Fairytale (Fairies of Rush)

by Maggie Shayne

  And the questions...he didn’t want to analyze them now. He told himself that it was normal for a person who’d never known her parents to feel an identity crisis now and then. He didn’t believe that was the case, here, but he told himself he did, and focused on getting to where she was. Talking to her.

  Taking her pain away...

  No. Not that. Just...just...

  He followed the sound of her voice...catching sight of her just as she dove from the cliffs like an eagle swooping down on its prey.

  “Jesus Christ. . . Brigit!”

  He ran to the ledge as well. Crying out in anguish when he saw her body pierce the lake, holding his breath while she was hidden from view by the sapphire waters, and then nearly collapsing in relief when she surfaced again.

  Like a mermaid when her head emerged. Like a pagan goddess as she tipped her head skyward, eyes closed as if to receive the kiss of the sun.

  And then she began swimming. Adam shook his head in disbelief. Then realized he shouldn’t. He’d sensed from the beginning that the staid, reserved Brigit was only a mask she wore. That the real woman within was a hellion. Well, he’d been right. Though even then, he’d underestimated her.

  He caught sight of her again, diving under the waves. She surfaced some yards out, and dove again. And again. And again, each time swimming farther from the shore.

  “Brigit,” he said softly, wondering if she were even aware how far out she’d gone. “Brigit! Can you hear me?” He shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. She didn’t respond, didn’t look back. Damn, she hadn’t looked back since she hit the water. Not once.

  Okay...there...she was stopping, floating. Resting. Maybe she was okay. But, damn, she was a long way out. He turned his body, not his head, and started heading toward the path that led down to the shore. Keeping his eyes on her as he decided to swim out in case she needed help.

  But then a wave hit her and swept her under. She came up sputtering, and he knew she’d finally seen how far away the shore was. He couldn’t see the panic in her face. But he could feel it. He could feel it as surely as if it were his own. And he didn’t even stop to wonder how the hell that was possible.

  She stroked toward shore and was swept underwater again. And Adam didn’t hesitate. He turned back toward the cliff, heeled off his shoes, and ran, peeling the shirt over his head as he went, and letting the wind take it from his hands. The jeans stayed where they were. No time for those now. He hit the edge running and pushed off hard. And then his body was knifing downward at what felt like the speed of light. Icy-cold water met him head on, engulfing him, chilling him through to the bone by the time he curved up to the surface again. And then he poured every cell into making his strokes powerful, making each movement of his body propel him forward as fast and as far as possible.

  And he’d just about reached her when she vanished beneath the surface. Like a rebellious mermaid struggling against her fate, only to be yanked into the depths by some overbearing sea god. And then he was diving down, deeper, stroking madly, eyes wide and straining to see her through the ever-darkening water.

  And then he did.

  Stroking straight down, he caught her under the arms, yanked her to him, got his legs under him again. His lungs burned. He couldn’t hold his breath much longer, but he wouldn’t let her go. He wouldn’t. He might not find her again. His legs pumped. He moved his entire body to propel himself upward. And finally his head emerged in an explosion of droplets...and hers with it.

  Holding her from behind, he maneuvered her head onto his shoulder as he dragged gulps of air into his starved lungs. His legs still working to keep them afloat, he gripped her chin with one hand, turned her head a little, stared down at her beautiful face. Satin skin. Huge eyes, closed now, thick long lashes beaded with lake water. Rivers of it running down over her throat.

  He put his lips to hers, tried to breathe for her. It was awkward, all but impossible to do while trying to tread water. Three breaths;. Then he struck out for shore. And in a few seconds, he paused to force his own breath into her body again. Then swam some more.

  He’d nearly reached the shallows when she choked and began twisting in his arms.

  He only held her tighter, and stroked onward until his feet reached bottom. They were still a hundred yards from the shore, but he could walk now. He got his footing and picked her up, carrying her the rest of the way.

  They emerged from the water like that. Adam still searching her face for the signs of life that had subsided into stillness again, still frantic for her. And Brigit just lying in his arms, head thrown backward, long hair trailing in the water as were her arms.

  He laid her on the shore. No sand. Cayuga’s shore was grassy down here, rocky in other spots. With barely time to catch his breath he bent over her again, covered her mouth with his, pushing air into her chest until it rose.

  Seconds ticked by, and then he felt her moving. Her hands came up, threaded into his hair, tugging gently until he lifted his head away. She rolled weakly to one side, choking, gagging, spewing lake water into the grass. And then she sat there, head hanging down between her braced arms.

  “Are you all right? Do you need an ambulance?”

  She said nothing. Her back to him.

  “What the hell were you trying to do, Brigit?”

  Silence.

  He gripped her shoulder, pulling her around to face him. “Talk to me, dammit! What the hell is going on with you! You could have got yourself killed out there! Or is that what you wanted?”

  Her eyes seemed to recapture a bit of life then, and her chin came up a little. “I was coming back. I was coming back...I just couldn’t make it.”

  “Why?” His grip on her shoulders tightened, and he shook her a little. “Why, Brigit?”

  She shook her head slowly. “It was stupid...but it wasn’t what you think.”

  “Jesus, Brigit, at this point I don’t even know what I think.” He wrapped his arms around her in abject relief, held her hard to his chest, and ran his hands over her wet skin. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  She straightened away from him, and a worried frown puckered her brows. Her palms came up to run slowly down either side of his face. “Adam,” she said, and it was no more than a whisper. “Don’t care about me. Whatever you do...don’t care...”

  And then her back bowed with a spasm of coughing, and her shoulders shook with it. He pulled her to his chest again, and just held her there. “What the hell made you think I cared, Malone? Adam Reid doesn’t care about anyone except Adam Reid. Anything else is freaking lunacy.” He only wished to Christ it was the truth.

  He scooped her up in his arms and headed back for the house, taking a longer but safer path up the steep, rocky hillside. And he didn’t bother trying to silence the voice inside that told him every word he’d just uttered was a goddamn lie. And had been, since the first day he’d laid eyes on her.

  Turmoil. So much of it in his eyes. And his face. Even his hair showed signs of stress. It stuck up a little crazily from the many times he’d shoved his hands through it. He was sitting in a leather armchair, just staring at her, when she awoke some hours later. Those eyes seemed to be eating holes through her, intense. Burning. He sat slouched, one elbow propped on the chair’s arm, and his hand buried in his hair.

  He’d put on dry clothes. A pair of pleated black trousers with knife-sharp creases. A clean white t-shirt, and a black suit jacket. The jacket hung open. He had classes today, she realized. But he was waiting...

  He hadn’t shaved yet this morning. Soft golden bristles coated his face. A shade or two darker than his hair. He looked tired. So tired.

  Brigit blinked, realizing she’d been staring at him as intently as he was still staring at her. She looked away, tried to take stock of herself instead of him. Her lungs hurt. Her throat hurt. Her head hurt.

  Her clothes were damp. He’d laid her on the sofa in the study, built up a fire in the hearth. But he hadn’t undressed her. Just wrappe
d her in so many blankets she couldn’t help but feel warm.

  She looked at him again, and trembled because he was still staring at her that way. Disturbing.

  “You should change.”

  His voice coming so suddenly amid the silence made her jump.

  “I’d have done it myself, but. . .” His lips thinned and he shook his head. “I think we both know what would happen if I were to undress you. With my hands, I mean, instead of just with my eyes.”

  Her face burned. She brought her hands to it.

  “Why are you here, Brigit Malone? What the hell are you trying to do to me?”

  “Adam...”

  “No. No more lies. Just tell me. Dammit, Brigit, just open your mouth and tell me.” He closed his eyes, laughed just a little, a bitter, harsh sound. “Jesus, Brigit, did you really think you could convince me you were some kind of supernatural being? A fairy for Christ’s sake?”

  She sat up straighter on the sofa, fear somersaulting in her chest. He wasn’t making sense. “I never said I was—”

  She stopped speaking when he pulled her book, her fairytale, from behind his back, and laid it gently on the coffee table. “Never said it. But set it up so I’d find all the clues. What did you do, Brigit, throw my old plants out and replace them with new ones when I wasn’t looking? Hmm?”

  “Adam, I don’t know what you’re—”

  “So I was supposed to see the suddenly thriving plants and immediately think of that Celtic text. I was supposed to remember how it said animals and plants respond to the presence of fairy folk, and I was supposed to wonder.”

  She frowned at him, shaking her head slowly from side to side.

  “And that story someone planted with the old nun. Now that was the kicker, that really was. Brilliant. Did you think of that, too, Brigit?”

  She felt her eyes narrow. “Old nun?”

  “Oh, come on, you had to know I’d check up on you. You had to know...That’s why you left that story with the nun, for me to find. No mother. No birth certificate.”

  “You checked up on me?”

  “I had a P.I. do it.”

  She was stunned, shaken right to the core. But she knew, at once. “Mac Cordaix,” she whispered.

  “He talked to this old nun, Sister Ruth...”

  “Sister Ruth,” she echoed, her voice a choked whisper.

  “So old she’s easily persuaded to forget about the privacy laws. She told the story of twin girls with apparently no past, left at the altar of a church. Twin girls...who just happen to have the same names as the ones in the fairytale you told me. The motherless fay princesses whose mortal father brought them to the human world.”

  She shook her head, slowly getting to her feet and letting the blankets fall to the floor around her. Automatically, she grabbed her precious book and held it to her chest. “I told you the story, Adam. I told you myself...but what difference does any of it make? It was just a story. It wasn’t real.”

  He shook his head, looking as if he wasn’t entirely in agreement with that statement. “If it isn’t real, then someone went to a lot of trouble to make me think it was. It’s almost as if this thing has been planned from the day you and your sister were left at that...”

  He stopped speaking at the thump her book made when it hit the floor. His gaze went from it, up to her face, and she tried to close her mouth, tried to stop her eyes from watering. She lifted her hands to him, gripping his t-shirt in trembling fists. “I have a sister?” She searched his face, trying to see, no longer caring about anything else, breathless and hurting, but desperate to know. “A sister?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  She blinked, choking on tears. “I...Sister Mary Agnes told me...things...about a sister. But I thought...I thought it was something she just tacked onto the fairytale. Something to make it more real to me. She pretended to believe I was one of them. I guess she thought...” She released his shirt, lowered her head. “I believed it...for a while. Once I was old enough to realize it was only a story, I thought all of it was a story.” Lifting her eyes to meet his once more, she went on. “I tried checking my records once, but the lawyer I spoke with said it was impossible. They’re sealed—”

  “Your records were destroyed in the fire, Brigit. But according to a retired nun who claims she was there at the time, you had a twin sister who was adopted almost immediately.”

  His voice had lost the accusatory ring. And his eyes had taken on a wide, wondering expression, She sank backward, until she was sitting on the floor. “A sister.”

  “You really didn’t know. You really didn’t make any of this up, did you?”

  She said nothing, just sat there, stunned. Adam rose and came forward. He stood close to her, towering over her, his hands on her shoulders. “Why are you here, Brigit? Why did you come to me?”

  She blinked and lifted her eyes. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Then—”

  “No. I can’t leave, either. Adam...” She drew a breath, fought for strength. “You saved my life today. And now you’ve given me...given me a reason to go on...”

  “Your sister.”

  She nodded. “I—” A sob interrupted her, but she fought it and began again. “God, I can’t believe it. Bridin is real. She’s real.”

  “Brigit—”

  “I won’t hurt you, Adam. I swear...whatever my intent was...I won’t. I can’t. B-but I need to be here.”

  “Why?”

  “J-just for a few more days. Just until I figure out what to do.”

  “Why, Brigit?”

  She gripped his lower arms and pulled herself to her feet. She stood so close to him that she could feel the warmth of his body. Feel every breath, almost every thought. And she tipped her head back, staring into his eyes, wishing with everything in her that he would let her stay. She’d find a way to solve this thing without hurting him or getting Raze killed. She would.

  Pouring her heart into her eyes, and from them, into his, she whispered, “Please don’t make me go, Adam. Please.”

  In her eyes is the power to bend a man to her will. The words from the ancient text whispered through Adam’s mind as he stared at Brigit’s ebony eyes.

  “Okay.”

  The word slipped through his mouth without warning. He didn’t think about it first, because she was so close that all he could think about was holding her, warming her, healing her. She could have died out there today. Hell, she’d stopped breathing. That had been no act, and neither was this.

  My God, it was true. This woman was the child in the fairytale. The one he’d been shown long ago. The daughter of a fay queen. No. Yes! And it was Adam’s destiny to help her...and then to let her go.

  He closed his eyes in misery, but quickly shook off the self-pity. Because there was more going on here. She didn’t seem to realize who she really was, let alone what she was supposed to do about it. She had her own reasons for coming to him. And whatever she was up to, he had to believe she didn’t want to do it. Someone was forcing her. And when he thought about that, he thought about the creep he’d found here yesterday. Zaslow, and this mysterious Raze, the mere mention of whose name had forced Brigit to lie. What the hell was he to her? What was Zaslow? What were they up to?

  Sweet Jesus, she was in trouble. Or she’d convinced him that she was. And instead of feeling bad for her, he felt good. For himself. Selfish bastard. All he could feel was gratitude that whatever deceptions she’d committed, she’d been forced to commit. He was sure of that, now.

  He searched her face, fell into her eyes, and ended up holding her tight against him. His hands dove into her hair, stroking and untangling it. “Dammit, Brigit, why won’t you open up to me? Why won’t you let me help you?”

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “This is my problem, Adam. Mine. And only I can solve it.”

  Chapter Ten

  Adam left, but she could tell he wasn’t happy with her answers. Or...her lack of answers. And she had a feeling he was s
omehow letting her stay here quite against his will. As if he were being blackmailed the way she was. Or...or maybe as if he were being hypnotized into doing what she wanted. But he wasn’t.

  He’d wanted to throw her out. At least, part of him had. So why hadn’t he?

  Didn’t matter. She had to get in touch with Zaslow. Since her recent communion with her “other self,” the wild one, she’d found a bit more courage and strength. Enough, she thought, to try again to fight Zaslow. To take her life back again. To regain control. She had to find a way to make Zaslow give this whole idea up. She had to...

  But how?

  Brigit paced the study, her eyes going often to the painting on the wall above the marble hearth. Watering each time they met those dark, mysterious eyes peering at her from amid the bushes.

  She had a sister. God, even with all this garbage going on, she couldn’t get past the wonder of it. The joy of it. All this time, not knowing. All this time, wondering, wishing, hoping. Dreaming of her sister.

  Her perfect, golden sister. Bridin. Brigit wondered if Bridin could be as wonderful as she’d dreamed. Oh, but she had to be! She would be!

  Brigit owed Adam more than she could ever repay, she realized sadly.

  And that brought her back to the matter at hand. Her impending betrayal of Adam Reid, the man who’d given her a dream come true. A sister.

  She had no idea what was going on with Adam. Why he would accuse her of trying to convince him she was some kind of fairy or something. His anger confused her, and his words this morning...God, she’d lost track of when he was speaking about her fairytale and when he was speaking about her real life.

  Except for the part about a sister.

  Brigit closed her eyes and tried not to dwell on that aspect of this mess. Not right now. Right now, her only goal was to convince Zaslow to let her off the hook. She had to find a way.

  Money. The man was greedy, and he was doing this for money. He’d told her he was being paid a hundred thousand dollars for the painting. So if she could find a way to give him an equal amount...