He remained silent, and she began to shake her head.
“But you didn’t really do that. You didn’t give it away. When?”
“The day after the conflict resolution meeting at your office. There didn’t seem to be much reason to hold out hope.”
“Can you get it back?”
“No, Lucy, it’s gone.”
“Oh, my God, Noah, why?”
“Because I said I would.”
She shook her head. “But I would never have asked you to do that. I know what the belt meant to you.”
“I didn’t do it just for you, Lucy. Some men do keep their promises, and I needed to keep this one.”
Her throat had gone terribly dry, but it had nothing to do with telling untruths. It was raw emotion. Naked disbelief. Kindling hope.
“Noah,” she whispered. She didn’t know what to do.
Fortunately, he did. He closed the distance between them and took her by the hand, giving her a moment to feel his warmth and get accustomed to his nearness. She looked up at him and was immediately lost in the wild blue depths of his eyes. His lips touched hers, and his fingers held her face, exactly as he had the first time they kissed.
Not a test this time. The real thing. And so were her feelings. Hot and bright. Searingly real. Almost painful. God, was she awake, alive.
“Come here,” he whispered. “Let me hold you.”
Gladly she fell into his arms, warmed by blue denim and enveloping male heat. He seemed to need this as much as she did. He was holding her like she was something precious and irreplaceable.
As the moments flew by, she said, “By the way, what’s number one?”
“Us,” he told her, “if there is an us. That’s number one.”
She nodded against his chest, wondering if this was really happening. “I was wrong about you. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”
“I could compile my very own top ten list.” Pretending to deliberate, he said, “Let me see. Number ten: Take the tucks out of that wedding dress?”
Lucy laughed and raised on her tiptoes to kiss him again, knowing her life was never going to be the same. Thank God. From now on there would be lots of laughing, lots of light, and a love that burned as bright as a forest of candles. And best of all, if she was lucky, she would be kissed awake by a blue-eyed prince, in the form of an electrician, each and every morning.
Midsummer Night’s Magic
VIRGINIA KANTRA
In grateful memory to children’s librarians Margaret Garwood and Jeanette Wermuth of the Ludington Public Library, who over the years introduced me to Andrew Lang and Georgette Heyer.
Thank you for making a difference.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
O I forbid you, maidens a’.
That wear gowd on your hair,
To come or gae by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lin is there.
I love fairy tales. The story of Tam Lin or Tamlane appears as ballad 39A in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads edited by Francis Child and is said to date from 1729. But the legend is much older than that. You can find Child’s version online at http://www.tam-lin.org/front.html
Sexy, scary, and touching, the story has always seemed timeless to me. I hope you enjoy this modern re-telling as much as I did.
Chapter One
THE entire evening had been a total waste of time, gas, and moonlight.
Not that librarian Janet Porter had much else to do with her Saturday night. She’d actually been pleased by Monica Randolph’s invitation. A dinner party seemed like the perfect opportunity to do a little discreet fund-raising for the Poplar branch of the Wade County Public Library. She hadn’t even minded the forty-five-minute drive out of town to the Randolphs’ home, a half-million-dollar mansion perched, like a Swiss chalet on steroids, halfway up a mountain.
But Janet never had a chance to make her pitch for the library. Her hostess had been far more interested in Janet’s failure to bring a date than in her lack of up-to-date computer equipment.
So Janet had written the evening off as a bad investment even before the squealing erupted from under the hood of her car.
She switched off the voices keeping her company on late-night public radio and glanced at the dash. Her stomach sank.
The engine light was on. That couldn’t be good. She peered through the windshield, but it was too dark to see if the engine was smoking. Too dark to see much of anything, really, but tall black trees and humped gray hills and neglected white mile markers.
She tightened her grip on the wheel. If she could just make it to the next intersection . . .
The car shuddered and squealed again. And then the engine died.
Oh, please, Janet thought. The car rolled and bumped onto the soft shoulder as she braked, fighting to stay clear of the ditch. Not here. Not now.
But nobody listened, not the Fates or the fairies or the gods of Detroit. Her car lurched and stopped, nose down, under the trees.
Janet drew a shaky breath, still clinging to the wheel of her car. Her palms were damp. Her heart was thudding. Gradually, she became aware of other sounds stealing through the open crack of her window. Night noises. Insect noises. Rustling, whirring, buzzing noises, foreign and unfriendly.
So she wasn’t nature girl. That didn’t mean she had to sit here like a lump until the bats and mosquitoes swooped down to take her away. She was used to doing things for herself. When you were thirty-six years old and lived alone, it wasn’t like you had a choice.
She wiped her palms on her skirt and got out of the car.
Her heels sank in the mud. Her feet tangled in the tall grass. Her clothes—long skirt, short jacket, tasteful earrings—were fine for dinner with a library patron. Not so good for poking around under the hood of her car.
She tottered around anyhow, not sure what she was looking for or even if she would recognize it if she saw it. At least she could see now. The moon, a clear, pale disk in the sky, shed silver light on everything.
She stared at the dark, greasy tangle of pipes and wires under the hood, fighting the curl of helplessness in her stomach. For one atypical year in graduate school, she’d actually lived with an engineering student; that didn’t make her a car mechanic. Ross MacLean had shown her how to change a tire and charge a battery. He’d taught her not to trust good-looking men who pretended to love her. He’d never informed her what to do about an engine that squealed and died.
She had her cell phone. What she didn’t have was anyone she could call at eleven-thirty at night who would be willing to drive forty miles outside of town to rescue her.
She needed new friends.
No, she needed a tow truck. Or a North Carolina state trooper. She fumbled in her bag for her phone and pressed *SP to summon the state police. Nothing. Not a click, not a ring. . . . Maybe it was SP*? Or #SP? She tried them both without success. She was probably in some dead zone far out in the country.
The road curved into silence and shadow in both directions. Someone would drive by eventually, she assured herself. A farmer in a pickup truck. Or a pair of teens on their way to the local lovers’ lane. A friendly trucker who wanted to stay off the main highway. A serial killer out trolling for victims. . . .
She shivered and looked over her shoulder.
Lights? Were those lights, twinkling through the trees?
Janet knew she wasn’t brave. She didn’t want to leave her car. But lights meant people, a phone, a farmhouse, safety.
She locked her car—leaving the hood up to attract any highway patrolman who might cruise by—and plunged off the road and over the ditch toward the lights. The bank proved to be surprisingly tough going. She had to brace her feet on tufts of grass and grasp at saplings for balance. Halfway up, the overhanging trees hid the lights from her view, and she almost gave up. But then she heard some kind of back porch music, fiddles and drums. A radio? So she went on.
At the top of the bank, she paused, panting. A low stone wall rode t
he crest of the hill, its outline gleaming in the moonlight. The sense of passing a border, a boundary, sucked at her feet and clutched her heart like the soft ground and the snagging branches.
Stupid. She threw her leg over the wall and ripped her pantyhose.
A lean, dark shadow detached itself from the deeper shadows at the side of the path and stood in her way.
“You’re trespassing,” the shadow said coldly.
Janet’s heart rocketed to her throat. Her hand flew to her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly, because the slog up the bank had taken it out of her and because, well, he’d scared her. He was very tall, whoever he was, and he’d appeared out of the dark like magic. Irritation flickered at the edge of her fear, like a line of flame on a piece of paper. Who did he think he was, skulking around, jumping out at people? Jerk.
“There wasn’t a sign,” she pointed out.
She thought he stiffened. She couldn’t be sure. The moon was behind him, and she couldn’t see his face, only the sudden tension in his broad shoulders.
But clearly he wasn’t at all placated by her apology or her explanation. “You need to leave,” he said. “Now.”
Maybe it was the darkness that forced her to focus on his voice. It had a deep, low timbre that shivered her bones and stirred her memory.
Which was ridiculous, because she didn’t know him. She couldn’t know him. She didn’t normally spend her time tromping the backwoods of North Carolina.
Although it was possible he’d visited her library. He could have come in to read up on bovine growth hormones or to borrow a government pamphlet on pesticides. Perhaps he was a student in town. Despite his height and his deep voice, Janet thought he was young. He had a young man’s arrogant grace and long hair. Even in silhouette she could see it brushed his shoulders.
“I can’t leave,” Janet said in her best “Quiet, please” voice. “My car broke down.”
He raised his head like a wolf scenting prey. “You’re alone?”
Janet swallowed. He wasn’t a patron. This wasn’t her library. Maybe he was a rapist. Maybe, oh, God, maybe he was a lookout of some kind. Wild notions raged in her brain. She’d read her local history. Bad things went on in the woods at night. It wasn’t that long ago that Klansmen ran in these hills. Moonshiners. Pot farmers.
“I have friends waiting for me,” she said hastily.
“Right.” He took a step forward, still in shadow. “Let’s get you back to them, then.”
Janet froze, her heart thumping like a rabbit’s. She didn’t want to go anywhere with him. But if she ran for the road, he would catch her. If she screamed, there was no one to hear.
“I think I’ll wait here,” she said.
He stopped, his tall profile blurred against the backdrop of trees. She wished she could read his expression. “You need help,” he said flatly.
Well, obviously. But she hated needing help, and it didn’t seem wise to admit a weakness. Not to him.
“I just need a phone,” she said.
He shook his head. “You need a hell of a lot more than that,” he said—amused? disapproving?—and slipped past her, down the hill.
He never brushed against her. In fact, he held himself carefully separate and turned his head away. But his movement stirred the air around her. His closeness made her tremble, and his scent teased her. He smelled like wild things, like night and smoke and some sharp, elusive memory.
She drew a shaky breath and held it inside as he disappeared in the direction of her car.
“Friend of yours, is he?” croaked a voice somewhere near her knees.
Janet’s eyes popped open. Alarmed, she took a step back, trying wildly to locate the speaker. “I—no,” she stammered. “He’s taking a look at my car.”
“Ah.”
There. On a fallen log under the trees, a man hunched like a drift of leaves, like a lump of lichen. When she spotted him, he uncurled from his perch. And even though it was dark, she saw his smile gleam in the moonlight. His teeth were pointed.
“You’re trespassing,” he said.
Alarm made her cross. “Yes, I know.”
“I don’t mind,” the man said peaceably, shuffling toward her. He was short, and there was something peculiar about the way he dressed. Janet blinked. Were those feathers around his neck? “But She might.”
“Who is she?” asked Janet. “Who are you?”
The man chuckled. “Now, that would be telling.”
Had she stumbled on some kind of criminal activity in the woods? Or the Mad Hatter’s tea party?
“You can’t tell me your name?”
“You can call me Rob.” The little man smiled at her, as if pleased with his solution. “Rob Goodfellow.”
“Fine,” Janet snapped, because she was having a bad night and she was nervous. “Rob. Can you tell me where I can find a phone?”
Goodfellow cocked his head to one side, as if he were listening. The music continued, faint and disturbing, like the bass rhythm on a stereo played in the next apartment. “You’ll want to come to the Circle,” he said at last. “It may be you’ll find what you need there.”
Great. The sooner she called a towing service and got back to town and normalcy, the better. She straightened her spine and followed him through the bare, dark wood, the ghosts of last autumn sliding and rustling underfoot.
She was looking for the warm yellow squares of house windows. Instead she saw red sparks sailing from an open fire toward the black and pewter sky. Silver points winked from the branches overhead like Christmas decorations or lights strung at a party.
A party. Janet’s mouth dropped open as she tottered from under the cover of trees. Not a Klan meeting. Not a drug rendezvous. She had stumbled on a party, one of those Renaissance fair thingies or maybe a Mardi Gras festival, with people in costume and music and dancing. She saw feathers, she saw flowers, she saw velvet and fur. A woman with a face like an angel whirled by in the arms of a man wearing a horned satyr’s mask.
“What—Where are we?” she asked.
Her escort watched her with shrewd black eyes like a bird’s. “Those who live around here call it Carter Farm.”
She squinted. It was hard to focus beyond the flickering fire and shifting dancers, the bright skirts and bare feet, the pale arms and glittering eyes, but she thought she could make out the pitched roof of a house, a stone well, a weathered barn. All dark, all deserted.
Janet glanced uncertainly at Goodfellow, the call of the pipes swirling in her ears and the rhythm of the drums louder than her heartbeat.
“You said there would be a phone,” she said slowly.
He grinned at her. His teeth were very pointy. “Did I?”
“What are you doing?” It was the deep voice again, the voice of the tall man who had stopped her by the wall, only now he didn’t sound cold at all. He sounded angry. “You shouldn’t have brought her. She doesn’t belong here.”
Janet blinked, dazzled by the dancers and the light of the fire. She knew she didn’t belong here. She had to get back to . . . Well, she’d sort of lost track of what she had to get back to, but she was pretty sure she was supposed to be someplace else. Still, the dark man’s insistence that she was out of place among the dancers and the music hurt.
He shoved beside her, turning his back on her to confront Goodfellow. They were arguing, but she was distracted from what they said by how good the tall man smelled. His scent, raised by the heat of the fire, was compounded now by leather and engine grease.
Something about that smell woke a memory. Raised a ghost. But before she could identify it, he pivoted to face her.
“Are you wearing stockings?”
The fire was behind him. His broad shoulders, his dark head, were lined with flame.
Janet swallowed. “What?”
“Your fan belt is broken. If you’re wearing stockings, I can rig something that will get you to the nearest service station.”
“I have on pan
tyhose.”
“That’ll do. Take them off.”
“You’re in a mighty hurry to get rid of her,” Goodfellow said.
The dark man turned his head and spoke over his shoulder. “Stay out of it, Puck.”
Janet’s breath caught in her chest. She could see him now, his profile lit by the blaze behind him. He was dressed in clothes less bright but no less exotic than the dancers’—black leather pants and black leather jacket and a T-shirt so dark a green it was almost black. A gold chain rested heavily around his strong, brown throat. He should have looked like a gay biker. But he didn’t. He looked barbaric and dangerous and achingly familiar. In fact, he looked a lot like—
He looked exactly like—
Her hand covered her mouth.
Ross.
As if she had called his name aloud, he turned back to her and frowned. “You have to go now.”
He couldn’t be, Janet told herself even as her eyes strained to search his face. Ross MacLean would be her age by now. Old. Thirty-six. And except for the shoulder-length hair, this man—this boy—looked exactly like the lover who had left her fourteen years ago without even a good-bye. The same moss green eyes, the same angled cheekbones, the same age. . . .
He was too young. He couldn’t be Ross. But he looked enough like him—like a dream come true, like the ultimate do-over—to make her heart hitch, all the same.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
His face was grim. Nothing like the boy’s she remembered at all. “Nobody you want to know,” he said.
Janet wasn’t so sure. He was certainly more exciting than the majority of her library patrons. And there was that eerie resemblance to Ross. . . .
She didn’t want exciting, Janet reminded herself. Exciting was disruptive. And Ross had broken her heart.
She cleared her throat. “You said you can fix my car?”
“I can’t fix it. But I can get it to take you another ten miles. Is there still a garage in Miles Cross?”
Man of My Dreams Page 26