Michael was holding himself rigidly, as if he were afraid a movement would betray him. Attraction and first kisses—where she and he were now.
“And then,” Emma said, “we kissed, and I lost a thousand years. And when I woke up, everything was paved, and Aethelstan looked old enough to be my father.”
“Wow,” Michael said.
She nodded, then sighed. Her life, empty as it was, now open for him to see.
“So,” he said. “What has all of this to do with sharing a room?”
She froze. She had forgotten how she had even gotten on the subject. But she had been the one to bring it up. She pushed her chair away from the table, and slumped down. She didn’t look at him—at least not directly.
“I like you, Michael.”
“I like you, too, Emma.”
“No,” she whispered. “I really like you.”
That smile was back on his face. She could see it out of the corner of her eye. “Does that mean you’re worried about what’ll happen if we share a room?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What if I swear to protect your virtue?” There was no humor in his voice. She looked at him. The smile was gone now. He seemed very serious.
“I’m not worried about you,” she said.
He took her hand. His touch was electric; she could feel it throughout her entire body. It was as if no one had ever really touched her before.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t attracted to you too,” he said, “but I can promise that I won’t kiss you.”
He made it sound so easy. Maybe it was for him. She started to pull her hand away, but his grip tightened.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, his voice slightly husky. “I want to kiss you. Very much. But I understand your fear. I’m telling you that I respect it.”
Her eyes burned and she had to look away. No one had been this tender with her, ever. Not even Darnell, who in his little catlike way, always had his own agenda.
“Now I understand why you’re always pulling away.” Michael’s forefinger traced her knuckles. The movement was both gentle and erotic. A wave of desire ran through her. “I thought for a long time that you simply weren’t attracted to me.”
“It was better that way,” she said, watching his finger move. She wanted to stop him, to make the feeling go away, but she also wanted him to keep touching her—forever.
“Not for me.”
“Michael, we can’t do anything. Nothing will come of this.”
His hand covered hers again. “Emma, people can have long relationships without kissing. There’s more to—”
She put her finger on his lips. “I know. I have cable.”
He hadn’t moved. It was as if he were holding himself back, as if his first inclination was to kiss the finger she pressed against him.
She dropped her hand. He tightened his grip on her other one—a squeeze, a reassurance.
“Michael,” she said. “I have no idea how deep the spell goes.”
“You said it was a kiss spell.”
“I said she often lied about what kind of spell it was.”
His face paled. “You mean that any kind of physical intimacy might trigger that coma again?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“If something happened, couldn’t someone appeal to the Fates? After all, it would be wrong. She’s gone. The spell should have been removed. Right? Or wouldn’t they see it that way?”
“They probably would.” Emma clenched her free hand on her lap. More than anything she wanted to cover his hand with her own, feel the weight of both of their hands on top of hers. But she didn’t.
She wouldn’t.
“I don’t understand the problem then,” he said.
“Their sense of time is different from ours. They might reverse the spell, and I would still lose ten, twenty, forty years of my life. I’m not willing to do that again, Michael.”
“I understand that,” he said. “Oddly enough, it makes complete sense to me. But it sure makes for a lonely existence.”
“I know,” Emma said softly.
He studied her for a moment. The compassion on his face was almost more than she could bear. “At some point, Emma, you might want to find out if the spell still exists.”
“You mean test it?”
He nodded.
“Why?” she asked. “Why would I do that?”
“Because right now you’re operating on supposition. And you could live another thousand years—a lonely woman with a series of cats. What if, five hundred years from now, you find out that you were wrong, that the spell was gone?”
She let out a small shuddery sigh. She hadn’t thought of that before.
“You see, even if you lose thirty years to a test, it will still prevent you from living alone for the next thousand.”
“Assuming someone would want me,” Emma said.
Michael placed his other hand over hers. The warmth and weight of his hands was comforting, and still arousing. “I would want you.”
“You thought I faked all my research. You thought I was incompetent and a fraud.”
“And I was attracted to you even then. God help me, Emma, even when I thought you were betraying everything I believed in, I still wanted to be with you.”
She finally did put her hand on his. A hand pile, the most physical they would probably ever get. “That’s why you said no to the trip.”
“You were confusing me. I’d never felt like this about a woman before. My choices in the past were always very logical.” Her gaze met his. He smiled ruefully. “And passionless. No wonder they didn’t last.”
“Anything between us would be passionless too, Michael,” she said.
He laughed. “Emma, you and I have never lacked for passion. It’s physical intimacy that’s the problem.”
“So the dream, that was just an excuse?”
“The dream had me worried,” he said. “I didn’t want to know that you had left the world because I was attracted to you.”
“My beauty,” she said sadly. “Just like everyone else.”
He sighed. “I guess I deserved that. I even thought that for a while. But, Emma, it was more from the start.”
“You’d like to believe that anyway,” she said. Maybe when she got her magic, she would make her face plain, so that no one stared at her. She had so many things that other people wanted, and they were such empty, useless things.
“No, Emma,” he said. “I know that it was more.”
“You can’t know that,” she said.
“Oh, but I can.”
“How?”
“I thought you were crazy. I’d seen beautiful crazy women before, and I’ve never ever been attracted to them.”
She traced his knuckles with her finger. It was just as erotic in the reverse. She made herself stop.
“I used to wonder,” she said, “if part of Ealhswith’s spell wasn’t to make me irresistible to men.”
“You’re saying my feelings for you are magic?” He pulled one of his hands out from under hers and caught hers. Now he was holding both her hands, gently but firmly. “How insecure are you, Emma?”
“I am about some things.”
“How can you be? You’re talented, smart, and beautiful.”
“It’s really quite simple.” She slipped her hands away from his. “Darnell’s the only person—if you want to call him that—who ever wanted to be with me more than he wanted to be with anyone else.”
“Come now, Emma—”
“Think about it,” she said as she stood up and walked away.
***
He did think about it. He sat alone in the mall restaurant, drinking coffee and waiting for his hormones t
o stop jumping.
No one had wanted Emma from the beginning. Her parents had given her away. The woman they had given her to was a hideous person, one that Michael didn’t entirely understand. And then she had become infatuated with a boy, who had harmed her. After rediscovering him in a time of crisis, he turned away from her and married another woman.
For the last ten years, her best friend had been a cat. An elderly cat, who, for all his feistiness, didn’t have many years left.
Why would Emma believe anyone would fight for her? Even Michael had shown her, by his actions, that he only wanted to be with her under duress.
Well, it was time to prove himself now. He would help her free herself from this curse. Even if she ultimately decided that she didn’t want to be with him—and why would a beautiful magical creature want to be with a stodgy professor?—she would at least know that he had cared.
And she would be free to fall in love, sometime in her very long life.
Somehow the idea didn’t comfort him. The best he could hope for was that when she really did fall in love, it would be long after he was gone.
Because, spell or not, she had stolen his heart—and only now had he realized it was missing.
Chapter 11
When Michael returned to the hotel nearly an hour later, Emma had already moved them to a new room with two queen-sized beds. Fortunately the desk clerk had caught Michael or he would have gone to the old room. He went up three flights of stairs, feeling slightly cranky and oddly uncomfortable that Emma had touched his things.
The new key card the desk clerk had given him worked like a charm, and Michael opened the door, only to find a growling Darnell. Even regular-cat-sized, Darnell looked ferocious, his incisors bared and his eyes flashing yellow.
“It’s me, buddy,” Michael said as he slipped inside.
Darnell’s hackles fell. He backed away, and then walked to the window as if he had meant to growl at the man who had defended him two days before.
“At least we avoided a pizza moment,” Emma said.
“A pizza moment?”
“He used to attack the pizza delivery guys.”
“Charming cat you have there.”
Emma shrugged. “I told you. He likes me. And that means he defends me, whether I need it or not.”
Michael closed the door and stepped farther into the room. It was much bigger than the one he had left, and actually had a tiny view of the Black Hills in the distance.
Emma had all the lights on, even the bathroom lights. The TV was tuned to CNN Headline News. She was sitting on the bed closest to the window wearing a thin blue-and-white striped robe and dark blue socks. Her hair was pulled away from her face, which had a fresh-scrubbed look. The room smelled faintly of bath oil, and Michael wondered what he had missed.
He didn’t want to know. Or rather, he didn’t want to think about it. He had promised, after all.
“You didn’t tell me we’d move before I got back.”
“I figured when your key didn’t work, you’d go downstairs and found out where we were.” She sounded matter of fact, but she hadn’t looked at him. She was staring at the television. Her right hand was toying with the remote.
“What’s Darnell think of this?”
To Michael’s surprise, the cat yowled. Darnell was standing in the middle of the floor, legs spread, shaking his little feline head.
“Is he saying no?”
“I told you he could communicate without having to say the words.”
“He really wants out of here.”
“Well,” Emma said. “I really want a good night’s sleep.”
She still hadn’t looked at him. Apparently the conversation embarrassed her. Or maybe the situation did. Michael wondered if she had ever shared a room with anyone—at least after her coma—and he would wager that she hadn’t.
“It’s awfully early for lights out,” Michael said, sitting on his bed.
“What do you want to do?” Emma asked. “Play a game of Parcheesi?”
Michael laughed. “Who taught you how to play Parcheesi?”
“Nora’s mother. She adored the game.”
Michael shook his head. “Parcheesi is not my idea of a good time.”
Emma plucked at the thin bedspread. Her ears had turned red. Apparently she would take anything he said tonight in exactly the wrong way.
He sighed. He wasn’t about to tell her that he didn’t have pajamas or a robe. He got out of bed, and opened his suitcase, which Emma had thoughtfully placed on the suitcase holder in the closet. Then he removed a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt. It wouldn’t be the most comfortable outfit to sleep in, but it would work.
For a moment, he hesitated. He’d shared hotel rooms before with other adults—adults he wasn’t involved with—and usually they just turned aside as he changed clothes. But he doubted Emma would do that. He took his clothing into the bathroom, feeling like a virgin bride on the wedding night.
The scent of the bath oil was even stronger in here. The tub was still slick and water beaded on the porcelain. A damp towel hung on the hook behind the door. Had Emma expected him back sooner? Or had she known that he would be gone long enough for her to take a bath?
Or was her subconscious playing more tricks on them both, this time fallible, human tricks? Whatever it was, it was working. He finger combed his hair, and let himself out of the room, wishing he hadn’t suggested this arrangement in the first place.
Darnell was still pacing. He looked like a tiny black guard who was determined to keep his mistress safe. Michael picked him up. Darnell’s body was rigid.
“We’ll make sure everything goes okay tonight, big guy,” he said. “You need some rest too.”
Darnell squirmed out of his arms, and jumped onto Emma’s bed. He laid at the foot and alternated between looking at the door and looking at the window. At least he wasn’t pacing anymore.
CNN started its news cycle all over again. Michael sighed, pulled out his pillows, and settled on his bed.
It was going to be a very long night.
***
Even after she had turned out all the lights, Emma couldn’t get to sleep. The room felt different than any other bedroom she’d ever been in. Michael’s presence seemed stronger in the darkness—his even breathing, the rustling of his sheets, the occasional sigh. If she squinted, she could see his shape in the darkness, lying on his side, facing the wall.
He hadn’t tried anything. He had promised and he had been able to keep that promise.
Part of her was very disappointed about that.
She fluffed her pillows for the six hundredth time and stared at the ceiling. She had wanted to get some sleep but now she wasn’t sure it was possible, not with Michael so close. Everything had changed with their conversation. Now he knew that she wasn’t avoiding him. Now he knew that she found him attractive. And, it seemed, he found her attractive too.
Michael’s presence wasn’t the only thing that kept her awake. She was afraid of her dreams. Michael knew to wake her up, but she wasn’t sure if he’d remember in the heat of some strangeness.
Although there was a better chance of him remembering than Darnell would. Darnell, who hadn’t left the foot of the bed, who continued to watch the window and door as if he expected one of them to suddenly open and something horrible to come through.
She pressed her fingers against her temple, trying to wipe out that thought. What she was most afraid of was that the something horrible would come from her very own mind.
It took nearly an hour, but she finally dozed. She had no idea how long she had been asleep when she awoke to the sound of voices. Whispering voices.
She couldn’t make out the words, but the shush-shush sound of them made her hair stand on end. She was breathing shallowly, not sur
e if they would disappear now that she was awake.
Shapes surrounded her bed. Gray shapes that seemed to have no real substance. Over their whispers, she could hear Michael’s soft breathing and Darnell’s snores. They were asleep.
Or maybe she was dreaming.
She willed herself to wake up, but nothing happened. No changes, nothing. So she propped herself up on her elbows. The shapes moved like oil on water.
“What do you want?” she asked in her most menacing voice.
Darnell’s snoring stopped. She had at least awakened the cat. Then she realized that Michael’s breathing no longer held the even rhythm of sleep. He was awake too.
“I said what do you want?” She spoke even louder this time. Michael shifted on his bed. She heard the creaking mattress, but she couldn’t see him through the shapes.
The whispering had stopped when she had first spoken, but it started up again. This time it was louder.
Loose magic…
Loose magic…
Loose magic…
Darnell’s fur was standing on end. He had risen to his feet and he was growling.
“What do you mean?” Emma asked.
So easy to take…
So easy…
“What the hell is this?” Michael asked. Just the sound of his voice reassured her. But it didn’t reassure Darnell. He was still growling.
You don’t want it…
Don’t want it…
“What are you talking about?” Emma asked.
A simple gift…
A simple gift…
A simple gift—
Darnell yowled and launched himself at the shadows. He went right through them, although he was yelping as his fur met with their grayness. They shredded like fog in a breeze and then they vanished as if they never were.
Darnell landed on Michael, kicking and clawing. Michael grabbed Darnell and held him over his head. Darnell was fighting harder than Emma had ever seen him. He was frantic, yowling and hissing and clawing and biting.
“Emma!” Michael said.
She eased herself off the bed and crossed the small space between them. The air still had a slimy feel, as if the shadows had left something behind. She grabbed Darnell, got sliced for her efforts, and cradled him, trying to calm him.
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