Breath of Magic

by Teresa Medeiros

  As he recited the vast array of beverages favored by his employer, the woman's fragile complexion grew even pastier. When he reached "mango," she began to sway. Alarmed, he rushed forward to steady her.

  She clutched his massive arm, her face crumpled in abject misery.

  "What is it, miss? Are you sick?"

  She studied his face, as if weighing whether or not she dared confide in him. Her pallor was replaced by a furious blush as she stood on tiptoe and whispered something in the general direction of his ear.

  He frowned down at her. "I am sorry, miss. My English is not so good. I know not of this pot."

  Heaving an exasperated sigh, she dragged his ear down to her mouth to hiss something even more explicit.

  "Ah!" He felt a broad smile crack his stoic face. "I understand."

  Thankful to have found a task he felt competent to execute, he tucked her small hand in the crook of his arm and led her to an expanse of wall textured with flocked paper. He punched a shiny black button, unable to resist a tiny flourish as he did so.

  The wall slid open, eliciting a gasp of pure astonishment from his companion. She drifted ahead of him into the spacious room.

  She glided past the Italian marble of the sunken whirlpool tub and matching pedestal sinks without a second glance. She paid little heed to the plush mauve carpet crushed beneath her feet or the twin brass shower heads wrapped in a frosted glass enclosure. Not even the thick burgundy towels draped over the electronic towel warmer were enticing enough to lure her rapt attention from the gleaming object perched beneath a tasteful Andrew Wyeth print.

  She drew her gaze away from it only long enough to flash Sven a grin of utter delight. "Why, 'tis the grandest chamber pot I've ever seen!"

  Tristan's Gucci loafers didn't make even a whisper of sound as they traversed the wide corridor to the boardroom of Lennox Enterprises. Since it was Sunday morning, the maze of offices flanking the hall had been deserted by all but his most conscientious employees. In defiance of superstition, Tristan had located his corporate headquarters on the thirteenth floor of the Tower.

  Copperfield marched at Tristan's side, frantically shuffling a stack of manila files. "The press are clamoring for some answers about the girl. I've fielded interview requests from the Times, the Post, People magazine, and Jay Leno. What should I tell them?"

  "Tell them I have no comment at this time."

  The rhythm of Copperfield's steps faltered. "Let me clarify this. First you offer a million dollars to the first scam artist clever enough to con you. Then some woman dressed like the corpse from an Amish funeral flies in on a burning broom and crash-lands in your arms in front of a thousand witnesses and you have no comment?"

  "That's correct. Until I have some concrete answers, I see no point in whetting their appetites. You know as well as I do that the scent of blood will only send them into a feeding frenzy."

  Copperfield jotted a notation in a margin before slapping one of the files shut. "So what are you planning to do with her? Keep her prisoner in your penthouse tower like some princess in a medieval romance?"

  "She's no prisoner," Tristan replied, his bland expression costing him more effort than usual to maintain. "She can leave anytime she likes."

  "Then I suppose it's pure coincidence that her baby-sitter just happens to be a six-feet-four Norwegian armed with a Clock nine-mil and a Walther PPK he's convinced once belonged to James Bond."

  The perpetual sarcasm in Tristan's voice ripened. "I confess. You've found me out. I gave Sven strict orders to shoot her in the back if she tries to leave, then heave her body down the nearest elevator shaft."

  Although Tristan would never have admitted it, he wasn't sure if Sven's presence was supposed to deter Arian from leaving or deter him from spending any more time than necessary in her presence. After his brief flirtation with espionage, he had spent a restless night on the sofa in his corporate office.

  He had removed the temptation of further nocturnal spying by disabling the penthouse security cameras before leaving the Command Center. He could care less if Deluth or any other of his security guards spent their on-duty hours ogling Miss Whitewood's nubile legs, but he despised the thought of them trespassing on her solitude – intruding upon her private melancholy as he himself had been guilty of doing. He'd rather let Sven do his dirty work for him.

  Dousing a flicker of shame with a shot of cynicism, he said, "Miss Whitewood didn't seem to have any engagements more pressing than collecting her million dollars." He threw open the boardroom door. "If this meeting proceeds as planned, I'll allow you the pleasure of personally evicting her from my suite."

  As soon as they entered the boardroom, it became evident that nothing was going to go as planned. Instead of the beaming faces Tristan had expected, they were greeted by a variety of expressions ranging from glum defeat to utter despondency. The heavy drapes had been drawn to ward off the morning sunlight, only adding to the aura of gloom.

  "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," Tristan said briskly, settling into the sleek leather chair at the head of the oak conference table.

  As Copperfield slumped into the chair at his right, an assistant melted out of the dark paneling to place a cup of steaming black coffee at Tristan's elbow.

  Tristan eyed the five men and three women seated around the long table, knowing they were the most gifted panel of computer programmers, physicists, chemists, and engineers ever assembled in the United States under one corporate banner. Yet at the moment they were all avoiding his eyes as if they heartily wished they possessed one-way plane tickets back to their countries of origin.

  "I trust you have the results we discussed," he said, his smile deceptively gentle.

  Several members of the panel made a great production of rifling through the mountains of computer printouts that littered the table, but it was Gordon Montgomery who lunged to his feet.

  Tristan had always admired the Scotsman's frankness. Montgomery was also the only man in the room with an IQ higher than his. The convex lenses of his glasses magnified his red-rimmed eyes. "I'm turribly sorry, sir. We've worked the whole night through, but have nothin' of any significance to report."

  "Nothing at all? Not even the chemical composition of the device? Theories on its potential methods of aviation?"

  Montgomery shook his head, his uncombed nest of ginger hair making him look more like a scientist of the mad variety. "We've dissected the thing into microscopic cross sections and done magnetic resonance imaging until we're bug-eyed, but I'm tellin' you, sir, it's nothin' but a pile of splinters and a heap of scorched straw – a bloody broom!"

  Tristan took a sip of the coffee. Its bitterness wasn't nearly as keen as his disappointment. After his lapse of judgment in the Command Center last night, it somehow seemed even more imperative that he prove Arian Whitewood nothing more than a conniving little fraud. "Then we simply have to assume the motor fell off in flight, causing the crash."

  Copperfield's smile was a fraction too smug for Tristan's comfort. "It's a pity most standard kitchen brooms don't come equipped with flight recorders and little black boxes."

  Tristan spared him a brief, but icy glare. "All right then, Montgomery. Have your technicians map the surrounding city blocks into quadrants and begin combing the area for debris. Tomorrow morning, we'll – "

  "Uh-um, excuse me, Mr. Lennox." Sven's shaggy blond head appeared in the crack between door and frame.

  "What is it, Sven?" Tristan demanded, unable to suppress a tiny thrill of alarm. He knew it would take nothing less than a bomb threat or a call-back audition for Baywatch to make his bashful bodyguard brave the corporate offices without his permission.

  Despite his agitated state, Sven could not help giving the security camera mounted in the corner a come-hither look as he rounded the table. He cupped his massive hand around Tristan's ear and whispered something.

  Tristan frowned, thinking he couldn't possibly have heard him correctly. Sven straightened and beckoned him toward th
e window. Nearly quivering with curiosity, Copperfield beat them both around the table to tug open the drapes, flooding the paneled gloom with sunlight.

  Exchanging baffled glances, the scientists lined up on either side of Tristan as he peered down into the courtyard thirteen stories below. At first glance, everything appeared to be as orderly as it should have been on a peaceful Sunday morning.

  "There, sir." Sven pointed one of his beefy fingers. "The fountain."

  Tristan narrowed his eyes, realizing that the majestic geyser designed to be the focal point of the courtyard had fizzled to a lethargic sputter. Even as he watched, it diminished to a trickle, then to a pathetic little dribble.

  Ever the pragmatic engineer, Gordon Montgomery clapped him on the shoulder. "Somethin' seems to be bottomin' out the water pressure, sir."

  "Something," Tristan concurred, knowing no amount of restraint in the world could hide his darkening expression. "Or someone."

  As he turned on his heel and strode from the boardroom, Sven and Copperfield exchanged an apprehensive glance, forging an unspoken agreement that it would be wiser not to follow.

  7

  When Tristan stepped off the penthouse elevator, he was bombarded by billowing clouds of steam. His irritation mounted as he felt his raw silk suit wilt against his frame like an overwatered daisy.

  After slamming the door of his private office to protect his computers from the humid assault, he headed for the bedroom, muttering dire imprecations beneath his breath. A thunder resembling that of Niagara Falls was rumbling from the open door of the bathroom.

  He plunged through the veil of mist, too angry to care if the idiotic Miss Whitewood was fully clothed or dressed in nothing but bubbles and a smile. Which didn't explain his stab of disappointment at finding her still wearing her shabby shroud.

  Water poured from the brass faucets of the tub in steaming gouts. Both sinks were running full tilt as were the twin shower heads. Their roar muffled his arrival, leaving him free to observe his guest gleefully flipping the handle of the commode, then bouncing backward to admire the result. As soon as the tank stopped running, she would repeat the ritual – flushing, chortling with delight, then watching intently as the water drained from the sparkling basin.

  Tristan wrenched off the bathtub, then waited for a lull in the water pressure to lean into the shower. Just as he was giving its crystal knob a vicious twist, another shift in pressure sent a gush of warm water cascading over his head. The commode's roar subsided to a trickle, leaving no sound in the room except the steady plop, plop of water dripping off the cuffs of his trousers to soak his newly installed Berber carpet.

  Arian slowly turned around. She eyed him from head to toe before bobbing a wary curtsy. "Good day, Mr. Lennox. Is it raining outside?"

  Her baffled blink left no doubt as to how ridiculous he must look with his painstakingly applied mousse dripping into his collar and his two-thousand-dollar Valentino suit plastered to his body. In contrast, the steam had coiled her hair into an enchanting halo of ringlets and made her skin look as dewy as the petals of a lily. The injustice of it infuriated him.

  "Of course it's not raining! Are you out of your mind?" His bellow echoed off the tile walls, making her flinch.

  Clearly assuming his question was a rhetorical one, she cast the toilet a last wistful glance before sidling past him. "Remarkable plumbing. I had heard of such marvels being installed in the new palace at Versailles, of course, so you mustn't think me an utter bumpkin."

  A bumpkin was by far the most flattering description Tristan was entertaining at the moment. "They don't have tanning booths or indoor plumbing in France?" he growled, snatching a towel from the warmer and stalking after her.

  She evaded his question by nearly colliding with a wide-eyed maid carrying a breakfast tray and several newspapers. It didn't improve Tristan's temper to realize the woman had overheard his uncharacteristic outburst.

  As Arian intercepted the tray with a husky moan of anticipation, the succulent aroma of bacon wafted to his nose. Sven must have ordered from the deli downstairs, Tristan thought, unconsciously licking his lips as he eyed the thick slabs of pork. He would never allow such artery-hardening slop in his private kitchens.

  "Thank you ever so much," Arian said, tucking the newspapers beneath her arm as Tristan's scowl sent the maid scurrying from the suite.

  Still glowering, he toweled the moisture from his hair while Arian settled herself cross-legged on the bed and began to shovel in forkfuls of fried egg as if she'd never heard of a fat gram. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a woman eat without berating herself for enjoying it.

  "Oh, Lord, I was ravenous," she mumbled, tearing off a generous bite of the bacon. "I feel like I haven't eaten in over three hundred" – she glanced up to meet his frosty gaze before swallowing with an audible gulp – "hours."

  She drained a mug of hot chocolate, leaving Tristan to covet the enticing mustache of marshmallow foam adorning her upper lip.

  "Would you care for some?" she asked, proffering a plump cinnamon roll studded with raisins.

  "No, thank you," he said stiffly, the wheat-germ waffle he'd choked down at five that morning lying like a brick in his stomach. "I've eaten."

  He regretted his haste the moment Arian's dainty coral tongue caressed a dab of icing from the pastry. Her moan of delight made his gut contract with longing. He wanted to snatch the roll from her and wolf it down in one gulp. Shocked by the outlandish impulse, he wadded the towel into a ball and hurled it into the corner.

  "I didn't come here for breakfast, Miss Whitewood. I came to ask you a few pertinent questions."

  "Then I hope you'll be satisfied with my answers. I've always been told I'm frightfully impertinent."

  He tore his gaze away from her winsome grin. "My technicians are presently combing the streets surrounding the Tower for debris from your crash. I was hoping you might save them some of their valuable time by explaining to me just how you came to be soaring past at the precise moment of the magic competition."

  "I don't remember." She polished off the cinnamon roll and began licking each finger in turn like a fastidious little cat.

  Riveted by the innocent display of eroticism, Tristan suddenly had trouble remembering his original question. "You don't remember what?" he repeated faintly.

  "I don't remember how I came to be flying past. I'm afraid I hit my head when I crashed and have been afflicted with an unfortunate case of… manesia." She set the tray aside, looking immensely pleased with herself.

  Tristan didn't know whether to laugh or back away and call the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. "You wouldn't, by any chance, mean 'amnesia'?"

  He had to give her credit. She recovered with nothing more than a thoughtful blink. "That's right. Amnesia. Sometimes when you have it, you can't remember what it's called."

  Her guileless expression only intensified his desire to strangle her. He locked his hands behind his back to stifle the urge and began to pace at the foot of the bed. "Allow me to clarify your assertions. You hit your head. You have amnesia. But you do remember that your name is Arian Whitewood, you come from France, and you'd like very much for me to reward you a million dollars."

  He pivoted on his heel to discover that instead of hanging on his every word as any one of his underlings would have done, her attention had strayed to the scattered newspapers. He wondered if it had been Copperfield's idea of a joke to send up not only the Sunday-morning editions of the Times and the Post, but special rush editions of the tabloids as well. Arian didn't seem the least bit distressed by the Prattler's depiction of her as a bug-eyed first cousin of E.T. but she was gazing intently at the cover of the Global Inquirer.

  "They're saying I might be this man's daughter," she said, her expression oddly earnest. "He looks like a pleasant enough fellow. Do you see a resemblance?" She held the cover next to her face to reveal a sulky young Elvis in the prime of his prepolyester career.

  Tristan's cynical laug
h was curbed by the wistful note in her voice. He curled his upper lip in a sneer that rivaled Elvis's to hide its jarring effect on him. "Let me guess. You've forgotten your father's name as well."

  She lowered the paper, meeting his gaze evenly. "I don't believe I ever knew it."

  Tristan would have found her confession less disturbing if it had been tainted by even a hint of his own bitterness. Eager to escape her large, liquid eyes, he strode over to the wall, his temper so feverish the automatic sensors sent the closet doors shooting open with a whoosh instead of a hiss.

  He snatched down the handsome Panama he'd bought to wear on the beach at Martinique during a vacation he'd never found the time to take, marched back across the room, and tossed it into Arian's lap. "Pull a rabbit out of my hat."

  Cradling the hat between her palms, she peeped over the brim, then indulged him with the sort of cautious smile one might reserve for an escaped lunatic. "Well, now, I can't very well pull one out if you haven't put one in."

  He blinked at her, alarmed that her logic was starting to make sense to him. "I don't want you to pull out a rabbit that's already there. I want you to conjure one up out of thin air like bad magicians have been doing for centuries." He nodded toward the hat. "Go on. Snap your fingers. Twitch your nose. Cross your arms and blink. I don't give a damn how you do it, but if you can pull a bunny out of that hat in the next five minutes, I'll call and have Copperfield cut you a check for one million dollars."

  Tristan was startled to realize he meant it. His carefully preserved peace of mind was worth more to him than a paltry million. He would forgo the satisfaction of proving this woman a fraud if he could just get her out of his life. And his bed.

  She glanced at him, then back at the hat as if she were warring with some powerful temptation. One of her hands fluttered toward her chest and that unusual necklace of hers before curling into a fist and falling back to her lap.