Nora Roberts - Key of valor

Zoe McCourt was sixteen when she met the boy who would change her life. She'd grown up in the mountains of West Virginia, the oldest of four. By the time she was twelve, her father had already run off with the wife of another man.

Even then, Zoe hadn't considered it any great loss. Her daddy was a short-tempered, moody man who preferred drinking beer with the boys or banging his neighbor's wife rather than seeing to his own.

Still, it was hard, since most weeks he had at least brought home a paycheck.

Her mother was a thin, nervous woman who smoked too much and compensated for her husband's desertion by replacing him, with some regularity, with boyfriends cut from the same cloth as Bobby Lee McCourt. They made her happy in the short term, angry and sad in the long, but she'd never been able to do without a man for more than a month straight in any case.

Crystal McCourt had raised her brood in a double-wide, slotted into a lot in the Hillside Trailer Park. After her husband ran off, Crystal got shit-faced drunk and, leaving Zoe in charge, hopped in her third hand Camaro to head out in pursuit of, in her words, "the cheating son of a bitch and his godforsaken whore."

She'd been gone for three days. She hadn't found Bobby, but she came back sober. The chase had cost her some of her self-respect, and her job at Debbie's House of Beauty.

Debbie's House might have been more of a hut, but it cut deep to lose the regular pay.

The experience toughened Crystal considerably. She sat her children down and told them things were going to be rocky and things were going to be hard, but they'd find a way.

She nailed up her beautician's license in the trailer's kitchen and opened her own house of beauty.

She undercut Debbie's prices, and she had a talent with hair.

So they'd gotten by. The trailer had smelled of peroxide and permanents and smoke, but they'd gotten by.

Zoe shampooed heads, swept up shorn hair, and minded her three siblings. When she showed an aptitude, she was given comb-outs or allowed to trim.

And she dreamed of better, of more, of the world outside that trailer park.

She did well in school, especially in math. Her skill with numbers put her in charge of her mother's books, the taxes, the bills.

She was an adult before her fourteenth birthday, with the child inside yearning for something more.

It was no surprise that she was dazzled by James Marshall.

He was so different from the boys she knew. Not just because he was a little older-nineteen to her sixteen-but because he'd been places and seen things. And God, he was so handsome. Like Prince Charming out of the storybook.

His great-grandfather might have worked the mines in those hills, but there was no coal dust on James. The generations between had scrubbed it all away, and added a sheen of polish and gloss.

His family had money, the kind of money that bought class, and education, and trips to Europe. They had the biggest house in town, as white and showy as a bridal gown, and James and his younger sister were both sent to private schools.

The Marshalls liked to give parties, big, splashy ones with live music and fancy catered food. Mrs. Marshall would always have Crystal come right to the house to do her hair for a party, and Zoe often went along to do Mrs. Marshall's nails.

She would dream about that house, so clean and full of flowers and pretty things. It was so wonderful to know people lived that way. Not everyone was crowded into a trailer that smelled of chemicals and stale smoke.

She promised herself that one day she would live in a house. It didn't have to be big and grand like the Marshalls', but it would be a real house, and it would have a little yard.

And one day, she would travel to the places Mrs. Marshall spoke of-New York City, Paris, Rome.

She saved her pennies for it from her tip money, and the pay she earned from the odd jobs she took. Well, the pay that didn't go to helping Mama keep the wolf from the door.

She was good with money. At sixteen she had four hundred and fourteen dollars tucked away in a secret savings account.

In April, when she turned sixteen, she made some extra money helping to serve at one of the Marshalls' parties. She was presentable enough, and eager for the work.

She wore her hair long back then, a straight stream of black down her back. She'd always been slim, but she'd blossomed in a way that had the boys sniffing around her. She had no time for boys-or not very much.

She had long-lidded eyes of golden brown that were always looking, watching, wondering, and a wide, full mouth that was slow to smile. Her features were sharp and angular, adding a touch of the exotic that was a contrast to her innate shyness.

She did what she was told and did it well-and kept, as much as it was possible, to herself.

Maybe it was the shyness, or the dreamy eyes, or the quiet competence that attracted James. But he flirted with her on that early-spring evening, flustered her, and ultimately flattered her. And he asked to see her again.

They met in secret, which added to the thrill. The sheer romance of having the attention of someone like James was overpowering. He listened to her, so her shyness dropped away and she told him her dreams and hopes.

He was sweet to her, and whenever she could slip away they went for long drives or simply sat and looked at the stars and talked.

Of course, before long, they did more than talk.

He said he loved her. He said he needed her.

On a soft night in June, on a red blanket spread out on the floor of the summer woods, she lost her innocence to him with the eager optimism that belongs to the young.

He was still sweet, still attentive, and promised they'd always be together. She imagined he'd believed it. She certainly had.

But there was a price to pay for being young and foolish. She had paid it. And, she thought, so had he. Maybe he'd paid much, much more than she had.

Because while she had lost her innocence, James had lost a more precious treasure.

She glanced over at that treasure now. Her son.

If James had changed her life, Simon had righted it again. In a new way, a new place. James had given Zoe her first taste of what it was to be a woman. The child had made her one.

She'd gotten her house-her little house with its little yard-and she'd gotten it by herself. Maybe she'd never traveled to all those wonderful places as she'd once dreamed of doing, but she'd seen all the wonders of the world in her son's eyes.

And now, nearly ten years after she'd first held him, first promised him she would never let him down, she was moving forward again, with her son. She was seeing to it that Simon had more.

Zoe McCourt, the shy girl from the West Virginia hills, was about to open her own business in the pretty town of Pleasant Valley, Pennsylvania, with two women who'd become as much sisters as friends in two short months.

Indulgence. She liked the name. That was what she wanted it to be for the clients and customers. It would be work, hard work, for her, for her friends. But even the work was a kind of indulgence, as it was labor they'd all dreamed of doing.

Malory Price's arts and crafts gallery would occupy one side of the main level of their sweet new house. Dana Steele's bookstore would stand on the other. And her own salon would spread over the top floor.

Just a few more weeks, she thought. A few more weeks of remodeling and freshening up, of setting up supplies, stock, equipment. Then they would open the doors.

It made her belly jump to think of it, but it wasn't only fear. Some of those jumps were pure excitement.

She knew exactly how it would look when it was done. Full of color and light in the main salon, then softer, relaxing tones in the treatment rooms. She would have candles set around for fragrance and atmosphere, and interesting pictures on the walls. Good lighting to flatter and to soothe.