“Really,” she told him. And he nodded, though she didn’t think he believed her. “So what are you doing here? Is it about the class?”
“Yes.” His lips thinned, and he tipped his head back, looked at the deep blue sky beyond the glass ceiling, then lowered it again, shoving one hand backward through his luminous, honey-coated hair. “No.”
Brigit tilted her head. “Which is it?”
“I...” He licked his lips, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You didn’t want to take the class anyway. Did you?”
She lowered her head to hide the jolt those words caused her. He was too perceptive. How could she ever hope to deceive him? She wondered what had brought him here, and wished she had the powers Sister Mary Agnes had woven into the fairytale. She’d simply wave her hands and whisper a mystical chant, and she’d be given instant access to his mind, his home. To his life. To his painting.
He was a frightening man. Such conflicting emotions passing through those eyes of his. From near reverence to wariness and suspicion when he looked at her. And always that old, well-worn anger simmering just below the surface. Crossing him would not be pleasant. Especially if he caught on. And fooling him would not be easy.
She fingered the pendant she wore, and ordered herself to calm down.
He was looking around the greenhouse now, turning slowly, so she could better appreciate the lines of his face. Harsh and angular. A straight Roman nose and wide-set almond-shaped eyes. He had the eyes of a wizard, she thought. Hypnotic, mesmerizing. Eyes like an oracle. They seemed capable of seeing everything, right to the soiled hubs of her soul. And the thick, sensual lips...the ones she’d tasted so often in her dreams.
He turned then, caught her staring at his mouth, and one corner of it twitched. His eyes registered sensual awareness, followed by a flare of alarm. Both of which he concealed almost immediately. “This is quite a place.”
She thought of her mission, thought of the classified ad Zaslow had shown her. And tried not to think about Adam’s lips, and not to look at his eyes.
“Thanks. It better be, I guess. I’m stuck here for a few weeks. That’s why I wasn’t opening today, in fact. I need time to pack up some things . . .” She let her voice trail off as his sharp eyes narrowed, probing hers. And she couldn’t help it when she looked away.
“Why’s that?” he asked, his voice soft and wary. As if he were fully expecting—even awaiting—the lie she was about to tell.
She was not a good liar. She’d always been far better at thievery and forgery than outright, face-to-face deception. Her entire life, as far back as she could remember, she’d never been able to tell a lie to someone’s face without seeing Sister Mary Agnes, arms crossed over the front of her black habit, one foot tapping the floor, staring her down until she squirmed. For a while, she’d seen that vision face to face. Now she only saw it in her mind, but it was no less effective. She writhed inside.
“Radon,” she blurted.
Oh, yes. She’d nearly forgotten the other reason she never lied. Because she was so utterly terrible at it.
He crooked that one golden brow again, his eyes still piercing her. “Radon?”
She nodded, turning away from his knowing stare, absently straightening the amaryllis at her right, letting her eyes drink in the perfection of its large white trumpets rather than face this man as she lied to him. “My house is built over an old shale bed, and it turns out there’s radon seeping into the basement. It causes cancer, you know.”
“I remember hearing that somewhere.”
Of course he did, she thought. It was last week’s lead topic on “20/20.” “I have to move out until it’s safe again.”
“That shouldn’t take long, should it? A couple of days, maybe?”
She paused, biting her lip, her back still to him. “Well, then there’s all that construction. The entire basement needs to be...er...radon-proofed.”
“Of course it does,” he said, and the sarcasm was so subtle, she couldn’t be sure it was there.
She grated her teeth, and made herself face him, trying to read his eyes, but he’d put up some kind of invisible shield. One she thought was as effective as the glasses she wore. She was shocked that his eyes told her nothing. That had never happened to her before.
“I don’t suppose you’ve considered staying in a hotel?”
She shook her head quickly. “Can’t afford it. All that construction and all...” He probed again, silencing her, but this time she held his gaze. She was determined to see whether he believed a word she’d said, or was just letting her make a fool of herself for his amusement. And still his eyes revealed nothing.
Except that, bathed in the sunlight streaming down from above, they turned from dark, mesmerizing sapphire, to a lighter shade with flecks of turquoise appearing here and there.
“Your shop is nice,” he put in. “But it’s small. Where are you going to sleep?”
She shrugged. “I’ll just spread a sleeping bag on the floor.”
He drew a breath, shook his head. He looked into her eyes, probed, then looked away again. “Are you going to tell me it’s a coincidence, Brigit?”
She heard a ripple of anger in the words, but oddly enough, it sounded more like a plea. “Coincidence?”
“Just yesterday I placed an ad in the Ithaca Times. Room and board, cheap, or in exchange for light housework. I don’t suppose you saw it?”
He wouldn’t release her gaze. She tried to look away and couldn’t. He knew she’d seen that ad. He knew she was fishing for an invitation. God, he saw right through her!
“Yes,” she admitted. She faced him squarely, waiting for the disdain to appear in his eyes. It didn’t. There was relief instead. Silent gratitude for something as simple as the truth. Impulsively, she added more. “To be honest, that’s why I came to the university. Not for the class. Just to...”
“Check me out.”
Lips thinning, she nodded. Now that he knew she’d lied to him, she’d never get into his house. God, how could she save Raze now?
“And what’s the verdict?”
Her head came up fast, and she bit her lip. “What?”
“Do I pass inspection, Brigit? Am I the kind of man you think you could...live with?” There was a slight tilt of his lips, as if he were trying to lighten things up. But it didn’t reach his eyes. They were more intense than ever, and she had the feeling the question meant a lot to him.
“You mean...you’d let me?”
“Assuming you have time for a little light housework. With the shop to run and all, maybe you’d rather not...”
“No! I mean...yes.” Her voice softened. “Yes, I’ll have time. I’ll make time. I have to...”
God, if she wasn’t careful he’d see how vital this was to her! She cleared her throat, met his eyes, shivered at the potency of the impact whenever she held his gaze for more than an instant. It was electric. Magic. Reviving her forbidden dreams of him, and making her body shudder with awareness and raw, erotic hunger. Their gazes held for far too long. She was reading things in his eyes, and showing him things in hers...things that shouldn’t pass between strangers. Unspoken longings and erotic promises. All slipping from somewhere inside her before her conscious mind regained control. She blinked rapidly, embarrassed at the intensity of that long glance. From the corner of her eye, she saw him give his head a fast shake, as if trying to wake himself up from a brief slumber.
“Akasha’s hours are a little unorthodox,” she said, to cover the awkwardness. “We open in the afternoon and close at eleven p.m. It seems to fit the schedules of the students much better than nine to five would. I have free time in the mornings.”
He nodded, seemingly lost in confusion. Chaos. Determinedly keeping his gaze on the floor he said, monotone, “So would you like to see the place?”
When she didn’t answer because she was busy studying the way the sunlight illuminated the swirls of paler blond and darker gold in his hair, he looked up again, met her eyes. And for j
ust an instant she thought she saw knowledge in them. That he knew damned well she was still being less than honest.
A ripple of fear raced up her spine, into her nape, and she shivered involuntarily. How could he melt her soul with the heat and wanting in his eyes one minute, and chill her with suspicion and mistrust in his eyes the next?
He didn’t hold her gaze this time. It was a brief, chilly clash before he focused on the plants, feigning interest in them. “Well?” he went on. “Are you still interested?”
She paced slowly away from him, pushing one hand through her hair as if deep in thought. And then she turned to pace toward him again, stopping halfway, gnawing her lower lip, making him want to do the same. A lush begonia hung between them, its leafy, twisting strands interfering with his view of her, and for a second he resented it, because he enjoyed looking at her so much.
And then he went still, and he felt his blood slowly freeze over in his veins. Because he suddenly knew why she seemed so familiar to him. She was the woman in the painting. The woman he’d seen in his childhood delusion all those years ago. She was...
No! No, she couldn’t be. She was not the woman he’d obsessed about for the past twenty-five years. The resemblance was no more than coincidental. Because the thing that had instigated the obsession had never really happened. It was just a story he’d heard somewhere, and incorporated into his dreams. He hadn’t really seen this woman bathing in a pond in an enchanted forest. He hadn’t really been told that she was his fate. That she’d come into his life so he could show her the way home, and that if he fell in love with her, she’d break his heart.
But then again, he’d never really believed it had only been a dream, had he? Not deep down inside, where it counted. And right now, there wasn’t a kernel of doubt in his soul or body that this was her. It was only his practical mind that rebelled.
She turned to look at him from beyond the plant’s twisting vines. Just the way she had before, in the dream or vision or hallucination or whatever the hell it had been. His knees threatened to buckle and he couldn’t seem to draw another breath. In a second he’d be gasping. Chilled beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, and his goddamned hands were shaking.
And he suddenly remembered the question he’d asked her just now. Whether she’d come with him, to his home. Whether she’d stay for a while. And he was terrified she’d say yes, and just as terrified she wouldn’t.
His mind all but begged her to come with him. Into his home. It scared him, the amount of tension that coiled in his stomach as he awaited her answer. She’d lied to him, for God’s sake. And he had a feeling she still was, despite her uncanny resemblance to his lifelong fantasy. She wasn’t even a very good liar. Radon. Right.
But he’d taken the bait. Not because he’d believed her, but because he’d wanted to. And he supposed it was a good thing he did. Because when she looked into his eyes, he didn’t think there was a way in hell he could say no to her.
Christ, she hit him on so many levels she left his head spinning. She was his obsession. As if someone had breathed life into his childhood dream. As if a magic wand had been waved and she’d just walked right out of his head, and into his life. He’d searched for her for so long...
No. Not for her. For the source of that fantasy...the myth that had to have inspired it. You never searched for her!
Was that true? Because it certainly felt as if he’d been searching for her. He’d thought the painting was as close as he’d ever get to finding her. But now she’d stepped off the canvas. And he wasn’t capable of letting her just walk away. Not without knowing her, trying to find out what all of this meant.
On an entirely separate level, he resented her. Because she had this incredible power over him, and because she was lying. She was up to something. His need to know everything there was to know about her was something he understood. Her desire to entangle herself in his life, though, was baffling. Every defense mechanism he’d developed through the betrayals he’d been dealt had jumped to full alert. Alarm bells were going off in his head, warning him that he was walking right into yet another heartache.
And yet he was powerless to resist. When he wasn’t looking at her, he could convince himself that he was going in with his eyes wide open this time. But when he looked into those eyes he felt as if he’d tumbled headlong into a trance state, and that he’d be her willing slave for the rest of his life if she so much as asked it.
The effect she had on him reminded Adam sharply of the descriptions of fairies in that newly translated Celtic text, and countless others. The enchantments they could place on the man of their choice. The way he’d waste away from sheer unfulfilled longing. A passage of John Keats came to mind. Adam tried to shake it away.
Ridiculous!
And yet he heard the words echoing in his mind.
I met a Lady in the Meads Full beautiful, a faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light And her eyes were wild. I set her on my pacing steed And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend and sing A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna dew, And sure in language strange she said
“I love thee true.”
And there I shut her wild wild eyes,
With kisses four.
“La belle dame sans merci
Thee hath in thrall!”
She came toward him, touched his shoulder, and he jerked at the erotic impulse that hissed through him, shaking the verse from his mind. He’d never thought of his shoulder as an erogenous zone before.
“Adam?”
“Yes?”
Stop looking into her eyes. It’s that simple, just don’t look at her and you’ll be fine.
“Did you hear me?” she asked in a voice like silk. “I said I’d like to come with you.”
His vision blurred as he deliberately misinterpreted her words, and let himself fantasize, just for a second.
“To the house,” she added quickly, almost as if she could read the pictures in his mind. “To see the room.”
“I’ll take you,” he told her, and then he turned away, leaving her to interpret that whatever way she wanted. He headed for the door, his neck damp and prickly, and his heart doing things that might be described as palpitations.
“All right.”
She was with him, right beside him, and he hadn’t even heard her footsteps.
Her hair was long, her foot was light...
Shut up, he thought. Just shut the hell up, Keats.
Adam Reid didn’t live in a house. He lived in a fantasy. From the steep, curving drive to the majestic pines that lined it, to the electric-blue sky above. Beautiful. And when she caught sight of the house, she lost her breath. It reminded her of a medieval monastery, tall and square, and made entirely of huge blocks of reddish-brown stone. The house wore an ivy coat, Brigit noticed, and she thought it must need it to ward off the chill of all that stone. And then she frowned, because for just a second, looking at the rows of arched windows had felt a lot like looking into someone’s eyes. And what she’d read there had been sadness. An old hurt. Just like the one that lived within the soul of Adam Reid. The one he kept hidden beneath layer upon layer of bitterness, wariness, and anger.
“Here we are,” he said, pulling his aging Porsche to a halt and killing the motor. It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d left the Commons. There had been something in the car beside the two of them. An invisible, pulsing tension so tangible she thought it might be a living thing.
“It’s beautiful,” she told him. She opened her door and got out. And as soon as the wind hit her, she knew there was something very special about this place.
Beyond the house, she could see Cayuga Lake, its swirling waters stirred by the wind’s fingers. And to her left, a miniature mountain’s towering pines made love to the deep blue sky.
The girl she’d been so long ago seemed to yawn and stretch from her enforced slumber. Summoned to wakefulness by th
e magic of this place, perhaps. Brigit had managed to lock that wild thing away, to make her a prisoner of the controlled, responsible woman she’d become. But now the girl sniffed the scent of the lake and of the pines on the wind. And she suggested, in a mischievous whisper only Brigit could hear, that it would be wonderful to run barefoot through those tall grasses at the base of the hillside. To cartwheel and somersault all the way down that slope. To frolic naked in the lake, as its vigorous waves tossed her to and fro. Or to stand fully clothed in a rainstorm, right there on those cliffs that jutted out over the water.
For a moment, she envisioned herself doing just that. Standing on the cliffs, soaking wet, her hair whipped by the wind, her arms outspread as she welcomed the storm, taunted the lightning. It wasn’t the respectable owner of Akasha standing there in Brigit’s vision. It was an untamed hellion. And there was a glint in her eyes, and she was laughing aloud as she dared Adam Reid to take her in his arms and kiss her the way he really wanted to.
Brigit slammed her eyes shut, mentally thrusting the wild thing back into her cell and locking the door. There was no room in her life for that wanton anymore.
“Are you all right?”
Blinking him into focus, she managed a firm nod. She wasn’t all right. She was falling apart. God, where was her hard-won control now? Everything had been taken out of her hands! Raze’s well-being. Her own decision to become a mature, responsible, socially acceptable woman. Maybe even her ability to remain that way.
And her deeply rooted feelings for this man. Her dream man.
“You looked...odd.”
“It’s this place,” she said, and turned to look out over the water again. “It’s magical.”
“I used to think so.”
When she looked at him, one corner of his mouth had pulled into a sad, perhaps nostalgic smile.
“Come on. You’re going to have to see the inside before you decide.”
But she’d already decided. She’d stay here. Under any other circumstances, she’d have run from this place as fast as she could, and vowed never to return. It would be difficult to keep her facade in place here. Nature knew the wild thing inside her. Nature seemed to be calling to her, rousing her, and beckoning her to take over.
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