Fairytale (16 page)

It was right. He knew it was a second later,
when a sob choked her, and she turned to him. When she curled up
against him, burying her face in the crook of his shoulder,
pressing so close and curling her body up so tightly it was as if
she’d like to crawl inside him. As if she’d like to hide there,
from her memories.

And dammit, he knew that feeling all too
well. He had a few memories of his own that could put him in a
similar state. And he couldn’t turn away from another person who’d
had a childhood full of nightmares. He couldn’t do it.

He wrapped her up in his arms and he held
her, and all his pent-up breath left him in a rush. The rigidness
left his shoulders and his spine. He stopped grating his teeth.
This was right. This was where he needed to be, right now. He
stopped fighting it, and let his instincts have free rein. His
hands stroked her hair, and rubbed her back, and squeezed her
tighter. He whispered to her that it was all right, that she was
safe, that he wasn’t going anywhere.

Her trembling body relaxed in his arms. Her
face lay tight to his unclothed chest. He felt her hot tears there,
and her warm breath. He felt her quivering lips each time she
parted them on a sob. The scent of her hair and that of her tears
mingled to create a bittersweet perfume he’d remember always. Her
skin slid beneath his hands like silk.

He kept it up until she cried herself to
sleep.

And then he wondered what demon had possessed
him to end up in bed with this woman. Was he so far gone that, even
knowing she lied with nearly every breath, he was still
this...this...

Enchanted.

Yeah, that was the word for it, all right. If
he didn’t know better, he’d think he was under an enchantment.

And maybe that’s exactly what it was. And
maybe it was about time he remind himself that if all of this
really
were
true, if his childhood fantasy had really
happened, and if Brigit Malone were truly the woman he’d been
shown...then lying here, holding her this way, was the stupidest
thing he could do. Because it made him want more, and it made his
heart go soft when it had been a solid lump of granite for such a
long time. And he couldn’t let himself care for her. He
couldn’t.

Because if this fairytale were true, he
already knew the ending. And it wasn’t happily ever after.

He laid awake, bathed in her warmth and her
nearness, telling himself to leave her alone and holding her tight
in his arms, for the rest of the night.

“Adam...?”

Brigit lifted her head from the firm, warm,
male cushion beneath it, and realized it was Adam’s naked chest.
Her first impulse was to return her head to that wonderful pillow,
after trailing her lips over it to see how it would taste.

Fortunately, she came a little more fully
awake before giving in to that impulse.

“Oh,” she whispered, and then, more softly,
“oh.”

His eyes were opened, clear, and focused on
her face with a mingling of concern and awareness. “Yeah. You can
say that again.”

They were incredibly dark this morning, his
changeable eyes. Like the needles of a blue spruce on a cloudy
day.

She remembered last night. The smell of
smoke...the waking nightmare. And Adam, coming to her, holding her
and making it all disappear. Her eyes widened as she thought of her
book. The
Fairytale.
But a quick glance confirmed she’d
tucked it back under her pillow as she did every night. She sighed
and sat up, then belatedly clutched the blanket to her chest. Her
choice of sleeping attire hadn’t been exactly modest.

“Too late, Brigit. I already have intimate
knowledge of that nightie.”

She lowered her eyes, feeling her cheeks
burn.

“Don’t be embarrassed. You look...incredible
in it.”

“This shouldn’t have happened.” She spoke
quickly, softly, keeping her eyes averted.

“Nothing
happened,
Brigit.”

“I slept in your arms.”

“Yeah. And I was warm until you moved away.
Now I’m freezing.” He flung back the covers and surged to his feet,
heading toward the wide open French doors. She couldn’t take her
eyes from his scantily clad body...those hair-smattered thighs,
hard as tree trunks, that small, compact butt covered only by a
thin pair of boxers. The broad, smooth width of his shoulders. The
way his golden hair touched his nape. The way it curled slightly
there. The way she wanted to touch it.

He closed the French doors, and turned to
face her. And the color of his eyes turned darker still. They took
on a gleam she hadn’t seen before. He took a step toward the
bed.

“I...I’m sorry,” she said softly. “About last
night.”

“Don’t be.” He took another step.

She met his gaze, held it, and very slightly,
she shook her head. “I can’t...”

He stopped in his tracks, blinking as if
snapping out of some trance state. He lowered his chin to his
chest, blew all the air from his lungs.

Then he came the rest of the way to the bed
and sank onto the foot of it. No longer the predator. She wasn’t
afraid of him now.

“Tell me something, Brigit,” he said, and he
ran two hands back and forth through his hair roughly, as if it
would somehow invigorate him. All it did was make the hair stick up
like feathers. Make her long to smooth it down again. “How old were
you when you got trapped in that fire?”

She closed her eyes. He knew it was real, and
not a dream. There was no use denying it. She already knew he could
see right through her lies. So she opened her eyes again, and met
his. “Eight or nine.”

“Jesus.” He lifted his brows then, not
asking, just waiting.

“It was an orphanage. St. Mary’s, in New
York. Sister Mary Agnes...she was the one who used to tell me the
story...she died that night.”

He was searching her face. For what, she
wondered?

“But you got out.”

She nodded. “A homeless man who spent most of
his time in the park across the street came into that hell and
carried me out.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding,” she whispered. And as she did,
she thought of Raze, and all he’d done for her. She adored him.
There was nothing in this world she wouldn’t do to keep him
safe.

And unfortunately, that included betraying
the man who sat in his underwear on the foot of her bed, staring
into her eyes as if he were seeing her for the first time.

Adam had left her in the bed. He still wasn’t
sure how he’d worked up the will to do that, but he had. She’d been
lying there looking sleepy and vulnerable, and very much as if
she’d rather he stayed.

Right. And she’d told him things, things
she’d been holding back before. And now maybe he had a jumping-off
point. He had to know everything about her. He had to find a way to
determine once and for all if there were even the slightest
possibility she was...what he suspected she was. God, he couldn’t
even complete the thought without feeling ridiculous.

But he had to know the truth. Before she
destroyed him. Because if that was her goal, intentional or not,
Adam was sorely afraid she was going to succeed.

Funny how a woman he was afraid would destroy
him could manage to heal him while he awaited the killing blow.
Because that’s what she was doing. He realized it this morning. It
was the damnedest thing. She seemed to have the same effect on his
heart that she had on his houseplants.

Pure, impossible magic.

Facts. He needed facts.

He sat in a booth at Hal’s Deli right now,
across from the man who could get them for him.

“Don’t worry about the money, Adam. Look, you
paid me plenty for trying to track down that lousy wife of yours,
even though I offered to do it as a favor, and even though I wasn’t
able to find her for you.”

“Successful or not, you put a lot of time
into tracing her, Mac. What kind of friend would let you do all
that for nothing?”

“Yeah, well, I’m doing better now. The
business is thriving. Anything you need I’ll do at no charge.” He
looked Adam in the eye, his expression intense. “I mean it. You
offer me a dime, I’ll blacken your eye. You’re my best friend. Just
tell me what you want.”

Adam nodded, admitting defeat. “Thanks,
Mac.”

“So what’s up?”

He sighed, feeling inexplicably guilty for
what he was about to do. “She goes by the name of Brigit Malone,”
he said finally. “And she spent some time in a shelter called St.
Mary’s, in New York. I take it she was an orphan. She mentioned
that she might have a twin sister, but that she doesn’t know for
sure. There was a fire at St. Mary’s while she was there. Burned
the place to the ground. Now she owns a shop on the Commons.
Akasha. And that’s just about every goddamn thing I know about
her.”

Except, he added silently, that she loves the
rain. And that having her around seems to make dying houseplants
thrive. And that her eyes...

He gave his head a shake. He also knew her
address. And that she’d lied about the construction going on there.
He gave Mac the former.

“But you’d like to know more?”

He nodded, and took another sip of the best
coffee in the state of New York. “Yeah. Everything you can dig up,
okay?”

“You got it, Adam. It would help if I could
see her. Do you have a photo?”

“No.”
But I have a painting
, he added
silently.

“Well, could you arrange for us to run into
each other somewhere?”

“You could come to the house” Adam suggested,
barely following the conversation. Why, when she was the one lying
to him every time she opened her pretty mouth—probably—was he
feeling guilty for asking a P.I. to check her out? Why?

“Oh, that’ll work,” Mac said. “Assuming she’s
brain dead.”

Adam frowned, trying to get his mind on the
matter at hand. “Hmm?”

“If she’s plotting something, she’ll have
reason to be suspicious of me, Adam. And if she is, and she has
something to hide, she might take measures to
keep
it
hidden.”

“Oh.”

“So take her out somewhere. Some university
function or other. There’s always something going on, isn’t
there?”

“Yeah. There’s always something,”

“Adam, are you okay?”

He met the other man’s eyes, and nodded. “So
far.”

“If you’re so sure she’s lying to you, why
the hell don’t you just toss her out?”

He shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t explain
it, Mac, but—”

“Don’t put yourself through this again,
pal.”

He met his best friend’s eyes. The concern he
saw there was genuine. He wished he could tell Mac everything, but
he knew he’d sound totally insane.

“Look,” he said at last, changing the
subject. “There’s a thing tonight. Cocktail party for university
alumni, to kick off a fund raiser. Starts at nine. Okay?”

Mac sighed, but shrugged in resignation.
“Okay. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can find out about her.”

“Thanks.”

Mac slid out of the booth, apparently out of
reasons to stay and try to talk some sense into Adam. He could be
overprotective of his friends. It irritated some of them, but Adam
saw it for what it was. Genuine caring. The guy felt things deep.
Especially loyalty. His friends were lucky people.

Adam lingered after Mac had gone. He still
had time left on his lunch break. Customers came and went, sat and
ate, chatted and read their newspapers. But he wasn’t seeing them.
More and more, he saw only one face in his mind. A face far too
innocent to be involved in trickery or deceit. Maybe too beautiful
even to be merely mortal. If she’d lied her way into his life, then
it was only because he’d let her. And he would let her remain,
because he was so desperate to find out her true connection to the
tale that seemed to have been a part of her childhood as much as
his own. And
its
connection to the painting that hung over
his mantel and haunted his thoughts.

He still had to know those things. But
now...he had to know them before she managed to lie—or to
enchant—her way right into his heart.

It scared the hell out of him to admit, she
already had a pretty decent start.

The way it was going, she’d be finished
within a day or two. Brigit was more careful when she carried the
canvas up the stairs this time. She’d worked on it most of the day,
and barely given the paint any drying time at all before she’d had
to move it. Dangerous, lugging a wet painting around like this. It
could smudge or smear.

But it didn’t. Not this time.

She heard a car out front, and looking down
at her paint stained fingertips, she panicked. But then she
narrowed her eyes, tilted her head, and listened closely. And she
knew the sound wasn’t coming from Adam’s Porsche.

Wiping her hands with a soft rag, she
continued down the curving staircase, hearing the doorbell now. She
dropped the rag on a table as she passed, and went to open the
front door.

Zaslow stood there leering at her.

Brigit gasped. “What are you doing here?”

His smile was slow and deliberate. “Came to
check on your progress, Brigit. Wouldn’t want to think you were
pulling one over on me.”

Brigit ignored him, her gaze shooting past
him to where his car sat in the driveway.

“Raze isn’t there. You think I’d be stupid
enough to bring him along?”

“Where is he? Is he all right?”

“Relax, Brigit. He’s fine. And as long as you
do what you’re told, he’ll continue to be fine.” His hands snatched
hers without warning, and his grip was unnecessarily cruel as he
lifted them, turned her palms up, and examined her fingers. She
tried to pull free, but he was too strong. And he smiled at the
paint stains still visible on her fingertips.

“Looks like you’ve been a good little forger,
Brigit. How much longer?”