by Nora Roberts
He shook his head violently. The air he gulped in was as sweet as spring, and yet it burned like bile in his throat. “I’m sorry. No reason to take it out on you.”
She touched his cheek. “I can handle it.”
But he wasn’t sure he could. He’d never talked the whole business through before, not with anyone. Saying it all out loud left an ugly taste in his mouth, one he was afraid he’d never be rid of. He took another careful breath and started again.
“I stayed with my grandmother until I was five. My aunt, Carolyn, had married. He was in the army, a lifer. For the next few years I moved around with them, from base to base. He was a hard-nosed bastard—only tolerated me because Carolyn would cry and carry on when he got drunk and threatened to send me back.”
Morgana could imagine it all too clearly. The little boy in the empty middle, controlled by everyone, belonging to no one. “You hated it.”
“Yeah, I guess that hits the center. I didn’t know why, exactly, but I hated it. Looking back, I realize that Carolyn was as unstable as Leeanne, in her own way. One minute she’d fawn all over me, the next she’d ignore me. She wasn’t having any luck getting pregnant herself. Then, when I was about eight or nine, she found out she was going to have a kid of her own. So I got shipped back to my grandmother. Carolyn didn’t need a substitute anymore.”
Morgana felt her eyes fill with angry tears at the image of the child, helpless, innocent, being shuffled back and forth between people who knew nothing of love.
“She never looked at me like a person, you know? I was a mistake. That was the worst of it,” he said, as if to himself. “The way she drummed that point home. That every breath I took, every beat of my heart was only possible because some careless, rebellious girl had made a mistake.”
“No,” Morgana said, appalled. “She was wrong.”
“Yeah, maybe. But things like that stick with you. I heard a lot about the sins of the father, the evils of the flesh. I was lazy, intractable and wicked—one of her favorite words.” He sent Morgana a grim little smile. “But that was no more than she expected, seeing as how I’d been conceived.”
“She was a horrible woman,” Morgana bit out. “She didn’t deserve you.”
“Well, she’d have agreed with you on the second part. And she made me understand just how grateful I should be that she put food in my belly and a roof over my head. But I wasn’t feeling very grateful, and I ran away a lot. By the time I was twelve, I got slipped into the system. Foster homes.”
His shoulders moved restlessly, in a small outward showing of the turmoil within. He was pacing back and forth over the grounds, his stride lengthening as the memories worked on him.
“Some of them were okay. The ones that really wanted you. Others just wanted the check you brought in every month, but sometimes you got lucky and ended up in a real home. I spent one Christmas with this family, the Hendersons.” His voice changed, took on a hint of wonder. “They were great—treated me just like they treated their own kids. You could always smell cookies baking. They had the tree, the presents under it. All that colored paper and ribbon. Stockings hanging from the mantel. It really blew me away to see one with my name on it.
“They gave me a bike,” he said quietly. “Mr. Henderson bought it secondhand and took it down to the basement to fix it up. He painted it red. Bug-eyed, fire-engine red, and he’d polished all the chrome. He put a lot of time into making that bike something special. He showed me how to hook baseball cards on the spokes.”
He sent her a sheepish look that had Morgana tilting her head. “What?”
“Well, it was a really great bike, but I didn’t know how to ride. I’d never had a bike. Here I was, nearly twelve years old, and that bike might as well have been a Harley hog for all I knew.”
Morgana came staunchly to his defense. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Nash sent her an arch look. “Obviously you’ve never been an eleven-year-old boy. It’s pretty tough to handle the passage into manhood when you can’t handle a two-wheeler. So, I mooned over it, made excuses not to ride it. I had homework, I’d twisted my ankle, it looked like rain. Thought I was pretty clever, but she—Mrs. Henderson—saw right through me. One day she got me up early, before anyone else was awake, and took me out. She taught me. Held the back of the seat, ran along beside me. Made me laugh when I took a spill. And when I managed to wobble down the sidewalk on my own, she cried. Nobody’d ever . . .” He let his words trail off, embarrassed by the scope of emotion that memory evoked.
Tears burned the back of her throat. “They must have been wonderful people.”
“Yeah, they were. I had six months with them. Probably the best six months of my life.” He shook off the memory and went on. “Anyway, whenever I’d get too comfortable, my grandmother would yank the chain and pull me back. So I started counting the days until I was eighteen, when nobody could tell me where to live, or how. When I got free, I was damn well going to stay that way.”
“What did you do?”
“I wanted to eat, so I tried a couple of regular jobs.” He glanced at her, this time with a hint of humor in his eyes. “I sold insurance for a while.”
For the first time since he’d begun, she smiled. “I can’t picture it.”
“Neither could I. It didn’t last. I guess when it comes right down to it, I’ve got the old lady to thank for trying writing as a career. She used to whack me good whenever she caught me scribbling.”
“Excuse me.” Morgana was certain she must have misunderstood. “She hit you for writing?”
“She didn’t exactly understand the moral scope of vampire hunters,” he said dryly. “So, figuring it was the last thing she’d want me to do, I kept right on doing it. I moved to L.A., managed to finesse a low-level job with the special-effects guys. Then I worked as a script doctor, met the right people. Finally managed to sell Shape Shifter. My grandmother died while that was in production. I didn’t go to the funeral.”
“If you expect me to criticize you for that, I’ll have to disappoint you.”
“I don’t know what I expect,” he muttered. Stopping beneath a cypress, he turned to her. “I was twenty-six when the movie hit. It was . . . well, we’ll risk a bad pun and call it a howling success. Suddenly I was riding the wave. My next script was picked up. I got myself nominated for a Golden Globe. Then I started getting calls. My aunt. She just needed a few bills to tide her over. Her husband had never risen above sergeant, and she had three kids she wanted to send to college. Then Leeanne.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face, wishing he could scrub away the layers of resentment, of hurt, of memory.
“She called you,” Morgana prompted.
“Nope. She popped up on my doorstep one day. It would have been ludicrous if it hadn’t been so pathetic. This stranger, painted up like a Kewpie doll, standing at my front door telling me she was my mother. The worst part was that I could see me in her. The whole time she was standing there, pouring out the sad story of her life, I wanted to shut that door in her face. Bolt it. I could hear her telling me that I owed her, how having me had screwed up her life. How she was divorced for the second time and running on empty. So I wrote her out a check.”
Tired, he slid down the tree and sat on the soft ground beneath. The sun was hanging low, the shadows stretching long. Morgana knelt beside him.
“Why did you give her money, Nash?”
“It was what she wanted. I didn’t have anything else for her, anyway. The first payment lasted her almost a year. In between, I’d get calls from my aunt, or one of my cousins.” He tapped a fisted hand on his thigh. “Months will go by, and you’ll think you’ve got your life pretty well set. But they don’t let you forget what you’ve come from. If the price for that’s a few thousand now and again, it’s not a bad bargain.”
Morgana’s eyes heated. “They have no right, no right to take pieces of you.”
“I’ve got plenty of money.”
“I�
�m not talking about dollars. I’m talking about you.”
His gaze locked on hers. “They remind me who—what—I am.”
“They don’t even know you,” she said furiously.
“No, and I don’t know them. But that doesn’t mean a hell of a lot. You know about legacies, Morgana. About what comes down in the blood. Your inheritance is magic. Mine’s self-interest.”
She shook her head. “Whatever we inherit, we have the choice of using it, or discarding it. You’re nothing like the people you came from.”
He took her by the shoulders then, his fingers tense. “More than you think. I’ve made my choices. Maybe I stopped running away because it never got me anywhere. But I know who I am. That’s someone who does best alone. There’s no Henderson family in my future, Morgana. Because I don’t want it. Now and again, I write out a check. Then I can close that all off so it’s just me again. That’s the way I want it. No ties, no obligations, no commitments.”
She wouldn’t argue with him, not when the pain was so close to the surface. Another time she could show him how wrong he was. The man holding her now was capable of tenderness, of generosity, of sweetness—none of which had been given to him. All of which he’d found for himself.
But she could give him something. If only for a short time.
“You don’t have to tell me who you are, Nash.” Gently she brushed his hair from his face. “I know. There’s nothing you can’t give that I’ll ask for. Nothing you don’t want to give that I’ll take.” She lifted her amulet, closed his hand over it, and hers over his. Her eyes deepened as they stared into his. “That’s an oath.”
He felt the metal grow warm in his hand. Baffled, he looked down to see it pulsing with light. “I don’t—”
“An oath,” she repeated. “One I can’t break. There’s something I want you to take, that I can give. Will you trust me?”
Something was stealing over him. Like a shadow cast by a cloud, it was cool and soft and weightless. His tensed muscles relaxed; his eyes grew pleasantly heavy. As from a great distance, he heard himself speak her name. Then he glided into sleep.
When he awakened, the sun was warm and bright. He could hear birdsong, and the babbling music of water running over rock. Disoriented, he sat up.
He was in a wide, rolling meadow of wildflowers and dancing butterflies. A few feet away, a gentle-eyed deer stopped her peaceful walk to study him. There was the lazy drone of bees and the whisper of wind through the high, green grass.
With a half laugh, he rubbed a hand over his chin, half expecting to find a beard like Rip Van Winkle’s. But there was no beard, and he didn’t feel like an old man. He felt incredible. Standing, he looked out over the acres of flowers and waving grass. Above, the sky was a rich blue bowl, the deep blue of high spring.
Something stirred in him, as gently as the wind stirred the grass. After a moment, he recognized it. Serenity. He was utterly at peace with himself.
He heard the music. The heartbreaking beauty of harp song. The smile was already curving his lips as he followed it, wading through the meadow grass and flowers, startling butterflies.
He found her on the bank of the brook. Sun flashed off the water as it tumbled over smooth, jewel-colored rocks. The full white skirts of her dress pooled over the grass. Her face was shaded by a wide-brimmed hat, tipped flirtatiously over one eye. In her lap was a small golden harp. Her fingers caressed the strings, coaxing out music that floated over the air.
She turned her head, smiled at him, continued to play.
“What are you doing?” he asked her.
“Waiting for you. Did you rest well?”
He crouched beside her, then lifted a hesitant hand to her shoulder. She was real. He could feel the warmth of her skin through the silk. “Morgana?”
Her eyes laughed up at his. “Nash?”
“Where are we?”
She stroked the harp again. Music soared, spreading like the wings of a bird. “In dreams,” she told him. “Yours and mine.” After setting the harp aside, she took his hands. “If you want to be here, we can stay a while. If you want to be somewhere else, we can go there.”
She made it sound so easy, so natural. “Why?”
“Because you need it.” She brought his hand to her lips. “Because I love you.”
He didn’t feel the scrabble of panic. Her words slid easily into his heart, making him smile. “Is it real?”
She rubbed her cheek over his hand, then kissed it again. “It can be. If you want it.” Her teeth grazed lightly over his skin, sparking desire. “If you want me.”
He drew the hat from her head, tossing it aside as her hair rained down over her shoulders and back. “Am I spellbound, Morgana?”
“No more than I.” She cupped his face in her hands to bring his lips to hers. “I want you,” she murmured against his mouth. “Love me here, Nash, as though it were the first time, the last time, the only time.”
How could he resist? If it was a dream, so be it. All that mattered was that her arms welcomed him, her mouth tempted him.
She was everything a man could want, all silk and honey, melting against him. Her body seemed boneless as he laid her back on the soft green grass.
There was no time here, and he found himself pleased to linger over little things. The velvet flow of her hair under his hands, the teasing flavors at the corners of her mouth, the scent of her skin along her jaw. She yielded to him, a malleable fantasy of silks and scents and seduction. Her quiet sigh sweetened the air.
He couldn’t know how easy it had been, Morgana thought as his mouth drank from hers. As different as they were, their dreams were the same. For this hour, or two, they could share each other, and the peace she had wrapped them in.
When he lifted his head, she smiled at him. His eyes darkened as he traced the shape of her face with a fingertip. “I want it to be real,” he said.
“It can be. Whatever you take from here, whatever you want for us, can be.”
Testing, he brought his lips to hers again. It was real, as was the feeling that flooded him when those lips parted for his. He sank deep into that long, luxurious melding of lips and tongues. Beneath his, her heart beat fast and true. When his hand covered it, he felt its rhythm leap.
Slowly, wanting to spin out the moment, he unfastened the tiny pearls that ranged down her bodice. Beneath, she was all warm, soft skin. In fascination, he explored the textures as her breath quickened.
Satin and silk. The color of rich cream.
His eyes flicked back to hers as his fingertips skimmed. Through the fringe of dark lashes, her irises had deepened, hazed. Lightly he brushed his lips over the soft slopes of her breasts.
Honey and rose petals.
With a murmur of approval, he teased her flesh with lazy, openmouthed kisses, circling in until he could roll his tongue over the aching peaks. He nipped, knowing by her gasp that he was holding her at that dazzling point between pleasure and pain.
He drew her in, driving them both quietly mad with teeth and tongue. Her hands were in his hair, gripping hard. And he felt her body arch, go taut, then shudder into pliancy. When he lifted his head to look at her, her eyes were glazed with shock and delight.
“How—?” She shivered again, throbbing with the aftermath of that fast, unexpected crest.
“Magic,” he said, pressing his lips to her heated flesh again. “Let me show you.”
He took her places she’d never seen. As she gloried in each dizzying journey, her hands and lips moved freely over him. When she trembled, so did he.
A mixing of sighs, a melding of bodies. A murmured request, a breathless answer. Fired by need, she pulled his shirt away to taste the hot, damp flesh of his heaving chest.
Where there was fire, there was joy—in feeling his blood leap for her, his pulse quicken.
Within the small slice of paradise she had conjured, they made their own. Each time his mouth came to hers, the spell grew stronger. Possessive, persuasive, her hands
streaked over him, and she rejoiced in the way his muscles bunched and quivered at her touch.
He wanted—needed—her to be as desperate as he. With his heart pounding in his ears, he began a torturous journey down her torso, streaking toward the center of her heat. His teeth scraped the sensitive skin of her thigh, dragging a broken moan from her.
Her hands fisted in the grass as his tongue pleasured and plundered. Blind with need, she cried out as he drove her from peak to shattering peak. As her body writhed and arched, he steeped himself in her.
Damp flesh slid over damp flesh as he began the return journey. When his mouth crushed down on hers, he sheathed himself in her. And his vision dimmed as he felt her open for him, surround him, welcome him.
Fighting back the grinding need, he moved slowly, savoring, watching the flickers of pleasure on her face, feeling her pulse throb as she rose to meet him.
The breath sighed out between her lips. Her eyes fluttered open. They stayed on his while her hands slid down his arms. With their fingers locked, they tumbled past reason together.
When she felt his body shatter, when his muscles went to water, he rested his head between her breasts. Lulled by the beat of her heart, he let his eyes close. He began to sense the world beyond Morgana. The warm sun on his back, the call of birds, the scent of flowers growing wild on the banks of the rushing brook.
Beneath him, she sighed and lifted a hand to stroke his hair. She had given him peace, and she had found pleasure. And she had broken one of her firmest rules by manipulating his emotions.
Perhaps it had been a mistake, but she wouldn’t regret it.
“Morgana.”
She smiled at the husky murmur. “Sleep now,” she told him.
* * *
In the dark, he reached for her. And found the bed empty. Groggy, he forced his heavy eyes open. He was in bed, his own bed, and the house held the heavy hush of predawn.
“Morgana?” He didn’t know why he said her name when he knew she wasn’t there.
Dreaming? Fumbling with the sheets, he pushed himself out of bed. Had he been dreaming? If it had been only a dream, nothing in the waking world had ever seemed more real, more vivid, more important.
To clear his head, he walked to the window and breathed deeply of the cool air.
They’d made love—incredible love—in a meadow beside a stream.
No, that was impossible. Leaning on the sill, he gulped in air like water. The last thing he remembered clearly, they had been sitting under the tree in the side yard, talking about—
He jolted back. He’d told her everything. The whole ugly business about his family had come pouring out of him. Why the hell had he done that? Dragging a hand through his hair, he paced the room.
That damned phone call, he thought. But then he recalled abruptly that the phone call had stopped him from making an even bigger mistake.
It would have been worse if he’d told Morgana he loved her—a lot worse than telling her about his parentage and upbringing. At least now she wouldn’t get any ideas about where their relationship was headed.
In any case, it was done, and it couldn’t be taken back. He’d just have to live with the fact that it embarrassed the hell out of him.
But after that, after they had been sitting in the yard. Had he fallen asleep?
The dream. Or had it been a dream? It was so clear in his mind. He could almost smell the flowers. And he could certainly remember the way her body had flowed like water under his hands. More, much more, he could remember feeling as though everything he had done up to that point in his life had been leading to that moment. To the moment when he could lie on the grass with the woman he loved, and feel the peace of belonging.
Illusions. Just illusions, he assured himself as panic began to set in. He’d just fallen asleep under the tree. That was all.
But what the hell was he doing back in his room, in the middle of the night—alone?
She’d done it. Giving in to unsteady legs, he lowered to the bed. All of it. Then she’d left him.
She wasn’t getting away with it. He started to rise, then dropped down again.
He could remember the peace, the utter serenity, of waking with the sun on his face. Of walking through the grass and seeing her playing the harp and smiling at him.
And when he’d asked her why, she’d said . . .
She’d said she loved him.
Because his head was reeling, Nash clamped it between his hands. Maybe he’d imagined it. All of it. Morgana included. Maybe he was back in his condo in L. A., and he’d just awakened from the granddaddy of all dreams.
After all, he didn’t really believe in witches and spells. Gingerly he lowered one hand and closed it around the stone that hung from a chain around his neck.
The hell he didn’t.
Morgana was real, and she loved him. The worst part was, he loved her right back.
He didn’t want to. It was crazy. But he was in love with her, so wildly in love that he couldn’t get through an hour without thinking about her. Without wishing for her. Without imagining that maybe, just maybe, it could work.
And that was the most irrational thought in the whole irrational business.
He needed to think it all through, step by step. Giving in to fatigue, he lay back to stare at the dark.
Infatuated. That was what he was. Infatuation was a long way from love. A long, safe way. She was, after all, a captivating woman. A man could live a long, happy life being infatuated by a captivating woman. He’d wake up every morning