Daddy Warlock

by Jacqueline Diamond

  A smile softened Chance’s face. Warmth flooded Tara as she realized she had said the right thing.

  Neither Lois nor Ray appeared satisfied, however, and the conversation lagged. As they said good-night, she gathered the dinner hadn’t gone as they hoped.

  When she and Chance were in the car, she said, “Your father must hold a very high opinion of you, to bring so much pressure to bear.”

  “I wish he would take your advice.” There was resignation and sadness in his voice. “The man just doesn’t know when to quit.”

  “My father quits too easily,” Tara said.

  “My mom was the one who quit too easily in our family.” Chance’s eyes glittered in the. dark. “She left when I was a child, completely cut off contact. I don’t even know where she is.”

  “Have you tried to find her?”

  He let out a low breath. “No. I respect her privacy. And I suspect my father might have been pressuring her to do something unethical. I just hope she didn’t regret giving birth to me.”

  “What a terrible thought!” Tara couldn’t imagine why he would even think such a thing.

  “They didn’t marry for love,” Chance explained. “Tara, listen. My family is unusual. It may be hard to grasp, but I want to come clean with you.”

  After tonight’s uncomfortable dinner with his cousin and father, Tara wasn’t sure how much she wanted to hear. Still, she treasured the fact that Chance was taking her into his confidence. “Is it anything like your aunt Cynda and her crystal ball?”

  “Quite a bit like that,” he agreed.

  “Well, if I had a crystal ball, I’d say you were going to hit somebody unless you quit swerving around in your lane,” griped the car’s computer.

  “I wasn’t swerving—much,” said Chance.

  “Look out!” cried the car as the traffic ahead stopped suddenly and Chance had to slam on the brakes. “You see what I mean?”

  He turned to Tara. “I’ll tell you what Let’s continue this discussion where I don’t have to watch out for traffic. There’s a whirlpool bath on my private patio. Do you feel like a soak?”

  Now that he mentioned it, her shoulders ached from bending over the computer that afternoon. “I’d love it,” she said.

  LURING TARA into his whirlpool bath by moonlight probably hadn’t been the best idea in the world, Chance scolded himself as he stepped out of his bathroom wearing black trunks. He’d been so preoccupied by the conversation at dinner that he hadn’t considered the ramifications of getting her alone at night in scanty clothing.

  He simply wanted an uninterrupted chance to explain what was going on, and to unwind after that tense dinner. It was time to take another step toward her acceptance of Harry as he really was.

  It troubled him that Ray had learned of the boy’s existence. If he knew the truth, he would almost certainly try to subvert Harry’s talents to his own advantage. But Chance didn’t intend for his father to find out about the boy’s parentage.

  Tara had come through like a trooper. Even without understanding the subtext of the discussion, she’d given Ray the right answer about letting children choose their own path. Chance wished his father could grasp the principle that other people, including one’s offspring, were not objects to be exploited.

  He only hoped Lois would stop hero-worshiping his father before she got sucked irrevocably into his way of thinking. Still, she was an adult and had to make her own decisions.

  A tap at the door of his suite drew Chance from his reverie. He swallowed hard at the sight of Tara standing there in a one-piece russet swimsuit with a towel tossed over her shoulder.

  He didn’t need the sight of her to remind him of her inviting shape. His senses were imprinted with every detail of those firm small breasts, the slender waist and the long legs with their slightly angular knees.

  What he’d forgotten was the golden sheen of her skin by lamplight and the vulnerability in her face. Then there was the dangerous way his thoughts kept thrusting into her mind. Already he could feel the heat that flared inside her at his nearness.

  Drawing on his self-taught discipline, Chance visualized a glass wall forming between the two of them. As he did so, the air abruptly chilled.

  Tara took a dazed step backward, her expression as startled as if a door had slammed in her face. She didn’t seem angry about the sudden withdrawal, however. In fact, she looked embarrassed. “I keep getting the feeling I’m dozing off while I’m wide awake. I’ll have to make a point of catching up on my sleep.”

  “A hot soak ought to relax you.” Taking her arm, Chance guided her through the French doors onto the shrubbery-enclosed patio.

  Touching her made his pulse race, and again he got the sense of reaching into her mind and seeing through her eyes. Steam beckoned from the large whirlpool bath, and the tiles underfoot reminded her of the hotel where she and her girlfriend had stayed on a weekend trip to Mexico.

  Resolutely, he re-formed the glass wall. Tara shivered. “I didn’t notice how breezy it was.”

  “The cold makes the pool feel even better,” he advised, and switched on the jets.

  Dropping her towel, Tara lowered herself into the water and slid down until it reached her chin. Wisps of hair floated around her like a halo.

  Chance caught an image, a far memory, of Tara playing in a forest stream. Sunlight and leaf shadows dappled her bare breasts as she floated on her back, lazily gesturing him to join her. Not Tara. Ardath.

  He settled into the hot water, as far from her as the pool allowed. Having an honest chat was going to be difficult if he kept muddying it up with past lives. For once, Chance wished he were just an ordinary guy who could fall in love without a lot of complications.

  Except he didn’t dare fall in love. Given the unresolved passions of their previous existence, there was no telling what might result. Their goal must be to safeguard their son’s development.

  “You may be wondering what my father was getting at tonight”, he said.

  She shifted, sending ripples stroking up Chance’s thighs and right to his masculine center. “I gather he believes in intuition, and particularly in yours.”

  That had been perceptive of her, he reflected, trying to ignore the way his body responded to her nearness. “Yes, intuition, that’s a good name for it. Everyone possesses it to one degree or another.”

  “But your work is based on keeping track of trends and developments,” Tara said. “I guess the subconscious mind makes creative leaps but—”

  “There’s a lot we don’t know about how our minds work.” Chance knew he would have a better shot at persuading her if he used logic. “There have always been people who seemed able to predict how others would behave. It’s too bad scientists haven’t found a reliable way to test their skills.”

  “Maybe they just pay more attention to the subtle clues that we all give off.” She stretched, not seeming to notice how the movement displayed her body to advantage. There was nothing calculated about Tara.

  Ironically, Chance realized, he could view her more clearly through this imaginary barrier than when their minds touched. From a distance, he could appreciate her with pure masculine delight, as he would any other woman—or rather, no other woman that he had met. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

  Still, he couldn’t allow himself to dwell on how much he wanted her. He had an obligation to help Tara understand the new world she had entered that Halloween night seven years ago, the world to which she was now bound irrevocably through her son.

  “Scientists tend to discredit what they don’t understand,” he said. “The West denied for a long time that Eastern mystics could control their heartbeat and blood pressure. Now we routinely use biofeedback to do exactly that.”

  “So your father thinks intuition can be harnessed?” She frowned. “He believes people can read minds, or even control them? Don’t you think that’s bizarre?”

  “It would certainly be odd by most people’s standards;” Chance said. “But
I know that people can do things that defy scientific principles. The way my father kept his wineglass from tipping over, for example.”

  She regarded him skeptically. “Oh, come on, Chance. That was just luck.”

  He searched for a better example, one she could relate to. “How about when Harry turned that fork around in the air?”

  Tara stared at him. “How did you know about that? Are you saying you saw us on television before I’d even applied to work for you?”

  Darn, he hadn’t been thinking clearly. He couldn’t admit the whole truth, not yet. If she learned why Chance had really hired her, she would leave at once.

  “Harry told me.” He hoped that when he finally was able to explain the whole story, she would forgive him this lie.

  “Oh!” Even in the moonlight, he could see her flushing. “I’m sorry! I just—but I mean—you didn’t actually believe him, did you?”

  “He, uh, did make the softball jerk a little in the air,” Chance improvised. “Tara, it’s rare, but some people do have talents like that”.

  “Talents?” Steam gave her an ethereal air, but there was nothing misty about the sparks flying from her eyes. “If my son had that kind of power, he’d be a freak!”

  He should have anticipated this reaction. Denial was only natural, but he must find a way to break through it “Don’t you suppose the first time a caveman drew an antelope on the wall and it really looked like an antelope, people thought it was frightening? Maybe these are skills we simply don’t understand yet.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Tara said. “Painting on a cave is nothing like making forks loop around in the air.”

  He could feel, even through the imaginary glass wall, that she believed more than she wanted to, but was fighting it. He didn’t want to shake her sense of security. She needed to take these insights one step at a time, and they’d gone far enough for one night.

  “Well, it’s an interesting subject.” Chance drew himself up into the night air, which promptly turned his skin into a mass of goose bumps. “We’d better get some rest before we both doze off and drown.”

  “You’re right.” Following his example, she emerged from the pool. “This water is terrific. And I enjoyed meeting your father and Lois tonight. They’re complicated people.”

  “A little too complicated.” He tried not to stare as she stood with one leg propped on the raised edge of the pool, drying herself. In the moonlight, her legs were long and slender, her hips curved and inviting.

  “I can’t see them getting the best of you, in anything.” Tara glanced at him admiringly, and then caught her breath as their eyes met.

  In that instant, he saw both Tara and Ardath staring at him. He felt his modern self fade, replaced by a man of the forest who wanted this woman and intended to take her.

  The glass wall cracked into tiny chips that glittered like stars. A sparkling haze enveloped them both, and drew them close.

  Chance’s hands framed Tara’s waist and slid down the silky fabric to. the velvet of her skin. Her eyes drifted shut and she curved against him, and in that moment he no longer knew where they were, or even who they were.

  Their mouths fit together as if completing a circuit. Energy charged through him. His tongue teased hers, and she pulled him hard against her.

  A desperate awareness surged through him, a primitive need to unite them in flesh as well as spirit. There was no space in him for caution; his blood had become a river of flame.

  Tara melted into him, nipping lightly at his mouth, urging him to claim her. Her breasts teased his chest, and he could feel the heat of her molten core.

  She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She isn’t herself.

  He didn’t want to hear Chance’s voice. He wanted to be Valdemar, savage and remoreseless, seizing what he wanted and willing to die if necessary to keep it.

  You don’t have the right to make that decision. Tara needs to understand, and so far, she doesn’t

  With a deep inner wrench, he pulled away. As soon as the connection broke, Tara shivered in confusion.

  Hating himself for doing it, Chance eased back into her mind and conjured a curtain of mist to shield her from the memory of what had just passed between them. It was, he told himself, a form of protection.

  Dazed, she wrapped a towel around her shoulders and said good-night. As he escorted her out, Chance fought down the urge to take her in his arms, kiss her sleepy face and reawaken the sparks he had done his best to extinguish.

  His body ached, and after she left he spent long, stinging minutes in an ice-cold shower. It didn’t help to remind himself that he deserved this.

  HARRY HAD FALLEN ASLEEP with his arms around his favorite teddy bear. Curled under the covers, he reminded Tara of Christopher Robin, forever a child in the Forest.

  It was hard to imagine that someday he would grow up. But as she had pointed out to Raymond tonight, eventually each child emerged from the cocoon to make his own way in the world.

  When he did, she hoped Harry would be like Chance— sensitive, intelligent and…

  And what? Masculine, she thought. Tonight, the man had dominated the darkness, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight, his body taut and ready to burst.through the wisp of fabric around his waist.

  Tara’s body tingled and she realized to her embarrassment that the sight of her boss in a swimsuit had excited her. Had he been aware of it? With all her heart, she hoped not, but there was little that escaped his awareness.

  No more moonlight dips in the spa, she told herself firmly, and went to change for bed.

  Chapter Eight

  “But the other kids still don’t like Al.” Harry’s gray eyes widened with six-year-old sincerity.

  “Did you try what I suggested?” Chance said as they finished their hamburgers. Around them, kids were racing toward the restaurant’s play area, but Harry considered such activities boring.

  “Yeah, I spent recess yesterday showing him how to hit, but he just doesn’t get it,” the boy said. “Why can’t I give his thoughts a little push? I could make him understand!”

  “I’ve explained—”

  “Just a little bit!” said Harry.

  Chance tried not to show his dismay. His own psi abilities had matured when he was considerably older, and even so it had taken years to master them. Now his son was showing the same talent, but much earlier and without the maturity to understand the issues.

  It was lucky he had discovered the boy’s existence before things went haywire. Even now, he wondered if the boy could muster the self-discipline to reject the temptations he was encountering.

  “You could make things worse,” he warned. “In any case, Al needs to find his own solutions without you monkeying around in his brain”.

  “I can’t help it,” the boy protested. “Sometimes I hear what people are thinking when I don’t even want to!”

  “I know it must be frustrating.” It was hard to reason with a six-year-old, although, Chance reflected ruefully, no harder than reasoning with his sixty-year-old father. “But you have to keep working at it.”

  “Like I knew the substitute yesterday wasn’t going to let us watch a videotape like Mrs. Reed promised,” Harry said. “She was going to hand out boring old work sheets! So I made her think she had to let us watch the video or she would get in trouble.”

  “Harry!”

  “I didn’t mean to!” The little boy drooped before Chance’s disapproval. “Honest, it happened before I even realized what I was doing.”

  In the week since Tara had moved in, the boy had progressed alarmingly. It was obvious his powers had lain close to the surface, ready to explode.

  Chance was beginning to regret taking Harry to the video store last week and encouraging him to anticipate people’s choices. It had been a necessary step if the boy were to learn to control his talents instead of letting them control him. But the risk was that Harry’s powers would develop even faster than they might otherwise.

  “Whenever y
ou start hearing people’s thoughts, you need to imagine a barrier—like a wall—forming between you.”

  “I don’t think I can,” Harry said.

  “Would you like to try?”

  “Sure.”

  “Finish eating and let’s go somewhere quiet, then.”

  Along the restaurant aisle, a mother hurried past carrying a tray, with a toddler pulling at her skirt. Instinctively, Chance made the heavy door to the play area swing open ahead of her, in a slow arc as if air pressure had nudged it.

  But he didn’t see, until too late, the puddle of spilled soda on the floor. “Oops!” said Harry a split second later, as the woman’s foot came down in it.

  The tray went flying, the woman staggered against their table and the toddler trotted directly into the path of the thick door as it swung shut.

  Both Chance and Harry must have tried to stop the door at the same time, from different angles. With a great crack, the glass split in jagged segments, spraying the floor with shards. It was pure luck that the toddler halted a few inches on the safe side of the threshold.

  Everything happened so fast, Chance realized as he helped the woman right herself, that no one else noticed the exact sequence. A restaurant worker and several patrons rushed to the child, exclaiming in surprise at finding him uninjured when he had apparently been struck by the door with shattering force.

  Harry frowned. “What went wrong?”

  “Sometimes two heads aren’t better than one,” Chance observed as the woman ran to hug her child. “But it proves my point, doesn’t it? Interfering can make things worse. It’s not our job to run other people’s lives.”

  The boy made a face. “Yeah, I guess you’re right But I wish I could help Al.”

  “I suspect that being his friend is a very big help,” Chance said. “Want to go to the park and make little waves in the pond?” It was a good visualization exercise, just what the boy needed.