Fairytale Page 11

  Watching the way her lips moved nearly did him in. But he blinked and gave his head a shake. “I don’t talk about that,” he told her. “Not to anyone, Brigit. Don’t ask me to.”

  “Do you talk about your father, Adam? Do you talk about what he did to you?”

  He wanted to look away, and he couldn’t. “No,” he said. “Because it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “He hurt you. He’s still hurting you. That matters.”

  “Not to me, it doesn’t.”

  “To me, then.”

  Adam closed his eyes to block out the sincerity in hers. He wasn’t going to talk to her about this. He wasn’t. He...

  “You know, they say abused kids can grow up to be abusers.”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “I’ve heard that.”

  “But not necessarily, you know?”

  “Of course not. Lots of abused kids grow up to be wonderful parents.”

  “You know why?” Why? Good question, he thought. Why am I blurting my most secret feelings to this woman? This stranger? And yet his mouth kept right on moving. “Because they know what a little kid longs for in his heart. They know how bad it is for a kid to go without the one thing he craves. All it takes to put a kid right in paradise, is for his parents to love him, Brigit. It’s so damned simple. Why can’t more adults see that?”

  He felt her hand covering his where it rested on the stone.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Maybe they’re blind.”

  “They are. I’ll tell you something, Brigit, when I have a son, I’m going to love him with everything in me.” He opened his eyes, saw her staring at him, and saw her tears. “Don’t pity me.”

  “I’m not. I’m jealous of you.”

  He lifted his brows.

  “You’ll be a wonderful father, someday, Adam,” she told him. “Your children will be lucky, and beautiful, and your family, deliriously happy. I envy that. I really do.”

  No pity. No poor baby routine. Maybe it was okay that he’d opened up to her a little bit. Maybe having her validate his fondest dreams would make them more real, more possible.

  Or maybe she’d throw them right back in his face someday. He’d forgotten her lies for a few minutes, hadn’t he? And somehow she’d tricked him into sharing his oldest pain with her. How had she done that?

  “I don’t want to talk about me anymore,” he said, looking away from her.

  “All right.”

  His relief was intense. Almost as if, had she insisted, he’d have had no choice but to go on with the conversation. To tell her every secret he had. Which was crazy, of course. She was still looking at him, still searching his eyes. And when he looked into hers he couldn’t stay angry over her supposed invasion of his mind. Instead he fixated on her mouth, and decided if she didn’t start using those lips to talk with, he was going to find another occupation for them.

  “Tell me,” he coaxed, drawn into her eyes and stuck there like a fly trapped in a spider’s web. Saying whatever foolish words popped into his mind, because he was too entranced by her to censor himself. She was spinning some kind of magic, damn her. And he was eating it with a spoon. “Tell me about the fairytales you believed in.”

  She smiled very slightly, not smugly. Maybe it was more of a self-conscious smile. “I wanted to tell you anyway. So that maybe, you could tell me where the story came from. There are parts of it. . . parts that are important for me to understand.”

  “I will, if I can.” Anything, he thought vaguely. Right now—out here with the dark clouds skittering over the half moon, making shadows on her face, and the wind coming off the lake, whipping more tendrils of her hair loose until they reached toward him, caressing his cheeks like loving fingers—right now, he’d do anything she asked of him.

  She leaned back, hands flat on the ground behind her, and her legs stretched out in front, one crossed over the other at her ankle. She wore no stockings tonight. Her lean legs were bare and smooth and tempting him to touch. To taste. He realized she was barefoot. And he thought about kissing her again, from her toes to her hips. He fought the impulse with everything in him.

  God, she was beautiful. Like an angel. Or something else ethereal and elusive and mysterious. Something you could glimpse and observe and long for, but too precious ever to hold.

  But he wanted to hold her. He wanted it so much he couldn’t look away. Utterly mesmerized by her eyes and the deep, sultry sound of her voice, he listened to her as she began to tell him her story.

  Her eyes focused on the roiling lake. But her gaze was turned inward as she began, “Once upon a time...”

  Chapter Seven

  “Where the hell did you hear that story?”

  The harsh tone of his voice startled her, and she snapped back to the present, out of the past that had been swamping her mind as she recited the Fairytale from memory. “I told you. It’s just a story I heard when I was...”

  “It’s just the one story I’ve been searching for my entire life,” he yelled back, and it shook her to know he wasn’t raising his voice just to be heard over the wind. He was angry. “Just a story I’ve never been able to find, Brigit.”

  “But—”

  “Once more, where did you hear it?”

  His face was hard. Granite lines and angles and shadows. And the wind came in stronger than before, whipping his hair into chaos. Roiling storm clouds obliterated the moon’s glow, now. But they were nothing compared to the ones raging in his eyes.

  “An old nun,” she said softly, “told me that story on the nights when I was too afraid or too lonely to sleep. I used to think it was true. That I was really...” She let her voice trail off, shaking her head slowly at the expression he wore. “You don’t believe me.”

  He said nothing, just got up as the first raindrops plunked and smattered the flat stone under his feet.

  “Come on inside. You’ll get soaked.”

  “But, Adam, you’ve heard that story before. I know you have. You knew about the forest of Rush.”

  “What?”

  He seemed so alarmed that she blinked in surprise. “You said you thought ‘Rush’ was the name of the forest in the painting. Adam, that’s why I assumed you’d heard my Fairytale.”

  “Your fairytale?”

  She lowered her head. “Well, I used to think it was mine. That someone had made it up just for me. I only realized it wasn’t when it became obvious others had heard it, too. You...and the artist who did your painting.”

  She looked up at him, standing above her, staring down at her with an expression that combined so many emotions she couldn’t name them all. Disbelief. Confusion. Rage. Suspicion.

  “Adam, I don’t know what you suspect me of here. But I only told you about the story because I wanted to know if the version you’d heard included the twin daughters.”

  His eyebrows bent into question marks. “I’m damned if I’m going to stand out here in the rain and discuss something I know is impossible. A goddamn lie. There’s no way you heard that story.”

  “It’s not a lie.” The rain fell harder. “Adam, that fairytale was the most important thing in my life for a long time. I clung to it when I had nothing else. And if you know anything about it, about where it comes from or...”

  He stared at her, and she felt his eyes probing her soul. Felt his doubts. And something else...

  “The only thing I know about it, Brigit, is that it doesn’t exist.”

  Brigit got to her feet, leaning close to him as the wind came harder. Raising her voice to be heard over its deep moans. “If you heard the story, and the artist heard the story, how can you say it doesn’t exist?”

  “I didn’t hear the damned story! I—” He pushed a hand through his damp hair. “I’m going inside.”

  She closed her eyes, refusing to watch him go. Damn! She hadn’t meant to cause him any more pain. And she obviously had. She’d been worried he’d see through the lies she told. Now he was seeing lies when she spoke the truth. Why
was he so certain her fairytale didn’t exist? What kind of cruel joke was this, anyway? He knew the story, but claimed he’d never heard of it? And what had he meant when he’d told her it was the story he’d been searching for all his life?

  Oh, God, and what did any of this matter? She’d been foolish to let herself get distracted. She was here to do a job, not to find answers to the mysteries of her birth and bloodlines. Not to find out, once and for all, if she might really, truly have a sister.

  She closed her eyes, released a long, slow, shuddery breath, and with it, forcibly, a bit of her tension. The sound of the rain was a comfort, and she stood still, feeling its coolness soaking her clothes, her hair. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know who she was. Or where she came from. Or what she was supposed to be doing in this lifetime. It didn’t matter.

  She shouldn’t be asking anything from Adam Reid, anyway. Not when she was about to deceive him and steal from him. Let him go inside. She’d stay here. And maybe the rain would cleanse her stained soul. She tipped her face up to the droplets, felt them cooling her heated skin. And she couldn’t stop the tears of shame from falling from her eyes, but they mingled with the rain and were hidden.

  Shit, this was too far-fetched to be for real. Now, more than ever, he knew that Brigit Malone was lying. Trying to convince him she held the answer to his childhood delusions. Trying to make him believe she’d heard the tale...that he’d finally found the source for those fantasies that had nearly got him beat to death by his own...

  Not nearly beat to death. It was a few broken ribs, for Chrissakes! A half-dozen stitches in the back of the head. Kids get hurt worse than that playing high school sports.

  He hadn’t been in high school, though. He’d been in second grade. He remembered thinking that if this was love, he wanted no part of it. And he’d held that lesson in his heart, ever since. Love and pain were one and the same in his scarred mind. And whether it made practical sense or not, the lesson was too well learned to ever be forgotten. Hell, he ought to thank the old man for teaching him so well.

  It doesn’t matter.

  Adam stood at the bank of windows in his study, and he stared out to the stone ledge. She was still out there. Had been for hours. He’d turned out all the lights so he could see her in the darkness and the rain. The yellow stars and moons on her dress made it a little easier to spot her.

  She’d remained as she’d been, standing there and letting the rain pummel her body. He’d had to come inside. Jesus, she’d been so sensual, especially before she’d risen. When she’d been lying beside him on that cool rock protrusion, with her eyes closed and her dress getting wet. All he could think about was lowering his body on top of hers, of kissing the rainwater from her skin...

  Not of the lies she was telling or of the reasons behind them. She couldn’t have heard the story when she was a kid.

  Why not, Adam? You apparently did.

  Only he didn’t remember it as a story. He thought he’d actually gone there. Seen that place called Rush, firsthand. Talked to a pregnant fairy named Maire, for God’s sake.

  Yeah. And what are the chances of Brigit making up a name like that? What are the odds she’d come up with the same name you dreamed? Hmm?

  But he hadn’t gone there. It had been a dream, instigated by a tale he must have heard...but one he couldn’t have heard, because he’d searched the world over for it, and he’d never found it.

  Brigit must know about his dream. She must know details. How, though?

  Made no sense whatsoever. There was no conceivable reason for her to deceive him this way. And even if she somehow knew all the details of his childhood delusion, and was making up all this about having heard stories of Rush, there was one thing she couldn’t fake. Couldn’t lie about. Her likeness to the woman in his fantasy. The woman he’d been told was his fate. The woman who was supposed to break his heart, because he had to let her go in the end.

  In a dream, he reminded himself, turning to glance at the painting, the enchantress from his childhood fantasy. Only in a dream.

  And that old doubt came whispering through his mind like a cool, bracing wind. It wasn’t a dream, Adam. And it wasn’t a delusion. It was real, and deep down inside, you know it. No other explanation makes sense.

  A shiver worked up his spine. The practical part of his mind dismissed that whimsical voice, ignored it, but his heart couldn’t do the same. What if it were true? What if his experience hadn’t been a fantasy? And what if she were really...

  His gaze returned to the ledge outside. She stood with her arms stretched out to her sides, head tipped back to the rain. And she turned in an excruciatingly slow circle.

  She is a faery’s childe, and her joy is the rain. From it she draws comfort.

  Jesus, he snapped inwardly. Quit thinking in terms of that damned Celtic text!

  But he couldn’t stop thinking of it, because she was the embodiment of all it described. Damn, could she really be...

  Finally she stopped turning, let her arms fall to her sides, and turned to walk along the path, and out of his line of vision. She was coming back to the house.

  Maybe, he reasoned, as he built a fire in the grate and tried to convince himself it was for his own benefit, not hers, maybe there really were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy. Maybe.

  So either she was telling the truth, and had no more idea than he, where the story had come from. Or she was lying in a deliberate attempt to perpetrate some complex scam.

  Or maybe all of this was real. Part of his mind wanted to play with that theory, examine it, and dwell on it. But most of his mind rebelled. He wouldn’t let himself linger in those long-forbidden areas of his mind—realms he’d deemed off-limits, like the woods where it had all begun. But it kept coming back to him, teasing his brain the same way sounds on rooftops around Christmas Eve teased children’s minds the world over. Tempting his imagination to dare explore it.

  She’d told him a tale of Rush. And in it, Maire had twin daughters. Brigit and Bridin. She’d asked him about that part of the tale, whether it was included in any versions he might have heard. Why? The only logical answer was that she, Brigit, believed she might be the Brigit in the story. And that somewhere, she had a twin sister named Bridin.

  If that were true, then the pregnant Maire he’d dreamt of had shown him a vision of her own soon-to-be-born daughter. And told him she was to be his fate.

  He blinked, recalling that fairy lady’s words to him when he’d been a little boy. “She needs you to show her the way...the way to her sister, and then show her the way back home.”

  He gave his head a shake to silence that bell-like voice he remembered so well, but it went right on. “You mustn’t let yourself fall in love with her. She’ll break your heart if you do.”

  A cold chill crept into his nape, and he shivered. As he passed the geranium on the end table, he paused, doing a double take. The thing’s leaves were vivid green. And if he wasn’t mistaken, those tiny nubs he saw were flower buds.

  His stomach knotted a little. Just yesterday the plant had been withered and brown. He remembered the way she’d paused beside it, rubbed her fingers over the drying leaves.

  Brigit, his mind whispered. She must be...

  “She must be the owner of a nursery on the Commons, stupid,” he said aloud. “She must be applying her talents to save my pathetic house-plants. And that’s all.”

  But overnight?

  Tomorrow, he decided, dropping to his knees in front of the hearth and adding larger bits of wood, he would do some research on Brigit Malone.

  He woke to screams so harsh and so frantic they made his heart freeze in his chest. And then he smelled the smoke.

  “Oh, shit!”

  He dove out of bed in his shorts, and took only the briefest second to feel his bedroom door for heat before flinging it open, lunging into the hall, and leaning over the railing, automatically checking the fireplace. He immediately saw what was wr
ong, and his entire body sagged in relief. There was no fire. Something had plugged the flue. Smoke billowed gently from a smoldering log on the grate and floated upstairs. Brigit had stopped screaming, so she must realize now that there was no danger.

  He took the stairs two at a time, and used the brass pail and the matching shovel to scoop the offending log out. Smoke spiraled off the charred lump. He rapidly shoveled up a few other smoke-belching embers, and added them to the pail, then carried the mess outside, into the rain, and dumped it right into the first puddle of water he came to.

  He left the front door open, and opened all the windows in the study before going back upstairs again. And then he tapped on Brigit’s door, wanting to check on her before going back to bed.

  There was no answer.

  Frowning, Adam pushed the door open and stepped inside. But she wasn’t in the bed. He flicked the light on, and then crossed the floor to open the French doors, and allow fresh air in to cleanse the room’s slightly smoky air. And that’s when he saw her.

  She sat on the floor in the corner, knees drawn to her chest, eyes wide but, he thought, unseeing. She was pale, and trembling, and tears had burned tracks into her cheeks. She clutched a book to her chest with white knuckled hands. And she wore only that vanilla satin nightgown. One of the thin straps had fallen from her shoulder, and the way her knees were bent, the bottom of it was bunched up around her hips. She looked, he thought sadly, like a frightened little girl. And that was what did him in.

  A shiver ran up Adam’s spine at the fear in her eyes. He’d never seen anything so desolate in her before. She always seemed so vibrant, so full of life. But right now, her eyes were vacant. Dead.

  He crouched in front of her, his hands automatically closing on her shoulders. “Brigit? Hey...come on, talk to me.” He shook her a little. “Brigit?”

  Her eyes seemed to focus on him. But her breathing was still ragged and too fast.

  “It’s all right, angel,” he told her. And then he blinked, surprised the endearment had fallen so naturally from his lips. And then he decided it fit her. “There’s no fire,” he soothed. “Just smoke. The chimney was plugged. It’s no big deal.”