of the rainbow had been closer than he’d thought all along. “Start with one here, then maybe Chicago, San Francisco. Thing is, I’m going to need a backer.”
She ran her tongue around her teeth. “Naturally. Any ideas?”
He shot her the charming, untrustworthy grin. “I’d like to keep it in the family.”
“Uncle Jack.”
“Come on, Whitney, you know I can do it. Forty thousand, no, make it fifty, and I’ll set up the slickest little restaurant on the West Side.”
“Fifty thousand,” she mused, moving toward her desk.
“It’s a good investment. I’d write up the menu myself, supervise the kitchen. I’d… What’re you doing?”
“That would come to sixty-two thousand, three hundred and fifty-eight dollars and forty-seven cents, all told.” With a brisk nod, she double-underlined the total. “At twelve and a half percent interest.”
He scowled down at the figures. “Interest? Twelve and a half percent?”
“A more than reasonable rate, I know, but I’m a softie.”
“Look, we’re getting married, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“A wife doesn’t charge her husband interest, for Chrissake.”
“This one does,” she murmured as she continued jotting down numbers. “I can figure out the monthly payments in just a minute. Let’s see, over a period of fifteen years, say?”
He looked down at her elegant hands as she scrawled figures. The diamond winked up at him. “Sure, what the hell.”
“Now, about collateral.”
He bit back an oath, then smothered a laugh. “How about our firstborn son?”
“Interesting.” She tapped the pad against her palm. “Yes, I might agree to that—but we don’t have any children as yet.”
He walked over and snatched the notebook from her hand. After tossing it over his shoulder, he grabbed her. “Then let’s take care of it, sugar. I need the loan.”
Whitney noticed with satisfaction that the pad had fallen faceup. “Anything for free enterprise.”
A B O U T T H E A U T H O R
Nora Roberts was the first writer to be inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. The New York Times bestselling author of such novels as Montana Sky, Born in Ice, True Betrayals, and Divine Evil, she has become one of today’s most successful and best-loved writers. Nora Roberts lives in Maryland.
If you loved
Hot Ice
then here’s a sneak peek at
Divine Evil
Nora Roberts’s
spellbinding novel of romantic
suspense, available now
from Bantam Books
Divine Evil
Available from Bantam Books
C H A P T E R
1
The rite began an hour after sunset. The circle had been prepared long ago, a perfect nine feet, by the clearing of trees and young saplings. The ground had been sprinkled with consecrated earth.
Clouds, dark and secretive, danced over the pale moon.
Thirteen figures, in black cowls and cloaks, stood inside the protective circle. In the woods beyond, a lone owl began to scream, in lament or in sympathy. When the gong sounded, even he was silenced. For a moment, there was only the murmur of the wind through the early spring leaves.
In the pit at the left side of the circle, the fire already smoldered. Soon the flames would rise up, called by that same wind or other forces.
It was May Day Eve, the Sabbat of Roodmas. On this night of high spring, both celebration and sacrifice would be given for the fertility of crops and for the power of men.
Two women dressed in red robes stepped into the circle. Their faces were not hooded and were very white, with a slash of scarlet over their lips. Like vampires who had already feasted.
One, following the careful instructions she had been given, shed her robe and stood naked in the light of a dozen black candles, then draped herself over a raised slab of polished wood.
She would be their altar of living flesh, the virgin on which they would worship. The fact that she was a prostitute and far from pure disturbed some of them. Others simply relished her lush curves and generously spread thighs.
The high priest, having donned his mask of the Goat of Mendes, began to chant in bastardized Latin. When he had finished his recitation, he raised his arms high toward the inverted pentagram above the altar. A bell was rung to purify the air.
From her hiding place in the brush, a young girl watched, her eyes wide with curiosity. There was a burning smell coming from the pit where flames crackled, sending sparks shooting high. Odd shapes had been carved in the trunks of the circling trees.
The young girl began wondering where her father was. She had hidden in his car, giggling to herself at the trick she was playing on him. When she