“There is that,” Dageus said, nodding his agreement and looking pointedly at Drustan.
“Is he always such a stick in the mud?” Adam demanded of Dageus, shooting a dark look at Drustan.
“Drustan’s ever been overbroody about oaths and whatnot,” Dageus said dryly.
“And it’s a blethering good thing one of us is,” Drustan said, casting Dageus a glare.
“Right, because if we both were, you’d be dead. Och, I forgot, so would I,” Dageus said mildly.
Drustan’s lips twitched for a moment, then he snorted and gave in to a laugh. “Point ceded, brother. Smartass.”
“Learning more words from your wee wife, I see,” Dageus noted, with an amused lift of a brow.
“I just did something so awful that I’m not sure I even know who I am anymore,” Gabby blurted without preamble when she stumbled upon Gwen and Chloe MacKeltar; finally she’d found the center of the castle.
She hadn’t meant to tell them that—really, she hardly even knew them, other than their brief conversation last night, which had consisted primarily of a recounting of recent events, nothing personal—but her mouth seemed to have its own bizarre agenda this morning, and she figured if she tried to zip it, she might explode.
Or worse, go find more wine, and she knew that was a really, really bad idea.
The MacKeltar wives were cozily ensconced in overstuffed chairs in a bright sunny room that opened off the second floor of the great hall, the east wall a bank of unbroken glass overlooking a lush tumble of gardens. They blinked up at her with warm smiles.
“Oh, come in! We were just talking about you,” Chloe said, beaming, and patting a chair beside her. “Please join us. Have you had breakfast yet? There’s coffee and pastries”—she waved a hand at the side table—“dig in. Gwen and I always breakfast in the solar; you can find us here every morning. We wanted to wake you, but Adam insisted we let you sleep. Said you hadn’t gotten the chance to sleep in a real bed for a while.”
The permanent scowl that seemed to have taken possession of Gabby’s face eased a bit. He hadn’t brought her coffee, but at least he’d thought of her. “Where is he anyway?” she asked peevishly, reaching for a buttery, golden-crusted scone.
“He went riding with Drustan and Dageus early this morning,” Gwen replied. “They were talking nonstop in Gaelic as they rode out and it sounded pretty intense, so I think they might be gone awhile. What did you do that’s so awful?” she asked avidly, plucking a clean cup from the table and offering it to her.
Sinking into a chair next to Chloe, Gabby poured herself a cup of coffee, heaped in sugar, and sipped greedily. Nice and strong, she noticed. Thank you, God. They waited patiently while she fortified herself, though by the time she’d finished her second scone, Gwen was tapping her fingernails against her cup.
Drawing a deep breath, Gabby began. Encouraged by their sympathetic responses, she ended up confiding the whole sordid debacle. Beginning with too much wine, skimming over the crying and the almost-phone-call, and ultimately to her confrontation with a contingent of the Maid Parade.
By the time she’d finished, Gwen and Chloe were laughing so hard they were wiping tears from their eyes.
“I can’t believe I did it,” Gabby said for the dozenth time. Blessed caffeine was thrumming through her veins, the scones had soaked up most of the sick feeling in her stomach, and the jackhammers in her head had died down to a dull tapping. She was beginning to think she might actually be able to take a shower sometime today. The mere thought of one when she’d awakened, the mere idea of little beads of water making contact with her tender scalp, had been more than she could bear. “Bananas,” she said, appalled. “Do you believe I said that? I’ve never done anything like that. I don’t know what got into me.”
The moment she said “bananas” her hostesses started laughing all over again, holding their stomachs.
A very small, though bone-deep-embarrassed, smile curved Gabby’s lips as she watched them laugh. It was kind of funny, or at least it would have been if it had been someone else who’d behaved so moronically. If her friend Elizabeth had done something so idiotic, she’d have laughed about it for months.
When they finally sobered, Chloe said softly, “Oh, please. What got into you was that last night every woman in the castle was looking at your man like he was their favorite kind of ice cream and they couldn’t wait to devour him. Believe me, I can relate. Merely walking down a crowded street with Dageus can make me crazy some days. He and Drustan are hardly your average twenty-first-century men; women go nuts over them. The last time we were in Inverness some crazy romance author on a tour of the Highlands tried to get Dageus to model for the cover of one of her books.”
Gwen nodded with a wry look. “It does get old. I nearly got into a bit of a tussle in a sporting goods store with a saleswoman.”
But Gabby heard only one thing. “He’s not my man,” she told Chloe tightly. And wasn’t that just the crux of the problem? “As a matter of fact,” she added broodingly, “he’s not really even a man at all.”
“What on earth do you mean by that?” Gwen exclaimed.
“He’s a fairy, Gwen.” She couldn’t believe she had to point out the obvious. Hadn’t somebody told her last night that Gwen was a brilliant physicist?
“A male Tuatha Dé,” Gwen corrected. “That’s how we think of them. Calling them fairies makes them sound like diminutive little things with wings. And they’re not. They’re just a different, highly advanced civilization, a race with vastly superior technology, but Adam’s still every bit a man. Heavens, don’t you see how he looks at you? If you have any doubt about what he is, look at that. That’s pure man and nothing but.”
Gabby went very still. “How does he look at me?”
Gwen and Chloe exchanged incredulous glances.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Chloe exclaimed, “she’s as bad as I was, isn’t she, Gwen?”
“I think she might actually be worse,” Gwen said dryly. “It’s just a good thing the men are off elsewhere, because I can see we need to have a good long girl talk.”
They rode for hours. It was early afternoon by the time they drew their mounts to a halt at the top of a vast, sweeping ridge. The sun had passed midpoint and begun its descent, and Adam was seething with silent impatience.
Still, no matter his mood, it was impossible to remain unaffected by the beauty of the Highlands. From their lofty vantage, the whole vale was spread beneath them like a scooped-out bowl between bens, at the heart of which sprawled Castle Keltar, looking tiny and faraway. Miles and miles of untamed, lush country stretched before them, dusted with the soft pastels of summer.
Adam inhaled deeply. How he loved this land. He’d always understood why the Scots had fought so fiercely to keep it. “Ah, she’s lovely,” he said softly, “Scotia is.”
“Aye,” Dageus agreed.
Drustan grunted, then sighed gustily, as if hours of talking and debating hadn’t done it, but Adam’s appreciation of their land had somehow resolved things for him. “We’ll do it, Old One,” he said. Grumpily. Clearly at irreconcilable odds with oath-breaking but conceding the necessity of it.
A quiet satisfaction spread through Adam’s body.
That was what he’d been waiting to hear; the only thing that had been keeping him out on a horse, too far away from his woman. And with that victory, his thoughts turned with sharp focus to Gabrielle.
He knew just what gifts he would give her tonight. Tonight he would finally see his ka-lyrra in something besides jeans. Then in nothing at all.
Now he had seven glorious days stretching from here to Lughnassadh that he could spend with her, on safe ground, with no pressing concerns. Only the concern of sealing his claim to her. Of winning her body, mind, and soul. His desire for her was no longer about getting to experience sex in human form, it was only and all about simply getting inside her. Making her his. Being the one to turn those green-gold eyes all dreamy-sexy, the one to mak
e her whimper, the one to make her shudder with pleasure. Who cared what form he wore, so long as he had her in his bed?
“Or, rather, not do it,” Dageus was saying, when Adam tuned back in. “We’ll sit back and let the walls come down. And we’ll speak with our descendant Christopher and see to it he agrees.”
Adam inclined his head, meeting the Highlanders’ gazes with unspoken thanks.
“But hear this, Adam Black,” Drustan added, “if all hell is to break loose a sennight hence, we’ll be looking for you to fight at our side. We’ll be expecting you to have our backs, as we’ll be having yours.”
Adam inhaled sharply as an emotion unfamiliar to him expanded in his chest. Drustan was looking at him as if he were just another man, a warrior to wage battle with them, to stand and hold against whatever may come. And he realized that beside them and beside his petite ka-lyrra he would stand. Even, if need be, against his queen.
“You have my word,” he said quietly.
And when they both murmured swift acceptance of his pledge, that uncommon sensation, that strange pressure behind his sternum, expanded even more.
Gwen couldn’t have been more right, Gabby reflected later that afternoon as she stepped out of the shower—she’d definitely needed some girl talk.
They’d talked for hours, whiling away the morning and most of the afternoon. The three of them had hit it off like old friends. She hadn’t realized how desperately she’d needed to discuss things with someone. She’d been all alone with her thoughts since the moment Adam had burst into her life, and so much had happened so fast, and she’d not worked her way through any of it.
Gwen and Chloe had helped immensely. They were of the same age, and were a lot like her friend Elizabeth: smart (almost too smart), funny in a self-deprecating way, with big, generous hearts. And over the course of the day the three of them had curled lazily in the sunshine in the solar, talking nonstop.
Gwen and Chloe had taken turns telling their stories about how they’d met their husbands, and Gabby had listened, entranced.
Gwen had met Drustan first. She’d been on a holiday in Scotland when she’d fallen down a ravine and plunged through the bottom of the rocky crevice into a forgotten cave, only to land on an enchanted, slumbering Highlander from the sixteenth century (talk about falling for a guy). He’d sent her back in time to save him. But all hadn’t gone well, and Dageus had broken his oaths to save Drustan’s life so he and Gwen could be reunited.
And then Chloe had stumbled upon Dageus, or rather been stumbled upon by him, while he’d been holed up in a luxurious penthouse in Manhattan, searching ancient texts, trying to find a way to free himself from the thirteen evil souls possessing him.
Gwen had thought Drustan mentally unbalanced when she’d met him, with his talk of time travel and curses.
Chloe had thought Dageus a nefarious thief and hopeless womanizer. And she’d come to find out that he was possessed by purest evil.
Both had taken chances with their hearts, immense chances, against immense odds.
And both were deliriously in love, happily married, and living a dream. A dream that had tugged painfully at her heart when Gwen had brought her tiny, beautiful dark-haired twin daughters in to nurse, and Chloe had blushingly confided that she was expecting too.
And she’d not missed Adam’s part in Chloe’s happiness. Chloe had told her all that had happened in those dusty catacombs: about the showdown with the sect of the Draghar, how Dageus had taken a mortal wound in the process of defeating them and saving her. How she’d thought she’d lost her Highland love forever, and would have, if Adam hadn’t given of his own life force to bring him back from the brink of death and see him returned to her.
That bore a lot of fascinated pondering in Gabby’s mind. Just what motives had he been driven by? What thoughts had been going on in that beautiful dark head, behind those timeless, ancient eyes? What deep, unspoken feelings? Why would he stir himself to return a human man to his human lover? And at such a price?
For Chloe had also told her that Dageus had confided (when he’d finally come to bed for a few hours early that morning) that the reason Adam had been punished by his queen was because of his intervention to save the MacKeltars.
It was yet another thing he’d not told her—refusing to answer when she’d asked him twice before—but she could hardly blame him, because she’d not have believed it then.
She believed it now. And that knowledge was doing crazy things to her heart.
Now more than ever she wanted to know—who was Adam Black? Who was this big, underdisclosing, intensely sexual, surprisingly gentle Fae who seemed to spend more time with humans than with his own race? This Fae eminently capable of force, who never forced? This Fae who’d taken a stand for humans against his own kind?
More important, was all that fierce, guarded emotion in him reachable by a mortal woman?
That was the question that was making her feel shaky clear down to her toes. He was looking like every inch her fantasy prince. And it was scaring the hell out of her.
Before the afternoon was over, Gabby told her story in its entirety as well. It had been impossible not to. Gwen and Chloe were women who’d endured their own epidemics of otherworldly events; there’d been no need to hold anything back. Being a Sidhe-seer was only a moderately unusual thing from their perspective; it hardly even signified.
She’d told them how she’d been raised to fear the Fae, how her mom had left because she couldn’t deal with her having the vision, how Gram had raised her, taught her to conceal her “gift.” She’d told them what the O’Callaghan Books said about the Fae, and about how wrong she’d realized those books were—at least about Adam.
She’d told them how she’d given herself away that night she’d seen him, how he’d tracked her, and the many things he’d done since.
She’d finally admitted the fear she’d not, until that moment, admitted even to herself. That she would somehow survive all this, fall head over heels for him, only—unlike in her teenage fantasies—there would be no Happily-Ever-After. He would regain his immortality, secure her safety as he’d promised, then return to the Fae realm, and that would be that. After all, the universe would again be his oyster and, in the cosmic scheme of things, Gabby knew she was nobody’s pearl.
It would be Game Over. Time up. No extended play. Just the haunting taste of an all-too-brief fairy tale left on her tongue, ruining her appetite for reality forever.
Well, first of all, Chloe had said gently, I think it’s too late, sweetie; you’ve already fallen.
Gwen had nodded agreement. But, second, and most important, Gabby, she’d said softly, the question you must ask yourself isn’t, will you get a Happily-Ever-After? The question you need to ask yourself is, will you be able to live with yourself if you don’t let yourself have a happy-now, and end up having had nothing at all?
19
Gabby took her time with her hair and makeup that evening, a luxury she’d not been able to indulge for days. While they’d been traveling and sifting about, on those rare occasions she’d glimpsed a mirror—usually during a quick duck into a public rest room—she hadn’t liked what she’d seen, so she’d not lingered. But tonight she had the assurance that they were on safe ground, there would be no unceremonious dips in lakes or falls from steeples, and she was determined to look good for a change.
Aspirin and a long hot shower had scalded away the last of her hangover. Chloe had invited her to drop by her chambers before dinner so they could find her something to wear, as they were nearly the same size. She was looking forward to wearing something besides jeans. Okay, she was looking forward to looking pretty around Adam; there, she’d admitted it. Really, a woman would have to be dead not to want to look good around him.
She brushed on lipstick and ran her fingers through her hair, letting it spill down her back, tugging a few long bangs to spike softly around her eyes. A smudge of smoky shadow at her eyes, a dab of mascara. A hint of shiny glo
ss on her mouth, enough to catch the light and do interesting things with it. Enough to draw a man’s notice.
And that, she decided, eyeing herself in the mirror, was as good as Gabby got. Clothes would have to do the rest; she just hoped Chloe had something ultrafeminine and a smidgen provocative that she could borrow.
Opening the bathroom door, she stepped out into the adjoining bedchamber.
And froze.
Impossible, she thought, staring at the canopied bed.
Not that the velvet drapes were hung again or that the bed was neatly made—that was perfectly possible. A maid had obviously stopped in while she’d been in the shower, shaving her legs, smoothing on lotion, and fussing with cosmetics.
What wasn’t possible was the slinky black dress she’d spent long minutes sighing over so wistfully at Macy’s that was currently hanging between those drapes.
Nor, she thought, stunned, moving closer to the bed, the dainty heels she’d eyed so covetously.
Nor, she thought, eyes widening, that sinful bit of lacy bra and panties in her favorite shade of pale pink.
And, oh, my God, she thought breathlessly, is that a box from Tiffany’s?
Clutching the lapels of her bathrobe, she glanced around the room.
There was no sign of him.
But on the air, faint yet unmistakable, was just a hint of the exotic scent of jasmine and sandalwood and spicy, seductive man, and she realized he’d probably sifted out mere moments ago while she’d been finishing up her makeup.
She reached for the box with trembling hands, opened it, and gasped, so stunned that she fumbled and nearly dropped it.
Nestled on a bed of velvet was a diamond choker and matching earrings, and she knew exactly where she’d last seen them. It had been back in Cincinnati, the night he’d brought her dinner from Jean-Robert at Pigalls. She’d left the office late, taken her usual path past Tiffany’s to collect her car from the corner lot. There’d been a new window display up, and she’d been briefly captivated by the elegance of the simply set stones. She’d paused, gazing in the window at the matching pieces. Wondering, with feminine curiosity, what kind of man showered what kind of woman with such jewels. Wondering if she’d ever get so much as a diamond ring on her finger, or even a plain wedding band.