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 already."
"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. andquot;
"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?"
She left the question hanging, walked back into the kitchen. She took a sip of her tea, felt the hot flow of whiskey slide into her, then began to select her other arrangements and put them where she liked. "It would be hard for you, being told this story since you were a child, being expected to accept it."
"Can you accept it?" he demanded. "Can you just shrug off education and reason and accept that you're to belong to me because a legend says so?"
"I would've said no." Pleasing herself, she set bottles of heather on the narrow stone mantel over the simmering fire. "I would have been intrigued, amused, maybe a little thrilled at the idea of it all. Then I would have laughed it off. I would have," she said as she turned to face him.
"Until I kissed you and felt what I felt inside me, and inside you."
"Desire's an easy thing."
"That's right, and if that had been it, if that had been all, we'd both have acted on it. If that had been all, you wouldn't be angry now, with yourself and with me."
"You're awfully bloody calm about it."
"I know." She smiled then, couldn't help herself. "Isn't that odd? But then, I'm odd. Everyone says so. Lena, the duck out of water, the square peg, the fumbler always just off center. But I don't feel odd or out
of place here. So it's easier for me to be calm."
Nor did she look out of place, he thought, wandering through the cottage placing her flowers. "I don't believe in magic."
"And I've looked for it all my life." She took a sprig of heather, held it out to him. "So, I'll make you a promise."
"You don't owe me promises. You don't owe me anything."
"It's free. I won't hold you with legends or magic. When I can leave, if that's what you want, I'll go."
"Why?"
"I'm in love with you, and love doesn't cling."
Humbled, he took the heather, slipped it into her hair. "Allena, it takes clear eyes to recognize what's in the heart so easily. I don't have them.
I'll hurt you." He skimmed his fingers down her cheek. "And I find
I'd rather not."
"I'm fairly sturdy. I've never been in love before, Conal, and I might be terrible at it. But right now it suits me, and that's enough."
He refused to believe anything could be so simple. "I'm drawn to you. I want my hands on you. I want you under me. If that's all, it might not be enough for you, or for me in the end. So it's best to stand back."
He walked to the peg, tugged down his slicker. "I need to work," he said, and went out into the rain.
It would be more than she'd had, she realized, and knew that if necessary, she could make it enough.
The storm was only a grumble when he came back. Evening was falling, soft and misty. The first thing he noticed when he stepped inside, was the scent.
Something hot and rich that reminded his stomach it was empty.
Then he noticed the little changes in the living room. Just a few subtle touches: a table shifted, cushions smoothed. He wouldn't have noticed the dust, but he noticed the absence of it, and the faint tang of polish.
She'd kept the fire going, and the light, mixed with that of the candles she'd found and set about, was welcoming. She'd put music on as well and was humming along to it as she worked in the kitchen.
Even as he hung up his slicker, the tension he'd carried through his work simply slid off his shoulders.
"I made some soup," she called out. "I hunted up some herbs from the kitchen bed, foraged around in here. You didn't have a lot to work with, so it's pretty basic."
"It smells fine. I'm grateful."
"Well, we have to eat, don't we?"
"You wouldn't say that so easy if I'd been the one doing the cooking." She'd already set the table, making the mismatched plates and bowls look cheerful and clever instead of careless. There were candles there, too, and one of the bottles of wine he'd brought from Dublin stood breathing on the counter.
She was making biscuits.
"Allena, you needn't have gone to such trouble."
"Oh, I like puttering around. Cooking's kind of a hobby." She poured him wine. "Actually, I took lessons. I took a lot of lessons. This time I thought maybe I'd be a chef or open my own restaurant."
"And?"
"There's a lot more to running a restaurant than cooking. I'm horrible at business. As for the chef idea, I realized you had to cook pretty much the same things night after night, and on demand, to suit the menu, you know? So, it turned into one of my many hobbies." She slipped the biscuits into the oven. "But at least this one has a practical purpose. So." She dusted her hands on the dishcloth she'd tucked into her waistband. "I hope you're hungry."
He flashed a grin that made her heart leap. "I'm next to starving."
"Good." She set out the dish of cheese and olives she'd put together. "Then you won't be critical."
Where he would have ladled the soup straight from the kettle, she poured it into a thick white bowl. Already she'd hunted out the glass dish his mother had used for butter and that he hadn't seen for years. The biscuits went in a basket lined with a cloth of blue and white checks. When she started to serve the soup, he laid a hand over hers.
"I'll do it. Sit."
The scents alone were enough to make him weep in gratitude. The first taste of herbed broth thick with hunks of vegetables made him close his eyes in pleasure.
When he opened them again, she was watching him with amused delight. "I like your hobby," he told her. "I hope you'll feel free to indulge yourself with it as long as you're here."
She selected a biscuit, studied it. It was so gratifying to see him smile.
"That's very generous of you."
"I've been living on my own poor skills for some months now." His eyes met hers, held. "You make me realize what I've missed. I'm a moody man, Allena."
"Really?" Her voice was so mild the insult nearly slipped by him.
But he was quick.
He laughed, shook his head, and spooned up more soup. "It won't be a quiet couple of days, I'm thinking."
Chapter 5
He slept in his studio. It seemed the wisest course.
He wanted her, and that was a problem. He had no doubt she would have shared the bed with him, shared herself with him. As much as he would have preferred that to the chilly and narrow cot crammed into his work space, it didn't seem fair to take advantage of her romantic notions.
She fancied herself in love with him.
It was baffling, really, to think that a woman could make such a decision, state it right out, in a fingersnap of time. But then, Allena Kennedy wasn't like any of the other women who'd passed in and out of his life. A complicated package, she was, he thought. It would have been easy to dismiss her as a simple, almost foolish sort. At a first and casual glance.
But Conal wasn't one for casual glances. There were layers to her thoughtful, bubbling, passionate, and compassionate layers. Odd, wasn't it? he mused, that she didn't seem to recognize them in herself.
That lack of awareness added one more layer, and that was sweetness.
Absently, with his eyes still gritty from a restless night, he began to sketch. Allena Kennedy from New York City, the square peg in what appeared to be a family of conformists. The woman who had yet to find herself, yet seemed perfectly content to deal with where she'd landed. A modern woman, certainly, but one who still accepted tales of magic.
No, more than accepted, he thought now. She embraced them. As if she'd just been waiting to be told where it was she'd been going all along.
That he wouldn't do, refused to do. All his life he'd been told this day would come. He wouldn't passively fall in, give up his own will. He had come back to this place at this time to prove it.
And he could almost hear the fates giggling.
Scowling, he studied what he'd drawn. It was Allena with her long eyes and sharp bones, the short and shaggy hair that suited that angular face and slender neck. And at her back, he'd sketched in the hint of faerie wings.
They suited her as well.
It annoyed the hell out of him.
Conal tossed the pad aside. He had work to do, and he'd get to it as soon as he'd had some tea.
The wind was still up. The morning sun was slipping through the stacked clouds to dance over the water. The only thunder now was the crash and boom of waves on the shore. He loved the look of it, that changing and capricious sea.
His years in Dublin hadn't been able to feed this single need in him, for the water and the sky and the rough and simple land that was his.
However often he left, wherever he went, he would always be drawn back. For here was heart and soul.
Turning away from the sea, he saw her.
She knelt in the garden, flowers rioting around her and the quiet morning sun shimmering over her hair. Her face was turned away from him, but he could see it in his mind. She would have that half-dreaming, contented look in her eyes as she tugged away the weeds he'd ignored.
Already the flowers looked cheerful, as if pleased with the attention after weeks of neglect.
There was smoke pluming from the chimney, a broom propped against the front wall. She'd dug a basket out of God knew where, and in this she tossed the weeds. Her feet were bare.
Warmth slid into him be
fore he could stop it and murmured welcome in his ear.
"You don't have to do that."
She looked up at his voice, and she was indeed happy. "They needed it.
Besides, I love flowers. I have pots of them all over my apartment, but this is so much better. I've never seen snapdragons so big." She traced a finger on a spike of butter-yellow blooms. "They always make me think of
Alice."
"Alice?"
"In Wonderland. I've already made tea." She got to her feet, then winced at the dirt on the knees of her trousers. "I guess I should've been more careful. It's not like I have a vast wardrobe to choose from at the moment. So. How do you like your eggs?"
He started to tell her she wasn't obliged to cook his breakfast. But he remembered just how fine the soup had been the night before. "Scrambled would be nice, if it's no trouble."
"None, and it's the least I can do for kicking you out of your own bed." She stepped up to the door, then turned. Her eyes were eloquent, and patient. "You could have stayed."
"I know it."
She held his gaze another moment, then nodded. "You had some bacon in your freezer. I took it out last night to thaw. Oh, and your shower dripped. It just needed a new washer."
He paused at the doorway, remembered, as he hadn't in years, to wipe his feet. "You fixed the shower?"
"Well, it dripped." She was already walking into the kitchen.
"You probably want to clean up. I'll get breakfast started."
He scratched the back of his neck. "I'm grateful."
She slanted him a look. "So am I."
When he went into the bedroom, she did a quick dance, hugged herself. Oh, she loved this place. It was a storybook, and she was right in the middle of it. She'd awakened that morning half believing it had all been a dream. But then she'd opened her eyes to that misty early light, had smelled the faint drift of smoke from the dying fire, the tang of heather she'd put beside the bed.
It was a dream. The most wonderful, the most real dream she'd ever had. And she was going to keep it.
He didn't want it, didn't want her. But that could change. There were two days yet to open his heart. How could his stay closed when hers was so full?
Books by Nora Roberts Page 311