Fairytale (10 page)

On an entirely separate level, he resented
her. Because she had this incredible power over him, and because
she was lying. She was up to something. His need to know everything
there was to know about her was something he understood. Her desire
to entangle herself in his life, though, was baffling. Every
defense mechanism he’d developed through the betrayals he’d been
dealt had jumped to full alert. Alarm bells were going off in his
head, warning him that he was walking right into yet another
heartache.

And yet he was powerless to resist. When he
wasn’t looking at her, he could convince himself that he was going
in with his eyes wide open this time. But when he looked into those
eyes he felt as if he’d tumbled headlong into a trance state, and
that he’d be her willing slave for the rest of his life if she so
much as asked it.

The effect she had on him reminded Adam
sharply of the descriptions of fairies in that newly translated
Celtic text, and countless others. The enchantments they could
place on the man of their choice. The way he’d waste away from
sheer unfulfilled longing. A passage of John Keats came to mind.
Adam tried to shake it away.

Ridiculous!

And yet he heard the words echoing in his
mind.

I met a Lady in the Meads Full beautiful, a
faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light And her eyes
were wild. I set her on my pacing steed And nothing else saw all
day long, For sidelong would she bend and sing A faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey
wild, and manna dew, And sure in language strange she said

“I love thee true.”

And there I shut her wild wild eyes,

With kisses four.

“La belle dame sans merci

Thee hath in thrall!”

She came toward him, touched his shoulder,
and he jerked at the erotic impulse that hissed through him,
shaking the verse from his mind. He’d never thought of his shoulder
as an erogenous zone before.

“Adam?”

“Yes?”

Stop looking into her eyes. It’s that simple,
just don’t look at her and you’ll be fine.

“Did you hear me?” she asked in a voice like
silk. “I said I’d like to come with you.”

His vision blurred as he deliberately
misinterpreted her words, and let himself fantasize, just for a
second.

“To the house,” she added quickly, almost as
if she could read the pictures in his mind. “To see the room.”

“I’ll take you,” he told her, and then he
turned away, leaving her to interpret that whatever way she wanted.
He headed for the door, his neck damp and prickly, and his heart
doing things that might be described as palpitations.

“All right.”

She was with him, right beside him, and he
hadn’t even heard her footsteps.

Her hair was long, her foot was light...

Shut up, he thought. Just shut the hell up,
Keats.

Adam Reid didn’t live in a house. He lived in
a fantasy. From the steep, curving drive to the majestic pines that
lined it, to the electric-blue sky above. Beautiful. And when she
caught sight of the house, she lost her breath. It reminded her of
a medieval monastery, tall and square, and made entirely of huge
blocks of reddish-brown stone. The house wore an ivy coat, Brigit
noticed, and she thought it must need it to ward off the chill of
all that stone. And then she frowned, because for just a second,
looking at the rows of arched windows had felt a lot like looking
into someone’s eyes. And what she’d read there had been sadness. An
old hurt. Just like the one that lived within the soul of Adam
Reid. The one he kept hidden beneath layer upon layer of
bitterness, wariness, and anger.

“Here we are,” he said, pulling his aging
Porsche to a halt and killing the motor. It was the first time he’d
spoken since they’d left the Commons. There had been something in
the car beside the two of them. An invisible, pulsing tension so
tangible she thought it might be a living thing.

“It’s beautiful,” she told him. She opened
her door and got out. And as soon as the wind hit her, she knew
there was something very special about this place.

Beyond the house, she could see Cayuga Lake,
its swirling waters stirred by the wind’s fingers. And to her left,
a miniature mountain’s towering pines made love to the deep blue
sky.

The girl she’d been so long ago seemed to
yawn and stretch from her enforced slumber. Summoned to wakefulness
by the magic of this place, perhaps. Brigit had managed to lock
that wild thing away, to make her a prisoner of the controlled,
responsible woman she’d become. But now the girl sniffed the scent
of the lake and of the pines on the wind. And she suggested, in a
mischievous whisper only Brigit could hear, that it would be
wonderful to run barefoot through those tall grasses at the base of
the hillside. To cartwheel and somersault all the way down that
slope. To frolic naked in the lake, as its vigorous waves tossed
her to and fro. Or to stand fully clothed in a rainstorm, right
there on those cliffs that jutted out over the water.

For a moment, she envisioned herself doing
just that. Standing on the cliffs, soaking wet, her hair whipped by
the wind, her arms outspread as she welcomed the storm, taunted the
lightning. It wasn’t the respectable owner of Akasha standing there
in Brigit’s vision. It was an untamed hellion. And there was a
glint in her eyes, and she was laughing aloud as she dared Adam
Reid to take her in his arms and kiss her the way he really wanted
to.

Brigit slammed her eyes shut, mentally
thrusting the wild thing back into her cell and locking the door.
There was no room in her life for that wanton anymore.

“Are you all right?”

Blinking him into focus, she managed a firm
nod. She wasn’t all right. She was falling apart. God, where was
her hard-won control now? Everything had been taken out of her
hands! Raze’s well-being. Her own decision to become a mature,
responsible, socially acceptable woman. Maybe even her ability to
remain that way.

And her deeply rooted feelings for this man.
Her dream man.

“You looked...odd.”

“It’s this place,” she said, and turned to
look out over the water again. “It’s magical.”

“I used to think so.”

When she looked at him, one corner of his
mouth had pulled into a sad, perhaps nostalgic smile.

“Come on. You’re going to have to see the
inside before you decide.”

But she’d already decided. She’d stay here.
Under any other circumstances, she’d have run from this place as
fast as she could, and vowed never to return. It would be difficult
to keep her facade in place here. Nature knew the wild thing inside
her. Nature seemed to be calling to her, rousing her, and beckoning
her to take over.

Brigit would just have to deal with it,
though. If she did manage to get through this and save Raze, she
would have a life to go back to. A business to run. A place in this
community to fill.

He took hold of her elbow, and propelled her
away from the cliffs, back along the path she didn’t even remember
walking, to the front of the house. Wide stone steps and an arched
wooden door with stained glass. His keys jangled, and then he
opened the door and ushered her inside.

A huge room spread out before her, white
stucco, big windows. A wide mahogany staircase split into opposite
directions halfway up, and ran into hallways on either side. At the
bottom of the stairs, on a pedestal stand, a sparse fern with
yellowing leaves made her grimace. She instinctively went to it,
touched one withering strand, rubbed it between her fingertips.

He led her through the high-ceilinged foyer,
from which she could see the rows of bedroom doors upstairs. He
never slowed down. And she should have wondered why he was making a
beeline to the double doors at the far end of the room. But that
wouldn’t come until later.

He flung the doors open with a flourish.
“This is my favorite room. Technically, it’s the study, but to me
it’s more like a haven. Come in.”

Brigit stepped into Adam’s haven.

And then she froze in utter shock. Her gaze
riveted to the painting that hung above the mantel. She couldn’t
look away. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even draw a breath.

“Beautiful, isn’t it,” he asked in a soft
voice. He stood close beside her, and she assumed he, too, was
staring at the piece. But she couldn’t look at him to be sure.

“It’s...it’s not possible...”

She felt Adam’s eyes on her. “Brigit?”

She shook her head, trying to remind herself
not to speak her thoughts aloud, when what she felt like doing was
screaming at the top of her voice. The painting was the perfect
image of the first page of her precious
Fairytale.
The one
Sister Mary Agnes had read to her every night. The one she’d
clutched to her heart, even when she’d expected to burn to death in
the fire. The one she’d clung to as Raze carried her to safety, and
that she’d cherished ever since. The one bright spot in an
otherwise heartbreaking childhood.

And here was its opening page, on Adam Reid’s
wall. The picture of the forest, and that magical pond in its
center. With the castle spires visible if you squinted at the
silvery clouds. And the pictures in the swirls of tree bark.

Only in the book, there had been no woman
bathing in that pond.

“I think she looks like you,” Adam whispered.
He sounded almost reverent.

“No. Not me.” Brigit wanted to close her
eyes, because the woman in the painting was staring straight into
her soul. Oh, she looked like Brigit all right. But she wasn’t.
Brigit knew her, knew exactly who she was. She was the image of the
wild thing Brigit kept locked inside.

And all of a sudden it occurred to her that
this
was the painting she was supposed to copy.

She actually staggered backward. She felt the
blood drain from her face, felt her eyes widen and her lips part on
a silent exhalation.

“Brigit?” He caught her shoulders, steadying
her, and only then did she realize how very close she’d been to
collapsing in sheer shock. Gently, he scooped her up, cradling her
to his chest for all too short a time. And she couldn’t stop her
arms from linking around his neck. She couldn’t prevent herself
from burying her face in the crook between his shoulder and his
neck. Because he’d held her this way so many times before, in her
dreams.

She felt him shiver, heard him draw a harsh
breath. And only a moment later, he lowered her onto a sofa. He
hurried away and returned in seconds with a glass of water, which
he pressed into her hands. His hands covered hers, and warmth
suffused her, right to the core. He didn’t remove them right away,
and she saw him blinking down at his hands on hers, as if trying to
solve a puzzle.

He finally sighed, and took his hands from
hers, and Brigit sipped the water. Adam studied her.

“I’ve shown that painting to a lot of
people,” he said at last, taking the water from her hands and
setting it on the glass-topped coffee table beside yet another
dying houseplant. This one a geranium. “None of them has ever
reacted like that.”

“It...it wasn’t the painting,” she told him,
though she knew full well it was. “No?”

“No. I’ve just had a few rough nights. No
sleep. And I skipped a couple of meals, and I guess if s probably
catching up with me.”

He nodded, but skepticism darkened his dark
blue eyes. She’d better get used to the idea that lying to him was
to be used only as a last resort. He saw through every fib she
concocted. She sat up a little, and he turned, sliding closer until
he sat right beside her. His gaze went back to the painting on the
wall.

“Have you ever seen it before, Brigit?”

Her throat went dry at his question. That
insight again. But it couldn’t possibly be
that
sharp. “I
don’t think so.”

God, why would he ask that? And what was he
doing with this piece of her childhood?

“It’s incredible, though,” she said, trying
to keep the emotions out of her voice. “Who is the artist?”

He shrugged. “It’s anonymous. See, way down
near the base, where the water ripples? There’s a word there. The
dealer at the Capricorn thought it was the artist’s signature. But
I disagree.”

Brigit tilted her head and looked for the
word. When she saw it her heart tripped over itself.

Rush.

“What...” Her voice emerged as a croak. She
cleared her throat and tried again. “What do you think it is?”

“The title of the piece,” he said slowly,
softly, not taking his eyes from the work. “I think it’s the name
of that place. Rush.”

“How do you—” She shouted half the question,
going rigid and jerking her head around to face him. Then she bit
her lip, stopping herself from asking how he could know the name of
that forest. The answer was simple enough. He must have heard the
Fairytale,
too. And so had this anonymous artist.

She felt an acute sense of disappointment.
All this time, she’d honestly believed that story was hers and hers
alone. That—even if it hadn’t been created by a fairy princess for
her twin daughters—maybe Sister Mary Agnes had made it up, just for
one lonely orphan. It took away the magic, knowing it had been an
ordinary fairytale that hundreds of others had shared.

She closed her eyes to prevent him from
seeing the way the revelation had hurt her.

“It touches me,” he told her. “Did from the
first time I saw it hanging in the gallery downtown. I wouldn’t
trade it for anything.”

That brought her gaze back to him. And if
there was guilt in her eyes before she lowered them again, then it
was no wonder. A tidal wave of the stuff had risen up to engulf her
at those words. He wouldn’t trade it for the world. But he was
going to trade it. For a fake.

“You feel better now? Strong enough to
continue the tour?”