Haunting Beauty (39 page)

She felt the tension in him leave, her own following willingly. He turned his face to the hollow of her throat and tenderly kissed her neck.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. I wanted it.”

He looked up, seeing the truth in her eyes, understanding that she’d felt the same consuming passion, the same driving need to seize tight and to ward off. To hold on and to let go. Then he was moving away from the wall, still holding her, still connected. She wrapped her arms and legs more tightly around him and held on as he lowered her to the bed.

Chapter Thirty-four

D
ANNI had only hours to decide what she was going to do. One part of her wanted to pull the covers over her head and pretend that nothing would change, pretend that tomorrow she’d awaken in Sean’s arms just as she had that morning and the morning before. But Danni had spent most of her life denying what she didn’t want to face. She refused to do it any longer.

In the drawer of the dresser, she sensed the Book waiting, watching. She’d managed to contain it before, but she was growing weak with the effort. She could feel it draining her strength.

Sighing, she wiggled out of bed, took a pair of panties from the dresser, and shrugged into Sean’s discarded button-down shirt which she found on the floor. A flush covered her face as she thought of how she’d ripped it from his body. Bean looked up from the rug at the foot of the bed and wagged her stubby tail.

“Where are you going?” Sean asked, his voice thick and sleepy, rumbling deep in his chest.

“Water,” she answered. “I’ll bring you some, too.”

When she returned, he was sitting up, propped by pillows, his hands linked behind his head. She stared at him, admiring the flat ridges of his stomach, the hard broadness of his chest, the slope and gleam of muscles rising from shoulder to bunched bicep. The perfect weave of sinew and bone. He was beautiful in shape, in face, in mind. She climbed on the bed beside him, legs together and tucked beneath her.

He thanked her for the water and drank it down. After the wild sex they both seemed suddenly shy, neither meeting the other’s eyes. There was still much unsaid between them, and it turned the intimate aftermath into tense waiting.

Finally, he sat forward, putting a large warm hand on her bent knee. “What happened today?” he asked softly.

“My father threatened me. In the kitchen,” she said.

Sudden tears burned her eyes, and she covered her face with her hands to hide them. Sean cursed beneath his breath, and then he was kneeling beside her, pulling her into an embrace that was gentle and solid.

“I was going to ask for his help but . . . he’s been using the Book of Fennore, and it’s made him crazy. Bronagh and my mother both walked in, and he told them he’d caught me stealing . . .” she trailed off, stuttering over the horror of it.

Sean rubbed her back in slow gentle circles. “What did they say?” he asked.

“Bronagh told me to leave. I don’t know what else was said after.”

“Is that why you went to the cavern?”

She nodded. “I had to hide. I was so upset. He said he’d kill me before he let me have the Book. My father is a monster. I was so happy to meet him but he’s . . .” She took a deep breath, unable to speak it.

“Look at me,” he said, squeezing her shoulders. “Danni, look at me.” He waited until she complied and then, staring deeply into her eyes, he said, “Who or what he is—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t define who
you
are.”

She wanted to believe it, but his words were such hypocrisy that she couldn’t. “Doesn’t it? Haven’t you been measuring yourself by your father’s failures and crimes all these years?”

Sean’s mouth tightened, and she knew he wanted to argue. But at his core, Sean was an honest man. He couldn’t deny the truth, even to himself.

“Well, I guess that makes me a fool,” he said softly. “I’m sure you already knew that.”

She stared into his face, into the turbulent sea of his green eyes. She almost wished for the insulating anger she’d felt in the shower when he’d left her shaking and needing. But there was too much pain here now, in this moment of truth. Too much heartbreak and finality, for she knew what needed to be said next and there was no room for petty anger. No room for vengeance.

She pulled away, and he let his arms fall as he watched her. His gaze was intense, focused and probing. She felt like he was seeing through her, to the pain inside.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.

“There’s something I need to tell you, too,” he answered.

That caught her off balance and made her ask, “What is it?”

He smiled, though he still managed to look serious and intent and somehow vulnerable. Unsure of himself. Unsure of her.

“I’m sorry, about earlier, in the shower. I meant what I said, though. What’s between us, what I feel when I’m with you, it’s real.”

His hand moved to her throat, slipping back to tunnel through her hair and pull her closer for his kiss. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to the warmth and surrender of it.

“I’m in love with you, Danni. I want to be with you. Always. Forever.”

There were tears in her eyes again, only these were not the hot and bitter tears of her anger and humiliation. These were huge, glistening drops that slid down her cheeks. He loved her. And God knew she loved him, too. But he didn’t know the whole truth about what had happened to them on her fifth birthday. And when he realized she’d known all along and kept it from him. . . .

He pressed his lips to her face, to the salty tears. “Don’t cry,” he said, and his deep voice was low with pain.

“Sean .. .”

He heard the note of doom in her voice and stiffened, lips still pressed to her cheek. Slowly he pulled back, staring into her face with guarded eyes.

Danni stood, needing to put some distance between them before she spoke. She didn’t know where to begin explaining to this man that he’d been dead for the past two decades. And what scared her the most, what had kept her from speaking of it before, was one looming question: What would happen when he knew? What was his existence made of? Was it his belief that he was alive that made him seem so real? If she shattered that, would he become the ghost she knew him to be?

“Do you remember when you came to my house?” she asked.

“It was just a few days ago.”

“I know. But do you remember how you got there?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“How you got there, Sean. Did you take a cab?”

He shook his head, brows pulled together in consternation. “No.”

“You didn’t have a car. I would have seen it.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this. What’s your point, Danni?”

“And how did you get back to your hotel?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I guess I walked.”

“Maybe you did. But you should remember it, shouldn’t you?”

He shook his head, noncommittal. But now he looked angry. Feeling as if something were breaking inside her, she went on. “What about the flight over from Ireland? Do you remember that?”

“Of course,” he said, but the frown had become a scowl and she knew he was trying to recall it even as he spoke.

“Where did you layover?” she asked.

“What?”

“A flight that long had to have a layover. Which city?”

Mutely, he shook his head again.

“Think about it, Sean. You can’t remember because you weren’t on a flight.”

“So you’re saying, what? You think I came to Arizona the same way we came here?”

“Not exactly.”

“Quit skirting whatever it is you’re trying to say, Danni. What’s your point?”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “After you came to see me, in Arizona, I looked up Ballyfionúir on the Internet. I found an article about you, about what happened here the night my mother disappeared.”

“About me? Why? What did it say?”

“It had a picture of your father. It was taken . . .” She swallowed, her throat burning with hurt and dread. “It was taken before he killed himself. There was a picture of you, too, Sean. From when you were young. The age Michael is now.”

“Why was there a picture of me?”

She paused. Now that she was at the edge, at that moment, she didn’t think she could go on.

“Why was there a picture of me?” he repeated.

“Because . . . because it said you’d been killed that night. It said your body was later found in an unmarked grave. In the valley, by the ruins.”

He stood suddenly, naked and beautiful, tormented and silent. He was remembering. She saw it, felt it in the emotions flashing across his face.

“You weren’t alone, though,” Danni went on, her voice cracking. “There was an unidentified woman with you. She was dead, too.”

He stared at her, the fury of his confusion rolling like waves over them both.

“That woman . . . It was me.”

Chapter Thirty-five

S
EAN prayed Danni would smile, laugh. Tell him she was joking. But of course she didn’t. She stood there looking miserable and hurt, staring at him with those big gray eyes. He concentrated on the faceted silver and pewter, rainy day slate that swirled together around the black of her pupils. Anything to keep his thoughts from following where she led.

It said you’ d been killed that night. . . .

“Whatever you read was wrong,” Sean said. “Obviously.” Danni continued to stare at him as he struggled to sound sure. To convince her.

You weren’t alone, though . . .

When she spoke, her voice was gentle, soothing. But her words—they came like tiny darts, puncturing his skin without drawing blood. “I don’t think it was wrong, Sean. It said yours and the unidentified woman’s bodies were the only ones ever found.”

“Are you hearing yourself? If I’d been killed at fourteen, explain how I’m here now, a grown man?”

“I can’t.”

“Exactly.”

“But I can’t explain how either one of us is here, now. Our being in Ballyfionúir twenty years in the past isn’t even a possibility.”

“Not for me, maybe,” he said, still trying to keep it light. If he didn’t take it seriously, then how could she? “But you do this kind of thing all the time.”

“No, I don’t. Until you barged into my life, I hadn’t had a vision in years. Not since I was little.”

“My life has been ordinary up until now.”

“Has it really?”

There was demand in the question, and it cut him to the bone. He’d told her he loved her, and she’d spun the conversation into this miasma of accusation and plea. This inquisition intended to make him doubt his own fucking existence.

“Do you remember when you came to the antique shop to see me?” she asked.

He stared at her, trying to follow the jump in topic. He couldn’t. What did that have to do with the death and bodies?

“In Arizona,” she went on in a patient voice. As if she was talking to an imbecile. “We talked about going to dinner, and then those women with their kids, they were staring and we thought it was weird. But it wasn’t. They were staring because I was alone, talking to myself—at least that’s how it looked to them, like you weren’t there.”

“Can you hear yourself? A couple of women give you strange looks and you’ve twisted it into—”

“It’s more than that and you know it. They didn’t
hear
you, Sean. They didn’t
see
you.”

“Now I’m invisible?”

“No, dammit. Not invisible. Dead. You’re dead, Sean.”

The words rang out like a clap of thunder. They sucked the air from his lungs and made him gasp, cough, stagger back a step. He should be laughing at that. Clearly she was unwell. Did he look dead for fuck’s sake? But the feeling of being suctioned away from inside out wouldn’t permit laughter.

“Not all your ducks are quacking, are they, sweetheart?” he said, trying to hide his malaise, his fear. Because that’s what it had become, this hollowed-out feeling.

“Don’t make jokes.”

“Well, I’m having a hard time thinking what else to do, seeing how I’m dead.”

“Not now, you’re not,” she said.

“And you’re not making a bit of sense.”

“Think about it,” she said grimly. “In a few hours, something is going to happen. My mother is going to try to leave with the twins. I think you and your father are going with them. But something goes wrong. A boy and a woman are murdered and their bodies are left behind.”

“But that makes you dead, too.”

She looked frustrated, wild-eyed, and serious all at the same time. “Listen to me. We are both here and alive
now
because we’ve come back in time. We are here
before
the murders. And if history repeats itself, then tonight Michael—you as a boy—will be killed.”

“And then what happens to me as a man? Let me guess. I sprout fucking angel wings and fly away?”

She swallowed and looked down. “I’m only guessing,” she began, and her voice shook. The sound of that tremor running through her words eliminated the last of his insulating disbelief. As crazy as it sounded, she meant what she said, and it hurt her. “But I would say that when the boy is killed, the man will cease to exist.”

His laugh was thin and forced. It brought the little dog’s head up from her paws to watch them warily.

“You will never have the chance to grow up, Sean. Not really. You’ll spend your days wandering this town, never acknowledged. Never seen. Isn’t that how it was?”

He stared at her, remembering the emptiness of his life, the vacuous and nomadic days. The purposelessness. But still a desperate man inside him tried to pretend that it wasn’t true. “Then who came to your house in Arizona? Tell me that? And if you get killed, too, then why don’t you ‘cease to exist’ as well?”

“Because I’m still alive as a child. Don’t you see? In my case, the woman who will die isn’t real yet . . . Dáirinn will still grow up and become her. Me. But for you, the child dies before he can become a man. . . .”

Sean stared at her and to his horror, he did see. It was insanity, and yet didn’t it answer so many questions? How many times since he’d come here with Danni had he been overwhelmed by the tangibility, the clarity and delight of every experience? How many moments had he passed just drinking in the feel of the damp Irish air against his skin, the lilt of his words rolling off his tongue, or the scent of this woman filling him with pleasure?