BRANDED BY A CALLAHAN (5 page)

“So, it’s not that my boy is too much of a rascal for you, it’s that you’re too gidgety for him. That’s a first, I must say.” Fiona rose, paced around the attic for a moment, then stopped and peered at Ana. “You don’t seem like a gidget to me.”

“I don’t know what a gidget is,” Ana said.

“A flighty girl. One who blows around at every wind.” Fiona sighed. “There’s only one way to know if Dante’s the man of your heart or not.”

“He’s not,” Ana assured her. “I mean, I’m not the right woman for him.”

“Pooh. You’d hate to throw away your soul mate just because you’ve got cold feet.” She smiled, her face gentle yet determined. “Now let’s just pop you into this dress and see what happens.” She opened a massive door, in which hung all kinds of plastic-wrapped clothes, and pulled out a white wedding gown.

Ana had heard all about the magic wedding dress. There was no way on the planet she was putting that thing on. She didn’t believe in charms or superstitions, but Callahan legend was thick around this place. “I better not, Fiona. I’m not looking for a husband.”

“Nonsense! Every woman wants a husband.” Fiona looked as if Ana had sprouted an extra head. “And especially a handsome devil like my nephew.”

“I don’t think—” Ana began, as Fiona dragged the gown from its sparkling wrapping. “I mean—”

“Now, then,” Fiona said, hanging the dress in front of a cheval mirror. “You go right ahead. Take your time.” She smiled. “I’m going to get back to my Yorkshire pudding.”

“But what am I supposed to do?” Ana was a bit cowed by the gown. No way was she putting it on—what if it
was
magic? What if she saw herself in it and decided she wanted to become a bride? Get married?

No. It was all about the baby. When a woman only had one ovary, she didn’t have the luxury of wasting her chances on marriage first, then wishing for a pregnancy. “I don’t think I—”

“That’s just the thing,” Fiona said. “You won’t have to think. Once you put it on, you’ll know for certain.”

“Know what for certain?”

“Who your dream man is.” Fiona smiled at her, a benign and yet somehow cagey fairy godmother with a lacy lure. “Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

“I suppose—”

“You wouldn’t risk throwing Dante back into the dating pool if he was your prince. Of course, you’ll be terribly disappointed if he isn’t your prince, I know,” Fiona said, her tone sympathetic and sorrowful for Ana’s pain in that circumstance, “but at least you’d know, right?”

Ana glanced at the gown, worried. It was a beautiful thing, and the Callahan brides she’d seen wear it had been stunning. Of course it was all Fiona’s storytelling, there was no such thing as magic. Just Fiona trying to up her matchmaking score by one more victim.

“In the Irish we say,
an t-adh leat
. Good luck, dear. And don’t forget the reason the gown is magic—you will see the face of the man you love, the prince who’s the true destiny of your heart. Or at least that’s what the Callahan girls have all said, each and every one.”

Humming, Fiona went down the stairs. Ana closed her eyes for a moment, debating. It was so silly. The game was to get her in the gown—and probably any wedding dress would do—so she’d start frothing at the mouth to rush to the altar. “I won’t fall for it. I can put that on and feel nothing. It’s just yards and yards of beautiful white lace and whatever else wedding gown dreams are spun from. No different from a bedsheet or...or a tablecloth. Just white fabric.”

She’d been in love with Dante for a long time, though she barely admitted it to herself. She was just careful, that was all, and a careful woman made certain that she chose the right man to father her child.

She could afford no mistakes. Natural caution was what made her an excellent bodyguard. There was still time to back away from the situation if Dante wasn’t the man who could make her dreams come true. “In love” wasn’t final, it wasn’t endless—not yet, not while she could still hold back from falling all the way.

Yet there was a bigger worry, one she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to: if Fiona was right—the story was crazy but Fiona was known to be uncannily right on many matters—what if the man who appeared to her wasn’t Dante?

Maybe it was better not to know if Dante wasn’t her dream man.

It would be awful to be in love with a man who wasn’t Mr. Right. On the other hand, did she want to know Dante was the man meant to make a magical future with her? Shouldn’t that be the surprise that came on secret dreams to both of them?

It almost felt like Dante was defenseless in the face of her participation in Fiona’s scheme.

“Pooh,” she murmured, “I doubt I see any man at all. Fiona’s got more stories than a fortune-teller at the state fair.”

Soft, tinkling music reached her ears. She glanced around, wondering if Fiona was piping music up to her to set the mood. “Fiona, I’m not buying your fairy godmother shtick.”

The music was pretty, so lilting and spellbinding that Ana finally smiled. Okay, so perhaps Fiona was using all her props to close the deal. It would be fun to try the gown on and throw cold water on the whole tale of magic nonsense.

Fascinated in spite of herself, Ana touched the wedding dress, her heart suddenly beating very fast. Shimmying out of her jeans and top, she stepped into the infamous magic wedding dress that had led so many Callahan brides to their fairy-tale endings.

Closing her eyes so she wouldn’t see the dress until it was on her body, Ana slid the whisper-soft, made-from-angels’-wings dress up to her shoulders, feeling for the zipper of the low-waisted back to draw it up, and breathed in a sigh of excited anticipation before opening her eyes.

Chapter Five

The magic wedding dress was cherry-red.

Hot, fiery red.

Ana gasped, staring at herself in the mirror. The gown was fabulous, magical in every sense of the word. But it had turned redder than fire, stunning and alluring, a princess gown of temptation and sin. It was gorgeous in shades of flaming colors that enveloped her and caught the light from the lamps and overhead chandelier.

Every inch of her screamed unadulterated heat.

It was the most beautiful dress she’d ever seen. Fairy-tale to the max—but not bridal in the least. Not unless you were planning on marrying the devil himself.

Speaking of the devil, Ana glanced wildly around, looking for hers. But Dante was nowhere to be seen.

She was alone in the attic. Fiona was wrong. Ana hadn’t seen a vision of the man who was meant for her.

She was doomed to be alone. That had to be what this vision was telling her! In spite of the fact that she didn’t believe in magic—had only been humoring Fiona, and perhaps her own wistful dreams—the dress had changed itself to a Valentine-ball-fabulous creation of sexy siren seduction—yet there was no dream man to go with it.

Ana looked down, fascinated and horrified by the twinkles and stardust that seemed to burst from every seam of the full skirt.

Dante was not the man of her destiny.

Worse, if the magic wedding dress was right, it looked as if she could be cast as the Code-Red Vampire Bride of Rancho Diablo for next year’s Halloween.

She tugged the gown off as fast as she could, replaced it on its hanger, put on her clothes and escaped from Fiona’s attic of mumbo jumbo, her heart breaking painfully at her first experience with magic.

* * *

“W
HOA
,
WHAT
WAS
THAT
?”
Dante peered out the kitchen window, surprised to see Ana hurrying across the yard past the corral, clearly heading back to her house. No doubt it was time for her to be on duty, taking over from River.

“What is what?” Fiona came to stand beside him. “Huh. That’s...Ana. Running, and maybe crying.”

“I know. The question was rhetorical. What I meant was, why’s she running like she’s seen a ghost?”

“Uh—”

Dante turned to look at his aunt. She stared up at him, her gaze too innocent even for his delicate aunt. “What did you do, Aunt Fiona?”

“Nothing. I’ve been in here baking a cinnamon cake, as you full well know.”

She returned to gazing out the window, searching the landscape with a bit more interest. An uncomfortable feeling grew inside him at his aunt’s worried countenance.

“Should I check on her? Make sure everything’s all right?”

“I wouldn’t,” Fiona said, not looking at him. “You know how women are.”

“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t,” he said, considering her, knowing full well she was up to something, yet not certain how to pry it out of her. Fiona was good at concealing things when she wanted to, which was quite often.

“You’ll learn in due time, I’m certain,” Fiona said, retreating from the window and returning to her baking. But he knew his aunt, and she didn’t normally wear a face full of worry. She must know more than she was telling.

He sat down at the counter, reached for a piece of the newly baked cinnamon cake. She popped his hand lightly with a spatula. “You don’t have time to snack,” Fiona said.

“What better use is there for time than eating your cake?”

She refused to smile. “I don’t know. Go find a cow to brand.”

“You’re going to have to tell me, you know. I can see that something’s on your mind. Can’t keep these things in.” He reached for the cake again, and this time his aunt didn’t apply the spatula to him.

“You can’t possibly understand,” she said, sinking onto the bar stool next to him. “That gown has been part of my family for years. It’s never backfired. The magic has always been as strong as that of the Diablo mustangs.”

He frowned. “I thought that was Sabrina’s dress. That she got it from some Romanian ancestor.”

Fiona shrugged. “Romanian, Irish, it’s just magic, isn’t it? Does it really matter? It’s magic as long as it works.” She glanced at the window and let out a deep sigh. “Ten brides and the magic was still alive and well. Something’s gone terribly wrong. When the magic goes away, well, it’s very, very troubling.”

“How do you know any magic has gone away?”

“Because I’ve never had a female try on the magic wedding dress and run off in tears.” Fiona’s face was completely woebegone.

Thunderstruck, he glanced toward the window again, almost as if he might see Ana again. There was nothing outside the window but the lengthening fingers of November twilight. “What do you mean, try on the gown? Are you saying you had Ana put on the magic wedding dress?”

His aunt nodded, grabbed a tissue to wipe at her eyes.

“Why?” he demanded. “What made you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Fiona said. “I was trying to help!”

He didn’t like it. Why would Ana be running like something terrible had happened, unless something terrible
had
indeed happened? He was an ex-SEAL; operators didn’t run. Ana was a bodyguard. He’d never seen her run unless she was playing tag with the children. Mostly, he’d seen her hold and cuddle Sloan and Kendall’s babies Isaiah and Carlos, her hands gentle, her demeanor soothing and loving.

“I’m going to go check on her.” He got up, but Fiona put a hand on his arm, stopping him.

“Give it a chance to wear off, nephew.”

“What to wear off?” He felt certain he needed to get to Ana immediately, before she completely wrote him off. The way she’d been hauling ass, he wouldn’t be surprised if she escaped from Rancho Diablo—and him—
tonight
.

“Magic is very powerful,” Fiona began, “and if she had a bad experience—”

“How can that happen? Ten brides put that white thing on and glowed like they were made of diamonds. What makes the dress turn on someone?” He felt a terrible sense of destruction yawing over his heart suddenly, as though the fragile relationship he’d had with Ana might have been dealt a blow from which it might not recover.

“Well, more brides than ten,” Fiona said, gulping at some tea. “That gown has been in my family for centuries. It’s magic, you see, and magic is timeless—”

“Enough,” Dante interrupted. “Get on with what happens when the dress of dreams turns into the rag of doom. I swear, if it’s hurt her, I will rip it to shreds and use it for horse wrappings. I’ll use it to—”

“Shh!” Fiona looked mortified. “Don’t say such things aloud!”

“Why? Can it hear me?” he said it to be sarcastic, but the moment the words left his mouth he wished he’d whispered them.

“Not necessarily
hear
you, but it knows when it’s not... I mean, magic has to be believed in, you know, it can’t be cheapened with doubt!” Her agitation grew, but so did Dante’s. Ana might have just slipped from his grasp—no woman retreated like that unless she wanted to be far, far away from a man—and he didn’t care if she wore a potato sack, he just wanted her.

“Whatever,” Dante said. “Tell me how to fix it, or I’m going to go kick its man-catching ass, and then take a pair of scissors to it. Right before I toss it into a good hot Christmas-season bonfire!” he yelled at the ceiling where even a dead body in the attic would hear him.

At that, his redoubtable, amazingly stiff-resolved aunt fainted dead away.

* * *

“Y
OU
BIG
LUG
,”
A
SHLYN
whispered to Dante, staring at Fiona as she lay in the bed.

She’d helped Dante get their aunt upstairs to her bedroom, where Burke now fluttered helplessly at his wife’s side, muttering, “No worries at all, she’ll be fine, she’s a stout lass,” and not making Dante feel any better at all.

“You can’t curse the magic wedding dress,” Ash said. “Don’t you know better? You don’t curse
any
magic. It’s seriously bad stuff.”

She gave him a frown meant to punctuate her stern words, and it did puncture, practically deflating him. “Wake up, Auntie,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to cuss out your—”

“Don’t you dare say her illusion of chicanery,” Ash said. “I can hear you thinking it, brother. You are disrespecting the very core of Fiona’s belief system. What next? You’ll stand out in the canyons and shake your fist at the Diablos? Why are we here if we don’t believe in the family lore?”

“I don’t know anymore.” He sank back against the wooden chair he’d appropriated.

“That’s because you have no belief.” Ash patted Fiona’s hand. “You probably lost it in Afghanistan.”

“No,” Dante said slowly. “I really don’t think I ever believed in anything but myself and my family.”

Ash’s eyes went round. “Don’t let Running Bear hear you say that.”

He sighed. “Tighe believes in magic. And spirits and things that go bump in the night. The reason I was so good at scaring you guys to pieces when we were kids is because I honestly never feared anything.”

She shook her head. “Which makes you vulnerable.”

“No. It makes me safe.”

“Not if you’re the hunted one,” Ash said, her voice barely a whisper. “Pride goeth before a fall. A man with no humility lacks vision.”

He frowned. “I make my own reality. And I don’t want my future pinned to whether or not my intended likes the way she looks in Fiona’s uncooperative magic gown.”

Fiona’s eyes blinked open. She looked at Ash, then Dante. “Did you go look for her?”

“Who?” Dante asked.

“Ana, of course!”

“You told me not to! You specifically told me that—” He shot his aunt an impatient look. “And then you went toes-up, and frightened ten years off of me! Talk about dramatic timing!”

Fiona’s lips turned down. Burke sank onto the bed next to his wife. “Oh, I’m all right, Burke. Fetch me a bit of ginger water, if you will, and I’ll be right as rain in a minute.” She glared at Dante. “You, young man, will go upstairs and make certain the dress is carefully wrapped and put away. In its proper wrapper, in the attic closet. It mustn’t be touched by dust or anything sinister.”

“There’s nothing sinister up there, except maybe some mice,” Dante said, trying to be soothing. “And weren’t mice supposedly beneficial to Cinderella when she needed help the most?”

“Out!” Fiona exclaimed, and Ash gave him a push. He went out the door, feeling quite dismissed, though relieved that his aunt seemed to be back in form.

“Holy crap.” He stood in the hallway, unsure for the first time in his life what his next move should be. Fiona said to leave Ana alone, and then she wanted to know if he’d found her. He felt like a yo-yo with a raveled string.

She’d commanded him to secure the magic wedding dress, seeming very agitated by the thought that it might be unprotected. Men didn’t hang wedding dresses. If anything was bad karma, surely a man touching a wedding gown was, right? Especially if the woman he most admired had run from it?

There were some things a man had to suck up and accept. A lady’s dress was not like picking up a live grenade to get it away from your men. It was not like feeling bullets whistle past your ear, and wondering if you’d have a permanent scar from the heat of it as it barely missed your brain.

“Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,” he muttered. “Why not? I can protect the crest of my aunt’s clan. That’s all I’m doing, sealing off the crazies from infesting the Callahan attic. Damn mice, anyway.”

He went up the stairs, taking a deep breath as he crossed the threshold. There it was, the dress he’d cursed, splendidly white and pristine, hanging from a hanger, a vision of seed pearls and lace and jazzy, shiny things girls loved. These stupid wads of fabric fascinated women. They planned all their lives for wearing the just right creation, getting themselves all worked up over nothing. Men didn’t care about such things. When a man married a woman, mostly he didn’t care about the wrapping—all he cared about was later, when he did the unwrapping. Touching a naked woman at her most glorious. Men remembered skin and darling breasts and heart-shaped derrieres. But Dante would bet if you asked a man what the dress his bride had been wearing looked like five days after she’d worn it, there wasn’t one on earth who could tell you half a detail about it except that it might have been white. Maybe.

But that same man would be able to go on for a year yakking about how great it had been to kiss every inch of his bride’s—

The gown shimmered at him, waking him from his sudden burst of imaginings of Ana’s bare softness. Miles and miles of satiny skin and shy curves—

He shook his head. Glanced at the thing again, wondering if it was taunting him with frosty white luminosity, daring him to touch it. “I have to put you back in your bag,” he told it. “You’ve caused quite enough trouble for one day. And I have to say, why you had to pick on my lady, I really don’t know. Were ten Callahan brides your limit? Did you run out of magic?”

The gown was hardly a fitting foe, troublesome rag that it was. And it really didn’t deserve his animosity, even if it had made Ana cry. Sighing, he reached for the hanger.

To his astonishment, the gown filtered away, disappearing into the thin Rancho Diablo air that existed, indeed lived for, mysticism and tales of legend. He waited, astonished, his blood pounding.