She closed her eyes, released a shuddering sigh. “I was so afraid...”
“It’s all right.” He sank to the floor beside her. It was a good spot. The night breeze rapidly filled the room with rain-washed air that swept through, whisking the smoke back outside with it before blasting more fresh air in.
She pressed close to his side, her head on his shoulder. “Sister Ruth told us to hold hands,” she whispered. “But I let go. I went back...for Sister Mary Agnes.”
A cold chill raced up his spine as she whispered the words, and he wasn’t certain she was even aware who she was talking to. His arms went around her in an effort to stop her shivering, but it didn’t work.
“B-but I couldn’t find her,” she said. “There was so much smoke...and then the flames...”
“There’s no fire, Brigit. You’re safe.” He clasped her nape, turned her head so he could look into her eyes. They were still closed, so tightly it was as if she were fighting not to see something. But he had a feeling she was seeing it anyway. “Open your eyes, Brigit. Dammit, look at me. There’s no fire, you understand?”
Her eyes opened, but he wasn’t sure if it was in response to his command or to her own nightmares. They opened wide. Too wide.
“I couldn’t get out! I couldn’t breathe!”
A lump came into his throat, so large he nearly choked on it. This was no dream. No nightmare. This was a real memory.
“You’re safe now,” he told her. He took her hands, pressed her palms to his own face. “Look at me, will you? It’s Adam. There’s no fire. You’re safe, Brigit.”
She blinked several times. “Adam...” She sat up a little straighter, searching his eyes, then she covered her face with her palms and muttered, “Oh, God, oh, God.” Her entire body shook with the force of her sobs. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and she rocked back and forth.
There was the slightest hesitation on Adam’s part. Slight...as his wariness kicked in to analyze her behavior. Real trauma, or clever ploy?
No. She wasn’t acting. Whatever was happening to her, or had happened to her, was real. And frightening. And like it or not, it was tearing his heart out to see her in this state.
Adam got to his feet and bent over her. He slipped one hand beneath her legs and one around her back, and he picked her up, took her to the bed. He lowered her onto it. She rolled to one side, her back to him, and drew herself into a little ball. She reminded him of the woolly bear caterpillars he used to search for as a child. The way they’d curl themselves up when he touched them. An act of self-preservation. She was every bit as scared right now as those insects had been. She trembled, and every few seconds a sob racked her body. She still clutched that book to her breast, whatever it was.
Adam swallowed hard. He looked at the door, even then knowing he couldn’t leave her. Not like this. He whispered a prayer to St. Francis of Assisi, and then he laid down on the bed beside her. He snagged a handful of covers, pulled them up to cover them both.
It was right. He knew it was a second later, when a sob choked her, and she turned to him. When she curled up against him, burying her face in the crook of his shoulder, pressing so close and curling her body up so tightly it was as if she’d like to crawl inside him. As if she’d like to hide there, from her memories.
And dammit, he knew that feeling all too well. He had a few memories of his own that could put him in a similar state. And he couldn’t turn away from another person who’d had a childhood full of nightmares. He couldn’t do it.
He wrapped her up in his arms and he held her, and all his pent-up breath left him in a rush. The rigidness left his shoulders and his spine. He stopped grating his teeth. This was right. This was where he needed to be, right now. He stopped fighting it, and let his instincts have free rein. His hands stroked her hair, and rubbed her back, and squeezed her tighter. He whispered to her that it was all right, that she was safe, that he wasn’t going anywhere.
Her trembling body relaxed in his arms. Her face lay tight to his unclothed chest. He felt her hot tears there, and her warm breath. He felt her quivering lips each time she parted them on a sob. The scent of her hair and that of her tears mingled to create a bittersweet perfume he’d remember always. Her skin slid beneath his hands like silk.
He kept it up until she cried herself to sleep.
And then he wondered what demon had possessed him to end up in bed with this woman. Was he so far gone that, even knowing she lied with nearly every breath, he was still this...this...
Enchanted.
Yeah, that was the word for it, all right. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was under an enchantment.
And maybe that’s exactly what it was. And maybe it was about time he remind himself that if all of this really were true, if his childhood fantasy had really happened, and if Brigit Malone were truly the woman he’d been shown...then lying here, holding her this way, was the stupidest thing he could do. Because it made him want more, and it made his heart go soft when it had been a solid lump of granite for such a long time. And he couldn’t let himself care for her. He couldn’t.
Because if this fairytale were true, he already knew the ending. And it wasn’t happily ever after.
He laid awake, bathed in her warmth and her nearness, telling himself to leave her alone and holding her tight in his arms, for the rest of the night.
“Adam...?”
Brigit lifted her head from the firm, warm, male cushion beneath it, and realized it was Adam’s naked chest. Her first impulse was to return her head to that wonderful pillow, after trailing her lips over it to see how it would taste.
Fortunately, she came a little more fully awake before giving in to that impulse.
“Oh,” she whispered, and then, more softly, “oh.”
His eyes were opened, clear, and focused on her face with a mingling of concern and awareness. “Yeah. You can say that again.”
They were incredibly dark this morning, his changeable eyes. Like the needles of a blue spruce on a cloudy day.
She remembered last night. The smell of smoke...the waking nightmare. And Adam, coming to her, holding her and making it all disappear. Her eyes widened as she thought of her book. The Fairytale. But a quick glance confirmed she’d tucked it back under her pillow as she did every night. She sighed and sat up, then belatedly clutched the blanket to her chest. Her choice of sleeping attire hadn’t been exactly modest.
“Too late, Brigit. I already have intimate knowledge of that nightie.”
She lowered her eyes, feeling her cheeks burn.
“Don’t be embarrassed. You look...incredible in it.”
“This shouldn’t have happened.” She spoke quickly, softly, keeping her eyes averted.
“Nothing happened, Brigit.”
“I slept in your arms.”
“Yeah. And I was warm until you moved away. Now I’m freezing.” He flung back the covers and surged to his feet, heading toward the wide open French doors. She couldn’t take her eyes from his scantily clad body...those hair-smattered thighs, hard as tree trunks, that small, compact butt covered only by a thin pair of boxers. The broad, smooth width of his shoulders. The way his golden hair touched his nape. The way it curled slightly there. The way she wanted to touch it.
He closed the French doors, and turned to face her. And the color of his eyes turned darker still. They took on a gleam she hadn’t seen before. He took a step toward the bed.
“I...I’m sorry,” she said softly. “About last night.”
“Don’t be.” He took another step.
She met his gaze, held it, and very slightly, she shook her head. “I can’t...”
He stopped in his tracks, blinking as if snapping out of some trance state. He lowered his chin to his chest, blew all the air from his lungs.
Then he came the rest of the way to the bed and sank onto the foot of it. No longer the predator. She wasn’t afraid of him now.
“Tell me something, Brigi
t,” he said, and he ran two hands back and forth through his hair roughly, as if it would somehow invigorate him. All it did was make the hair stick up like feathers. Make her long to smooth it down again. “How old were you when you got trapped in that fire?”
She closed her eyes. He knew it was real, and not a dream. There was no use denying it. She already knew he could see right through her lies. So she opened her eyes again, and met his. “Eight or nine.”
“Jesus.” He lifted his brows then, not asking, just waiting.
“It was an orphanage. St. Mary’s, in New York. Sister Mary Agnes...she was the one who used to tell me the story...she died that night.”
He was searching her face. For what, she wondered?
“But you got out.”
She nodded. “A homeless man who spent most of his time in the park across the street came into that hell and carried me out.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding,” she whispered. And as she did, she thought of Raze, and all he’d done for her. She adored him. There was nothing in this world she wouldn’t do to keep him safe.
And unfortunately, that included betraying the man who sat in his underwear on the foot of her bed, staring into her eyes as if he were seeing her for the first time.
Adam had left her in the bed. He still wasn’t sure how he’d worked up the will to do that, but he had. She’d been lying there looking sleepy and vulnerable, and very much as if she’d rather he stayed.
Right. And she’d told him things, things she’d been holding back before. And now maybe he had a jumping-off point. He had to know everything about her. He had to find a way to determine once and for all if there were even the slightest possibility she was...what he suspected she was. God, he couldn’t even complete the thought without feeling ridiculous.
But he had to know the truth. Before she destroyed him. Because if that was her goal, intentional or not, Adam was sorely afraid she was going to succeed.
Funny how a woman he was afraid would destroy him could manage to heal him while he awaited the killing blow. Because that’s what she was doing. He realized it this morning. It was the damnedest thing. She seemed to have the same effect on his heart that she had on his houseplants.
Pure, impossible magic.
Facts. He needed facts.
He sat in a booth at Hal’s Deli right now, across from the man who could get them for him.
“Don’t worry about the money, Adam. Look, you paid me plenty for trying to track down that lousy wife of yours, even though I offered to do it as a favor, and even though I wasn’t able to find her for you.”
“Successful or not, you put a lot of time into tracing her, Mac. What kind of friend would let you do all that for nothing?”
“Yeah, well, I’m doing better now. The business is thriving. Anything you need I’ll do at no charge.” He looked Adam in the eye, his expression intense. “I mean it. You offer me a dime, I’ll blacken your eye. You’re my best friend. Just tell me what you want.”
Adam nodded, admitting defeat. “Thanks, Mac.”
“So what’s up?”
He sighed, feeling inexplicably guilty for what he was about to do. “She goes by the name of Brigit Malone,” he said finally. “And she spent some time in a shelter called St. Mary’s, in New York. I take it she was an orphan. She mentioned that she might have a twin sister, but that she doesn’t know for sure. There was a fire at St. Mary’s while she was there. Burned the place to the ground. Now she owns a shop on the Commons. Akasha. And that’s just about every goddamn thing I know about her.”
Except, he added silently, that she loves the rain. And that having her around seems to make dying houseplants thrive. And that her eyes...
He gave his head a shake. He also knew her address. And that she’d lied about the construction going on there. He gave Mac the former.
“But you’d like to know more?”
He nodded, and took another sip of the best coffee in the state of New York. “Yeah. Everything you can dig up, okay?”
“You got it, Adam. It would help if I could see her. Do you have a photo?”
“No.” But I have a painting, he added silently.
“Well, could you arrange for us to run into each other somewhere?”
“You could come to the house” Adam suggested, barely following the conversation. Why, when she was the one lying to him every time she opened her pretty mouth—probably—was he feeling guilty for asking a P.I. to check her out? Why?
“Oh, that’ll work,” Mac said. “Assuming she’s brain dead.”
Adam frowned, trying to get his mind on the matter at hand. “Hmm?”
“If she’s plotting something, she’ll have reason to be suspicious of me, Adam. And if she is, and she has something to hide, she might take measures to keep it hidden.”
“Oh.”
“So take her out somewhere. Some university function or other. There’s always something going on, isn’t there?”
“Yeah. There’s always something,”
“Adam, are you okay?”
He met the other man’s eyes, and nodded. “So far.”
“If you’re so sure she’s lying to you, why the hell don’t you just toss her out?”
He shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t explain it, Mac, but—”
“Don’t put yourself through this again, pal.”
He met his best friend’s eyes. The concern he saw there was genuine. He wished he could tell Mac everything, but he knew he’d sound totally insane.
“Look,” he said at last, changing the subject. “There’s a thing tonight. Cocktail party for university alumni, to kick off a fund raiser. Starts at nine. Okay?”
Mac sighed, but shrugged in resignation. “Okay. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can find out about her.”
“Thanks.”
Mac slid out of the booth, apparently out of reasons to stay and try to talk some sense into Adam. He could be overprotective of his friends. It irritated some of them, but Adam saw it for what it was. Genuine caring. The guy felt things deep. Especially loyalty. His friends were lucky people.
Adam lingered after Mac had gone. He still had time left on his lunch break. Customers came and went, sat and ate, chatted and read their newspapers. But he wasn’t seeing them. More and more, he saw only one face in his mind. A face far too innocent to be involved in trickery or deceit. Maybe too beautiful even to be merely mortal. If she’d lied her way into his life, then it was only because he’d let her. And he would let her remain, because he was so desperate to find out her true connection to the tale that seemed to have been a part of her childhood as much as his own. And its connection to the painting that hung over his mantel and haunted his thoughts.
He still had to know those things. But now...he had to know them before she managed to lie—or to enchant—her way right into his heart.
It scared the hell out of him to admit, she already had a pretty decent start.
The way it was going, she’d be finished within a day or two. Brigit was more careful when she carried the canvas up the stairs this time. She’d worked on it most of the day, and barely given the paint any drying time at all before she’d had to move it. Dangerous, lugging a wet painting around like this. It could smudge or smear.
But it didn’t. Not this time.
She heard a car out front, and looking down at her paint stained fingertips, she panicked. But then she narrowed her eyes, tilted her head, and listened closely. And she knew the sound wasn’t coming from Adam’s Porsche.
Wiping her hands with a soft rag, she continued down the curving staircase, hearing the doorbell now. She dropped the rag on a table as she passed, and went to open the front door.
Zaslow stood there leering at her.
Brigit gasped. “What are you doing here?”
His smile was slow and deliberate. “Came to check on your progress, Brigit. Wouldn’t want to think you were pulling one over on me.”
Brigit ignored him,
her gaze shooting past him to where his car sat in the driveway.
“Raze isn’t there. You think I’d be stupid enough to bring him along?”
“Where is he? Is he all right?”
“Relax, Brigit. He’s fine. And as long as you do what you’re told, he’ll continue to be fine.” His hands snatched hers without warning, and his grip was unnecessarily cruel as he lifted them, turned her palms up, and examined her fingers. She tried to pull free, but he was too strong. And he smiled at the paint stains still visible on her fingertips.
“Looks like you’ve been a good little forger, Brigit. How much longer?”
“Let go...dammit, Zaslow, you’re hurting me. I said let go!” Her words were firm, and delivered as commands as she tried to twist her hands free of his grip.
He smiled fully, but the smile died a second later. A large hand came down on Zaslow’s shoulder, jerking him backward, out of the doorway, so he stumbled on the stairs. He released his grip on her, more out of surprise, she thought, than anything else. She was surprised herself.
“Adam,” Brigit breathed.
He didn’t look at her. His eyes blazed with midnight-blue fire, and they were all Zaslow’s. At some point, she wasn’t certain when, he’d grabbed a handful of the other man’s shirt, and held it now, bunched in his fists.
“When a lady tells you to let go,” he said, his voice dangerously soft, “you let go. Got it?”
“You misunderstood, mister. Brigit and I are old friends...” Zaslow tried to wrest himself free. Adam finally let go, but did so with a little shove that sent Zaslow the rest of the way down the front steps.
Adam glanced her way, one brow lifted in question.
“Tell him, Brigit,” Zaslow said, and she grimaced, ready to declare that the very sight of him made her skin crawl. But before she got a word out, he added, “Raze wouldn’t want you to bad-mouth me. You know he wouldn’t.”
The fury that had been bubbling inside her froze, and slowly turned into fear. The bastard had her firmly in his control. She had to say and do exactly what he told her, or dear, sweet Raze would suffer for it. Damn Zaslow for using a helpless old man this way. Damn him for this!
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