by Betty Bolte
Tara examined the damage and then glared at him. “Do not move. No matter what else you do. Understood?”
“What?”
“What am I going to do?” Tara studied him, searching his eyes with a cool appraisal.
He bobbed his head once, needing to know her intent so he could brace himself for the anticipated pain. He didn’t want to faint in front of her, for crying out loud.
“I’m going to heal it.” A flicker of concern flashed in her eyes as she swallowed, her gaze intent on him. “Don’t move. I mean it, Grant. Trust me.”
“Heal it?” He swallowed to keep from crying out when he angled his hand to inspect the palm. Or what should be his palm. Instead he saw raw flesh and splinters of metal sticking from the wound. “How?”
“We don’t have time for this, Grant.” Tara shook her head slowly and her lips pressed into a straight line. “You must believe me when I tell you I can heal it. Don’t ask me how.”
“Why not?”
She inhaled and released a long breath, searching his eyes. “You won’t believe me. Just hold still, okay?”
Her touch had always soothed him, so why not? He nodded once and then watched in surprise as she took another deep breath and let it out slowly. Then laid both hands on the injured hand. Again the burning and stinging started while his vision blurred and distorted. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to hold still. To not pull away as instructed. He didn’t know what good she could do, but he’d given his word.
Minutes dragged by in which his skin turned alternately hot and cold, prickly and then peaceful. She closed her eyes as she moved her palms over his hand, hiding from view the site of the wound. He tried to peek around her hands but then decided he didn’t want to see. After several minutes elapsed he realized the pain had subsided. Then stopped.
Tara lifted her hands from his and massaged them as she inspected his hand. “Better?”
He stared at his hand. Blinked. Looked up into her guarded and tired expression and then back to his normal, healed hand. He turned it over to check the back, then the palm. Had he been dreaming of the explosion and now awake? His pulse raced as he tried to make sense of the last minutes.
“What did you do?”
She sank onto the porch floor beside him. Ran a hand over her forehead and then through her tousled hair. “I healed it just like I said I would.”
“Am I dreaming?” Or had he experienced another miracle? He mentally chided himself for the flash of whimsy. There must be a logical explanation. He studied Tara’s wary expression with a growing sense of deep unease.
She fidgeted, brushing hair from her eyes and giving him a sidelong glance. “No.”
“I don’t understand.” His hand had been burned and bloody. He examined it again, finding nothing. Not even a scar to bear witness to the explosion that still rung in his ears.
“You don’t need to.” She sighed and stood. “Let’s go inside. It’s getting late.”
She offered a hand to help him up but he brushed her aside. He didn’t know what exactly she did, but he needed time to reflect and make sense of it. He needed some time and distance to put his thoughts in order. There must be a logical explanation; he just needed to find it. Gaining his feet, he led the way inside, avoiding contact. Seeing is believing, and yet. His hand bore no marks of the accident. How had they disappeared?
Lenore greeted them with a worried frown. “What was that horrible noise?”
Tara shot him a glance and then sighed. “Grant scaring himself.”
He aimed a disbelieving stare in her direction. “The wolves, not me.”
Tara cleared her throat. “Whatever. Lenore, I’m afraid we’re going to have to beg your hospitality for another night. The day has gotten away from us.”
A slow smile eased onto the woman’s cracked lips. “I’ll make us some supper.”
Her expression stirred wary apprehension through his body. Between the vanishing wound that Tara overlooked mentioning to their hostess and the greedy appearance of that very same hostess, he needed to stay vigilant. Alert. And most of all, on guard.
Chapter 20
“We will miss Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, dammit. Roxie will be mad. Probably thinking I skipped town to avoid her directive.” Tara stood at the edge of the bed, hesitating to slip under the covers alongside Grant. Especially with him glowering in her direction. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” He sat up, his pillow behind his back, watching her every move. Still wearing his clothes as they’d done the first night in case of any sudden emergency.
She puffed a sigh. How could she describe his expression? The distrust fringing his eyes that followed her. A stern set to his jaw. Vertical lines between his dark brows. Shoulders high and tight even as he appeared nonchalantly relaxing in bed. He’d been taciturn ever since they’d retreated to their room for the night. Short answers to questions and silence in between. Rigid and defensive. He’d break if she lifted a finger without warning him first.
“Never mind.” Spooning with him was out of the question in his current state of mind. For that matter, laying in the same bed didn’t entice either. Talk about a cold shoulder. He was more like a popsicle. “Maybe I should sleep on the floor?”
Surprise replaced the wariness, but he simply gazed at her in silence. Blinking slowly as he studied her. The slow rise and fall of his broad chest screamed a willful self-control hiding the agitation inside him.
The closeness they’d shared seemed to have vanished. Sure, she’d pushed him away at first, afraid to let him in. Had hoped he’d save her from herself by dating her sister. But over the past few days, she’d seen him strong, loving, caring… She’d experienced how wonderful his arms felt around her, the smell and taste of him. She wanted it all back. But how?
He suspected she hid secrets from him. His expression shouted his doubts about her, who and what she was. He’d emphasized that he didn’t believe in the supernatural, the inexplicable, in things without seeing them to believe in them. Even when he did see them, he didn’t have faith in them. That was the crux of the problem. Somehow she had to make him see, make him understand, and make him agree that what he’d watched happen had in fact occurred.
He’d asked her repeatedly to trust him, and she had. He needed to trust her. For him to have faith in her, she was going to have to be totally honest with him. Her stomach lurched at the thought. Her palms dampened and she clenched them into fists of determination. She had to tell him. Had to persuade him to see her not only as a woman but in the form of her secret nature, as a witch. Knowing his reaction would then inform her next steps.
“Grant…” Crossing her arms, she considered her words carefully. He raised one brow and cocked his head, waiting for her to continue. “Listen, there’s something you need to know about me.”
“Yes, Tara?”
She dragged in a breath and blew it out, bracing for his reaction. But she must know if he could acknowledge her talents as fact. If he could accept her. He needed to know the truth. Then they could sort out whether they had a future. Tucking her right hand beneath her left elbow, she crossed her fingers for luck. If he didn’t take it well, she’d lose any chance of a relationship, let alone a future, with him.
“About your hand…” Could she do what she needed to? Would he run from the room, and from her? She chewed on her lip for a moment before shrugging resignedly. “It’s true.”
“What is?” He scrunched his brow into a puzzled frown. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I have special gifts.” What a lame statement. Argh! Pressing her eyelids closed for the span of a breath, she tried to calm her thundering pulse. She opened her eyes to meet his steady regard. May as well plunge in with both feet. “I mean, I can heal people.”
“I know you’re a midwife. I think that’s a respectable profession and calling.” He rested his hands in his lap, fingers loosely linked on top of the quilt. Feigning ease and relaxatio
n. “You delivered Pat last month without a hitch.”
She waved off his observation. She couldn’t force the right words of explanation to come out in proper order for him to understand. Perhaps she should start over. “No, more than that.”
He tilted his head to squint at her, listening intently to what she was saying but apparently not understanding. “More than what?”
She huffed out her annoyance with herself and her lack of communication skills at the present moment. Another tactic might work better to help him fathom the reality. “Do you remember when we danced at Halloween?”
He nodded, shifted his hips on the bed to a more comfortable angle. “We had fun that night.”
“Do you also remember how I danced real close and ran my fingers up and down your temples?” She could see him processing the question, searching his memory of the party and the dancing. She recalled the zing of electric current passing through her fingers into his brain and up her arms. The tumors had evaporated with only a few minutes of contact, then the current became an attraction and she’d forced herself to sever the link.
“Yeah, I thought that was a very sexy thing to do.” He grinned at her, reliving the pleasure they’d shared at the costume party. He waggled his eyebrows at her. “A real turn on.”
For her as well, but she knew even then the result of their foolish allure to one another. It simply couldn’t work unless they could find a middle ground for beliefs neither had any intention of changing. They stood at an emotional and logical impasse. He wouldn’t leave the city with all its conveniences and she wouldn’t leave the small town where she’d grown up and her loving sisters resided. He wouldn’t concede the existence of anything supernatural, and she knew it existed because she was part of that realm. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t fight for the opportunity to test those precarious waters. To see whether they had any chance of negotiating a relationship based on honesty and trust.
“That was actually the second treatment for the tumors in your brain. The first happened at the Golden Owl when I touched you. The tumors had tangled in your optic nerves so much they were difficult to remove. But your headaches eased some. Do you remember that?” She peered at him, noted when he stilled and stared at her. “The night of the dance, I finished eliminating the tumors. After that moment, the headaches stopped, right?”
“While we danced. Right.” He moved his head up and down in slow motion, keeping his gaze fixed on her. She fidgeted under the weight of his regard. She steeled herself for his reaction. A reaction which would reveal whether they could make a relationship work. “I hadn’t pinpointed the moment. Until now. You say you healed me? How?”
“I touched you, just like I did earlier this evening with your hand. Like Beth’s migraine the other night. That’s my secret gift, one I don’t share with everyone.” Her heart quailed when his brows rose to his hairline. “I’m more than a healer. I’m a witch, Grant.”
He blinked rapidly as he stared at her for several silent moments. “A witch? There’s no such thing as magic, or spells, and such.”
“No, you’re wrong. It’s true.” He didn’t believe her, as she feared. A chill worked through her as if ice water flowed in her veins when he pushed himself more upright against the pillow to stare at her. Could she make him believe? “I have been able to heal by touching the wounded or diseased all my life. Since I was a little girl.”
He shook his head. “It can’t be. You’re pulling my leg, right?” Flinging the covers off, he got out of bed. “Why are you pretending to be something you’re not?”
There it was. His flat denial of her reality. The dart to the soul when her true being and abilities were dismissed as nothing more than dust. Her heart sank. She’d hoped so much that he’d see her side of the equation. Would be willing to walk in her shoes and comprehend who and what she was. His stubbornness galled her into action. She couldn’t give up. Not yet.
“Oh, Grant, please believe me.” She needed him to listen, understand, and most of all truly come to terms with her ability. “I care about you but you have to admit the truth. To me, but most of all to yourself.”
“What truth is that?” He practically snarled the words at her.
The man she’d grown to care for, indeed the beginning flutters of love had flitted through her heart, stood glowering at her. Hands on his hips and brows pulled low to shadow his eyes. Dimmed the light of his soul as he waited for her to answer his demand. He’d transformed into a skeptic and cynic right before her eyes. She’d always told him the truth, and despite his overbearing nature she would continue to do so even if he didn’t want to hear it.
“That I am a witch as well as a woman.” She dropped her arms to her side and waited for his response. Fingers still crossed on her right hand.
“I don’t believe in the mystic and magical.” He blinked slowly at her, regarding her for several tense moments. “I thought you knew that.”
She nodded as she took a step toward him. Stopped when he took a step back. “Grant, think about it. The night of the party, you saw my grandfather’s ghost.”
“Ghost? I thought that was some prank Zak pulled for fun.” His eyes knit together as he seemed to fight with himself on whether to stay and talk with her or turn and walk away.
“No, Grandfather Patrick was there. My sisters and I helped Paulette and Meredith send him back where he belongs.” Tara uncrossed her fingers, a silly and useless superstition to try to make her hope prove valid by crossing them in the first place. “You were there. You saw him. But you don’t believe what you saw.”
“How can you think that when someone dies they still live without a body?” He shook his head and pursed his lips, his entire body tense and ready to flee. “It’s not possible, nor logical.”
“Magic, just like ghosts, is part of our world. Just because we can’t explain how they exist, doesn’t mean they don’t.” Tara widened her eyes, willing him to believe. “I’m proof that magic exists.”
“That does it.” He strode to the end of the bed, stopped and glared at her. “I can’t be with someone who would believe in such crap as magic and witches.”
His words zinged straight to her heart, shooting down her defenses. Her hopes. Surely he didn’t mean to be so cruel. Didn’t believe what he’d flung at her. Yet he’d said those hurtful and hate-filled words. Her pulse raced and her palms dampened. She rubbed her hands on her denim-covered thighs. He had to believe her. She wouldn’t let him go without a fight, not after all they’d been through and had come to mean to each other. Before she’d healed him. Now she didn’t know whether they meant anything to one another after all.
“Seeing is believing?” Tara folded her arms over her chest, aware of how quick and shallow her breathing had become the more Grant grew agitated and defensive. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Exactly. I don’t believe in supernatural elements and all that bull.” He propped his hands on his hips; legs braced to turn and walk out. “It’s just aspects of the world we haven’t fully explained yet, not magic or the mystical.”
“Then you have every reason to believe me because you saw me heal your hand.” His words cut her to the quick. He had no right to denigrate her in such harsh terms. Tara curled her fingers into fists of growing anger. “Right before your eyes.”
He shook his head as he raked his fingers down through his hair to grip the nape of his neck. “I saw nothing of the kind. There’s an explanation for why my vision blurred, and things changed, just like there’s a reason why the days are passing so quickly here. I merely haven’t found the answer.”
“Yes, you have. You don’t want to accept the answer you’ve found.” Her anger flared in her chest, warming her from the inside until she feared she’d burst into flame.
“Magic?” He laughed without humor in the sound. More disbelief. “How can you believe in such a fairy tale?”
Calling her essentially a work of fiction hurt more than she ever thought possible. Not believing in
something was a fundamental and personal right. But to denounce her beliefs simply because he didn’t agree? Not only was such a stance rude but disrespectful. The disrespect in his statement made her hackles rise in defensive anger.
“I’m not a fairy tale, Grant.” She glared at him and then splayed her hands in front of her, inviting him to assess her entire being as both woman and witch. “I am, however, a talented and effective healer who uses magic in her work. I am a witch.”
“Tara…” He rubbed the stubble on his chin for several seconds, shaking his head slowly. “If you want to believe that, then I can’t stop you.”
He refused to accept who and what Tara claimed to be. But his acceptance of her was the thing she craved the most. Despair replaced the anger. Her heart shredded into searing fragments. She sensed the powerful magic at work in the hollow and the house in particular. She fought the sudden urge to run, escape Grant’s disbelief and disparaging looks. It was too late and too dark to attempt such a foolhardy thing. But come morning, she’d find a way to get them out of the enchantment. Away from the crone and whatever held them prisoners. Then go home and try with all her might to put her heart back together again.
She snatched a pillow and comforter off the foot of the bed and dropped them on the floor before Grant could stop her. “Tomorrow we’re getting out of here.”
“We said that today and failed to make good on our conviction.” Grant sidled to his side of the bed and sat on the edge, looking over his shoulder at her. “I agree we need to leave without fail. We can’t stay here in the woods forever like Lenore.”
About Lenore. The woman seemed content to live in the little house without a steady companion. Relying on the kindness of strangers who happened by. Or had the spell reached out, searching for someone capable of breaking the enchantment? But without knowing the reason behind the spell, Tara had no way of releasing the old woman from its grip. If in fact she read the signs and sigils correctly and interpreted their warning and lesson. The set of signs indicated harsh punishment for anyone interfering in the lesson to be learned. The sigils suggested the test had something to do with humility. She wished yet again for Roxie, with her talent for casting spells, to be there to help her understand. Like everything else in her life, she’d have to muddle through as best she could on her own.