"Roberts, Nora - Once More With Feeling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

With something like a moan, she jumped from the stool to pace around
the room. She didn't look like a star in jeans and a simple linen
blouse. Her closet held everything from bib overalls to sables.

The sables were for the performer; the overalls were for her.

"I'd buried all the hurts. I was so sure." Her voice was low and a
little desperate. It was still impossible for her to believe that she
had remained this vulnerable after five years. She had only to see him
again, and she felt it once more. "I knew sooner or later that I'd run
into him somewhere."

She ran her fingers through her hair as she roamed the room. "I think
I'd always pictured it would be in Europe-London-probably at a party or
a benefit. I'd have expected him there; maybe that would have been
easier. But today I just looked up and there he was. It all came
back. I didn't have any time to stop it. I'd been singing that damn
song that I'd written right after he'd left." Raven laughed and shook
her head. "Isn't that wild?" She took a deep breath and repeated
softly, wonderingly , "Isn't that wild?"

The room was silent for nearly a full minute before Julie spoke.

"What are you going to do?"

"Do?" Raven spun back to her. Her hair flew out to follow the sudden
movement. "I'm not going to do anything. I'm not a child looking for
happy ever-after any more. " Her eyes were still dark with emotion,
but her voice had grown gradually steadier . "I was barely twenty when
I met Brandon, and I was blindly in love with his talent.

He was kind to me at a time when I badly needed kindness. I was
overwhelmed by him and with my own success."

She lifted a hand to her hair and carefully pushed it behind her
shoulders. "I couldn,t cope with what he wanted from me. I wasn't
ready for a physical relationship." She walked to the brass unicorn
and ran a fingertip down its withers. "So he left," she said softly.

"And I was hurt. All I could see maybe all I wanted to see-was that he
didn't understand, didn't care enough to want to know why I said no.

But that was unrealistic." She turned to Julie then with a frustrated
sigh. "Why don't you say something?"

"You're doing fine without me."

"All right, then." Raven thrust her hands in her pockets and stalked
to the window. "One of the things I've learned is that if you don't
want to get hurt, you don't get too close. You're the only person I've