Key of Knowledge (The Key Trilogy, Book 2) by Nora Roberts

Author:Nora Roberts [Roberts, Nora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780739439067
Publisher: Jove Book
Published: 2003-09-28T18:39:42.921000+00:00

* * *

IT shouldn’t bother him so much, and it irritated the hell out of him that it did. He didn’t expect everyone to like his work. He’d long ago stopped being bruised or deflated by a poor review or a disgruntled comment from a reader.

He wasn’t some high-strung, temperamental artist who fell into funks at the slightest criticism.

But damn it, Dana’s dismissal of his work dug holes in him.

It was worse now, Jordan thought as he gazed out the bedroom window and brooded. Worse that she’d been kind about it. It had been easier to take her scathing and unsolicited opinions of his talent, her snotty, elitist dismissal of his field than her gentle and kindly meant pat on the head.

He wrote thrillers, often with a whiff of something other, and she dismissed them as hackneyed commercialism that appealed to the lowest common denominator.

He could handle that, if she was an elitist book snob, but she was far from it. She simply loved books. Her apartment was crammed with them and there was plenty of genre fiction on her shelves.

Though he’d noted there was nothing on them by Jordan Hawke.

And, yeah, he thought, it stung more than a little.

He’d been ridiculously pleased to come back into the bedroom and see her bent over his laptop, to see what he’d believed had been avid interest in the story he was building.

Curiosity, as she’d said. Nothing more.

Best to put that one away, he told himself. Lock it away in a box before it dug in too deep and started to fester.

They were lovers again, and thank God for it. They were, he hoped, halfway to being friends again as well. He didn’t want to lose her, lover and friend, because he couldn’t get past her disinterest or disapproval of his work.

She didn’t know what it meant to him to be a writer. How could she? Oh, she knew it was what he’d wanted and hoped for. But she didn’t know why it was so vital to him. He’d never shared that with her.

There was a great deal that he hadn’t shared with her; he admitted.

His work, yes. He’d often asked her to read something he’d done, and naturally had been pleased and satisfied when she’d praised it—intrigued and interested when she’d discussed the story and offered her opinions.

The fact was, on a purely practical level, hers was one of the opinions he valued most.

But he’d never told her how much he’d needed to make something of himself. As a man, as a writer. For himself, certainly. And for his mother. It was, for Jordan, the only way he knew to pay his mother back for all she’d done for him, all she’d given up for him, all she’d worked for.

But he’d never shared that with Dana, or anyone else. Never shared with anyone that private grief, the drowning guilt or the desperate need.

So, he would put it away again and concentrate on rebuilding what he could and starting fresh with what he couldn’t rebuild.

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