by Nora Roberts
“Mr. Donovan. I won’t take up much of your time. I just need …”
Even as her words trailed off, Mel was by her side. The look she shot at Sebastian was anything but friendly. “Are you going to let us come in and sit down, or are we just going to …”
Now she was the one whose words trailed off. It wasn’t threatening tears that robbed her of her voice. It was utter shock.
His eyes. It was all she could think for an instant, and indeed she thought it so clearly, so violently, that Sebastian heard the words echo in his own mind.
Ridiculous, she told herself, regaining control. It was a dream.
That was all. Some silly dream she was mixing up with reality. It was just that he had the most beautiful eyes. The most uncomfortably beautiful eyes.
He studied her for a moment more, and, though curious, he didn’t look beyond her face. She was, even in the harsh sunlight, quite attractive. Perhaps it was the defiance he saw so clearly in her steady green eyes, or the lift of her chin, with its faint and oddly sexy cleft. Attractive, yes, he decided, even if she did wear her hair inches shorter than his own. Even if it did look as though she hacked at it herself with a pair of kitchen shears.
He turned away from her and offered Rose a smile.
“Please, come in,” he said, and gave her his hand. He left Mel to follow.
She did, and he might have been amused to see the way she swaggered up those steps and into the high-ceilinged great room, with its skylights and open balcony. She frowned a bit, wishing she didn’t find it so appealing, those warm, honey-toned walls that made the light so soft and sexy. There was a low, wide couch, long as a river, done in a lustrous royal-blue. He led Rose to it, over a lake-size rug of bleeding pastels, while Mel checked out his living quarters.
It was neat as a pin without appearing viciously organized. Modern sculptures of marble, wood and bronze were interspersed with what were surely valuable antiques. Everything was large scale, with the result that, despite its size, the room was cozy.
Here and there, set with apparent casualness on those polished antiques, were clusters of crystals—some large enough to strain a man’s back lifting them, others tiny enough to fit in a child’s palm. Mel found herself charmed by them, the way they winked and gleamed, shaped like ancient cities, slender wands, smooth globes or rough mountains.
She found Sebastian watching her with a kind of patient amusement, and she shrugged. “Some digs.”
His lips curved, joining the humor in his eyes. “Thanks. Have a seat.”
The couch might be as long as a river, but she chose a chair across the island of an ornately carved coffee table.
His eyes stayed on Mel another moment, and then he turned to Rose. “Can I get you some coffee, Mrs. Merrick? Something cold?”
“No. No, please don’t bother.” The kindness was worse, somehow, undermining her desperate control. “I know this is an imposition, Mr. Donovan. I’ve read about you. And my neighbor, Mrs. Ott, she said how you were so helpful to the police last year when that boy went missing. The runaway.”
“Joe Cougar.” Sebastian sat beside her. “Yes, he thought he’d give San Francisco a try, and drive his parents crazy. I suppose youth enjoys risks.”
“But he was fifteen.” Rose’s voice broke and pressing her lips together, she shored it up again. “I—I don’t mean his parents wouldn’t have been frightened, but he was fifteen. My David’s only a baby. He was in his playpen.” She sent Sebastian a look of desperate pleading. “I only left him for a minute when the phone rang. And he was right by the door, sleeping. It wasn’t as if he was out on the street, or left in a car. He was right by the open door, and I was only gone a minute.”
“Rose.” Though her personal preference was to keep her distance from Sebastian, Mel got up to sit beside her friend. “It’s not your fault. Everyone understands that.”
“I left him,” Rose said flatly. “I left my baby, and now he’s gone.”
“Mrs. Merrick. Rose. Were you a bad mother?” Sebastian asked the question casually, and saw the horror bloom in Rose’s eyes. And the fury light in Mel’s.
“No. No. I love David. I only wanted to do my best for him. I only—”
“Then don’t do this.” He took her hand, and his touch was so gentle, so comforting, that the threatening tears retreated a little. “You’re not to blame for this. Trying to make it so you are won’t help find David.”
Mel’s fury fizzled out like a wet firecracker. He’d said exactly the right thing, in exactly the right way.
“Will you help me?” Rose murmured. “The police are trying. And Mel … Mel’s doing everything she can, but David’s still gone.”
Mel, he mused. An interesting name for a long, slim blonde with a chip on her shoulder.
“We’re going to get David back.” Agitated, Mel sprang up again. “We have a few leads. They may be slim, but—”
“We?” Sebastian interrupted. He got a quick image—here, then gone—of her with a gun gripped in both hands, her eyes as cold as frozen emeralds. “Are you with the police, Miss—?”
“Sutherland. Private.” She snapped the words at him. “Aren’t you supposed to know things like that?”
“Mel …” Rose said with quiet warning.
“That’s all right.” He patted Rose’s hand. “I can look, or I can ask. With relative strangers, it’s more polite to ask than to intrude, don’t you think?”
“Right.” With what was certainly a snort, Mel dropped into a chair again.
“Your friend’s a cynic,” Sebastian commented. “Cynicism can be very valuable, as well as very rude.” He started to steel himself to tell Rose he couldn’t help. He simply couldn’t open himself to the trauma and risk of looking for another lost little boy.
Mel changed everything. Just, he supposed, as she was meant to.
“I don’t consider it cynicism to recognize a charlatan masquerading as a samaritan.” Her eyes were hot when she leaned forward. “This psychic business is as phony as a ten-dollar magician in a shiny suit pulling rabbits out of his hat.”
His brow quirked. It was the only sign of interest or irritation. “Is that so?”
“A scam’s a scam, Mr. Donovan. A young child’s future is at stake, and I won’t have you playing your mumbo-jumbo games to get your name in the papers. I’m sorry, Rose.” She stood, almost vibrating with anger. “I care about you, and I care about David. I just can’t stand by and watch this guy hose you.”
“He’s my baby.” The tears Rose had been battling spilled over. “I have to know where he is. I have to know if he’s all right. If he’s scared or happy. He doesn’t even have his teddy bear.” Rose buried her face in her hands. “He doesn’t even have his teddy bear.”
Mel cursed herself, cursed her temper, cursed Sebastian Donovan, cursed the world in general. But when she knelt beside Rose, both her hands and voice were gentle.
“I’m sorry. Honey, I’m sorry. I know how scared you are. I’m scared, too. If you want Mr. Donovan to”—she almost choked on the word—“to help, then he’ll help.” She raised her furious, defiant face to Sebastian’s. “Won’t you?”
“Yes.” He nodded slowly, feeling fate take his hands. “I will.”
* * *
He managed to persuade Rose to drink some water and dry her eyes. While Mel stared grimly out the window, Rose took a small yellow teddy bear out of her bag.
“This is David’s. His favorite. And this …” She fumbled with a wallet-size snapshot. “This is his picture. I thought— Mrs. Ott said you might need something.”
“It helps.” He took the toy and felt a vicious pull in his gut that he recognized as Rose’s grief. He would have to go through, and beyond, that. But he didn’t look at the photograph. Not yet. “Leave it with me. I’ll be in touch.” He helped her to her feet. “You have my word. I’ll do what I can.”
“I don’t know how to thank you. For trying. Just knowing you are … Well, it gives me something else
to hope for. We, Stan and me, we’ve got some money saved.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“Rose, wait in the car for me,” Mel said it quietly, but Sebastian could see that she was feeling anything but quiet. “I’ll pass on what information I have to Mr. Donovan. It may help him.”
“All right.” A smile ghosted around Rose’s mouth. “Thank you.”
Mel waited until Rose was out of earshot, then turned and fired. “How much do you think you can squeeze out of her for this kind of a con? She’s a waitress. Her husband’s a mechanic.”
He leaned lazily against the doorjamb. “Ms. Sutherland, does it appear I need money?”
She made another derisive sound. “No, you’ve got just buckets, don’t you? It’s all just a game for you.”
He curled his fingers around her arm with a steely strength that caught her off guard. “It’s not a game.” His voice was so low, so filled with suppressed violence, that she blinked. “What I have, what I am, is no game. And stealing children from their playpens is no game, either.”
“I won’t see her hurt again.”
“We can agree on that. If you’re so against this, why did you bring her?”
“Because she’s my friend. Because she asked me to.”
He accepted that with a slight nod. Loyalty was something else he could feel pumping out of her. “And my private number? You dug that up, as well?”
Her lip curled in something close to a sneer. “That’s my job.”
“And are you good at it?”
“Damn right.”
“Fine. I’m also good at mine, and we’re going to be working together.”
“What makes you think—?”
“Because you care. And if there’s a chance—oh, even the slimmest chance—that I’m what I claim to be, you won’t want to risk ignoring it.”
She could feel the heat from his fingers. It seemed to sizzle right through the skin to her bones. It occurred to her that she was afraid. Not physically. It was deeper than that. She was afraid because she’d never felt this kind of power before.
“I work alone.”
“So do I,” he said calmly. “As a rule. We’re going to break the rules.” He reached in, quick as a snake. He wanted one thing, one small thing, to rub her nose in. Finding it, he smiled. “I’ll be in touch very soon. Mary Ellen.”
He had the pleasure of seeing her mouth fall open, of seeing her eyes narrow as she thought back, struggling to remember if Rose had used her full name. But she couldn’t remember, couldn’t be sure. Shaken, she jerked away.
“Don’t waste my time, Donovan. And don’t call me that.” With a toss of her head, she strode to the car. She might not be psychic, but she knew he was grinning.
Chapter 2
Sebastian didn’t go back inside, not even after he had watched the little gray car trail down the ribbon of Highway 1. He stood on the porch, both amused and faintly irritated by the sizzles of anger and frustration Mel had left behind to spark in the air.
Strong-willed, he mused. And just brimming with energy. A woman like that would exhaust a peaceful man. Sebastian considered himself a peaceful man. Not that he wouldn’t mind poking at her a bit, the way a young boy pokes at glowing embers to see how often he can get a flame to shoot up.
It was often worth the risk of a few minor burns to make fire.
At the moment, however, he was just too tired to enjoy it. He was already angry with himself for having agreed to become involved. It was the combination of the two women that had done it to him, he thought now. The one with her face so full of fears and desperate hope, the other so vivid with fury and sneering disbelief. He could have handled one or the other, he thought as he descended the steps. But being caught in the middle of all that conflicting emotion, the sheer depth of it, had defeated him.
So he would look. Though he had promised himself a long, quiet break before taking on another case, he would look. And he would pray to whatever god was listening that he could live with what he might see.
But for now, he would take some time—one long, lazy morning—to heal his fatigued mind and ragged soul.
There was a paddock behind the house, attached to a low, gleaming white stable. Even as he approached, he heard the whicker of greeting. The sound was so ordinary, so simple and welcoming that he smiled.
There they were, the sleek black stallion and the proud white mare, standing so still that he thought of two elegantly carved chess pieces, one ebony, one alabaster. Then the mare flicked her tail in a flirtatious gesture and pranced to the fence.
They could leap it, he knew. Both had done so more than once, with him in the saddle. But there was a trust between them, an understanding that the fence was not a cage but a home.
“There’s a beauty.” Sebastian lifted a hand to stroke her cheek, her long, graceful neck. “Have you been keeping your man in line, Psyche?”
She blew into his hand. In her dark eyes he saw pleasure, and what he liked to think was humor. She whinnied softly when he swung over the fence. Then she stood patiently while he passed his hands over her flanks, down over her swollen belly.
“Only a few more weeks,” he murmured. He could almost feel the life inside her, sleeping. Again he thought of Morgana, though he doubted his cousin would care to be compared to a pregnant horse, even as fine an Arabian as Psyche.
“Has Ana been taking good care of you?” He nuzzled against the mare’s neck, comforted by her quiet good nature. “Of course she has.”
He murmured and stroked for a while, giving her the attention they had both missed while he’d been away. Then he turned and looked at the stallion, who stood alert, his handsome head high.
“And you, Eros, have you been tending to your lady?”
At the sound of his name, the horse reared to paw the air, trumpeting a cry that was rich in power and almost human. The display of pride had Sebastian laughing as he crossed to the stallion.
“You’ve missed me, you gorgeous beast, admit it or not.” Still laughing, Sebastian slapped the gleaming flank and sent Eros dancing around the paddock. On the second trip around, Sebastian grabbed a handful of mane and swung onto the restless mount, giving them what they both wanted. A fast, reckless ride.
As they soared over the fence, Psyche watched them, her eyes as indulgent—and as superior—as a mother watching little boys wrestling.
* * *
Sebastian felt better by the afternoon. The hollowness he’d brought back from Chicago was gradually being filled. But he continued to avoid the little yellow teddy bear sitting lonely on the long, empty sofa. And he had yet to look at the photograph.
In the library, with its coffered ceiling and its walls of books, he sat at a massive mahogany desk and toyed with some paperwork. At any given time, Sebastian might have between five and ten businesses of which he was either sole owner or majority partner. They were hobbies to him—real estate, import-export firms, magazines, a catfish farm in Mississippi that amused him, and his current pet, a minor-league baseball team in Nebraska.
He was shrewd enough to make a healthy profit, wise enough to leave day-to-day management in the hands of experts, and capricious enough to buy and sell on a whim.
He enjoyed what money could give him, and he often used those profits lavishly. But he had grown up with wealth, and amounts of money that would have startled many were hardly more than numbers on paper to him. The simple game of mathematics, the increasing or decreasing, was a never-ending source of entertainment.
He was generous with pet charities, because he believed in them. His donations were a matter not of tax breaks or philanthropy, but of morals.
It would probably have embarrassed him, and it would certainly have irritated him, to be thought of as an unshakably moral man.
He pleased himself until sunset, working, reading, toying with a new spell he hoped to perfect. Magic was his cousin Morgana’s speciality. Sebastian could never hope to equal her power there, but his innat
e competitive streak kept him struggling to try.
Oh, he could make fire—but that was a witch’s first and last skill. He could levitate, but that, too, was an elementary talent. Beyond that and a few hat tricks—that was Mel sneaking back into his mind again—he was no magician. His gift was one of sight.
In much the same way that a brilliant actor might yearn to sing and dance, Sebastian yearned to cast spells.
After two hours with little success, he gave up in disgust. He fixed himself an elaborate meal for one, put some Irish ballads on the stereo, and uncorked a three-hundred-dollar bottle of wine with the same casualness another man might show in popping open a can of beer.
He indulged in a lengthy whirlpool, his eyes closed, his mind a blessed blank as the water jetted around him. After slipping into silk pajama bottoms, he pleased himself by watching the sun set in bleeding reds. And then he waited for night to steal across the sky.
It couldn’t be put off any longer. With some reluctance, Sebastian went downstairs again. Rather than flick on lights, he lit candles. He didn’t need the trappings of the art, but there was comfort in tradition.
There was the scent of sandalwood and vanilla. Because they reminded him of his mother’s room at Castle Donovan, they never failed to soothe him. The light was shadowy, inviting power.
For several long moments, he stood by the sofa. With a sigh—very like a laborer might make on hefting a pick—he looked at the photograph of David Merrick.
It was a charming, happy face, one that would have made Sebastian smile if his concentration hadn’t been focused. Words gathered in his head, ancient words, secret words. When he was sure, he set the picture aside and lifted the sad-eyed yellow bear.
“All right, David,” he murmured, and his voice echoed hollowly through the empty rooms. “Let me see.”
It didn’t happen with a blaze of light or a flash of understanding. Though it could. It could. He simply drifted. His eyes changed, from smoke to slate to the color of storm clouds. They were fixed, unblinking, beyond the room, beyond the walls, beyond the night.
Images. Images. Forming and melting like wax through his mind. His fingers were gentle on the child’s toy, but his body had stiffened like stone. His breathing remained steady, slowing, evening out as it would in sleep.
To begin, he had to fight past the grief and fear that shimmered through the toy. Without losing concentration, he had to slip past the visions of the weeping mother clutching the bear, of a dazed-eyed father holding them both.
Oh, but these were strong, these emotions of sorrow and terror and fury. But strongest of all, as always, was the love.
Even that faded as he skimmed past, going deeper, going back.
He saw, with a child’s eyes, and a child’s wonder.
A pretty face, Rose’s face, leaning over the crib. A smile, soft words, soft hands. Great love. Then another, a man’s face, young, simple. Hesitant fingers, rough and callused. Here, too, was love. Slightly different from the mother love, but just as deep. This was tinted with a kind of dazed awe. And … Sebastian’s lips curved. And a wish to play catch in a nice backyard.
The images slid, one into the other. Fussy crying at night. Formless fears, soon soothed by strong, caring hands. Nagging hungers sated by warm mother’s milk from a willing breast. And pleasures, such delight in colors, in sounds, in the warmth of sunlight.
Health, robust health, in a body straining to grow as a babe’s did in that first dazzling year of life.
Then heat, and a surprising, baffling pain. Aching, throbbing in the gums. The comfort of being walked, rocked, sung to.
And another face, soft with a different kind of love. Mary Ellen, making the yellow bear dance in front of his eyes. Laughing, her hands tender and hesitant as she gathered him up, holding him high in the air and pressing tickling kisses to his belly.
From her, a longing, too unformed in her own mind to be seen clearly. All emotion and confusion.
What is it you want? Sebastian wanted to ask her. What is it you’re afraid you can’t have?
Then she faded away from him like a chalk portrait washed away in a shower of rain.
Sleeping. Dreaming easy dreams, with a slash of sunlight just beyond your fisted hand and the shade cool and soft as a kiss. Peace, utter peace.
When it was broken, there was sleepy irritation. Small, healthy lungs filled to cry, but the sound was cut off by a hand. Unfamiliar hands, unfamiliar smell, and then irritation turned to fear. The face— There was only a glimpse, and Sebastian struggled to freeze that image in his mind for later.
Being carried, held too tightly, and bundled in a car. The car smells of old food and spilled coffee and the sweat of the man.
Sebastian saw it, felt it, as one image stuttered into the next. He lost whole patches as the child’s terror and tears exhausted him into sleep.
But he saw. And he knew where to begin.
* * *