More Than Magic (38 page)

“I’ll do my best. I don’t think we have to worry about the media in
this
weather, so that’s a blessing. But we do have someone up here who was in a nice warm car, but apparently decided to drag my deputy up here in this blizzard and
insists
on talking to you guys. Over.”

Nick frowned.
 

“Dr. Grace?” It was a very familiar voice.

Grace grabbed for the walkie-talkie. “Oh Jamie! You brave thing you! You saved our lives you know, girl!”

She realized that she had called Jamie a girl and covered her mouth in dismay, looking at Nick who smiled back at her and shook his head.

“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” Jamie said proudly. “Me and Pooka! Pooka and I, I mean.”

“Yes, you did!” Nick leaned over to add.

“Are you going to be okay tonight, Jamie? Who are you staying with? Over.” Grace asked.

The sheriff came back on. “Her mom’s on her way back over the mountain. I thought it’d be best. And Grace, Daniel called the office all worried because he couldn’t get hold of you up here. Over.”

“Could you call him back? He’ll be frantic. Over.”

“No problem. Although I think if I tell him you’re stuck in a cave he’ll still be a mite worried till he hears your voice. Over.”

“Do your best. Over.”

“I just don’t feel right about leaving you guys down there with all those chemicals. I mean, meth byproducts are nasty stuff. Over.”

Nick looked at Grace.

“We’re fine back in the cave,” she whispered and handed him the walkie-talkie. “But it’s your call.”

Spending the night in a meth lab with Grace. He was dreaming or dead.

“As long as we stay back where we are, we’ll be fine. I have a feeling trying to break through that roof would make things worse. Over,” he said.

“Well, hopefully SAR’ll get you outta there before too long. One of us will be up here until they do. And we ran a line so no one’ll get lost trying to find this place. Over.”

“Oh, wait a minute.” Grace grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Can you have Jamie take care of Pooka?”

There was some scuffling on the roof. “Me and mom’ll stay at your house, if that’s okay? I can take care of Pooka and the chickens and stuff for you, till you get out.” Jamie said. “Uh— OVER!”

Grace laughed. “Thanks Jamie Lynn. Over.”

The sheriff came back on. “All right then, I’d like you check in every hour, starting now. Over.”

Nick looked at his watch. “Got it. Over.”

The cave was silent once more as the noise on the roof faded into distant mutters of sound. Pooka barked for a while, unhappy to be led away.

“Well—” Nick couldn’t figure out what to say next.

Grace looked like she wasn’t sure if she should sock him in the mouth or kiss him. Nick was definitely in favor of the latter, but he wasn’t going to push his luck.

“Yes,
well
.” Grace stared at him with her mouth set in a firm line.

“I guess I have some explaining to do,” Nick continued.

Grace went over and placed the walkie-talkie on a table. “No. It makes sense now.” She leaned back against the table. “Your analysis pinpointed this mountain, and there I was on top of it—Marshall Woodruff’s daughter. That must’ve terrified some folks in Washington. Wouldn’t that be inconvenient—having the Woodruff name hooked to a drug ring? So they send you in undercover, to make sure I’m not up to something that needs to be hushed up real quiet like—”

“Grace—”

“And you
are
really good. Excellent in fact,” she said. “You only made one mistake, Mr. Secret Agent Man.”

Yeah. I fell in love.

She pulled his handkerchief out of her jacket and held the initials up for him to see. “Really? You go undercover with your own monogrammed handkerchief?”

Nick had to admit that was embarrassing.

“But I
knew
there was a good explanation.” She stared at it for a moment. “I knew.”

He was surprised that she didn’t throw it at him. Instead, she stuffed it back into a pocket.

“However, I’m thankful beyond words that you left Jamie out of your story. I can’t imagine how her notebook was involved, though.”

“There’s going to be a lot of pressure to keep this from going to trial. And to keep you out of it as well.” He took a step toward her. “I’m really sorry, Grace—”

“Someone actually thought
I
was cooking some kind of special meth up here? Seriously? Just because I know my way around a lab—”

“A really potent kind of meth starts causing big problems in Atlanta.
You
just earned a degree with the knowledge and experience to create all manner of pharmaceuticals. Instead of going off to use your degree in some exotic rainforest, you show up here.” He had given up apologizing and decided the scientist in her needed a list of evidence. He ticked it off on his fingers for her. “One of the text messages they sent was traced to the cell tower nearest this mountain. Your cellular extender uses that tower. The geographic locations of two drops and one pickup point—all easy driving from here. The sellers are using encrypted math puzzles to communicate with their buyers. And here’s Jamie with her geocaching notebook full of the same type of puzzles with some of the same keys.”

Grace had folded her arms in front of her and was staring at her feet.

He took another step.

“And the way you acted that first night—trying to get rid of me. Then the way you sneaked off into the woods—” Nick explained.

“Sneaked?” she protested, though not too loudly. “
You
are talking about sneaking around?”

Nick took another step.

“Then, when I stumbled over you, you were really disturbed by the idea that you were being followed.”

Grace was about to object, but Nick raised a hand.

“Yeah, the ginseng. I know that now. But
then
I catch you talking to someone on the phone about ‘magic fairy dust’. And you are even more jumpy and edgy about me overhearing
that
conversation.” He threw up his hands. “Seriously, Grace. You are a brilliant scientist, you figure—”

She grimaced. “Yes.
Fine
. I see your logic.”

“And I
am
sorry. I can’t tell you how much,” he said.

“You only did your job.” Grace stared at her feet. “And if you hadn’t, who knows what might have happened. To Jamie. To me. To anyone who might have stumbled across that trash or something else.” Her voice was tight. “Like Pops.”

He waited, but she didn’t say anymore. In the silence, he heard water dripping somewhere.

“When they called me in on this case and I started analyzing the evidence, I knew,” he continued. “My gift said, pretty clearly, this was the case that was going to end my career. So, when I narrowed everything down to this mountain, I had to come up here myself. It wasn’t hard to convince my boss. He thought it was a long shot and that I should still be on sick leave. So, to him, this looked like a great place for me to take it easy.”

Nick found it hard to put words around the rest of it, and Grace was still avoiding his gaze.

“To be honest, when I got here, I thought it looked like a great place to die.” He heard her gasp as she finally looked up at him. “Until Old Annie pointed that damn gun at me and I realized I had a lot to live for.”

“Oh Nick,” Grace said, her eyes wide and wet. “Of course you do.” She stepped into his arms and kissed him.

Foolish. Stupid. Reckless.
But how could she keep up the pretense of anger in the face of that confession? Even to save
him
from heartache—

But his heart wouldn’t ache. He would just be confused when his obsession with her faded. Confused and then embarrassed when he realized it was all just—magic.

Magic.

It certainly felt magical. His mouth on hers, his fingers sliding down her back, his heart beating wildly against hers. Grace felt as if she were filled to the brim with Tink’s
“gold sparklies and magic fairy dust.”

Just magic.

Grace pulled away, but Nick wouldn’t let go, so she ended up leaning back in his arms with her hands on his chest.

She attempted to put her crumpled defenses back in order. “I-I suppose you don’t really
like
to cook—”
 

“Love to cook,” he whispered. “And I have a thing for redheads, if you must know.”

She clamped her mouth shut. Her best efforts were useless against this man—against her own rebellious heart.

“What are you afraid of Grace? You know me by now. Hell, you know my insides better than my doctors.”

Grace couldn’t think. The look in his eyes had slid into something dark and wild, as it had in the meadow—was it only last night? But she felt her body respond to the idea before her mind could protest.

“I-I don’t know,” she stuttered.

“Good,” Nick said. He pulled her toward him and kissed her, first on the lips, then, bringing his hands in to cup her face, he kissed her eyelids and her cheeks and her chin, then her lips again, before he pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair next to her ear. “I like it when you don’t know something.”

“What?” she protested.

“Exactly.”

Then he kissed her again and she couldn’t remember what he had just said. Her headlamp cast wild shadows around them until he stroked his fingers into her hair and pulled it off. He looped it around his wrist and cupped his hand around her nape to pull her closer and deepen the kiss as he picked her up off the floor.

“What are you doing?” she protested as he shouldered his way through the door into the office.

“You know, when you dragged me in here, for a second I thought you were some kind of angel carrying me off to the other side. Then—” he pushed the door shut with his foot, “—I woke up thinking I’m dead, but you’re there, so I think I’ve made it to heaven, in spite of everything.” He maneuvered through the opening to their little cave. “Now I’ve come to understand that I’m actually in my own personal purgatory, where I get you
in
an underground meth lab.” He grinned at her devilishly.

“Purga—” she laughed. “You are
not
carrying me!”

“Looks like I am.”

“Nick C—Mc—whatever your name is, put me down! You just got shot. You can’t go around picking up pe—” She squeaked as he set her down on the makeshift bed and put both of his hands on the wall behind her head, pinning her in.

“My name’s Nicholas Andrew McKenzie. I’m not an author of thrillers or anything else. I’m a Special Agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration—and I apologize, probably not for the last time, for deceiving you,
Dr.
Grace Elizabeth Woodruff.”

He leaned closer. Close enough for her to see the tiny flecks of white in the gray of his eyes. “Everything else I told you is true. Including this, which I tried to say before—I think I’m in love with you, Grace.” Then he kissed her. A gentle chaste kiss on her lips. His hands still on the wall behind her. Not demanding. Not asking for anything more.

“Andrew,” Grace said. “And how did you find out my middle name,
Andrew
?
”

“Not apologizing any more tonight,” he said firmly, kissing her again. Waiting.

“I could get accustomed to this kind of apologizing.” She ran her finger slowly down the side of his face to curve around his dimple.
If this is all I have of you, it will be enough.

He wasn’t asking for more than a kiss, but she did, running her finger slowly back and forth across his bottom lip until he closed his eyes and groaned, pushing his hands away from the wall and grasping her shoulders as she kissed him.
I hope you can forgive me when the magic wears off.

She rose to her knees, slipping her hands around him and tugging at his jacket, managing to shove it down and off his arms along with his vest and the headlamp.

He returned the favor, capturing her arms in her jacket while he explored her neck again, paying special attention to the area below her ear. She was shuddering by the time the jacket slipped off, freeing her hands to pull at the edge of his stained sweater until he growled in frustration and tore it over his head, throwing it behind him, where it sent the candle flame dipping and swaying, making the shadows weave around them on the walls like ancient dancers.

“I want to see my handiwork,” she said, rolling his undershirt up across his chest, making him gasp as her thumbs dragged through his chest hair and her palms slipped across his nipples. “And I don’t want to look at those bloodstains any more than I have to.”

She smiled as she pulled the shirt over his head and reached around him to twist it around his wrists, then leaned back to kiss his neck where she could feel the pulse pounding rapidly beneath the skin. Sliding her mouth along his stubbled chin, she kissed beneath his ear.

“I’m going to end up with beard burn,” she whispered into his ear.

“Dammit, Grace.” He yanked at the shirt tangled around his wrists and something ripped. “I was right. This is purgatory,” he complained.

Grace laughed and leaned back on her heels to run her fingers across his stomach and beneath the waistband of his jeans while he struggled with his shirt, watching as his muscles jumped and shivered beneath her touch. There was no sign of the wound that had been there hours before—only the ugly bloodstained hole in the fabric. She closed her eyes and reached out with her gift.