by Dani Harper
Did Olivia really have to add the handsome and naked references? The sound of the shower in the next room was not helping, either.
“But I did see a dog, Olivia. It was there, just for a moment, before I got slammed out of the circle, but I’m sure it was a dog that broke through the skylight. Big, black, with snarling teeth and glowing eyes—everything I’d expected.” Brooke stirred more sugar and chocolate creamer into her coffee. After the kind of night she’d had, she figured she deserved it. Her friend was subtly looking out for her nutritional needs, however, and spreading cream cheese on whole-wheat bagels for her.
“I just don’t understand where the dog went after he was pulled into my circle. I mean, we know now that the dog was really Aidan, but why the big change? Why did my spell restore him to human?”
Olivia sighed. “There is intent, m’ija, and there is need. Sometimes the Universe responds to need before intent. I just do not know whose need it was—yours or Aidan’s—that prompted such an intervention.”
“He said he was in the middle of a fight with the leader of the faery hunt. He didn’t know if he would have won.”
“Perhaps then he was snatched from a permanent death.” Olivia shrugged. “Or perhaps it was the leader’s life that needed to be saved. It is impossible to tell. Or maybe Aidan has some important purpose to fulfill, a job to do, that can only be done here.”
“But why here? And why now? He’s not only from Wales, he’s from a past Wales, one that doesn’t even exist anymore.” Brooke put her head in her hands. “All I wanted was some help with my magic, and this is what I get!”
“Have you tried any spells since Aidan arrived?”
"Well, I did put a little magic in my punch when I hit Aidan. But other than that, no,” said Brooke, and then she couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. I mean, why wouldn’t I try out some conjuring just because my house is destroyed and I’ve been out cold for most of the night?”
Olivia laughed too. “Okay, we’ll scratch that question for now. You have been a little busy. There will be time enough to experiment with your magic later—but when you do, you may be surprised. I’m sensing that this man has some power of his own. Maybe it’s just left over from what happened to him and will fade in time, or maybe he has some latent ability.” She waggled her eyebrows then. “Or maybe it’s just his good looks that are distracting us both. I’m old and widowed, but I’m very certain, m’ija, that I would have forgotten my own name when I saw that handsome face and that powerful body rise from the ruins of your spell room.”
“Will you quit that?” Brooke clapped her hands to her head in frustration, and only succeeded in irritating the still-throbbing lump on the back of her skull. But good grief, she so did not need the extra help when it came to admiring Aidan’s physique. Rising from the ruins, indeed. She was still buzzed from his kiss alone and a little desperate to change the subject. “And you should definitely quit that old stuff too, Olivia!” she added. “You’re hardly middle aged, and you still get whistled at on the street. When you decide to date, I’m sure you’d have one within an hour.” A warning look from her friend had Brooke hastily amending that. “If. If you were to decide to date. But come on, you didn’t seem to be drooling a bit when you were ordering Aidan to get his ass into that shower.”
“What can I say? First I do what is needed, and then I drool,” she said simply. “My son calls it hyperfocused mother mode.” Olivia made quotation marks in the air.
Brooke snorted her coffee and fumbled for a paper towel. “Omigod, that’s true! G nicknamed it that when he and I were in fifth grade, and I confess, we’ve both called it that ever since. It’s like your superpower, and now I’m wishing I had it. I definitely get distracted by all kinds of things when I’m doing a reading or in the middle of a spell. Not this time though,” she added quickly. “See, that’s the thing here, Olivia. This time I really felt at one with the energies, like everything was coming together just as it should. I asked for the help I needed—”
“And the Universe dropped a man into your lap. Don’t you think that’s a sign? Maybe he has something you need.” Olivia’s smile was more like a pirate’s grin.
Brooke knew that look, and there was no way she was going to reveal that she’d already been kissed within an inch of her life by the bold stranger. “You’re trying to find me a boyfriend again, aren’t you? Maybe I’d rather meet someone who hasn’t spent a thousand years as a dog.”
“Ah, now you are being picky, m’ija.”
“A grim is not a dog,” said a deep voice. Aidan stood in the doorway, kilted with a big bath towel. His gray eyes were even more startling with his dark blond hair pulled back from his face. His close-cropped beard still had beads of water in it, but the morning light revealed a decidedly reddish color in it that Brooke hadn’t noticed before. The blond hair that dusted his well-developed pecs and curled lightly around his nipples had that same red tint, a hidden highlight that only the sun would reveal. Over his sternum, however, the hair boldened to red gold. Without thinking, Brooke’s eyes automatically followed the coppery vee down the center of his taut-muscled belly to where it disappeared into the towel. She snapped her eyes up to his face just in time to realize he knew exactly what she’d just done.
Crap. She could feel the twin spots on her cheekbones heat. “You’re bleeding,” she said quickly, as if that explained why she was all but drooling over him. Lame, lame, lame, but it was the best excuse she could come up with. And he was bleeding, from various nicks and cuts on his arms and chest.
Fortunately, Olivia already had it handled. Armed with a pair of tweezers, she broke open a boxful of Band-Aids—thick, sturdy fabric ones, not the little sparkly ones that Brooke had on hand—and had Aidan sit in a kitchen chair so she could work on him. A little pile of glass fragments and plastic wrappers began to grow on the countertop as she plucked and peeled and stuck strips one after another. While she worked, the three cats showed up to check out the stranger in their apartment, first Jade, then Bouncer. Finally, even Rory emerged from his post-pig-out nap to scrutinize the man. The three sat at his feet, staring up at him as if trying to decide what he was. Or if he could be manipulated into giving them food.
“Would you like some coffee?” Brooke asked Aidan. She hoped she could manage that much without flubbing it. Although she now kept her gaze strictly above the neck when she spoke to him, dear goddess, she couldn’t unsee what she had seen. Her traitor fingers kept twitching; first one finger, then another, turned in playful little circles as if they yearned to tousle the hair on that broad muscled chest, and follow where it led…This is what comes of kissing complete strangers. I’ve definitely lost my mind…
“Aye, I will try a mug. Wales did not yet have coffee when I was—well, when I was a smith there.” Even seated, he loomed over the little bistro table. His big hand dwarfed the cup Brooke offered him, and she was grateful she didn’t dump it on him. He didn’t know she’d already spilled half of it on the counter and had to start over.
Aidan took a sip of the dark liquid and considered. Sipped again, then drank the scalding liquid down without blinking. He helped himself to one of the plain untoasted bagels that had escaped from the bag, biting into it like a doughnut.
That ended her drooling in a hurry. In fact, Brooke’s mouth nearly puckered. A thousand years of not eating and his first food is a dry bagel? Ugh! She hefted the carafe and refilled his cup—he was so going to need to wash down that doughy pastry. “Most people like their bagels sliced and toasted with butter, or cream cheese. Would you like me to fix that for you so you can try it out?” Brooke held out her hand for his bagel.
For a moment, he seemed about to say yes. But a sudden shadow crossed his face, and he shook his head. He drank his coffee and chewed the bread without looking at her again, moving only to take a second bagel. She could sense the anger and hurt that radiated from him, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out he was prob
ably thinking of the departed Annwyl, the woman he’d mistaken Brooke for. His beloved. His dear one.
What would it be like to have someone think of me that way?
“That’s the last one,” announced Olivia, having applied a final strip to the bottom of Aidan’s right foot. “I don’t think I’ve applied that many Band-Aids since George tried to skateboard down the concrete steps of the library when he was twelve. Fortunately, nothing’s too deep, so most of these can come off in a couple days. But in the meantime, you won’t be staining the clothes I brought for you.”
Aidan rose but still made no eye contact with Brooke. “I thank you for your ministrations, Mrs. Santiago-Callahan.” Then he said to the older woman in perfect Spanish, “Discúlpeme mientras tomo la oportunidad de vestirme…”
As he disappeared into the bedroom (with three cats following him), Brooke turned to her friend. “What. The. Hell?”
Olivia shrugged. “He thanked me and now he’s going to get dressed. The man speaks Spanish. Very well, in fact. He read the labels on the shampoo and things in my language, then asked me questions about them en español. Not only that, he read and translated the ingredients in the French hand cream that you order from Canada.”
Brooke did the math. “Including his own, that’s four languages. Four. That’s a lot for the time period he claims he’s from, and an awful lot for a blacksmith. Besides that, every one of those languages has evolved and changed over the centuries.”
“Oh, so now you second-guess yourself, m’ija? You’re wondering again if he’s telling us the truth about who he is and where he’s been all this time?”
“Of course I’m wondering! They don’t have language lessons in the faery realm, do they?” She realized she’d just mentioned the place as if it actually existed and pinched the bridge of her nose before her brain exploded. “Maybe George is right after all and he just happened to be watching me from the skylight when the giant dog showed up.”
Olivia shook her head. “I don’t have a lot of the Gift, but I do have an ear for the truth, and so do you,” she chided. “You know he’s not lying to us. It’s just a lot to take in all at once.” She patted Brooke’s hand and poured her more coffee. “Tomorrow or the next day, perhaps, we can go to my place and I will get out my scrying bowl. If we work together, you and I, maybe we will find some answers in it. But for now, let’s just do what comes next. As Aidan says, he will get dressed. Then we will all move forward together. I brought over a few of Jack’s old things that I thought might work,” she explained. “They are laid out on the bed for him, so he’d know what went with what.”
“That was very kind of you.” George’s father, Jack, had been a big man with wide shoulders, a boxer in his time before he turned in his gloves for a teaching career at a college in Spokane.
“It’s been five years, m’ija. It’s about time someone got some use from them.”
Olivia shrugged as if it were no big deal, but Brooke knew better from all the time she’d spent with George and Lissy in the Santiago-Callahan home. Olivia and Jack’s relationship had been a love story for the ages. When Jack passed away unexpectedly, Olivia found herself unable to continue living in the house they’d shared for so many years. Instead, she’d picked up stakes and bought herself a place with a half-acre garden in Walla Walla. George had followed her, determined that she shouldn’t be alone. Brooke was glad that she, too, had decided to make the city her home. How had she ever managed without Olivia around? She hugged her friend and stand-in mom. “I’m so grateful you came over. Thanks to you, we’ve got our stranger cleaned up, patched up, and—”
She was about to say dressed but the word stuck in her throat as Aidan reappeared in the kitchen doorway. He was dressed all right, but it was hard to tell which affected Brooke more: the fact that she remembered George’s gruff yet sweet father in what they had all laughingly called his teacher uniform of a corduroy jacket thrown over a nondescript plaid shirt and jeans, or that the clothes fit Aidan like they had been made for him. He looked good, even if he didn’t quite have the shirt buttons aligned or the collar right, and the pockets were inside out on everything. The three cats came and lounged on the floor beside him, looking as satisfied as if they’d helped him pick out his wardrobe. Knowing them, however, Brooke figured they’d laid all over the clothing on the bed before he could put in on, so that he now had the obligatory dusting of feline hair that all visitors to her apartment acquired.
At least Brooke felt more comfortable now that Aidan was fully covered, and it appeared that he was also slightly more relaxed. However, she had to work to tune out that annoying little voice in her head that kept telling her that she should have enjoyed the view while she could…As a result, she didn’t dare try to help Aidan out with the finer points of modern American clothing.
Fortunately, Olivia had already jumped in to redirect the buttoning of his shirt, straightening the collar, and instructing him on how to go about tucking in the unruly pockets. “You look very respectable, Aidan. Your last name is Llanfor, isn’t it? I’ve known some Langfords that used to live on my street, but never a Llanfor. I remember that Gladys Langford grew the most beautiful roses in her front yard, and whenever there was a summer wedding…”
She sounded cheerful and chatty, but those who were closest to her would recognize that Olivia was just making emergency conversation to cover for a sudden lump in her throat. She probably hadn’t looked at those dear clothes in a long time, and to see them on someone as big and strong as her late husband had been—well, it had to be damn hard.
“I am a smith by trade and accustomed to wearing much rougher materials. I am not certain that I am as respectable as these fine clothes suggest,” said Aidan. He leaned over and surprised Olivia by planting a kiss on her forehead. “Nor as good a man as the one who once wore them. Diolch i chi—thank you. My own mam would not have been more kind to me.”
He then finally looked at Brooke, and his expression held a mix of emotions. The anger and hurt were so very close to the surface still, and the disappointment too. If she had to guess, she’d say he was angry at her that she wasn’t his fiancée—and that he also suffered guilt because he knew he had no right to feel the way he did. Small wonder he didn’t smile as he spoke to her. This was a good man and one terribly torn. “You, too, have been kind, Brooke Halloran. Your building has been ruined, and yet you have expressed concern for a stranger and prevented your friend, George, from summoning the authorities. You have opened your home to me and called on this woman to help. I…” He paused for a moment, as if trying to choose his words. “I have behaved poorly.”
It wasn’t quite an apology, but it was definitely an admission. Olivia nearly made Brooke laugh by making a face that only she could see—her friend was plainly impressed by any man who could admit he was wrong. It was something that her beloved Jack had always had a very hard time with. G still did and probably always would, for that matter. It was a guy thing for sure, and Brooke gave a mini-shrug in reply to Olivia’s expression.
To Aidan, she said, “I guess I’d be grouchy too if I’d been dragged through a vortex and slammed through a skylight. George and I really gave you the third degree as well—asked you a lot of questions and generally gave you a hard time when I’m sure you weren’t feeling your best. Maybe we should just have a do-over.”
That puzzled him. “What is that?”
“It means, we just start over again and pretend that all the dumb stuff didn’t happen. We’ll act like we just met right now instead of this morning.” Except for the kiss. I don’t want to forget about the kiss, even if he thought I was someone else. She’d never, ever been kissed like that before. Who knew if she’d ever be kissed like that again?
As he appeared to consider her suggestion, she added: “You know, we really should be celebrating the first day of the rest of your life as a human being.”
George came in just in time to hear that. “Ha. The first rule of being human is there is no free lun
ch. At least that’s what my mother says.” He waggled his eyebrows at his mom and she swatted at him but missed. To Aidan, he said: “I’ve already got the sidewalk cleaned up, so bro, you’re gonna help with this floor here.” He jerked his head in the direction of the spell room.
Brooke could swear the man looked relieved. But then, work was a universal constant of life, and maybe it was appealing for that reason. He immediately began to take the jacket off, and Olivia jumped up to help him. She showed Aidan how to roll the shirtsleeves up over his heavily muscled forearms. Dear goddess, thought Brooke. He looks like the sexiest lumberjack I’ve ever seen. The fact that she’d never seen a real one notwithstanding, he looked just like she imagined one should. Surely lumberjacks had hands like Aidan—big, strong, calloused, and work roughened. Perfect for gliding over bare skin, leaving a trail of arousal…
As the men left the apartment, Olivia glanced back at Brooke. “See? We just do what comes next, m’ija.”
“Okay,” Brooke said, but she didn’t feel reassured. After all, she’d conjured up a death dog from the hitherto-unknown faery realm and turned him into a handsome prince, kissed him long and deep enough that she could still feel him, dammit, only to discover his heart belonged to somebody else. Oh, and she’d trashed her mortgaged building in the process.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what came next.
ELEVEN
As George shoveled up glass, he swapped his all-out defensive attitude towards Aidan for forty percent friendly mixed with sixty percent of I-am-so-keeping-an-eye-on-you. They’d arranged heavy boxes and garbage cans along the wall by the door, trying to separate out the materials from the mountain of debris. No way would the city dump accept this crap unless it was totally recyclable.
Colored-glass squares had once framed the clear skylight in a design original to the old building. The antique glass was thick and distorted things when you looked through it, like some great old marbles he’d found in a basement when he was a little kid. It was amazing how much of the colored stuff there was—the squares hadn’t seemed all that big when they were eighteen feet overhead—but he and Aidan set every bit of it aside in sturdy boxes, from the smallest thumb-size shard to pieces that were six or seven inches wide. Brooke knew of a stained-glass artist who would put the vintage material to good use, a friend of their high school classmate, Morgan Edwards, up in Spokane Valley.