He looked comfortable enough.
She closed her door, put the key in the ignition, and started the car. Rob turned toward her.
“I make you nervous, don’t I?”
She wasn’t sure how to answer that. He did make her nervous, but not in the way he thought. She wasn’t nervous because she was afraid of him. She was nervous because she was attracted to him, and how could she admit that to a man who was famous not only in his own time but also throughout the generations?
And, under another name, he was famous in this time, too. Only as a billionaire playboy who jet-setted from place to place.
So she decided for bravado instead: “I was just thinking that I must make you nervous.”
“Me?” he said after a moment. “You? Make me? Nervous? I—”
Then he laughed.
“I guess you must,” he said.
She grinned at him. She hadn’t expected him to make her smile.
Then she backed out of the parking space. The car turned easily, and she didn’t even come close to the SUVs. She probably should have checked her bumper before backing out, though. One of those monstrosities had probably hit her.
She clicked the air-conditioning higher, not that it did any good yet, and rolled down her window. Rob’s was already down.
She turned left, trying to remember exactly how she had gotten here.
It felt like a lifetime ago. In fact, she could hardly remember how to operate the car. Of course, that probably had something to do with the man beside her.
He was a powerful distraction.
“You know,” he said, looking out that open window, “the Interim Fates called you an empath.”
“They called you a hottie,” Megan said.
“Well, in your case, it’s true.”
What an obscure compliment to give her. At least he wasn’t repeated tried-and-true lines.
Lines tried and proven true over centuries.
She shivered. The air coming from the blowers had grown chilly. She rolled up her window and turned the air-conditioning on full blast.
“What they said about you is true in your case too,” she said.
He grinned at her sideways. “I’m not trying to butter you up.”
“I’m not trying to butter you up either. They’re right. They’re too young for you, but they’re right.”
And there it was, in the open. The age thing.
“They’re too immature for me,” he said. “I’ve learned over the course of my long life that age really doesn’t matter.”
So there had been other women, probably hundreds of them.
“I would think it would have to.” Megan came to an intersection, thankful that the stoplight ahead of her was red. She needed a moment to remember the route to the hotel. “I mean, after all, what do people have in common anyway? A shared history—not just the time they spend together, but the time they spend on the planet—accumulated wisdom, and years of observations—”
“Does my age bother you?” he asked.
“Um…” It was her turn to stammer. For a moment, she wished she was an interim fate and could say well, duh! with impunity. “Sure. I mean, yeah. I mean, shouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Should it?”
“You were in the Crusades,” she said. “Not on a crusade, but the Crusades. You know, the historical event. And I’m sure the more I talk to you, the more historical events I’ll learn about. You’ve lived like 25 times longer than I have. And that doesn’t bother you? There’s no way I can be as ‘mature’ as you are.”
“That’s a kind way of saying that I’m an old fart.” He grinned. “If the hotel’s anywhere near the Strip, you just missed your turn.”
She cursed, fought with the wheel, and glanced in the rearview mirror. How could he tell? In this stretch of Vegas, all the neighborhoods looked alike.
But the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building were suddenly on her right, instead of slightly to her left.
“Turn here,” he said, “and you’ll be fine.”
She nodded, feeling dumb. Here she was talking about maturity, and she suddenly felt like she was on a practice drive with her driver’s ed instructor.
She followed his advice and found herself on a six-lane road filled with cars, and the Strip glowing like a neon mirage ahead of her.
“I wasn’t saying you’re an old fart,” she said, wondering if she had implied it. She had trouble picking the right words while she was also driving and pretending not to be lost. “I’m just saying that a person like me has got to be dull to a person like you, no matter how mature I am for my age.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “After a certain point, all adults have a lot in common.”
“Whatever that means.” She turned again. The streets were starting to look familiar.
“After a while, who you are is more important than how long you’ve lived.” He shrugged. “Think about it. With the exception of your parents, don’t you feel like you’re the same age as most people who are over thirty and not obviously frail and elderly?”
She did. She gave advice to people twenty years older than she was without thinking about it, and talked to people who were in their sixties as if they were the same age.
She let out a small breath. “I understand the ‘you’re only as old as you feel’ concept, but it has nothing to do with eight hundred years of living versus twenty-five.”
His eyebrows went up. “You’re only twenty-five? Well, then, forget it. You’re much too young for me.”
She opened her mouth, shook her head, and then realized she had no response to his comment at all. None.
“We’re just going to have to wait until you’re thirty,” he said.
She reached the hotel and turned left into the parking garage. The attendant waved at her. She waved back.
“Wait for what?” she asked as she pulled into the same parking space she’d had that morning.
“A relationship.”
She shut off the car and shook her head again. “A relationship?”
She couldn’t quite believe that. Why would he be interested in a relationship? A friendship, a one-night stand, but a relationship?
He chuckled. “You actually believe me.”
Her face grew so warm that it almost hurt. He had tricked her into admitting her feelings. How could an eight-hundred-year-old man make her feel like she was in high school all over again?
He frowned. “I meant about being twenty-five instead of thirty. Not about the relationship.”
She nodded, made herself breathe, then popped the car door open. “It’s hot in here, don’t you think?”
He took her hand. “I’m actually interested in you, Megan. The relationship comment wasn’t a joke. Seriously.”
“Sure,” she said and got out of the car, slamming the door so hard that the sound echoed in the concrete bunker so like the one she had just left.
He got out, too. “I mean it. I haven’t met a woman who has attracted me like you have in centuries.”
“See?” she said. “There it is again. Centuries.”
“You want me to say years?” he asked. “That’s trivial in the context of my life. I mean centuries. Since Marian.”
The last two words hung between them. He looked appalled by them; she felt helpless, as if she were floating against a tide she had no control over.
“Is that a line you use on all the women?” she asked after a moment.
He shook his head. His expression was tight.
She suddenly regretted her question. She had wanted him to feel as uncomfortable as she did, and she had clearly achieved that. In fact, she had made him feel more uncomfortable.
She had hurt him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was rude of me.”
He blinked and seemed to get control of himself, but his eyes were wide and pain-filled. Still, he forced himself to smile.
“I deserved it,” he said. “I guess it’s odd to
think that someone like me, someone who has been around forever, would fall for someone else in less than a day.”
Her breath caught. Fall for? He wasn’t lying. She would be able to sense it if he were lying.
Wouldn’t she?
“It does seem improbable,” she said, and her words sounded lame. Worse than lame, they were slightly cruel.
Why was she hurting him? Because she was afraid of him?
Not him, exactly.
She was afraid of the powerful emotions he was drawing up from inside her. She had worked for most of her adult life at masking her emotions, hiding behind the screen she’d learned, being as calm as she could be.
She was anything but calm around Rob.
“Yeah,” he said and smiled again ever so slightly. “It does seem improbable. But everything about me is improbable.”
She had to give him that. She had to give him more than that. She had to stop fighting whatever it was between them.
“Everything about this day has been improbable,” she said.
“I’m moving too fast for you.” He leaned against the car and rested his arms on the roof, staring at her.
She resisted the urge to look around him to see if the attendant was listening.
“Everything is moving too fast for me,” she said. “I’m not good at surprises.”
“It seems to me you are,” he said. “You were able to handle the Interim Fates better than I could have.”
She shrugged. “I work with teenagers.”
“Not teenagers with enough magic to destroy the planet.”
“Oh,” she said softly, “some of them think they do.”
“I mean literally.”
She nodded. “I know that. But there’s not a lot of difference between thinking you have that power and actually having that power.”
“Unless you use it,” he said.
“With their father around, do you think they would?” she asked.
He grinned. “You see, you do really well with surprises. You have a lot of this figured.”
“And a lot of it is just me swimming upstream.” She was used to swimming upstream. When her parents had adopted her, they’d already had Travers and Vivian. Megan had felt like she was behind the curve from the moment she had arrived in that house.
The world had always been an inexplicable place, and she worked hard at not being noticed.
And here was a gorgeous man—a gorgeous, accomplished man—a gorgeous accomplished man in many countries and many lifetimes—noticing her.
More than noticing her.
Wanting her.
For whatever reason.
“So,” he said. “I was right. I scare you.”
Megan nodded. It was difficult to be honest with him, but it felt good at the same time. Still, she wanted out of the conversation.
“I scare you,” he said, “because of who I was.”
She shook her head. “Because of who you are.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Rob Chapeau, Billionaire Playboy? I already told you that’s made up for the press.”
“Magical, good-looking, a little—” (a lotta, but she wasn’t ready to say that) “—old-fashioned, smart, and strong.”
He smiled, clearly flattered and a bit bemused. “Why would that frighten you?”
Honesty time. She had promised herself. “Because you’re interested in me.”
“Why wouldn’t I be? You’re beautiful—”
She snorted.
“—smart, strong, and intuitive. I like all of that.”
“I’m sure there were countless women in your past with all of those traits.”
He nodded. “But none of them with the ability to see me, and see me clearly.”
Her gaze met his. “I don’t know if I see you clearly.”
“You walked into my magic circle last night,” he said.
“Drove in,” she said.
“And your questions this afternoon kicked my magic enough out of control that I showed you parts of my past no one has seen. Then you were able to talk with the Interim Fates. That’s amazing. I’ve never met anyone like you.”
“So,” she said, trying not to let disappointment into her voice. “It’s all about that empathic ability you were talking about. That rarity.”
He shook his head. “It’s about you. I find you fascinating, and I want to protect you, and I want to hold you—”
“I don’t need protection,” she snapped. She hated it when he brought this up. If he persisted in this attitude, there would be nothing between them.
“Ah,” he said, leaning his chin on the backs of his hands. It almost seemed like he was part of the car this way. “But you do need protection, Megan. You—”
“I can take care of myself. I have for twenty-five years. I’m a very strong woman, you said so yourself, and I can—”
“I know you’re strong,” he said. “I know you can take care of yourself. But no one has looked out for you, have they? Not once. No one told you that you have a special ability. No one showed you your magic, like they showed your brother his.”
“My brother had no idea until this week.” She was glad the car was between her and Rob. She needed the shield. She was getting more and more unsettled.
“But you’re so sensitive about how you look and your own abilities,” Rob said gently. “That comes when someone has to take care of herself, when she has no one to defend her.”
“My family’s great,” she said. “It’s just weird. I have a pretty, petite sister, and a brother who looks like a 1950s version of an All-American basketball player, and then there’s tubby little old me.”
Tubby. She winced when she said that word. It just came out.
“Was that what your parents called it?” Rob asked gently.
She shook her head. “They said it was baby fat. They said I’d grow out of it.”
“You’re voluptuous. Bottitcelli’s Venus,” he said. “So incredibly beautiful. Women need to celebrate their looks, their femaleness. You do.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I’d give anything to be a size six. But I could starve and never fit into anything smaller than a ten. I’m big-boned and big-hipped and big, big, big.”
He could probably hear the self-loathing in her voice. Her counselor had told her to work on body image, and she tried. But that meant accepting she would never be small, she would always be short and round, and nothing she could do would ever change that.
“Womanly,” he said.
“Fat,” she said.
“In today’s culture,” he said, “I can see how you feel that way. But women like you were rich in most of the years I lived through. Rich and strong because you had to be lush to bear children, to live through the hardships. Women like you represented the ideal female beauty, warm and soft and curvy.”
She stared at him but continued to lean against the car so that he couldn’t see her body.
He actually seemed to mean those words. He said each one as if it were a sensual detail, as if he were describing the best meal he’d ever had or the tastiest bottle of wine.
“You believe that, don’t you?” she said.
He nodded. “My Marian was built like you, not like the thin things that portray her in the movies. She was a great beauty. Like you.”
Megan shook her head slightly. “I’m not beautiful.”
“Half the cultures in this world would think you are. And most of the cultures in the past. America has a sickness. It has infected you, so that you believe you have no beauty at all. You are stunning.” Then he smiled. “This is what I mean by protecting you.”
She frowned. “I’m not following.”
“I mean that like all of us, you have damaged places, hurt places, and those places need a champion, someone to help them heal. I don’t want to take over your life and diminish you. I would like to be beside you, and keep those harmful attitudes from hurting you worse. There is nothing wrong with having someone strong beside you, to giv
e you added strength.”
She tilted her head slightly. She’d never heard anything like this, and she wasn’t sure if it was true. It certainly wasn’t anything she’d been taught in her courses, although it had a certain validity for her practice.
If she had been able to go home with some of her patients, defend them — protect them — against the verbal battering they received from their parents, or point out the neglect, the lack of love, then she would have been those children’s champions. And she would have been able to help them strengthen. Maybe their parents wouldn’t have changed, but the kids might have seen where their parents were deficient, where their home life was deficient.
“Everyone needs a protector,” Rob said. “Even me.”
“I couldn’t protect you,” Megan said softly. “You’re a bona fide hero. There are books dedicated to all you’ve done.”
“And yet,” he said just as softly, “in order to do those things, I’ve had to separate myself from my heart. I thought that heart was gone. But you found it.”
Her gaze met his. His eyes were warm, sincere.
“We can protect each other,” he said, “if we but try.”
He was winning her over, and so quickly. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be won.
She needed a little time, time to reflect, time to see if this was real or as ephemeral as that trip to the Interim Fates had been.
He stood, obviously feeling her change of mood.
“First,” she said quietly, “I need to see if Kyle’s all right.”
“Then we have to save the world for true love.” Rob’s words were mocking.
“We did promise to help the Interim Fates,” Megan said.
“You promised,” he said. “I just agreed to help you.”
“You don’t think they’re worth helping?”
“I think Zeus will destroy us for trying.” Then Rob grinned.
Megan felt even more confused. “What’s the smile for?”
“You truly are an empath,” he said. “You know how to manipulate me.”
She shook her head slightly. She didn’t like this empath talk. “I didn’t mean to manipulate you.”
“Maybe not consciously,” he said. “But you did.”
He was right; she hadn’t been aware of what she had done. “How?”
His smile widened. “The best way to get me to join any cause is to ask me to defend the powerless against the powerful.”
Fates 06 - Totally Spellbound Page 29