Fire and Flame (7 page)

“That’s not why I want you to teach me,” she insisted, gazing intently on his face as her long fingers trailed absently over a polished stone paperweight. “I’m the weakest witch in the region.”

“You’re not the weakest witch,” he argued without bothering to consider his words.

Again she gave him her impatient look. “I am.”

He wasn’t about to let her get away with that answer. Not after what he’d experienced with her on the road. “Last night you syphoned more energy, faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. You’re not the weakest.”

Sara lifted her chin higher. “I’m the weakest because I’ve obstinately avoided training. I don’t want to avoid training anymore. And you’re going to teach me.”

He was?

“I…I can’t teach you, Sara. I’ve never taught anyone anything. I’m just…”

She finished his stammered statement without blinking. “The high priest over the Ohio Valley Region. You better learn how to teach because witches are looking to you now. Who better to practice with than me?”

“You?” he repeated with far more horror than he’d meant.

Sara’s eyes and nostrils flared wide. “As loathsome as it will no doubt be for you, yes, me.”

He could hardly believe his ears. “Sara,” he stepped forward but halted when she pulled her head away from him. “You’re not loathsome. We just… We fight like cats and dogs.”

“I’ll try to be good,” she replied with a stilted delivery that said more than her words had.

Brent couldn’t help but laugh. “I won’t make that promise.”

Her forehead momentarily wrinkled. “Then I shouldn’t have to either.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“But I don’t understand. You won’t teach me because we fight…”

She looked adorable then with her blue eyes crinkled in confusion and the soured twist of her mouth. He wanted to cross the room and touch her cheek, to feel the satin of her skin beneath the rough pads of his fingertips.

Heat flared within him when the memory of all he’d seen that morning flashed in his mind’s eye. She was perfect. Even in grief, she’d been the most beautiful female he’d ever seen. Perhaps it was good she’d recoiled from him moments ago.

Without thinking, Brent declared, “I’ll agree to teach you on one condition.”

Sara’s gaze squinted as she drew in an irritated breath. Her shoulders pressed back, stiff and yet more dignified. “Yes?”

“You don’t move to New York.”

Her mouth parted wide enough for a finger, or a tongue to slip between. Brent forced his thoughts to stay on topic. Clearly she was surprised he knew what she’d planned to do post graduation.

“Yet,” she tried on for size.

Though he hadn’t put much thought into his demand, he now understood he’d spied a chink in her armor. She may have once dreamed of making it big in New York but he had a feeling that dream wasn’t as important as her current quest to become a better Fire witch. And if her precious dream could be delayed…perhaps it wasn’t truly precious after all.

And so he drew in all of the courage and confidence at his disposal. “No. You don’t go at all. You stay here.”

“My dream is in New York,” she exclaimed, gaze going narrow with each word she spoke. “Everything I’ve worked for these past five years is there. I have to go.”

Brent had nothing to lose, not when her squinting features implied she was already fully pissed off. He crossed the room until he stood inches from her. Brent drew in a breath of her warm amber and crisp pine scent even as she positioned herself a little farther from him. Perhaps those little movements away were anything but distaste for him.

His voice was barely above a whisper. “Is it what you
still
want or simply what you think you
ought
to?”

Sara opened her mouth—too fast to have given his question thought. He snatched up her hand, gently squeezing her palm in his. Her gaze shot to where their skin met. A startled breath emitted from between her pretty lips.

“I want to become a news anchor,” was her slow, stubborn reply. “There’s nothing for me here.”

“Nothing?” he echoed with a challenge to his tone.

Brent’s control slipped when her cool blue gaze dropped to his lips. His free hand cupped her cheek seemingly with a mind of its own. Before either of them could reconsider, he smashed his mouth over hers. Another startled noise escaped her throat. Her lips parted in surprise, opening a whole new world to him.

He dropped her hand, freeing his own so he could grab her by the other cheek. With her held securely in place, Brent pushed his tongue into the sweet opening she’d created. She was delicious heat, like licking a honeyed flame, and she had yet to get involved in the kiss. He might burn up if she did. Already he was rigid with need, straining at his slacks.

Though he’d forced this on her, he carefully checked for signs of distress. She hadn’t pushed at him. She’d not tried to pull away. She hadn’t made any noise apart from the initial gasp. But she also hadn’t joined in.

At last, her weight slackened in his grip. Brent shifted his left hand to her back, holding her steady. The delicate slides of his tongue turned to needy swirls now that she was warming to him. A moan vibrated her neck—a sound that sent a flare of heat through his blood. This was more than warming up.

The flare reached his brain. One blazing fact pierced his consciousness. Her father’s funeral had been not an hour earlier. He was behaving like a cad!

Reluctantly he extracted his tongue from her mouth. Without releasing her, he drew back so they could both breathe again. Her sooty lashes blinked heavily in time with her chest’s broad up and down motions—motions that stretched the limit of her fine satin dress.

Brent panted with need but he had to speak the words he should have said last night and he had to do it before she made another deluded declaration.

He made certain she could see the earnest expression on his face, and then he softly said, “I won’t make you miserable.”

****

Sara could hardly breathe let alone think but she’d heard
that
loud and clear. Her mouth began running with little help from her brain and neither was particularly coherent after that mind-scrambling kiss of his.

“What…? Is that why you…?”

She shoved at his chest minutes too late. He dutifully gave her room. With the opening now available to her, Sara charged away from him.

“I can’t believe you turned my finally wanting to train into an opportunity to push my duty on me,” Sara exclaimed from the security of the bookcase half a room away from him.

He opened his mouth to argue but nothing came out.

Because the jerk had no argument. He was trying to use her request as leverage.

He wanted her to stay? Here? In Indiana? It was where news anchors went to die!

But was that really her dream? Or like he’d asked, was it what she’d felt she
ought
to reach for?

Furious that he’d made her question everything she’d worked for, Sara stomped the three feet to the office door. And then she left Brenton Conley to stare mutely after.

Chapter Nine

Sara lifted her head from the Sunday newspaper atop the granite kitchen island. Brent stepped into the kitchen, shirtless, and rubbing his hand across black hair that stood on end. He had tan lines from short sleeves on his powerful biceps but it was the trail of dark hair weaving a narrow path through the valleys of his toned chest that caught and held her attention longest.

Brent’s mouth was open wide in a powerful yawn. A half second later it abruptly shut. “By the Phoenix, what are you doing up already?” he exclaimed even as he reached down and discreetly checked that the flap in his blue plaid boxer shorts was closed.

His exclamation jogged loose a forgotten memory. Sara bolted upright in her seat. “The Rule of Succession.”

Brent’s features crinkled as he shook his head. “Pardon?”

Sara cast her gaze across the kitchen, into the dining room, and then toward the living room. Soon it snapped back to the driveway and the cars parked there, as if she could see Fintan’s kingdom in a single glance.

“It’s all yours,” she choked out. “Everything here, it now belongs to you because you killed his killer.”

Her pink bedroom. Her Lexus. Her every possession. They had all been gifts from her daddy and thus it all belonged to Brent. She could hardly hold herself upright.

“There was an immediate living heir,” Brent reminded her. “This is all yours now.”

Sara shook her head. That wasn’t how it worked, was it?

“In any case, the reading of the will is this afternoon,” Brent explained far too calmly. “We’ll find out what Fintan wanted then.” After a beat he said, “I’m not very good at making breakfast. How about we get dressed and find someplace to get some eggs?”

Woodenly she nodded because the Rule of Succession still concerned her. She’d always heard a witch’s killer was entitled to his or her empire. Would it have been different if she hadn’t lived with her father? Perhaps that was what the word “immediate” had meant.

Sara would worry about it once the will had been read. Fintan would have noted how he wanted his empire to be handled after his passing. And Brent would surely respect the final wishes of his esteemed mentor. After all, it was the very least he could do for failing to keep her daddy alive.

****

Brent had never particularly liked Fintan’s lawyer and Curt Hourig had made no bones about his dislike of Fintan’s protégé. So when Brent settled into the seat in front of the man’s desk, he couldn’t help but adjust the cufflinks on his crisp shirt.

Sara had been quiet since the meeting in the kitchen. In fact, she’d been quiet since she’d shouted at him after he’d kissed her.

She’d thought it had been a play for sex. And while it
had
been, it hadn’t been what she thought. Brent didn’t want her to do her duty with him—he didn’t want one instance of intercourse when she was at her most fertile. He wanted
her
. And once he had her, he didn’t intend to give her up.

Brent cast a look to his right where she’d settled herself into Curt’s second leather chair. She looked beautifully dour in her black chiffon dress with its satin trim. It draped just so over the inviting curve of her knee, a knee he’d like to set his fingers to before he slipped them beneath the hem… He made himself look away because they had an audience.

The others named in the will sat in the chairs lining the outer edges of the room. The back portion of the large office was standing room only. Fintan had been generous.

Curt silently counted the attendees then checked the clock on his mantel, making sure he began at precisely two on the dot. He lifted a skeleton key from his thick ring as he stood. Curt approached the giant maple chest against the wall behind his desk. After a twist in the old lock and the creak of the heavy cover, he drew out a piece of folded parchment with a wax seal holding it closed. It was an old styled will for a priest who straddled the line between the old ways and the new.

Curt returned to his desk after securely locking his chest. He held up the folded paper for all to see. The McKenna family crest was embossed in the crimson wax above the familiar signature of Fintan McKenna
.
All those gathered could clearly see the will hadn’t been tampered with since the high priest himself had scrawled his name. Once satisfied everyone had seen the unaltered state of the document, Curt cracked the wax seal, and then pushed his silver glasses over his nose.

As with every other Fire witch last will and testament Brent had heard, Fintan had begun with the smallest of bits, working upwards. They heard of the thousand dollars he’d left for this charitable act and that. The plot of land he’d bequeathed to the Earth witches of Carmel. A business of which Fintan had been partnered in that was given over to the sole remaining partner. And the boat on the Pacific was given to a Water witch friend of long ago. Curt began reading the larger sums of money—shares, bonds and property that had been willed to his covens in the river valley. This would go on all afternoon.

“‘And finally, I ask that you send everyone but the final two away to hear the remainder of my will’,” the lawyer relayed. “‘If they are still with us, I ask that only my beloved daughter, Sara Vesta McKenna, and my most trusted confidant, Brenton Titus Conley, remain to hear my final wishes.’”

Curt lifted his gaze to the others. “Leave your name and contact information with my secretary as you leave and we will arrange to send you your portion of the inheritance.”

Brent clasped his hands tightly in his lap as the others left. He wasn’t sure what to think of Fintan writing him into his last will and testament.
Or
about the strange request that Brent remain while Sara’s portion was read.

Worry churned in his gut. Had the high priest written that Brent was to vacate McKenna House at once? Fintan’s premature death meant Brent had failed as an assistant. It would serve him right.

Though he’d amassed considerable savings, Brent didn’t want to be forced out onto the streets with no notice. Sara would put him out the first chance she got. Especially after that kiss. She’d want to be rid of him even though there was plenty of other Ena offspring left to attack her.

Curt took up the paper once more, fixing his glasses atop his straight nose again. “‘To my beloved daughter, I will two thirds of my remaining assets so she may realize her true potential in whatever fashion she sees fit. I also leave the home we made together to her.’”

Brent’s neck heated as his fears began to take form in words.

The lawyer went on with an unexpected caveat, “‘On the understanding that she will continue to provide a home for the son of my soul, Brenton Conley.’”

He wasn’t the only individual in the room staring at the lawyer as if he’d burst into blue flame.