Fairytale (24 page)

Brigit sat up fast, defensive, and looked
down at herself, wondering what he’d seen to shock him so.
“What?”

His hand came forward, forefinger tracing the
little red mark just above the triangle of jet curls. “This.”

She frowned harder. “Adam, it’s only a
birthmark.”

“In the shape of the crescent moon,” he
whispered. “And it’s blood red.”

“So?”

He lifted his gaze slowly, met her eyes, his
own narrowing, searching. “Brigit?”

“What?”

He licked his lips, swallowed hard. “Brigit,
you told me that when you were a child, you believed in that
Fairytale
of yours. That you believed it was true, and that
you really were—”

She shook her head quickly. “A childhood
fantasy, Adam. That’s all it was. A silly dream.”

“What if it wasn’t?”

Brigit frowned at him, shaking her head in
confusion. “What do you mean, what if it wasn’t? It had to be.
There are no such things as fairies. Everyone knows that.”

“But what if there were? What if you
really—”

She shook her head hard, and started to turn
away from him. But he slipped his hands into her hair, and gently
made her face him. “Have you ever really considered the
possibility, Brigit? Have you ever put it to the test?”

Her lips thinned. “Sure I have, Adam. I check
behind me every day for wings, but so far—”

“I’m being serious here.”

She didn’t want him to see the tears forming
in her eyes, but he wouldn’t let her turn away, so see them he did.
And he leaned closer, to kiss the tears away. “Why does the thought
of it make you cry, if you’re so sure it’s all nonsense?” he
whispered.

“Because I believed so strongly once, Adam.
And when I found out the truth it was like someone took away my
heart. It hurt to grow up, and face reality, and put fantasy away
where it belongs. In a little box of childhood memories. But I did
it. I don’t want to have to do it all over again.”

He blinked and shook his head as if trying to
shake water from his hair. “Okay,” he said softly, stroking her
hair with his soothing hands.

“Okay, I won’t push it. Not now. Not if it’s
gonna make you cry. But...”

“But, what?”

He shook his head slowly. “Nothing. Never
mind.”

She didn’t want to “never mind.” She wanted
to ask him if he were actually considering what he’d said to be a
possibility. And she would have...except that she wasn’t sure she
was ready to hear his answer.

Her mind was clearer when she woke, sometime
later. And the sensation that had drawn her out of sleep’s warm
embrace was one of loss, of emptiness, of coldness.

Blinking in the newborn sun’s soft amber
light, she struggled for memories. Her eyes shot wider when she
found them. She’d fallen asleep wrapped tightly in Adam Reid’s
arms. Right after making incredible love to him.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, scanning the room in
search of him, not seeing him, feeling her face heat anyway. “God,
tell me I didn’t.” But she did. She knew perfectly well she did.
And she’d been so determined not to. Not to let him too close. Not
to let him care.

She could only hope it had been no more than
physical to him. She could only pray he hadn’t let himself develop
any feelings, not even a passing fondness for her. Because she
might be forced to betray him in the end. She closed her eyes, bit
her lower lip hard. Not “might be,” she told herself with brutal
honesty. She would be forced to betray Adam. She’d tried buying
Zaslow off, and his response had been that. . . that horrible
delivery last night. That coffin-shaped box. His message, delivered
loud and clear, as to what could so easily happen, should she
resist his plan in any way.

What a cruel, malicious bastard to torture
her that way! For a few unbearable seconds she’d believed Raze lay
still and cold in that box. God, the feeling that had swamped her
then—the very thought of that sweet, gentle man dying at the hand
of one so evil...

She slammed her eyes closed as that desolate
image crept into her mind.

Fight him, said the one inside. Don’t let
that bastard do this to you!

No, she couldn’t fight Zaslow again. Not
while he still had Raze. She
would have
to betray Adam. And
he didn’t deserve to be hurt like that. Not again.

She knew what lay at the heart of Adam’s old
pain. The one she saw in his eyes, shadowing his soul, never
leaving him. She knew it was centered on betrayal. The betrayal
felt by a boy whose own father turned on him like some vicious
animal. The betrayal felt by a husband whose own wife takes
everything he has and slips away like a thief in the night. The
kind that was the most deadly. That which came from someone he
loved. Trusted. Believed in.

He might seem tough and hard-nosed, but she
could see through that shell to the man inside. He was fragile
right now. It wouldn’t take much to do him in.

She hoped to God the killing blow wouldn’t be
the one she had to deliver. And she assured herself it wouldn’t be.
Not as long as he hadn’t let himself care.

Where was he?

Frowning at the new thought, Brigit got out
of the bed. His bed. The pillow beside her was still sunken where
he’d laid his head. Everywhere there were signs of Adam. His scent
filled the room, and his clothes lay strewn on the floor. Golden
strands of his hair clung to the brush on the dresser, glimmering
like fire in the morning sunlight.

But Adam wasn’t here.

She snatched his robe from the bedpost and
wrapped it around her as she hurried to the French doors matching
those in her own bedroom. She pushed the latch down, stepped out
onto the deck to look up and down its wrought-iron length. But he
wasn’t out here, either.

And then she saw him. He was standing on the
outcropping of rock where they’d sat in the rain. The one where
she’d given in to the wildness inside, and dove into the lake on a
whim. And nearly got herself killed for her trouble.

He stood there, just staring out over the
water toward the fiery ball of the rising sun. And he seemed...God,
he seemed tortured. The wind came rushing off the lake to whip his
pale hair into chaos. He stood, braced against it, facing it. His
hands shoved into his jeans pockets, his eyes distant. Staring out
over the wind-tossed waves, but, she thought, not really seeing
anything there.

Oh, Lord, what had she done?

Ducking back inside, she raced to her own
bedroom, yanking a pair of black stirrups on just because they were
the first things she grabbed when she opened the dresser. No time
for the hairbrush. She snatched an oversized gauzy black shirt from
a hanger in the closet and pulled it on, fastening the big gold
buttons with trembling fingers. Black tails, front and back,
reached to her knees. She stuffed her feet into her favorite
leather thong sandals and ran into the hallway and down the
stairs.

Outside, the air still held the chill of
night. But dawn’s warmth was already invading. The breeze drew
goosebumps to the surface of her skin, but the sun on her eyelids
warmed her. She folded her arms over each other and ran along the
path that skirted the house, just in time to see Adam disappearing
in another direction. He hadn’t taken the path that led down to the
lake’s grassy shore. Instead, he’d gone off into the woods nearby.
A steep hillside, thick with pines, rose regally on the western
side of the house. State land, she knew. Not Adam’s own. He headed
up the hill, and vanished as soon as he passed the first row of
thick-needled sentries.

Where in the world was he going?

Brigit licked her lips, tilted her head to
one side, and debated with herself for no more than a minute. Then,
her decision made, she started after him.

Adam could no longer see the old path. The
one he’d followed as a small, adventurous child. It hadn’t been
made by man, anyway. Probably a deer trail or something. And deer
changed paths all the time, to keep a step ahead of their
predators. There were new paths trodden into the mossy forest
floor. Mazes of them, going off in a hundred directions, and
criss-crossing themselves often along the way.

Where was it? And how the hell was he
supposed to fulfill his destiny—to show Brigit the way home—if he
couldn’t even find the trail that had once led him there?

He remembered crossing a stream. And there’d
been a rise within the hillside, a hump of sorts. He’d had to climb
it. He’d had to do that on hands and knees, he recalled, because
the hump had been wearing a coat of blackberry briars. The cave was
partway down a grassy slope on the far side of that briar-riddled
hill.

If there ever had actually
been
a
cave. Adam had long ago convinced himself—with a lot of help from
his father—that there hadn’t been. That it had all been in his
imagination. But now, he’d swung the other way. He’d decided that
he’d been right all along. Even as a child. He really had found
some kind of mystical doorway to some enchanted realm. He really
had talked to a fairy there, who’d shown him his fate.

And his fate really was the woman he’d made
love to last night. The woman he’d left sleeping like an angel in
his bed. His fate, it seemed, was to have his heart broken by that
beautiful half-fairy enchantress, and he’d likely waste away with
longing for her the rest of his life, just the way Keats had tried
to warn him he would.

Too bad he hadn’t listened.

He’d got out of bed this morning, determined
to get it over with. If he could find the spot in the woods, he’d
show it to her, take her through to the other side, and be done
with it. The longer he put it off, the more it was going to hurt.
He was getting too damned used to having her around.

But now he faced another roadblock. One he
hadn’t even considered before. What if he could never find that
place again?

It felt good, in a way, to let himself
explore the possibility that his childhood fantasy had been real.
That he really had crossed some invisible threshold into a fantasy
world called Rush, and he really had met a fairy princess there, a
pregnant one, who’d shown him his future. He hadn’t realized how
much he’d missed believing in fantasy until he’d started to let
himself do it again. And it was all because of Brigit.

Her presence made his houseplants thrive, and
she could tell a man was lying to her by looking into his
eyes...

Goddamn, but that was something, wasn’t it?
The way she took one look into Mac’s eyes and just knew. Just like
that. She knew he was lying. Goddamn.

Her footfalls always seemed soundless and she
could predict the weather. And that birthmark...only, it was more
than just a birthmark, wasn’t it? It was the mark of the crescent
moon that was talked about in that old Celtic text. The sign that
marked her as a fairy of royal blood.

God, he could barely believe he’d let himself
be convinced by all of this. But he had. And in doing so he’d
regained something he’d thought he’d never find again.

And it had driven him to come out here. He
hadn’t trusted in his own mind enough to do so in nearly thirty
years. He’d try now. Maybe, the small part of his mind that
remained stubbornly skeptical told him, maybe being here again, in
this forest where it had all started, would trigger something in
his memory. Some logical explanation that would account for
everything. All of it.

Or maybe he’d find that doorway he’d been
trying for so long to believe had never existed.

Her skin was sweet.

He stopped in his tracks, frowning as the
realization hit him right between the eyes. He’d kissed her, he’d
kissed her all over. He’d tasted her skin. And it had truly seemed
as if there was a flavor to it. A sweetness.

Honey. Just like in that Celtic text.

“Christ,” he muttered, and forced himself to
continue walking. But after an hour trudging through the woods, he
realized he wasn’t going to find the place. Not now.

And for some reason, even that didn’t
convince him that it had never existed in the first place. It only
made him worry that he’d be unable to complete his destiny, and to
give Brigit the help she wasn’t even aware she needed. Or maybe it
simply wasn’t time yet. That fairy had told him he had to show
Brigit the way to her sister, and
then
the way back home.
Maybe he had to do this in the proper order, if it were going to
work at all.

Or maybe...maybe he really
wouldn’t
be
able to find it again.

Sighing in defeat, he sank down onto a damp,
rotting stump and wondered what the hell his next move should be.
Hell, if he couldn’t find the doorway, did that mean he could keep
her here, with him?

“Whatever it is, Adam, you can get past
it.”

He jerked his head up at the sound of her
voice, squinting in disbelief when he saw her. Her sudden
appearance there seemed to add even more credence to his theory. No
normal woman could follow a man through the forest without making a
sound, could she?

She came closer, sank down onto the forest
floor, hooking her elbows on her knees, feet crossed at the ankles.
“When I’m in a place like this, it reminds me how insignificant our
troubles really are. I mean, what do they matter, in the scheme of
things? We could disappear tomorrow, and the world would keep right
on turning. The wind would still blow...” She closed her eyes,
tilted her head back, and inhaled nasally. “...Mmm. And forests
would still smell like no other place can smell. And the pines
would still whisper their secrets to one another...”

He frowned, but found himself listening in a
way he never had before. And suddenly he heard them. As the wind
brushed through the needled boughs it seemed as if the trees
themselves were whispering in a million hushed voices. He’d been
able to hear them once. He’d been in on those secrets, a long time
ago. It had been...magic.