Once Upon a Star

by Nora Roberts

  “Fine.” The word was rigidly and properly polite. Only the single gunshot bang of a cupboard door as he started out again told him she was miffed.

  She’d make the damn tea, she thought, jerking the faucet on to fill the kettle, which was no easy matter since the cast-iron sink was loaded with dishes. And she’d be grateful for Conal O’Neil’s hospitality, however reluctantly, however rudely given.

  Was it her fault she’d ended up on the wrong island? Was it her fault she’d gotten turned around in a storm and passed out and had to be carted back to his house? Was it her fault she had nowhere else to go?

  Well, yes. She rolled her eyes and began to empty the dishes out of the sink so that she could fill it with soapy water and wash them. Yes, technically it was her fault. Which just made it all the more annoying.

  When she got back to New York she would be jobless. Again. And once more she’d be the object of pity, puzzlement, and pursed lips. And that was her fault, too. Her family expected her to fail now—flighty, scatterbrained Lena.

  Worse, she realized, was that she expected it, too.

  The problem was she wasn’t particularly good at anything. She had no real skill, no craft, and no driving ambitions.

  She wasn’t lazy, though she knew Margaret would disagree. Work didn’t frighten her. Business did.

  But that was tomorrow’s problem, she reminded herself as she dealt with the dishes and waited for the kettle to boil. Today’s problem was Conal O’Neil and how to handle the situation she’d put them both into.

  A situation, she thought, as she went about stacking dishes, wiping counters, heating the teapot, that should have been thrilling. A storm-swept island; a handsome, brooding man; a cozy, if rustic, cottage isolated from the world.

  This, she decided, perking up, was an adventure. She was going to find a way to enjoy it before the axe fell.

  When Conal came back in, the old teapot was sitting snugly in a frayed and faded cozy. Cups and saucers were set on the table, and the table scrubbed clean. The sink was empty, the counters sparkling, and the chocolate biscuits he’d had in a tin were arranged prettily on a plate.

  “I was hungry.” She was already nibbling on one. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No.” He’d nearly forgotten what it was like to sit down and have tea in tidiness. Her little temper snap appeared to be over as well, he noted. She looked quietly at home in his kitchen, in his shirt.

  “So.” She sat down to pour. The one thing she was good at was conversation. She’d often been told she was too good at it. “You live here alone?”

  “I do.”

  “With your dog.”

  “Hugh. He was my father’s. My father died some months back.”

  She didn’t say she was sorry, as so many—too many—would have. But her eyes said it, and that made it matter more. “It’s a beautiful spot. A perfect spot. That’s what I was thinking before I fell into your garden. You grew up here?”

  “I did.”

  “I grew up in New York, in the city. It never fit, somehow.” She studied him over her teacup. “This fits you. It’s wonderful to find the right fit. Everyone in my family fits except me. My parents and Margaret and James—my brother and sister. Their mother died when Margaret was twelve and James ten. Their father met my mother a couple of years later, then they married and had me.”

  “And you’re Cinderella?”

  “No, nothing as romantic as that.” But she sighed and thought how lovely it would be. “Just the misfit. They’re all brilliant, you see. Every one of them. My father’s a doctor, a surgeon. My mother’s a lawyer. James is a wildly successful cosmetic surgeon, and Margaret has her own business with A Civilized Adventure.”

  “Who would want an adventure civilized?”

  “Yes.” Delighted, Allena slapped a palm on the table. “That’s exactly what I thought. I mean, wouldn’t regimenting it mean it wasn’t an adventure at all? But saying that to Margaret earned me a twenty-minute lecture, and since her business is thriving, there you go.”

  The light was already shifting, he noted, as a new sea of clouds washed in. But there was enough of the sun yet to sprinkle over her hair, into her eyes. And make his fingers itch for a pencil.

  He knew just what he would do with her, exactly how it would be. Planning it, he let his gaze wander over her. And nearly jolted when he saw the pendant. He’d all but forgotten it.

  “Where did you get that?”

  She’d seen those vivid blue eyes travel down, had felt a shiver of response, and now another of relief that—she hoped—it was the pendant that interested him.

  “This? It’s the heart of my problem.”

  She’d meant it as a joke, but his gaze returned to her face, all but seared the flesh with the heat of it. “Where did you get it?”

  Though the edge to his voice puzzled her, she shrugged. “There was a little shop near the waterfront. The display window was just crammed with things. Wonderful things. Magic.”

  “Magic.”

  “Elves and dragons, books and jewelry in lovely, fascinating shapes. A hodgepodge, but a crafty one. Irresistible. I only meant to go in for a minute. I had time before we were to meet at the ferry. But the old woman showed me this, and somehow while we were talking, time just went away. I didn’t mean to buy it, either. But I do a lot of things I don’t mean to do.”

  “You don’t know what it is?”

  “No.” She closed her hand over it, felt that low vibration that couldn’t be there, blinked as something tried to slide in on the edge of her vision. “It feels old, but it can’t be old, not valuably old, because it only cost ten pounds.”

  “Value’s different for one than for another.” He reached out. It was irresistible. With his eyes steady and level he closed his hand over hers that held the pendant.

  The jolt snapped into her, sharp as an electric current. The air seemed to turn the blue of lightning. She was on her feet, her head tipping back to keep her eyes locked with his as he shoved back from the table with enough violence to send his chair crashing.

  That same violence was in him when his mouth crushed hers. The need, so bright, so strong, so right, whipped through her even as the wind rushed sudden and sharp through the window at her back. Her hand fisted in his hair, her body lifted itself to his.

  And fit.

  The pounding of her heart was like a song, each note a thrill. Here, with him, it was enough, even if the world crumbled to dust around them.

  He couldn’t stop. The taste of her was like water, cool and clean, after a lifetime of thirst. Empty pockets he hadn’t known he carried inside him filled, bulged, overflowed. His blood was a rage of heat, his body weak with wanting. He gathered the back of the shirt in his bunched fingers, prepared to rip.

  Then they dropped the pendant they held between them to reach for each other. And he snapped back as if from a blow.

  “This is not what I want.” He took her shoulders, intending to shake her, but only held her. She looked dazed. Faerie-struck. “This is not what I’ll accept.”

  “Would you let me go?” Her voice was low, but it didn’t quaver. When he did, and stepped back, she let out a short, quiet breath. There was no point in being a coward, she told herself.

  “I have a couple of choices here,” she began. “One is I hit my head when I fell and I have a concussion. The other is that I just fell in love with you. I think I prefer the concussion theory, and I imagine you do, too.”

  “You didn’t hit your head.” He jammed his hands in his pockets and strode away from her. The room was suddenly too small. “And people don’t fall in love in an instant, over one kiss.”

  “Sensible ones don’t. I’m not sensible. Ask anyone.” But if there was ever a time to try to be, it was now.

  “I think I should get dressed, take a walk, clear my head or whatever.”

  “Another’s storm’s brewing.”

  Allena tugged her clothes off the screen. “You’re telling me,” sh
e muttered and marched into the bedroom.

  4

  CONAL WASN’T IN the cottage when she came out again, but Hugh sat by the fire as if waiting for her. He got up as she came through and pranced to the door, turning his big head so that his eyes met hers.

  “Want a walk? Me, too.”

  It was a pity about the gardens, Allena thought as she paused between them. She’d have enjoyed getting down into them, yanking out those choking weeds, pinching off deadheads. An hour’s pleasant work, she thought, maybe two, and instead of looking wild and neglected, those tumbling blossoms would just look wild. Which is what was needed here.

  Not her job, she told herself, not her home, not her place. She cast an eye at the little outbuilding. He was probably in there doing…whatever the hell he did. And doing it, she imagined, angrily.

  Why was there so much anger in him?

  Not her problem, she thought, not her business, not her man.

  Though for a moment, when their hands and mouths were joined, he had seemed to be.

  I don’t want this. I don’t want you.

  He’d made himself very clear. And she was tired of finding herself plopped down where she wasn’t wanted.

  The wind raced in off the sea, driving thick black-edged clouds toward the island. As she began to walk, she could see the pale and hopeful blue being gradually, inevitably consumed.

  Conal was right. A storm was coming.

  Walking along the shoreline couldn’t do any harm. She wouldn’t climb the hills, though she longed to. She would just stick to the long curve of surf and sand and enjoy the jittery thrill of watching the fierce waves crash.

  Hugh seemed content to walk at her side. Almost, she thought, like a guard.

  Eight kilometers to the nearest village, she remembered. That wasn’t so very far. She could wait for the weather to clear, then walk it if Conal wouldn’t drive her. There’d been a truck parked between the cottage and the outbuilding, a sleek and modern thing, anachronistic but surely serviceable.

  Why had he kissed her like that?

  No, that wasn’t right. It hadn’t been his doing. It had simply happened, to both of them. For both of them. There’d been a roar in her head, in her blood, that she’d never experienced before. More than passion, she thought now, more than lust. It was a kind of desperate recognition.

  There you are. Finally. At last.

  That, of course, was ridiculous, but she had no other way to explain what had spurted to life inside her. And what had spread from that first hot gush felt like love.

  You couldn’t love what you didn’t know. You couldn’t love where there was no understanding, no foundation, no history. Her head told her all these sensible, rational things. And her heart laughed at them.

  It didn’t matter. She could be conflicted, puzzled, annoyed, even willing to accept. But it didn’t matter when he didn’t want her or what had flamed to life between them.

  She stopped, let the wind beat its frantic wings over her, let the spray from the waves fly on her. Overhead a gull, white as the moon, let out its triumphant scream and streamed off in the current of electric air.

  Oh, she envied that freedom, for the heart of flight was inside her. To simply fly away, wherever the wind took her. And to know that when she landed, it would be her place, her time, her triumph.

  But you have to live in the present, don’t you, Lena? Her mother’s patient and puzzled voice murmured in her ear. You have to apply yourself, to pay attention. You can’t keep drifting this way and make something of yourself. It’s time you focused on a career, put your considerable energy into making your mark.

  And under that voice, unsaid, was You disappoint me.

  “I know it. I’m sorry. It’s awful. I wish I could tell you how awful it is to know I’m your only failure.”

  She would do better, Allena promised herself. She’d talk Margaret into giving her a second chance. Somehow. Then she’d work harder, pay more attention, be responsible, be practical.

  Be miserable.

  The dog bumped his head against her leg, rubbed his warm fur against her. The small gesture comforted her and turning away from the water, she continued to walk along its verge.

  She’d come out to clear her head, she reminded herself, not to fill it with more problems. Surely there couldn’t be a more perfect spot for easing heart and mind. Under those threatening skies, the rough hills shone, the wicked cliffs gleamed. Wildflowers, dots and splashes of color, tangled in the green and gray, and she saw a shadowy spread of purple that was heather.

  She wanted to gather it, fill her arms with it, bury her face in the scent. Delighted with the idea, she turned to scramble over rocks where sprigs of it thrived in the thin soil, then higher to mounds bumpy and thick until the fragrance of it overpowered even the primitive perfume of the sea.

  When her arms were full, she wanted more. Laughing, she hurried along a narrow path. Then stopped dead. Startled, she shook her head. She heard the oddest hum. She started to step forward again, and couldn’t. Simply couldn’t. It was as if a wall of glass stood between her and the next slope of rock and flowers.

  “My God, what is this?”

  She lifted a trembling hand, sending sprigs of heather falling, then flying free in the wind. She felt no barrier, but only a kind of heat when her hand pressed the air. And try as she might, she couldn’t push through it.

  Lightning burst. Thunder rolled. Through it, she heard the sound of her name. She looked down to the beach, half expecting to see dragons or sorcerers. But it was only Conal, standing with his legs spread, his hair flying, and his eyes annoyed.

  “Come down from there. You’ve no business clambering up the rocks when a storm’s breaking.”

  What a picture she made. He’d come after her out of responsibility, he liked to think. But he’d been dumbstruck when he’d seen her walking the cliff path in the eerie light, her hair fluttering, her arms overflowing with flowers. It made him want to climb after her, to whirl her and her flowers into his arms, to press his mouth to hers again while the wind whipped savagely over them.

  Because he wanted it, could all but taste her, his tone was blade-sharp when she met him on the beach. “Have you no more sense than to pick flowers in such weather?”

  “Apparently not. Would you walk down there?”

  “What?”

  “Just humor me, and walk down the beach five more feet.”

  “Maybe you did rattle your brains.” He started to grab her hand, pull her away, but she took a nimble step aside.

  “Please. It’ll only take you a minute.”

  He hissed out an oath, then strode off, one foot, two, three. His abrupt halt had Allena closing her eyes, shivering once. “You can’t do it, can you? You can’t go any farther than that. Neither could I.” She opened her eyes again, met his furious ones when he turned. “What does it mean?”

  “It means we deal with it. We’ll go back. I’ve no desire to find myself drenched to the skin a second time in one day.”

  He said nothing on the way back, and she let him have his silence. The first fat drops of rain splattered as they reached the cottage door.

  “Do you have anything to put these in?” she asked him. “They’ll need water, and I’d like to keep my hands busy while you explain things to me.”

  He shrugged, made a vague gesture toward the kitchen, then went to add more turf to the fire.

  It was a downpour. The wind rose to a howl, and she began to gather vases and bottles and bowls. When he remained silent, scowling into the fire, she heated up the tea.

  He glanced over when she poured the cups, then went into the kitchen himself to take out a bottle of whiskey. A healthy dollop went into his own tea, then he lifted a brow, holding the bottle over hers.

  “Well, why not?”

  But when it was laced, she picked up the flowers instead of the cup and began to tuck them into vases. “What is this place? Who are you?”

  “I’ve told you that alrea
dy.”

  “You gave me names.” The homey task calmed her, as she’d known it would. When her gaze lifted to his again, it was direct and patient. “That’s not what I meant.”

  He studied her, then nodded. Whether she could handle it or not, she deserved to know. “Do you know how far out in the sea you are?”

  “A mile, two?”

  “More than ten.”

  “Ten? But it couldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes to get here—and in rough weather.”

  “More than ten miles out is Dolman Island from the southwest coast of Ireland. Here we straddle the Atlantic and Celtic Seas. Some say the silkies come here, to shed their hides and sun on the rocks in human form. And the faeries come out of their rafts under the hills to dance in the moonlight.”

  Allena slipped the stems of shorter blossoms into a squat bottle. “Do you say it?”

  “Some say,” he continued without answering, “that my great-grandmother left her raft, her palace under the hill, and pledged herself to my great-grandfather on the night of the summer solstice while they stood by the king stone of the dance on the cliffs. One hundred years ago. As a hundred years before, another with my blood stood with his woman in that same place to pledge. And a century before that as well, and always on that same night in that same place when the star shows itself.”

  She touched her pendant. “This star?”

  “They say.”

  “And in two days it’s the solstice, and your turn?”

  “If I believed my great-grandmother was other than a simple woman, that I have elfin blood in my veins and could be directed to pledge to a woman because of the way a star shines through the stones, I wouldn’t be in this place.”

  “I see.” She nodded and carried one of the vases into the living room to set it on a table. “So you’re here to prove that everything you’ve just told me is nonsense.”

  “Can you believe otherwise?”

  She had no idea what she believed, but had a feeling there was a great deal, a very great deal, that she could believe. “Why couldn’t I walk away from here, Conal? Why couldn’t you?”