Totally Spellbound (11 page)

“You know the Fates?” he
asked.

“She brought them here,” John Little
said.

“Really?” the man said.

“I asked her too.” Kyle sounded
nervous. What was with this guy? How come he was upsetting her
nephew?

“You did?” the man asked. “Are her
son?”

“Nephew,” Kyle said.
“I
told
you that.
You have to start paying attention.”

He sounded so much like a miniature
Travers, that Megan let out a small laugh. Which seemed to break
the spell she was under.

“What is this all about?” she asked
the man, just like she had asked John Little.

“Betrayal,” the man said, “and the
fulfillment of a debt.”

Rob regretted those
words the moment he said them. He didn’t know this woman. It didn’t
matter that she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen
(and then he felt a momentary pang of guilt:
Sorry, Marian
). It didn’t matter that
she left him feeling only 250 years old.

All that mattered was getting the
Fates out of his office and getting his life back in
order.

“They want you to settle a
debt?” asked the World’s Most Beautiful Woman—whose name was,
apparently, Megan. (A good, old-fashioned name for a woman of a
type that should never have gone out of fashion.)

“No,” he said. “They apparently didn’t
realize I had a debt to settle with them.”

“Because they betrayed
you.”

“Because they betrayed my
wife!”

Megan took a slight step
backward, pulling the young boy with her. The boy looked like the
movement choked him slightly, then she loosened her grip on him as
if she had known that, too.

“You can’t lust after my Aunt Megan if
you have a wife.” The boy looked like a fierce warrior himself,
albeit of the modern kind—most of his battles probably happened on
computer rather than on the battlefield.

“I don’t lust after…” Rob let his
voice trail off when he saw Megan’s face. She had the kind of face
that carried every emotion she felt, and at the moment, she felt
disappointment. “I mean, I don’t have a wife. Anymore. She
died.”

“Oh,” the boy said, and he bowed his
head. “I didn’t know.”

The last three words he
said with surprise. Apparently, he had never met anyone who could
block a psychic, even though it was easy, particularly with a young
one.

Although maybe not as easy as it
seemed. The boy had, after all, caught Rob’s attraction to that
woman across the room.

“They betrayed your wife?” Megan asked
with that sexy, throaty voice of hers.

His gaze met hers. She had
such stunning green eyes—the color was as deep as a perfect
emerald—but more than that, he could see deep inside her, as if he
could see her very soul.

He wanted to break eye contact, but
couldn’t. He also couldn’t lie to her. He wanted her to
know.

So he settled on, “It’s a long
story.”

She gave him a small smile, as if she
had heard that before, and knew it for the evasion it
was.

The door rattled again.

“We have to do something about them,”
John said. “You can’t just leave them in there, Rob.”

“Have security escort them off the
premises.”

“Rob!” John’s entire face became the
picture of shock. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“No,” he said, “and I don’t
particularly care to.”

“Zeus is making a power
play.”

“So?” Rob asked, then mentally kicked
himself. He really didn’t want to know.

“He’s trying to get rid of true
love.”

“So they say, right? Those lying
Fates?”

“They’re not lying.” The boy shook off
his aunt. “My dad’s been fighting for them all along. My dad and my
Aunt Viv and my Uncle Dex. And now the Fates say they need you. So
you should help them.”

“I should, huh?” Rob asked. He’d never
been comfortable around children, especially precocious
ones.

“Yeah, you should.”

Megan reached for her nephew, but he
slipped away from her, walked up to Robin, and mimicked his
posture, putting his hands on his hips and standing with his legs
slightly apart.

“I never took Robin Hood for a
coward,” the boy said.

John gasped.

Megan said, “Kyle!” apparently in an
attempt to admonish the boy.

But Rob just narrowed his eyes,
feeling the anger flare. The boy wanted him to get angry. The boy
was psychic and knew how to make him angry — so Rob’s shields
weren’t working as well as he thought.

Still, he loathed it when someone
called him a coward, particularly someone who didn’t know his
history.

Although this little
boy had just called him Robin Hood. So the boy
did
know, and the boy still used the
word.

“I’m not a coward,” Rob
said.

“You are too,” the boy
said.

“Because I won’t help three women who
let my wife die? You have a lot of living to do, boy, before you
understand that.” Rob crossed his arms, and rocked back on his
heels. “In fact, I hope you never do understand it.”

“They were just following the rules!”
the boy said.

“Yeah, I’ve followed rules,” Rob said.
“Just because the rules exist doesn’t make them right.”

“The Fates hurt your wife?” Megan
asked.

“Eight hundred years ago, Aunt Meg,”
the boy said with deep sarcasm.

The anger Rob had only barely
controlled flared again. What did that child know about pain,
anyway?

“So you’ve told everyone that you’re
Robin Hood?” Megan asked.

“I haven’t told anyone,” Rob said.
“You people have been calling me that.”

“Please.” Megan shook her head
slightly. “Give me a little respect. This is Chapeau Enterprises,
and ‘chapeau’ means hood or hat in French. Your friend is named
Little John. I wouldn’t be surprised if you called your secretary
Maid Marian—”

“That’s enough!” Rob was shouting
before he realized he had opened his mouth. He couldn’t take this
lack of respect any more. “Get them out of here, John, or I
will.”

“They came with the Fates,” John said,
unfazed by Rob’s anger. John had seen it too many times before. “If
you let the Fates out of your office, I’m sure everyone will leave
happily.”

They wouldn’t, of course. The Fates
wanted something from him, and the woman, with her blazing green
eyes, hadn’t stepped back at all. She seemed as angry as he
felt.

“You have no right to yell
at me or Kyle,” she said. “You don’t know us. We’re not here to
bother you. I drove the Fates here to discuss their contract
dispute with you. I was only doing it as a favor to Kyle. I hadn’t
expected to walk into a place filled with angry people and a lot of
blame. Had that been the case, I wouldn’t have brought along a
sensitive eleven-year-old—”

“Aunt Meg!” The boy, Kyle, rolled his
eyes in obvious embarrassment.

“—
and I wouldn’t have
brought the Fates. They’re unusual women, and I’m not sure if I
like them, but they don’t need this abuse.”

She was beautiful when she was mad.
She spoke softly, which people rarely did when they were angry, and
the emotion flooded her creamy skin with color that accented the
auburn of her hair. Those green eyes flared and held him like he
hadn’t been held in a long time.

Normally this kind of anger calmed him
down—he liked being the reasonable one in the room—but he wasn’t
feeling reasonable.

“Abuse?” he said softly.

“Abuse.” She crossed her
arms. “You shout and bluster as if you control the very world.
When, in fact, all you’ve done is lock three helpless, naïve women
in your office and somehow got out on your own, and then shouted at
a little boy you’ve never met before. If that’s not abuse, then
you’re bordering on it.”

He stared at her. She was young —
younger than she seemed at first glance. Clearly a product of this
country and the last thirty years.

“Lady,” he said as gently as he could,
considering how angry he still was. “When I was a boy, beatings
were common, women were little more than property, and if one of
your betters killed your brother, you had no recourse at all. I’ve
been a soldier in one of the bloodiest, most senseless conflicts in
all of history. I’ve seen more abuse than you can even
imagine.”

She raised her chin at him, that fine
face filled with skepticism. John had moved away so that he clearly
wasn’t part of the discussion. Kyle had moved to the other side of
the room, almost as if he couldn’t stand to be between Rob and
Megan.

“Locking three—in your words—helpless
and naïve women in my office isn’t abuse. It’s reasonable,
considering how badly I’d like to slap all three of them. And
raising my voice isn’t abuse either. It’s justified when my best
friend lets in the three women who hurt me the most because they
want a favor!”

Her eyebrows had risen so
high in her forehead that she looked comical. But her expression
told him she found nothing funny about the moment.

“I don’t care how you were raised,”
she said in that horrible reasonable tone. “Your parents were
obviously wrong, and whatever country you were in was barbaric. But
that doesn’t mean you can treat people here like this. I demand
that you unlock the door and let those women out.”

“Or?” Rob asked.

“Or what?” Megan said.

“What will you do?”

“I’ll call the police,” she
said.

He laughed. “What will they do? Arrest
me for locking women in my office?”

“I’ll tell them that you threatened
those women, which you did, and that you raised your voice at my
nephew and that I was worried for his safety.”

“Then why not get him out of here?”
Rob asked.

“Because I brought those women,” Megan
said. “I’m responsible for them. Let them out!”

“All right,” he said. “On one
condition.”

She was breathing hard. He tried not
to look at her breasts. They were as perfect as she was, moving up
and down with each deep, angry breath.

He hadn’t been this attracted to any
woman in a long, long time.

“What condition?” she
snapped.

“Have dinner with me.” The words came
out before he realized what he was going to say. That was the
second time he’d done that in this conversation. Whatever had he
been thinking?

Of course, he hadn’t been thinking.
That was the problem.

“You think you can manipulate me into
having dinner with you? You’re delusional.”

“You want those women, don’t you?” Rob
asked.

Her mouth opened slightly. Then it
closed. She looked at young Kyle, whose eyes seemed extra wide
behind his thick glasses.

“I don’t even like those women,” she
said.

“You don’t like me either,” he said.
“So it seems like an even trade to me.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Kyle said.
“I mean—”

“Kyle!” Her voice was harsh, although
she hadn’t raised it.

The boy closed his mouth,
too, and leaned against the wall. But Rob didn’t need to hear any
more. The boy was psychic, and she was undefended. She might not
like Rob, but she was intrigued by him.

“I’m not sure you’re nice,” Kyle said
to him.

Rob looked at the boy.

“I always thought Robin Hood was
nice.”

Rob chuckled. “I fought a sheriff and
killed his men, all in the name of a cause. I was a soldier after
that. They called me a man’s man. And you thought I was nice? Who
cleaned up the legends you’ve been reading?”

The boy dropped his chin. “Zoe says
you’re nice.”

“Zoe?” Rob only knew one
Zoe—at least, only one Zoe who was still alive. “You know Zoe
Sinclair?”

“She’s marrying my dad.”

“Zoe’s getting married?” Rob couldn’t
believe it. He hadn’t thought of Zoe as the marrying
type.

“To my dad,” the boy said again. “She
thinks you’re nice too. In fact, she thought it was a good idea for
the Fates to see you.”

“Zoe
sent them?”

“She found their spinning wheel,” the
boy said. “They want you to steal it.”

Rob looked at John, who shrugged
sheepishly. “The famous wheel? The one on which they spun life and
death? The one they told me about but never showed me?”

“They said it was stolen three
thousand years ago,” John said. “But they’re not very good with
time.”

“This fantasy convinces you to help
these women?” Megan asked. “What has my brother stumbled into
here?”