Fairytale (14 page)

She released him then and hurried from his
room. He heard her car start up seconds later. And then it roared
away, down the drive, fading in the distance.

What in the name of God was going on with
her?

Frowning, Adam wondered just what there was
in that old photo album that had got to her so much. And though his
family history was something he tended to avoid like the plague, he
reached for the album now, flipped it open, and scanned the pages,
trying to see the photos through Brigit’s eyes.

And then it hit him. The bruises. The way
she’d touched his face, kissed that scar on his forehead.

Ah, hell, she knew.

He heard her car pull in hours later. Hard
not to, as noisy as it was. A tide of relief washed over him, that
he’d chosen the perfect time to be away from the house. Sitting out
here, on the cliffs. Telling himself that he shouldn’t be so
mortified she’d learned about his secret. Hell, it didn’t make him
less of a man, did it? He’d have fought back, if he’d been older.
Hell, he’d have probably killed the old bastard.

It was the thought of her sympathy he
couldn’t stand. He’d rather have her take him for whatever meager
assets he still had, than to call her scheme on account of pity. He
couldn’t handle that.

Nor could he look into her eyes knowing she’d
seen those photos. Not yet, anyway. So, like a coward, he’d come
out here to hide from her. He sat staring down at the roiling
waters of the lake, waiting for the storm she’d predicted to move
in. She’d been right about that.

So in tune is she with nature, that even the
weather cannot hide its face from her seeking eyes. Whatever she
wishes to know is eventually revealed to her. Such is the nature of
the fairies.

He shook his head at the utter nonsense
reverberating in his head. Passages from that Celtic text. He’d
been reading it too much. Determined for some reason to get through
every page of it as soon as possible.

As if it were anything but another tale to
add to the collection.

“Adam?”

He didn’t turn. He only went stiff at the
sound of her voice. “How did you know I was out here?” If she gave
him some mystical answer about
just knowing
he was going to
scream.

“I looked for you in the study. Saw you
through the windows.”

“Ah.”

“I came out here to apologize. For going
through your album before. It was...it was wrong. I’m sorry.”

He said nothing, but a second later she was
sitting beside him on the flat stone ledge that jutted out over the
lake’s rocky shore. “The view from here is incredible.”

He turned to look at her, then. Surprisingly
enough, there was no pity in her eyes. No hint of the secret she’d
discovered. No sign she’d use the knowledge against him. He saw
acceptance in her eyes, instead. Maybe understanding. Nothing
more.

The incoming wind whipped tendrils of her
hair loose. He wanted to undo the braid that held those satin locks
captive. He wanted to pull her glasses off and set them aside so he
could really look into her eyes.

“There’s a storm coming, you know,” she said,
turning her face into the wind. And almost as if she’d read his
thoughts, she took the glasses off and set them down.

“I know.”

She nodded.

“She hated storms,” he said, and it was as if
the words just leapt from his tongue without permission.

“Your wife?”

He met her eyes, wondered how she saw things
even he didn’t see. “Yeah.”

“Has it been...very long?”

Why was it, he wondered, that whenever he
spent time with Brigit, he wound up answering questions he’d have
decked anyone else for even daring to ask him. “Almost a year since
she walked out. Along with my best friend, and most of my money.
One big happy family.” He continued staring out at the whitecaps,
and the foaming lake. And he heard her thoughtful sigh.

“No wonder you’re bitter.”

“Not bitter...just a little poorer. And a lot
wiser.”

“Wiser? In what way?”

“I know better than to trust again,” he said,
and he knew she’d disagree. She needed him to trust again, didn’t
she? She needed him to trust her, if she was going to pull off
whatever it was she was planning.

“That’s a hard line to hold...a lonely way to
live.”

“Lonely is better than used, Brigit. Besides,
who the hell is there to trust, hmm? Who would you suggest I start
with? You?”

She met his eyes, held them steady. “No. Not
me.”

He studied her face. So perfectly lovely. So
open and honest. So goddamn deceiving. Sitting there in the
darkness with the wind in her face, telling him not to trust her.
What the hell was it about her, anyway, that drew him so much?

“I get the feeling,” she whispered, tilting
her head and raking his face with her eyes, “that this bitterness
started long before your wife left you, though. I get the feeling
it started a long time ago. In your childhood.”

He lowered his chin to his chest. So she
wasn’t going to let it go after all. “The only thing I learned in
my childhood, Brigit, was not to believe in fairytales.”

She laughed, but it was a sad sound.

“What’s funny?”

She reached up to tuck a loose lock of hair
back into place, and he caught his own hand lifting, reaching out,
as if to stop her. Or to tin-twist her hair and watch the wind
shake it loose. He stopped himself in the nick of time.

“Not funny, ironic. Fairytales were the only
thing I
did
believe in.” The wind blew a little more of her
hair free again. “I wonder which is worse,” she said softly,
thinking it through out loud, he thought. “Believing so strongly
and having the fantasy shattered? Or never having the chance to
believe at all?”

She reached up to push the hair into place
again, and this time he covered her hand with his own, stopping
her. And she turned her head, met his eyes. So much pain there. And
he had to know. He had to.

“Tell me,” he heard himself whisper, and the
sound of the words was swallowed up by the wind, but he knew she
heard them all the same. “Tell me what you believed in so strongly.
I really want to know.”

She lowered her chin to her chest. “If you’ll
talk to me about what you learned not to believe in,” she
replied.

Watching the way her lips moved nearly did
him in. But he blinked and gave his head a shake. “I don’t talk
about that,” he told her. “Not to anyone, Brigit. Don’t ask me
to.”

“Do you talk about your father, Adam? Do you
talk about what he did to you?”

He wanted to look away, and he couldn’t.
“No,” he said. “Because it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“He hurt you. He’s still hurting you. That
matters.”

“Not to me, it doesn’t.”

“To me, then.”

Adam closed his eyes to block out the
sincerity in hers. He wasn’t going to talk to her about this. He
wasn’t. He...

“You know, they say abused kids can grow up
to be abusers.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “I’ve heard
that.”

“But not necessarily, you know?”

“Of course not. Lots of abused kids grow up
to be wonderful parents.”

“You know why?” Why? Good question, he
thought. Why am I blurting my most secret feelings to this woman?
This stranger? And yet his mouth kept right on moving. “Because
they know what a little kid longs for in his heart. They know how
bad it is for a kid to go without the one thing he craves. All it
takes to put a kid right in paradise, is for his parents to love
him, Brigit. It’s so damned simple. Why can’t more adults see
that?”

He felt her hand covering his where it rested
on the stone.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Maybe they’re
blind.”

“They are. I’ll tell you something, Brigit,
when I have a son, I’m going to love him with everything in me.” He
opened his eyes, saw her staring at him, and saw her tears. “Don’t
pity me.”

“I’m not. I’m jealous of you.”

He lifted his brows.

“You’ll be a wonderful father, someday,
Adam,” she told him. “Your children will be lucky, and beautiful,
and your family, deliriously happy. I envy that. I really do.”

No pity. No poor baby routine. Maybe it was
okay that he’d opened up to her a little bit. Maybe having her
validate his fondest dreams would make them more real, more
possible.

Or maybe she’d throw them right back in his
face someday. He’d forgotten her lies for a few minutes, hadn’t he?
And somehow she’d tricked him into sharing his oldest pain with
her. How had she done that?

“I don’t want to talk about me anymore,” he
said, looking away from her.

“All right.”

His relief was intense. Almost as if, had she
insisted, he’d have had no choice but to go on with the
conversation. To tell her every secret he had. Which was crazy, of
course. She was still looking at him, still searching his eyes. And
when he looked into hers he couldn’t stay angry over her supposed
invasion of his mind. Instead he fixated on her mouth, and decided
if she didn’t start using those lips to talk with, he was going to
find another occupation for them.

“Tell me,” he coaxed, drawn into her eyes and
stuck there like a fly trapped in a spider’s web. Saying whatever
foolish words popped into his mind, because he was too entranced by
her to censor himself. She was spinning some kind of magic, damn
her. And he was eating it with a spoon. “Tell me about the
fairytales you believed in.”

She smiled very slightly, not smugly. Maybe
it was more of a self-conscious smile. “I wanted to tell you
anyway. So that maybe, you could tell me where the story came from.
There are parts of it. . . parts that are important for me to
understand.”

“I will, if I can.” Anything, he thought
vaguely. Right now—out here with the dark clouds skittering over
the half moon, making shadows on her face, and the wind coming off
the lake, whipping more tendrils of her hair loose until they
reached toward him, caressing his cheeks like loving fingers—right
now, he’d do anything she asked of him.

She leaned back, hands flat on the ground
behind her, and her legs stretched out in front, one crossed over
the other at her ankle. She wore no stockings tonight. Her lean
legs were bare and smooth and tempting him to touch. To taste. He
realized she was barefoot. And he thought about kissing her again,
from her toes to her hips. He fought the impulse with everything in
him.

God, she was beautiful. Like an angel. Or
something else ethereal and elusive and mysterious. Something you
could glimpse and observe and long for, but too precious ever to
hold.

But he wanted to hold her. He wanted it so
much he couldn’t look away. Utterly mesmerized by her eyes and the
deep, sultry sound of her voice, he listened to her as she began to
tell him her story.

Her eyes focused on the roiling lake. But her
gaze was turned inward as she began, “Once upon a time...”

“Where the hell did you hear that story?”

The harsh tone of his voice startled her, and
she snapped back to the present, out of the past that had been
swamping her mind as she recited the
Fairytale
from memory.
“I told you. It’s just a story I heard when I was...”

“It’s just the one story I’ve been searching
for my entire life,” he yelled back, and it shook her to know he
wasn’t raising his voice just to be heard over the wind. He was
angry. “Just a story I’ve never been able to find, Brigit.”

“But—”

“Once more, where did you hear it?”

His face was hard. Granite lines and angles
and shadows. And the wind came in stronger than before, whipping
his hair into chaos. Roiling storm clouds obliterated the moon’s
glow, now. But they were nothing compared to the ones raging in his
eyes.

“An old nun,” she said softly, “told me that
story on the nights when I was too afraid or too lonely to sleep. I
used to think it was true. That I was really...” She let her voice
trail off, shaking her head slowly at the expression he wore. “You
don’t believe me.”

He said nothing, just got up as the first
raindrops plunked and smattered the flat stone under his feet.

“Come on inside. You’ll get soaked.”

“But, Adam, you’ve heard that story before. I
know you have. You knew about the forest of Rush.”

“What?”

He seemed so alarmed that she blinked in
surprise. “You said you thought ‘Rush’ was the name of the forest
in the painting. Adam, that’s why I assumed you’d heard my
Fairytale.”

“
Your
fairytale?”

She lowered her head. “Well, I used to think
it was mine. That someone had made it up just for me. I only
realized it wasn’t when it became obvious others had heard it, too.
You...and the artist who did your painting.”

She looked up at him, standing above her,
staring down at her with an expression that combined so many
emotions she couldn’t name them all. Disbelief. Confusion. Rage.
Suspicion.

“Adam, I don’t know what you suspect me of
here. But I only told you about the story because I wanted to know
if the version you’d heard included the twin daughters.”

His eyebrows bent into question marks. “I’m
damned if I’m going to stand out here in the rain and discuss
something I know is impossible. A goddamn lie. There’s no way you
heard that story.”

“It’s not a lie.” The rain fell harder.
“Adam, that fairytale was the most important thing in my life for a
long time. I clung to it when I had nothing else. And if you know
anything about it, about where it comes from or...”

He stared at her, and she felt his eyes
probing her soul. Felt his doubts. And something else...

“The only thing I know about it, Brigit, is
that it doesn’t exist.”

Brigit got to her feet, leaning close to him
as the wind came harder. Raising her voice to be heard over its
deep moans. “If you heard the story, and the artist heard the
story, how can you say it doesn’t exist?”