Key Of Valor by Nora Roberts Page A

don’t come from the same place. And I don’t mean the Valley.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWe don’t have anything in common, except for the key.”
    â€œThe key,” he agreed. “Friends who matter to both of us, a place that holds my roots and where you’ve set yours. A need to build something for ourselves. Then there’s a young boy. He happens to belong to you, but he’s hooked me. With or without you, he’d have hooked me. Do you get that?”
    She could only nod.
    â€œThere’s more, but let’s just toss in the sexual chemistry for now. Add all that up, it seems like some fairly solid common ground.”
    â€œI don’t know what to say to you half the time, or how to say it.”
    â€œMaybe you shouldn’t think about it so hard.” He held out a hand. “Let’s go look at the kitchen. If we don’t get out of here soon, there’s not going to be anything left in that chicken bucket but crumbs.”
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    SHE was grateful he’d let the subject drop. She just couldn’t separate her thoughts and feelings, her concerns and her needs into separate areas. Not right now.
    She was grateful, too, that the time she’d spent at Flynn’s had involved fried chicken and relaxation without focusing on the key.
    She had nothing to offer yet, and there was too much information, too many questions, circling around in her mind to line up in an intelligent conversation.
    They would need to have a meeting soon, all of them, but she wanted a little time to sort through everything first.
    Both Malory and Dana had come up with theories quickly. Those theories had been refined and re-angled and changed over the four weeks, but they’d formed a foundation.
    And, Zoe thought, she had nothing.
    So she would spend the evening going over the clue, all of their notes, taking herself back, step by step, through the first two quests. Somewhere in there were answers.
    Once Simon and Moe were settled down and the house blessedly quiet, she sat at her kitchen table. Notes, files, books were arranged in piles. She’d decided she’d gone over her coffee quota for the day, so she brewed a pot of tea.
    Sipping the first cup, she read over the clue again and wrote down on a fresh page of her notebook what she thought might be important words.
Beauty, truth, courage
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    Loss, sorrow
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    Forest
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    Path
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    Journey
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    Blood and death
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    Ghosts
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    Faith
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    Fear
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    Goddess
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    Valiant
    She was probably missing some, but the list gave her a start. Beauty for Malory, truth for Dana. Courage for herself.
    Loss and sorrow. Hers, or did it refer to the daughters? If she took it personally for this round, what was her loss, what was her sorrow? Most recently, she’d lost her job,Zoe mused and jotted that down. But that had turned out to be an opportunity.
    Forests? They were plentiful, but some meant more to her than others. There were woods at Warrior’s Peak. There were woods back home, where she’d grown up. There were woods along the river by Brad’s house. But if forest was symbolic, it could mean not seeing it for the trees. Not seeing the overall scope of something because you were too busy worrying about the individual details.
    She did that sometimes, that was true. But, God, there were so many details, and who was going to worry about them if she didn’t?
    She had a parent-teacher meeting coming up. Simon needed new shoes and a new winter coat. The washing machine was starting to make grinding noises, and she hadn’t gotten around to cleaning out her gutters.
    She needed to buy the towels for the salon and spring for a new washer and dryer over there. Which meant the one at home would have to grind for a while.
    She rested her head on her fisted hand, closed her eyes for just a minute.
    She would get it all done; that was her job. But one of these days, she was going to stretch out in the shade