Fairytale (13 page)

The painting. Something about this painting.
God, it was all tangled up with her disjointed memories and that
stupid fairytale she was beginning to wish she’d never heard!
Sister Mary Agnes should have known better than to fill a child’s
head with fantasy and tell her it was real. Didn’t she realize how
confusing it could be?

Her hands moved faster, brushstroke upon
brushstroke coating the canvas. Her arms worked furiously, and a
thin sheen of sweat coated her forehead.

Confusing? No, it was maddening! Because
Brigit had never known exactly where to draw the line between the
story and the actual facts of her own life. Had her mother really
died, for example? And had her father only given her up when he,
too, was about to lose his life? Had there ever really
been
a twin sister? Or was all of that just part of the fairytale Sister
Mary Agnes had passed on to her?

She hadn’t let those questions surface with
this much insistence in years, because they only brought
frustration. Her files were sealed. She’d never know. There was no
way she’d ever know.

She blinked then, and her flying hands slowed
a bit.

Maybe there
was
a way. Why hadn’t she
considered it before? Adam would know. He was an expert in
fairytales, wasn’t he? He’d published books on the subject, taught
classes at the university. He probably knew every fairytale ever
told. And she already knew he’d heard of hers. If he hadn’t, he
wouldn’t have likened this painting to the forest of Rush. Where
else would he have got that name? The fact was, he’d probably read
accounts of the fairytale she’d always thought of as hers alone.
And he would
know.
He could likely even tell her its
origins, and point out hidden symbolism in the words. But most
importantly, he’d know whether the twin sister was, indeed, just
part of the story.

But how could she ask him? She certainly
couldn’t tell him the truth. That
she
, orphaned Brigit
Malone, who’d taken the last name of a homeless old man because she
hadn’t had one of her own, had once believed herself to be the
daughter of a fairy princess. He would laugh her right out of the
house. And she couldn’t show him the book. Not now. She’d already
told him she’d never seen this painting before. If he saw the book,
he’d know that was a lie. Though the illustration in her book and
the painting on his wall were different, they were also, obviously,
the same. And she’d pushed his tolerance for lies too far,
already.

She could ask him about the story, though.
And since she was so bad at lying, she’d keep her version of things
as close to the truth as possible. Without making him think she was
totally insane, anyway.

She brought her gaze down, away from the
painting on the wall, and focused on the canvas in front of
her.

Perfect. She’d captured the background. The
stunning blue of the sky and the silvery shapes of castle towers in
the distance, hazy and unfocused. So a viewer might wonder if they
were real, or just shapes in the clouds.

The world in the painting was a magical
place. A place that couldn’t exist, except in the vivid world of
imagination. The artist’s. And Sister Mary Agnes’s. And even her
own.

A shame...such a shame...a place like that
couldn’t be real.

***

And when she looks into your eyes, sir,
you’re helpless to disagree. A man will grant her every wish,
answer her every query, for his will melts under the power of her
stare.

Adam closed the book and sat at his desk,
staring down at the leather binding. If he didn’t know better, he’d
swear the author was describing Brigit Malone. The woman who’d
taken up residence in his house...and more importantly, in his
mind.

He shouldn’t be thinking about her. Okay, he
should be, but he should be thinking about what she could be up to,
rather than what she looked like naked. The slender length of her
limbs and the lightness and grace of her every movement. The
spirals of hair curling against petal-soft skin. Those eyes. Those
breasts. That glittering pendant dangling in between.

Adam groaned under his breath. Dammit, he was
a fool. What he ought to be thinking about was the little detour
he’d taken on his way in to work this morning. The one that went
past her house, out on Sycamore. It had been a simple task to look
for her address in the phone book. Simpler yet, to take a run by
the place.

There was no sign of any construction going
on in the neat white cottage. No sign at all. But that shouldn’t
have surprised him. He’d known she was lying about that from the
second the words had left her succulent lips.

He pulled his car onto the roadside, and went
to the front door. Breaking and entering would have been the last
thing Adam Reid would consider doing, under normal circumstances.
However, things were far from normal between him and his
houseguest. He had to know about her. He couldn’t help himself.

First he knocked, just to be sure no one was
home. And then he peered through the window, cupping his hands on
either side of his face to block the morning sun.

And a merciless hand gave his guts a ruthless
twist. Because he spotted ordinary tilings, ordinary furnishings
and a small television. But then he saw the other things. The
telltale signs. The brown leather work shoes on the mat beside the
door. Size eleven or so, he figured. The soft brown flannel shirt.
The man’s CPO jacket on the coat rack.

He didn’t walk off the porch, he staggered
from it. And only when he’d stood braced against the Porsche,
gasping for air, had he noticed the damned mailbox. “Malone, R. F
& Brigit.”

A man. She lived with a freaking man. And
they shared the same last name.

Jesus.

“Jesus,” he muttered again now, as he sat at
his desk, remembering. Wondering if R. F. Malone was the same man
he’d heard her talking with on the phone last night. How the hell
had he let himself fall into this? He was tangled up with a married
woman. And he was so goddamned hot for her he couldn’t think
straight. She had some kind of hold over his mind. Maybe it was
deliberate, all part of whatever scheme she was hatching. He didn’t
know. Until now, he’d thought he could let her stay until he found
out.

Now though, he wasn’t so sure. He had a
feeling the best thing to do would be to go home, right now, and
throw her out on her ear.

Home. Yeah. He’d had a plan when he’d left
there this morning. He’d intended to be back by noon, but he’d lied
to her, deliberately told her he’d be gone all day long when he’d
had every intention of arriving early, surprising her. Catching her
red-handed...

Doing what, he wondered? Somehow, lifting the
silver seemed beneath her.

Anyway, his well laid plans had gone to hell
when old man Sneichowski had called a staff meeting, and made it a
priority. Adam had no choice but to attend. This job was too damned
important to risk incurring Sneichowski’s wrath.

Brigit put away her paints, cleaned her
brushes, and carried the canvas upstairs to hide it in the back of
the huge closet again. She managed to clean up the breakfast dishes
in record time, but she hesitated at the idea of going into Adam’s
bedroom. The idea was so disturbing...Why?

Grating her teeth, she told herself that a
little housekeeping was the least she could do to make up for what
she was going to take from him. She stiffened her spine, and walked
down the broad hallway, past her own room, looking over the
gleaming hardwood railing on the right, down into the study below.
Her gaze lingered on the painting for a moment too long. She turned
at Adam’s bedroom door, put her hand on the knob, and walked
in.

And then she became lost in sensations.
Because his scent lingered here in this place. Subtle. But here.
Surrounding her, touching her skin.

The rumpled bed drew her gaze, and she moved
toward it, unable to stop herself. She put her hands on the
wrinkled sheets that bore the imprint of his body, and imagined she
could still feel his warmth there. That bed, with its covers flung
back, looked incredibly inviting.

She stopped herself from crawling into it.
Barely. It took longer than it should have taken for Brigit to
realize what was happening. That wanton inside was in the driver’s
seat, running the show, acting out her carnal fantasies. Whispering
how erotic it would feel to strip to the skin and slide between the
sheets that had so recently been wrapped around Adam’s flesh.
Brigit put an end to that at once, stiffening her spine and
strengthening her resolve. She pushed that other one into her cell
and closed the door. And then she efficiently made Adam’s bed,
refusing to pay any attention to the images of him in it, of the
two of them in it together, that hurtled through her mind.

When the job was finished she turned away,
relieved. Her hands trembled. Her breaths came unsteadily. Her
heart raced.

Swallowing hard, she bent to pick up his
discarded robe. But as she did, she saw a fat book under his bed.
And that made her pause.

Brigit licked her lips. She knew perfectly
well she shouldn’t be doing this. She shouldn’t. But something
drove her, probably the irreverent imp that lived in her soul, and
she folded the robe to her chest with one arm, and reached for that
book with the other.

An album, she saw as she tugged it out. A
photo album. Her legs folded under her, and she pulled it into her
lap. His terry robe ended up slung over one shoulder as she opened
the cover and began studying photographs. Family photographs. And
she knew instinctively that this album hadn’t belonged to Adam. It
had belonged to his parents. There were baby pictures, dozens of
them. And she knew by the golden hair and intense sapphire
eyes—those wizard’s eyes—that they were of him. And later, school
pictures. Year by year, she saw Adam grow. There was his
kindergarten class photo. He stood proudly in the front row, beside
a little girl with lopsided pigtails, and he must have been
fighting that day, because he had a hell of a shiner.

And on the next page, a similar shot, this
one of a cluster of first-graders. And again, he was easy to spot,
because of the big, purple bruise high on one cheekbone.

Something broke inside Brigit as she
continued turning pages. Something ached and cried, and an anger
was born. She flipped the pages faster, and her throat closed off.
Adam’s handsome young face appeared bruised in too many of these
pictures. Here a shadow on his jaw. There a split lip. Here a tiny
line of stitches in his forehead. One had his arm in a cast.

Confusion knitted her brows tightly, as she
examined every page, until she knew the faces of Adam’s parents as
well as she knew her own. And curiously, the bruises stopped
showing up in Adam’s photos at about the same time his father
stopped appearing in any of them. The last half of the book was
filled with photos of a teenage Adam, and the young adult. Several
shots of him with his mother. At his graduation from high school.
From college. No bruises. No father.

The explanation was obvious. Tears filled her
eyes, and she tipped her head to one side until her cheek rubbed
against the terry robe on her shoulder. She inhaled, to smell him
in the fabric. This was the source of all the pain she saw in his
eyes, then. This was the wound that wouldn’t heal.

She could heal it. She knew she could, if
he’d let her. Only...she’d have to injure him again before she
finished, wouldn’t she?

“You enjoying yourself?”

She’d been looking forward to seeing him
again, so she could ask about her fairytale. Only now, that was the
farthest thing from her mind. She didn’t want to see him at all.
Not like this. There was anger in his voice, and blazing from his
eyes when her head snapped up and she faced him. But she understood
that anger now. She knew about his old hurt.

And there really wasn’t a thing she could do
about it, was there? No. Not when she’d come here to hurt him just
a little bit more.

She closed the album, slid it back under the
bed, and slowly stood up. “I’m sorry,” she told him. And she
thought he must know it didn’t apply to her snooping.

She held his gaze, lifting one hand to swipe
the tear from her cheek. The anger in his eyes flickered, lost
power.

“You told me you were going to open up the
shop today,” he said. “Why didn’t you?”

“I...got distracted.”

“I can see that.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she replied with a
quick, guilty glance at the album under the bed. “The construction
people called, and there were problems to be sorted out. Decisions
I had to make.” She licked her lips. The lies were not flowing
smoothly. Not easily. And his skeptical, piercing stare wasn’t
making it any easier. “By the time I got everything sorted out with
them, I just didn’t feel up to much of anything.”

Liar! he wanted to shout at her.

But that wasn’t all. There was more than her
lies happening here. He’d expected to catch her up to no good when
he’d come home. What he’d found, instead, had almost put him on his
knees. She’d been curled up on his bedroom floor, absently rubbing
his bathrobe against her satiny cheek, occasionally turning her
nose to the fabric and inhaling, closing her eyes. She’d been
crying. Staring down at something in that old album that had been
under the bed since before Mother had died, and crying in
silence.

Why?

She was lying, dammit. Lying about
everything. Married, in all likelihood! He’d come here with every
intention of telling her to leave. Go back to good old R. F.,
whoever the hell he was, and stay out of his life forever. So why
wasn’t he?

She stepped closer to him. Closer still. And
he only stood there, watching, waiting. She stopped when her body
was so close to his there was barely space between them. He felt
her heat, and more. A sort of tingling that seemed to leap from her
flesh to his. As if she couldn’t help herself, she lifted one hand.
When her fingertips touched his cheekbone, he sucked in a breath.
But he didn’t move. Her touch traveled over his face, until her
fingers skimmed the tiny scar on his forehead. And then she pressed
her palms to either side of his head, tilted it downward and stood
on tiptoe to press her lips to the very same spot.