Once Upon a Valentine

by Stephanie Bond

  As if some underage clerk in a dusty old store would have even understood if you’d told him. Of course he wouldn’t, no more than most others on Earth would. They believed her world was a fantasyland made up of fairy dust, talking frogs and moonbeams. They had no idea fairy dust was toxic if ingested, talking frogs were often possessed by the evil spirits of dead witches, and full moonbeams brought out the beast in many locals.

  But this man, this irritatingly sexy man—who she’d seen once, buying that silly heart-shaped box, and then had the strangest dreams about for the next two nights—would recognize it. He’d know it was important. And he might refuse to give it back.

  Or, stealing it might have been his objective all along.

  There was one way to find out, even if it was risky. “I say it is my property. If you want to stop me from taking it back you’re going to have to hurt me. Which doesn’t go very well with that ‘protection’ job you claim to have undertaken.”

  “I could stop you without hurting you,” he said, his eyes gleaming in the faint shafts of moonlight. “Or, at the very least, distract you enough that you wouldn’t care anymore.”

  The hint of a smile on his sexy mouth and the thorough stare he raked down her body told her where his thoughts had gone. Ashlynn had to swallow hard, feeling that stare as if it was a touch. Like one of the many touches he’d given her during her long, heated dreams—the most sensual she’d ever experienced.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she whispered.

  He inched closer, though the satchel remained behind his back. She would have to step close to that rock-hard body and reach around him to try to get it. It’s not going to happen.

  “I can’t not think about it. I’ve lived next door to you for weeks. Listening to you roll over in that creaky motel bed. Hearing you try to sing in the shower.”

  She gasped when she realized he’d been right there, beneath her nose, and but for that one visit to the store, she had never even noticed him.

  He lifted a hand to her hair. “Smelling your scent in the air as I walked ten steps behind you.”

  Ashlynn trembled. Tried to breathe, but found it difficult. But not because she felt threatened—she didn’t fear physical assault from this man. If that had been his intent, he’d had his chance when he’d had her hunched to the ground, at his mercy. No, this assault would be purely sensual. Provocative.

  Possibly irresistible.

  It had been a long time since a man had sent a rush of heat through her, making her feel slightly dizzy, weak in the knees. He’d done it on first sight. Now, close up, he was truly causing her world to spin beneath her feet.

  “Don’t come any closer,” she ordered when he eliminated another inch of space between them.

  “What’s in the bag?” he whispered.

  She swallowed, hard. “That’s none of your business.”

  “Then I guess you won’t be getting it back anytime soon,” he said, his smile almost pleasant. “Unless you want to take it.”

  He sounded confident that she wouldn’t, as if he could seduce her right out of her property. Damn him.

  Was he right? She did feel so strange, so unlike herself. Unsure. It’s because you know he’s dangerous.

  Maybe. Or it could be because he was so incredibly sure of himself. Or because he’d possibly just saved her life.

  Or because he was so unbelievably handsome.

  Mind-numbingly so, with dark blue eyes made almost purple by the night. She hadn’t seen his eyes on that previous occasion and had been imagining them brown. But no, they were like the richest shade of royal velvet.

  They were striking against his thick, jet-black hair, which hung a little long, almost brushing his shoulders. His strong, squared jaw hinted at determination, while the faint stubble on it invited thoughts of lazy mornings and the rasp of skin on skin. And his wide mouth, which held a hint of a smile, was the kind women longed to taste on sight—soft, sexy, wry and inviting.

  Damn.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head, wondering if the rich air was affecting her. It certainly wasn’t like her to start picturing illicit touches and caresses with a stranger.

  Moonlit madness. And the lingering effects of dreams she should never have had. That was all. She was back in Elatyria, where everything seemed magical, mystical. Not like Earth, so dull, blunt and immediate. Here, fantasy and reality merged and swirled together. A brigand who stole from her could almost seem like the hero she’d fantasized about since she was a child hearing her father’s stories of fair maids and the noble men who rode to their rescue. Here, a paid adventurer—possibly a thief—could suddenly seem like the man of her dreams.

  Well, all right, he was the man of her dreams. But only in the literal sense.

  She opened her eyes, seeing the way his mouth had opened as he drew a slow, steady breath across his lips. His eyes gleamed with wickedness and his big, hard body was dressed in clothes more suited to a pirate than a prince.

  That should have been enough to end her mental wondering. Instead, it heightened it. Because, to her, pirates had always been ever so much more interesting than boring Prince Charmings.

  The long stare continued. His eyes hunted her face for a clue to what she was thinking. But there was no way she would reveal it. Finally, though, she focused only on her quest, on how hard she’d worked and how far she’d come. No way was some sexy rogue going to deter her from finishing what she’d started.

  She stiffened her jaw, determined not to show the thoughts he’d inspired with his casual, sensual threat. Then, unsure whether she was driven more by anger or desperation, she bit out the words, “Give. Me. My. Bag.”

  Her tone, or perhaps her unflinching expression, apparently convinced him. He finally lowered the satchel and let her take it. “You win.”

  She sighed in relief. She’d done it, convinced him she was unaffected by him, that he couldn’t charm his way into revealing her secrets. Maybe he wasn’t convinced. Maybe it’s all a trick.

  “I can’t force you to trust me. Though, you could give me the benefit of the doubt since I just saved your life.”

  Her life. Could someone really be prepared to kill her for a few torn pieces of parchment? No, of course not for the parchment. For the castle to which those torn pieces of parchment led. And what was, supposedly, in that castle.

  Legend said the Sleeping Beauty’s family had been so anxious to leave the castle that they’d left behind their treasures. It sounded silly, but if they really had been asleep for centuries, they might have believed everything around them was touched by the dark curse that had left them there to rot. That was one theory, anyway. Another theory was that it was not true, that they would have taken an hour or two to pack up the good stuff.

  Frankly, Ashlynn subscribed to the latter idea. It seemed incongruous to her that any ancient kings—notorious gold grubbers as they were—would have left something precious behind.

  But whether she believed it or not, men had killed for less than a castle full of treasure. And they might kill you just for the chance to find out it’s there.

  “Okay, princess, we should cover a little more ground.”

  She fell into step beside him. “I’m no princess.”

  Flexing his hand, which was reddened from her bite, he replied, “No, I guess you’re not. Princesses don’t fight dirty.”

  She snorted. “Nobody fights dirtier than a princess in a world where they outnumber the princes two to one.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because stupid princes are always trying to find a way to prove their manhood, so they go out and try to slay dragons or capture hydras and get themselves chomped into tiny bits.”

  A hint of a smile appeared on his lips. “I meant, why were you willing to fight so hard when you could end up getting hurt?”

  “You wouldn’t have hurt me,” she insisted.

  “No, I wouldn’t have. How’d you figure it out?”

  “Intuition, I s
uppose.”

  “That and I’m slightly less intimidating than the knife-wielding wonder-thug back in the village?”

  She chuckled. If he were like most men she knew, he would be acting sulky or angry that she’d managed to get her bag back without telling him anything. Instead, he seemed good-humored. “Well, at least you’re cleaner than he was.”

  “Wow. Thanks.”

  “And you don’t have a black eye and blackened teeth.”

  “His teeth weren’t black. That was just a big giant hole where they used to be.”

  “What did his two companions look like?” she asked.

  “During your Disney-movie marathon on Earth, did you happen to catch Alice In Wonderland?”

  She sneered. “I did. Ridiculous. As if the Queen of Hearts’s courtiers were giant-size playing cards!”

  “Did you happen to notice Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee?”

  “You mean that’s what the other two men looked like?” That didn’t sound too threatening.

  “Not exactly. More like Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee’s mom had sex with a giant and produced Tweedle Dangerous and Tweedle Deadly. They’re each at least seven feet tall with big bodies, tiny heads and lots of scars. They have mean scowls but soft voices, which, in my world, means that like Alice, they’ve been popping some ‘eat me and you’ll grow’ pills.”

  “Oh, dear,” she murmured.

  “Speaking of Disney movies and Earth, what exactly were you doing over there for so long, anyway?”

  “Looking for something.”

  “In every bookstore in Philadelphia, yeah, I know.”

  “How do…oh, right. You were following me.” She wrinkled her nose, surprised she’d been oblivious to his shadowing. Then again, she had been in another world. Everything had felt strange and unusual, so maybe that was why the presence of a secret bodyguard hadn’t stuck out.

  “What was it you were looking for?”

  “That’s classified.”

  He chuckled. “You watched some spy movies while you were there, didn’t you?”

  She couldn’t deny it. “That James Bond, he’s a scary man, isn’t he?”

  “You went to a Bond flick?”

  “There was a—what do you call it?—a movie marathon? It was on the television at the hotel once when I had nothing to do.”

  He hesitated, then asked, “You do know those movies are fictional, don’t you? I mean, you didn’t really think one guy went from looking like Sean to Roger to Timothy to Pierce to Daniel…but was always the same man, right?”

  She waved a hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I know that. But considering your people have fictionalized so much about my world, who’s to say Mr. Bond doesn’t exist on yet another plane of reality that neither of us knows about? Personally, I hope there’s one where that little boy wizard lives. I quite enjoyed those books during my recent stay.”

  He paused midstep. “Touché. I never thought of that.”

  Pleased that he didn’t immediately tell her she was wrong, like one of her colleagues had when she’d dared to suggest there might be more than two worlds, she smiled and continued. “He could be utterly real and might very well watch movies in his world about men walking on the moon and think they’re the most ridiculous thing he’s ever seen.” Then she thought about it, tapped her fingertip on her mouth and added, “Of course, that’s also what most people here think.”

  “Hey, don’t sweat it. A lot of people on Earth think that, too. They’re called conspiracy theorists,” he said with a grin.

  She liked that grin. Liked his laugh. Liked that they were walking through the forest in the darkness of night, utter strangers—well, at least, he was a stranger to her—yet she was actually enjoying herself.

  She could like this man. A lot. Which would normally be a good thing. But when combined with the heated attraction she’d felt for him at first sight, was probably a bad one instead.

  “Now back to what you were looking for....”

  Or, maybe she couldn’t like him. He was far too persistent.

  “Does it have something to do with a book?”

  Figuring he wasn’t going to let up unless she gave him something, she admitted, “I was researching two brothers named Grimm. They visited Elatyria centuries ago and caused all sorts of mayhem.”

  “Uh, yeah,” he drawled. “I’ve heard of them.”

  “It was bad enough for them to share Elatyria’s history as make-believe stories on Earth, but they also created mischief here.”

  Including terrifying children with ridiculous tales of an evil time called the Inquisition.

  That was one bad part of visiting Earth. She could have happily gone through her whole life without discovering that those Inquisition stories were true. And people thought the ancient practice of sacrificing virgins to dragons was barbaric? Yeesh.

  She shook off the images she’d seen in an Earthen textbook, focusing on the success of her trip. Now, she felt nothing but gratitude toward the Grimms. She suspected it was one of them who’d hidden the map piece between the lining of one of their own books, where she had discovered it.

  “By the way, how do you know so much about Elatyria?” she asked. “Obviously you’ve been here before.”

  He reached out and swept a jagged branch out of their way. “My parents were from here.”

  That surprised her. “Really? And they…emigrated?”

  “Yeah. They were from different villages and were told who they had to marry, all that stuff. So they ran away together.”

  Interesting. What would it be like, she wondered, to love someone so much you’d move to another world to be with them?

  “You doing okay? I know you’ve been walking all day.”

  She glanced at the sky, gauging the passage of time. “I’m fine. And I think we’ve gone far enough, don’t you?”

  “How far’s far enough?”

  “Far enough that we’re safe to wait here until those three Hunters drink too much ale and fall into such a deep sleep that they won’t notice me sneaking back into the village.”

  “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear,” he said, stopping. His chin was thrust out and his brow pulled down, all evidence of good humor gone. “We’re not going back to that village. We’re heading the other way—toward Riverdale. You’ll get home, I’ll get paid, and we can say sayonara.”

  Ashlynn tried not to feel a twinge of sadness that he so easily talked of saying…whatever the word was that he’d said, which she assumed meant farewell. But she forced the sensation away, angry at herself for getting distracted by his easy manner and friendly charm. Not to mention his appearance.

  “You hear me, princess?”

  “Stop calling me ‘princess.’ I’m a historian.”

  “You hear me, historian?”

  “I heard you.” Spying a big, graceful white pine, Ashlynn walked to it, then lowered herself to the soft cushion of fallen needles below. It would do for a bed. It couldn’t be any worse than that creaky, lumpy one she’d slept in for the last thirty nights. Had she been a real princess, she would have been black-and-blue after sleeping on that thing. She didn’t imagine it had any peas beneath it—it felt more like boulders.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking a rest.” She lay down on her side, hugging her bag close. “I’ll sleep for a while, then head back to the village in a few hours.”

  “But I just said…”

  “I heard you. Still, I am going back there.” Knowing he wouldn’t let it go, she explained, “I left something there when I passed through last month, something I need very badly. And I intend to go get it.”

  His mouth dropped open. “You’re crazy.”

  “No. Just determined. Now you can go, with my thanks. Your warning came in time and I appreciate it. But there’s nothing you can say that will stop me from going back to Foxglen.”

  He thrust a hand through his thick, black hair, frustration rolling off him. As if he just wa
sn’t used to anyone—any woman—refusing to do whatever he desired.

  You might not be refusing if he desired something else.

  She pushed that thought away. This man might have been friendly and protective, but he was still a stranger. And, judging by his readiness to say goodbye, a disinterested one.

  Expecting him to leave, she was shocked to see him drop onto another pile of needles, muttering a curse. “Look, lady. I don’t get the rest of my money unless you get safely home. So, if you’re going back to that village, I’m going to have to go, too.”

  She opened her mouth to refuse, not liking that some unknown entity had hired this man to take care of her. Was it someone from the museum? Or perhaps someone sent by Queen Penelope, who had shown great support for the arts, history and science since reclaiming her family’s throne?

  “This man who paid you, what was he like?”

  “Old. Long gray beard, but well dressed.”

  A face appeared in her mind. “This man, did he sneeze a lot?”

  Raine chuckled. “Yeah, he went through a half-dozen handkerchiefs during our single conversation.”

  That cinched it. Uncle Edgar, her father’s closest friend—Ashlynn’s own godfather—was one of the few who knew about her quest. He’d wanted to be her escort, but his health wouldn’t allow it. He’d obviously still found a way to get to Earth and make sure she was looked after. “I know who it was.”

  “Care to fill me in?”

  “A dear old family friend who knows what I’m working on and was worried.”

  That was very nice of him. But, as much as she appreciated the thoughtfulness, that didn’t mean she was happy about having this man, Raine, second-guessing her every move. She’d been raised to be independent, to think for herself, not to be one of those silly females who needed a man for every little thing.

  Though, she suspected it wasn’t a little thing she needed from this man. In fact, she imagined it was a big thing. A very big one, given how big and masculine he was everywhere else.

  Stop it. He’s not interested. That was very obvious.