The Lost Enchantress (4 page)

Still, it couldn’t hurt to pick up a paddle, she decided, turning in the direction of the registration area. It might even add to the excitement to have it right there at the ready on the miniscule chance she decided to throw caution to the wind and bid on something wildly extravagant. The Cruise to Nowhere always sounded so tempting at this time of year. Of course, it was most likely a cruise for two, which meant she would have to come up with someone to bring along; “nowhere” wasn’t a place you cruised to with your grandmother or sister or fifteen-year-old niece.

“Cruise to Nowhere” conjured visions of long, hot afternoons and moonlit nights, all running together in a romantic, soft-focus-y way. And at the moment she didn’t have much going on in the romance department. Actually, she had nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. Fortunately, she was too busy most of the time to notice.

She quickly filled out a registration form and exchanged it for a wooden-handled paddle.

“Here you go, Ms. Lockhart,” said the smiling young woman behind the desk. “Number 811 . . . I hope it’s lucky for you.”

“Thanks,” Eve replied, thinking luck would come into play only if she actually bid on something, and the only way 811 was likely to see any action was if the ballroom got hot and she used it to fan herself.

She gave that a try as she turned away, expecting to feel a small breeze on her face; instead, something closer to a gale force wind rushed over her. And
only
her apparently, because when she opened her eyes and looked to see how those around her had fared, everyone was still chatting and moving about as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Everyone except the man standing face-to-face with her.

A man she’d never seen before. Even windswept and slightly dizzy, Eve was certain of that. There are some men a woman just remembers, and he was one of them.

He’d been approaching the registration desk from the opposite direction when he stopped in his tracks about two feet away her. Maybe less.

Eve wondered whether he’d stopped to avoid plowing into her or because he too had felt the sudden rush of energy. The intense way he was looking at her made her suspect he’d felt it, or that he at least suspected something out of the ordinary.

She was still gripping the edge of the table with one hand, only vaguely aware of commands bubbling up from some distant, autopilot corner of her consciousness.
Smile politely, murmur an apology, move, damn it, move.
She did none of those things. It was as if all the neuron pathways connecting her brain to the rest of her had disengaged.

He
didn’t apologize or move away either. And Eve sensed that he had no interest in polite smiles. Something about him . . . no, she thought,
everything
about him sent the silent message that he did not want to be bothered.

She stood there, staring into his eyes far longer and more directly than manners dictated. And he stared back, his expression caught between wonder and irritation. An odd combination, she thought, but the thought drifted away as the sounds of conversation and laughter and clinking glasses softened into a distant hum and the air around her warmed and melted into the sound. For a fraction of time she couldn’t define, the entire universe was pared down to the few square feet of space separating them and Eve felt a sudden, powerful sense of being drawn to him, body and soul.

Anyone who didn’t know better might easily mistake the feeling for love at first sight. Either that or lust: the instantaneous, anchors-away, all-hands-on-deck variety that hits like a tsunami, leaves you witless and is frequently sparked by a bottle of something eighty proof. But Eve
did
know better. She wished she didn’t, but she did. She didn’t know exactly what was happening to her, but she knew enough to understand it had nothing to do with lust and even less to do with love.

It had to do with magic. And magic had everything to do with danger. So if A equals B and B equals C, she needed to get away from there as quickly as possible.

Easier said than done. In spite of the deductive reasoning of her brain, she didn’t want to walk away from him; she didn’t even want to look away, and it took all her will to do it. She lowered her eyes briefly, letting her gaze slide over him all the way to the floor, and then slowly looked up again, this time refusing to be drawn in by those dark eyes that never wavered, that seemed to see everything and give nothing.

That quick glance was enough for her trained journalist’s eye to catalogue the basics. Whoever he was, he was the perfect height, with straight, darkest brown hair, worn unfashionably long and swept back from the face of a first-class heartbreaker. The gods must have been feeling exceptionally generous on the day he was born, because they’d bestowed upon him the deluxe package: cheekbones high and chiseled, eyes dark, stormy gray, and a full, brooding mouth worthy of Byron himself. She’d bet anything the body beneath the long black overcoat—designer cashmere, almost certainly Ralph Lauren—was a lovely blend of lean and muscled. If she were twenty and silly and whole of heart, she would blow off the auction and follow him anywhere.

Fortunately, there were years of hard-won, battle-scarred wisdom between her and twenty. She couldn’t say the same for him. She pegged him as late twenties, thirty tops. Not that his age mattered to her any more than his
GQ
looks, she told herself sternly. She didn’t even care how he was connected to the sudden hijacking of her nervous system; she just knew she had to put a stop to it.

She started by squaring her shoulders and turning away. Next she took a deep breath and ordered her feet into action. So far so good. She was moving. Slowly and in the right direction, toward the ladies’ room. She needed a few minutes alone to regroup. The pull on her senses was still so strong it felt as if she was wading through molasses. Worse, she
wanted
to go back, or at least to turn and look at him one more time. And the wanting was like a weight in her chest. She forced herself to keep moving, and the feeling lessened as she put more distance between them. By the time she reached the ladies’ room it was no more than a tingle and a memory.

She hurried through the sitting area with its rose-damask-covered chaises and gilt-edged mirrors and into the first unoccupied stall. Locking the door behind her, she leaned back against it and waited for her head to clear and her heart to stop pounding and the world to right itself. What had just happened didn’t make any sense. Magic had no place in her life now; it was part of her past.

And part of your blood
, a voice deep inside reminded her.

Eve closed her eyes and took a long, shuddering breath. The voice was right, of course. Like it or not, magic had always been a matter of blood. Like it or not, she’d been born an enchantress, with all the wonder and all the complications that entailed.

Once, before she knew better, she’d accepted that as easily as she accepted having green eyes and long legs. She’d opened her life and her heart to that birthright as if it was a blessing instead of a curse, and she paid for that mistake with a piece of her heart. When she turned away from magic, there was another hard price to be paid, and she paid that as well. That’s when she vowed she was never going to pay again. And, far more important, neither was anyone she cared about. She made sure of that by never, ever messing with magic, and in turn, it never messed with her.

Until tonight.

There was no doubt in her mind that magic was responsible for what had just happened. What she didn’t understand was why. Could it have been simply a fluke? A mystical glitch of some sort? Or was it something more personal, something meant for her? And what about the guy in the black coat . . . was he responsible for what had happened or on the receiving end of it the same as she had been?

If it was a fluke, a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting caught in a stray energy field, she’d be more than happy to shrug it off. But if it was more, if someone, or some
thing
, had targeted her, then . . . then she probably wouldn’t have gotten off so easily, she acknowledged grimly.

Unless, Eve thought, she wasn’t being targeted so much as tested.

Frowning, she turned that possibility over in her mind. It didn’t make any sense. But then, she thought with a flash of resentment, magic didn’t have to make sense any more than it had to play by the rules laid out by man or physics. Magic had rules of its own; it was a world of ancient, arcane laws and mysterious, obscure prophecies, a world where knowledge was power and power was everything. Eve had neither, and she was certain—at least as certain as you could be about magic—of only two things. If she was a target, she was in trouble. And if she was being tested, it was in her best interest not to fail.

For that reason alone she refused to give in to the so-strong-it-hurt urge to plead a headache, call it an early night and get the hell out of there. That had been her first instinct, and it was still clamoring to be heeded. But running smacked of weakness, and that wasn’t the signal she wanted to send.

Her initial surprise had turned to resentment, and as she thought more about it, resentment gave way to anger, a controlled simmering anger that edged aside her fear. She could handle this. She would pull herself together and go back out there and enjoy the rest of the evening. Or at least pretend to. If anyone was watching, they weren’t going to see any cracks in her armor.

She waited until she was breathing normally and her hands had stopped trembling before she left the stall, and then she purposely took her time freshening up, combing her hair as if it were a matter of national security that each and every copper strand was perfectly aligned, applying a slow dusting of shimmery translucent powder and two careful layers of Wicked Roses lip gloss. Only then did she stroll back to her table, smiling and pausing along the way to greet friends, her manner so relaxed and unruffled no one would ever suspect how very ruffled she was on the inside.

She was sharing a table with other presenters, most of whom were also in the news business in one way or another. That meant there would be no shortage of opinions and friendly arguing to distract her and she was grateful for that.

She slipped into her seat beside Jenna Jordan, who hosted a popular radio talk show. They’d started in broadcasting around the same time, with Jenna working for a competing television station before finding her true calling in talk radio. She listened as Jenna finished delivering a typically colorful soliloquy on people who drive and talk on their cell phones at the same time. She had everyone at the table laughing, even though most of them—Eve included—had been guilty as charged at one time or another. That was Jenna’s gift; she made people laugh . . . at her, at themselves, at life.

“I mean it. I’m going to have bumper stickers made that say ‘Hang Up and Drive’ . . . and you’re all getting one,” she warned, giving her straight, shoulder-length black hair a toss.

As the laughter faded and the conversation moved on, she turned to Eve and grinned, her dark eyes dancing with excitement. Their friendship went back a long way, long enough for Eve to be wary when Jenna looked that excited.

Jenna was dramatic and energetic, a softly rounded woman with no shortage of strong opinions and no reluctance to share them, which is why her show was the top-rated in its time slot. Her husband seated on her other side taught classical literature at Brown. Richard Jordan had thinning brown hair and thoughtful eyes. He was the yin to Jenna’s yang, the calm to her storm. After ten years of marriage they still held hands and exchanged secret smiles, and once, at a party, Eve had turned her head at just the right moment and seen Richard do the impossible: he’d whispered in Jenna’s ear and made her blush.

Seeing them together stirred a yearning deep inside that most of the time Eve managed to forget was there. She had a good life, a full life, a safe life that she had chosen and worked hard to create. But every once in a while she was caught off guard by a glimpse of the kind of love and intimacy she could only imagine, and for one endless beat of time her heart stopped and her breath stuck in her throat and she wished she could do it all over again.

“Guess what,” Jenna said to her. “I think you have a secret admirer.”

Instantly the image of the man at the registration desk popped into Eve’s head and she tensed. “Really? Who?”

“Howard.”

She eased back in her chair. “Howard who?”

“Howard what’s-his-name, you know, from the governor’s budget office. Sandy hair, square jaw, not
too
short; he couldn’t take his eyes off you when you were on stage. And I heard him tell someone that you have shoulders like Angelina Jolie.”

Jenna arched her brows and nodded conspiratorially. She fancied herself a matchmaker and Eve a challenge to be conquered.

On stage, Ben, the auctioneer, was opening the bidding on a watercolor by a local artist.

Jenna leaned closer, her voice low. “I mean it. I think he has a thing for you.”

“What kind of thing?” Eve countered, only half listening as she looked around and tried to follow the bidding.

“You know, a thing thing. He’s smitten, besotted; he has the hots for you. Good God, Eve, how long has it been that I have to go all the way back to Getting Laid 101 to explain this to you?”

Good question
, thought Eve, and again the mystery guy’s image flashed before her. She blinked him away and did the math. And winced inwardly. Had it really been that long? There was no way she was admitting that to Jenna. It would only encourage her. Shrugging offhandedly, she replied, “Not long.”

The watercolor went for five grand. Curious to see who bought it, Eve leaned sideways and peered between heads. It was a very nice watercolor, but still, five grand was . . . well, five grand. Half a semester’s tuition at the private academy her niece, Rory, attended.