
    Yet Hester Landon never did anything without a reason. He couldn’t deny the setup and layout of the room showed careful thought and good research.
    Maybe she’d decided she needed a convenient place to exercise when, like today, the weather prohibited her famous three-mile daily walks. She could have hired someone to outfit the room.
    No, she never did anything without a reason—and she never did anything halfway.
    And still he couldn’t imagine her sliding in a DVD with the goal of getting ripped.
    Idly, he flipped through a couple more DVDs in the case, and found the sticky note.
    Eli, regular exercise benefits body, mind and spirit. Now, less brooding and more sweating.
    I love you,
    Gran via Abra Walsh
    “Jesus.” He couldn’t decide whether to be amused or embarrassed. Just how much had his grandmother told Abra anyway? How about a little privacy?
    He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked to the window facing the beach.
    While the sea had calmed, it remained gray under a sky the color of a faded bruise. Waves flopped up against the snow-covered beach, slowly, gradually nibbling away at that rippled blanket of white. The white mounds of dunes rose, sea grasses poked out like needles in a pincushion. They trembled in the wind, bent to the force of its hands.
    Snow buried the beach steps, lay thick and heavy on the rails.
    He saw not a single footprint, yet the world outside wasn’t empty. Far out in that gray forever he saw something leap—just a blur of shape and movement, here then gone. And he watched gulls wing over the snow, over the sea. In the snow-muffled quiet, he heard them laughing.
    And thought of Abra.
    He glanced back, gave the cross trainer an unenthusiastic study. He’d never liked putting in miles on a machine. If he wanted to work up a sweat, he’d play some round ball.
    “Don’t have a ball, a hoop,” he said to the empty house. “And I do have a couple feet of snow. I should shovel the walk maybe. Why? I’m not going anywhere.”
    And that last statement, he thought, had been part of the problem for nearly a year.
    “Okay, fine. But I’m not doing any freaking power yoga. God, who thinks of that stuff? Maybe ten or fifteen on that damn machine. A couple of miles.”
    He’d put in some miles on the