Daddy Warlock (10 page)

Except he didn't dare fall in love. Given the unresolved passions of their previous existence, there was no telling what might result. Their goal must be to safeguard their son's development.

“You may be wondering what my father was getting at tonight”, he said.

She shifted, sending ripples stroking up Chance's thighs and right to his masculine center. “I gather he believes in intuition, and particularly in yours.”

That had been perceptive of her, he reflected, trying to ignore the way his body responded to her nearness. “Yes, intuition, that's a good name for it. Everyone possesses it to one degree or another.”

“But your work is based on keeping track of trends and developments,” Tara said. “I guess the subconscious mind makes creative leaps but—”

“There's a lot we don't know about how our minds work.” Chance knew he would have a better shot at persuading her if he used logic. “There have always been people who seemed able to predict how others would behave. It's too bad scientists haven't found a reliable way to test their skills.”

“Maybe they just pay more attention to the subtle clues that we all give off.” She stretched, not seeming to notice how the movement displayed her body to advantage. There was nothing calculated about Tara.

Ironically, Chance realized, he could view her more clearly through this imaginary barrier than when their minds touched. From a distance, he could appreciate her with pure masculine delight, as he would any other woman—or rather, no other woman that he had met. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

Still, he couldn't allow himself to dwell on how much he wanted her. He had an obligation to help Tara understand the new world she had entered that Halloween night seven years ago, the world to which she was now bound irrevocably through her son.

“Scientists tend to discredit what they don't understand,”
he said. “The West denied for a long time that Eastern mystics could control their heartbeat and blood pressure. Now we routinely use biofeedback to do exactly that.”

“So your father thinks intuition can be harnessed?” She frowned. “He believes people can read minds, or even control them? Don't you think that's bizarre?”

“It would certainly be odd by most people's standards;” Chance said. “But I know that people can do things that defy scientific principles. The way my father kept his wineglass from tipping over, for example.”

She regarded him skeptically. “Oh, come on, Chance. That was just luck.”

He searched for a better example, one she could relate to. “How about when Harry turned that fork around in the air?”

Tara stared at him. “How did you know about that? Are you saying you saw us on television before I'd even applied to work for you?”

Darn, he hadn't been thinking clearly. He couldn't admit the whole truth, not yet. If she learned why Chance had really hired her, she would leave at once.

“Harry told me.” He hoped that when he finally was able to explain the whole story, she would forgive him this lie.

“Oh!” Even in the moonlight, he could see her flushing. “I'm sorry! I just—but I mean—you didn't actually believe him, did you?”

“He, uh, did make the softball jerk a little in the air,” Chance improvised. “Tara, it's rare, but some people do have talents like that”.

“Talents?” Steam gave her an ethereal air, but there was nothing misty about the sparks flying from her eyes. “If my son had that kind of power, he'd be a freak!”

He should have anticipated this reaction. Denial was only natural, but he must find a way to break through it “Don't you suppose the first time a caveman drew an antelope on the wall and it really looked like an antelope, people thought it was frightening? Maybe these are skills we simply don't understand yet.”

“I don't buy it,” Tara said. “Painting on a cave is nothing like making forks loop around in the air.”

He could feel, even through the imaginary glass wall, that she believed more than she wanted to, but was fighting it. He didn't want to shake her sense of security. She needed to take these insights one step at a time, and they'd gone far enough for one night.

“Well, it's an interesting subject.” Chance drew himself up into the night air, which promptly turned his skin into a mass of goose bumps. “We'd better get some rest before we both doze off and drown.”

“You're right.” Following his example, she emerged from the pool. “This water is terrific. And I enjoyed meeting your father and Lois tonight. They're complicated people.”

“A little too complicated.” He tried not to stare as she stood with one leg propped on the raised edge of the pool, drying herself. In the moonlight, her legs were long and slender, her hips curved and inviting.

“I can't see them getting the best of you, in anything.” Tara glanced at him admiringly, and then caught her breath as their eyes met.

In that instant, he saw both Tara and Ardath staring at him. He felt his modern self fade, replaced by a man of the forest who wanted this woman and intended to take her.

The glass wall cracked into tiny chips that glittered like
stars. A sparkling haze enveloped them both, and drew them close.

Chance's hands framed Tara's waist and slid down the silky fabric to. the velvet of her skin. Her eyes drifted shut and she curved against him, and in that moment he no longer knew where they were, or even who they were.

Their mouths fit together as if completing a circuit. Energy charged through him. His tongue teased hers, and she pulled him hard against her.

A desperate awareness surged through him, a primitive need to unite them in flesh as well as spirit. There was no space in him for caution; his blood had become a river of flame.

Tara melted into him, nipping lightly at his mouth, urging him to claim her. Her breasts teased his chest, and he could feel the heat of her molten core.

She doesn't know what she's doing. She isn't herself.

He didn't want to hear Chance's voice. He wanted to be Valdemar, savage and remoreseless, seizing what he wanted and willing to die if necessary to keep it.

You don't have the right to make that decision. Tara needs to understand, and so far, she doesn't

With a deep inner wrench, he pulled away. As soon as the connection broke, Tara shivered in confusion.

Hating himself for doing it, Chance eased back into her mind and conjured a curtain of mist to shield her from the memory of what had just passed between them. It was, he told himself, a form of protection.

Dazed, she wrapped a towel around her shoulders and said good-night. As he escorted her out, Chance fought down the urge to take her in his arms, kiss her sleepy face and reawaken the sparks he had done his best to extinguish.

His body ached, and after she left he spent long, stinging
minutes in an ice-cold shower. It didn't help to remind himself that he deserved this.

H
ARRY HAD FALLEN ASLEEP
with his arms around his favorite teddy bear. Curled under the covers, he reminded Tara of Christopher Robin, forever a child in the Forest.

It was hard to imagine that someday he would grow up. But as she had pointed out to Raymond tonight, eventually each child emerged from the cocoon to make his own way in the world.

When he did, she hoped Harry would be like Chance— sensitive, intelligent and…

And what? Masculine, she thought. Tonight, the man had dominated the darkness, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight, his body taut and ready to burst.through the wisp of fabric around his waist.

Tara's body tingled and she realized to her embarrassment that the sight of her boss in a swimsuit had excited her. Had he been aware of it? With all her heart, she hoped not, but there was little that escaped his awareness.

No more moonlight dips in the spa,
she told herself firmly, and went to change for bed.

“But the other kids still don't like Al.” Harry's gray eyes widened with six-year-old sincerity.

“Did you try what I suggested?” Chance said as they finished their hamburgers. Around them, kids were racing toward the restaurant's play area, but Harry considered such activities boring.

“Yeah, I spent recess yesterday showing him how to hit, but he just doesn't get it,” the boy said. “Why can't I give his thoughts a little push? I could make him understand!”

“I've explained—”

“Just a little bit!” said Harry.

Chance tried not to show his dismay. His own psi abilities had matured when he was considerably older, and even so it had taken years to master them. Now his son was showing the same talent, but much earlier and without the maturity to understand the issues.

It was lucky he had discovered the boy's existence before things went haywire. Even now, he wondered if the boy could muster the self-discipline to reject the temptations he was encountering.

“You could make things worse,” he warned. “In any
case, Al needs to find his own solutions without you monkeying around in his brain”.

“I can't help it,” the boy protested. “Sometimes I hear what people are thinking when I don't even want to!”

“I know it must be frustrating.” It was hard to reason with a six-year-old, although, Chance reflected ruefully, no harder than reasoning with his sixty-year-old father. “But you have to keep working at it.”

“Like I knew the substitute yesterday wasn't going to let us watch a videotape like Mrs. Reed promised,” Harry said. “She was going to hand out boring old work sheets! So I made her think she
had
to let us watch the video or she would get in trouble.”

“Harry!”

“I didn't mean to!” The little boy drooped before Chance's disapproval. “Honest, it happened before I even realized what I was doing.”

In the week since Tara had moved in, the boy had progressed alarmingly. It was obvious his powers had lain close to the surface, ready to explode.

Chance was beginning to regret taking Harry to the video store last week and encouraging him to anticipate people's choices. It had been a necessary step if the boy were to learn to control his talents instead of letting them control him. But the risk was that Harry's powers would develop even faster than they might otherwise.

“Whenever you start hearing people's thoughts, you need to imagine a barrier—like a wall—forming between you.”

“I don't think I can,” Harry said.

“Would you like to try?”

“Sure.”

“Finish eating and let's go somewhere quiet, then.”

Along the restaurant aisle, a mother hurried past carrying
a tray, with a toddler pulling at her skirt. Instinctively, Chance made the heavy door to the play area swing open ahead of her, in a slow arc as if air pressure had nudged it.

But he didn't see, until too late, the puddle of spilled soda on the floor. “Oops!” said Harry a split second later, as the woman's foot came down in it.

The tray went flying, the woman staggered against their table and the toddler trotted directly into the path of the thick door as it swung shut.

Both Chance and Harry must have tried to stop the door at the same time, from different angles. With a great crack, the glass split in jagged segments, spraying the floor with shards. It was pure luck that the toddler halted a few inches on the safe side of the threshold.

Everything happened so fast, Chance realized as he helped the woman right herself, that no one else noticed the exact sequence. A restaurant worker and several patrons rushed to the child, exclaiming in surprise at finding him uninjured when he had apparently been struck by the door with shattering force.

Harry frowned. “What went wrong?”

“Sometimes two heads aren't better than one,” Chance observed as the woman ran to hug her child. “But it proves my point, doesn't it? Interfering can make things worse. It's not our job to run other people's lives.”

The boy made a face. “Yeah, I guess you're right But I wish I could help Al.”

“I suspect that being his friend is a very big help,” Chance said. “Want to go to the park and make little waves in the pond?” It was a good visualization exercise, just what the boy needed.

Harry's dubious expression vanished. “Yeah! We can
make the toy boats sail faster! And tickle the ducks' behinds!”

He jumped up, ready for action. Chance found himself grinning as he uncoiled from his too-small seat.

Tickling the ducks' bottoms sounded like fun.

T
ARA HAD WORKED LATE
Monday night, helping Chance review the latest economic reports. It was a relief to have Tuesday morning off, while her seemingly tireless employer headed for the office.

After a week on the job, she was beginning to settle in. A person could definitely feel at home here, she reflected as she stretched lazily in bed, watching the clock tick past 9:00 a.m.

Chance had taken Harry to school, another sign of the pair's growing closeness. Seeing them spend so much time together made her vaguely uneasy, knowing that this relationship would be only temporary. Yet she couldn't deny that her son was thirstily soaking up the male attention.

Boys needed fathers, she thought. Of course, plenty of mothers raised their children alone and did a terrific job, just as Tara intended to do.

But being a single mom sometimes reminded her of what it had been like when she was younger and drove a rickety car whose rearview mirror had fallen off. She'd managed, but there was always the sense of something missing.

Tara chuckled. Men were hardly the same as rearview mirrors.

As she showered and dressed, she recalled how Chance had looked last week in his slim trunks, reclining in the whirlpool bath. More than his muscular chest and comanding
presence, she'd been drawn by the silver gleam in his eyes.

This weekend, although they'd gone their separate ways outside of mealtimes, she'd noticed occasional sideways glances from the man as if there were some kind of link between them. Could he be considering his aunt's nonsense about past lives?

Toweling off, she wondered exactly how far Chance's faith in intuition reached. He'd certainly made a point of discussing it in the hot tub.

How could such a down-to-earth man believe in the supernatural? But perhaps he hadn't really meant ESP and psychic phenomena, but rather some form of New Age spirituality.

With relief, Tara embraced that possibility. Slipping into jeans and a short cotton sweater, she admitted silently that this enigmatic side of Chance had worried her, for reasons she couldn't grasp.

But spirituality was another matter. Tara wasn't religious but she respected those who were, and hoped that someday she would experience a deeper faith herself. Perhaps Chance had been referring to theology and she'd failed to grasp his meaning.

That comforting conclusion enhanced her appetite, and she took the shortest route to the kitchen, through the courtyard. Vareena, who had today off from her convenience store clerking job, was playing the boom box at a low volume and practicing dance steps by herself.

“Only six weeks until the contest!” she called as Tara went by. “We must not waste a moment!”

Such dedication was commendable, Tara thought as she slipped into the opposite wing of the house. She hoped she could watch Rajeev and Vareena compete. Even if they didn't win, she wanted to cheer them on.

The coffeemaker on the kitchen counter was half-full, and she fixed herself two slices of toast. “We're a little low on eggs but there's enough for an omelet,” advised the house computer. It rarely spoke unless addressed but seemed to take a proprietary interest in the kitchen.

“Have you decided on a name yet?” Tara asked.

“I'm considering
Ma Maison
and
Mi Casa,”
said the nasal voice. “Although they do make me sound like a restaurant, don't you think? I'm looking for something familiar but with a touch of grandeur.”

“How about the
Starship Enterprise?”
Tara suggested.

“There's no need for sarcasm.” The computer signed off with an indignant beep.

After breakfast, Tara decided to read the newspaper in the courtyard and soak up some sunshine. Vareena had vanished, and the open space sat quiet in the morning light.

Stepping out, she let the rays wash over her face. She always felt at home out here, surrounded by the house and yet in touch with the sky and the wind.

Springtime flowers—pansies and poppies and petunias—overflowed the small planters. The fountain sprang to life as she came near, its twin sprays fanning and swirl- ing in an everchanging design.

A padded bench provided a place to sit facing the rear of the house. Although she had intended to read the paper, Tara let herself float in a sunny mental haze.

Even out here, she caught an almost subliminal whiff of the scent that pervaded the house—masculinity touched with the essence of herbs. She seemed to remember it from long ago.

Long ago, right here.

Blinking against the sunshine, she stared at the curving
stairway the led to the second-floor balcony. Since moving in, she hadn't given much thought to what might lie in the tower, but now it whispered of wonderful secrets.

She had no business entering Chance's private rooms, Tara scolded herself sternly. On the other hand, he hadn't said that she couldn't look around the house.

Without realizing she was rising, she moved toward the stairs. What harm could it do to explore?

In the back of her mind, Tara noted that something was amiss. This odd, sleeplike state shouldn't be seizing her in the middle of the day. It was as if she walked through a dream, a dream that she had experienced before.

None of it made sense, but the tower room was calling. All things would be explained, once she arrived.

Up the stairs Tara glided, and onto the balcony. The doorknob to the tower room turned easily in her hand and she went in.

Disappointment quivered through her. There was nothing here, just a round room with a polished wooden floor. Not even furniture.

“House?” she ventured. “What is this place?”

“What would you like it to be?” said the house. “A bedchamber? An office? He's stashed all kinds of things in the walls.”

“In the walls?” Tara noted for the first time that the walls were pierced by thin cracks outlining rectangles and other shapes. “How about a bedroom?”

From the rear wall descended a bed with a soft covering. Panels slid open on the walls, revealing an oak dresser. Velvet curtains, which had been hidden within a valance, lowered themselves across the windows.

She remembered this place, and a man too. The name
that came to mind was not a name, though, but a description: the Magician.

A mask covered his face but the eyes glowed silver as they bored into hers. Shudders ran through Tara. Something held her transfixed, half in dream and half in wakefulness, bathing in partially remembered details and trembling with the impossibility of it.

“Isn't this clever?” chattered the house. “Would you like to see the office?”

“No, thank you.” Numbly, Tara stumbled out onto the balcony. She
had
been to this house before. It wasn't from a scene from a movie, or a trick of the mind. And that figure in the black cloak and mask…She did know him. She knew him intimately.

Thank goodness for the heat of the day, soothing her shaken spirit so she could think more clearly. What exactly had happened here, and what did it have to do with Chance?

Before she could sort out her jumbled impressions, Rajeev hurried into the courtyard. “Miss Blayne?” he said. “Ah, the school has called regarding your son.”

“Is he all right?” She went down the stairs at a rapid clip.

“It seems that he is well,” said Rajeev. “But as for the school itself, who can say?”

H
ARRY WISHED
he could wipe the alarm and confusion from his mother's face. Things really weren't so bad, but that was hard to prove, with the principal soaked to the skin, the leaves blasted off a bush in front of the school and the fire captain turning three shades of red.

“There wasn't any
real
damage,” he protested as Mom knelt on the floor to bring her face level with his.
A bunch of other people stood around the front office, glaring at him.

“But there could have been,” she said. “The principal says you climbed into the fire truck and turned on the hose. Is that right?”

“No!” Harry started to get mad. Grown-ups shouldn't tell lies, especially about little kids. “Where's Chance? He'd understand.”

“I'm the one who needs to understand.” His mother wiped a wisp of hair from her forehead. “Now let's see. The fire fighters were visiting for Fire Prevention Week, and the kids were checking out the fire truck. Then what?”

It was hard, he discovered as he talked, to explain this stuff. Mom couldn't seem to grasp the obvious, like why Harry had persuaded Al to climb into the cab and turn on the siren.

“It made him a hero!” he explained with all the patience he could muster. “The kids were, like, ‘Wow!' And I did talk him into it, Mom. I didn't
make
him do it”.

“Then what?” she asked wearily.

This was going to be tough to get across. Nobody had believed him so far.

In fact, they'd gotten so confused that the fire captain was swearing it had been Harry in the cab and not Al. What made it even more complicated was that Harry felt he ought to take the blame, because in a way he
was
responsible.

“Well, the captain started to grab Al, so I thought, what if he thought there really was a fire? Then Al would be a hero for sounding the siren, right?”

“Keep going,” said his mother.