Totally Spellbound (13 page)

“My God,” Megan said softly. “You
never got over her.”

He raised his gaze to hers. Her eyes
were filled with the most amazing compassion. She understood. No
one he had ever told had understood.

People had always told him
that a man should have gotten over losing a loved one after so many
years. It was only natural, right?

He couldn’t say anything. There was
nothing to say, really.

Megan kept ahold of his hand. “But I
don’t understand how the Fates were involved in this.”

“They wouldn’t let me save her.” His
voice was husky. He swallowed, cleared it. “They said it was
wrong.”

Their words still
echoed, even now:
We cannot allow love to
violate the rules of existence.

“Why?” Megan obviously had heard that
echo. She had heard it, just like she had entered his
bubble.

What was this connection between
them?

“They said it took
the world out of balance, and the world would find hideous ways to
come back into balance. They said a few mages had tried this
before, and the world
had
found hideous ways to come back, and they didn’t
want that to happen again.” He didn’t look at her as he said that.
His voice shook.

“As if that mattered to you,” Megan
said.

“Precisely.” He spoke with a little
too much force.

“So they let her die,” Megan
said.

He shook his head. “They reversed my
spell. It was a deliberate act. They killed her. They didn’t let
her die. They took an action that made her die.”

“Changing what you had done,” Megan
said.

“Because they said it was
wrong.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, as
if she were absorbing his words. Then she shook her head, frowned,
and opened her eyes.

“Have you seen them since?” she
asked.

“No,” he said. “Of course
not.”

“Until today.”

“Yeah.” He whispered because he no
longer trusted his voice. He was afraid it would break. If it
broke, he might lose what little grip he had on himself.

“When they came, asking for a
favor.”

“Yeah.”

Megan’s lips thinned. “That is so
wrong.”

His gaze met hers
and then, despite himself, he smiled. It
was
wrong. But she had expressed her
objection in such a thoroughly modern manner that her words brought
him back to the present.

“No wonder you locked them in a room,”
she said. “I might have killed them with my own bare
hands.”

“Do that to the Fates,” he said, “and
you’d be imprisoned forever.”

Megan sighed. “I really don’t
understand this new world, do I?”

His smile grew fond. “But you’re
beginning to.”

She smiled back at him.
She had no idea how beautiful she was and he loved that. Too much,
these days, women knew exactly how attractive they were.

Then Megan broke the eye contact. Her
cheeks were slightly flushed. “My nephew says they’ve lost their
magic. Would they still be dangerous without it?”

“Lost their magic.” Rob shook his
head. Both the Fates and John had mentioned that, but he hadn’t
believed it. “It could be some sort of test.”

“Why would they test you?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never responded to
any of their summonses in the past. Maybe they decided to come to
me.”

“To ask a favor,” Megan said, as if
she were thinking about it.

Now it was his turn to sigh. He didn’t
owe them anything. And the idea of a test didn’t really ring true
to him. The Fates were devious and they lacked a sense of time, but
they usually played with emotional things, not spinning
wheels.

If they were messing with him, they’d
be doing something with true love and death, not spinning wheels
and little children.

“How long have you known the Fates?”
he asked.

Megan gathered the last of the
newspapers and clutched them to her chest. “About twelve
hours.”

“About twelve…?” he let his voice
trail off. “My heavens. And you’re here?”

“My brother is getting a
marriage license. He’s not in the mood to help the Fates any more.
Technically, all I’m supposed to be doing is baby-sitting Kyle.”
Then her mouth opened slightly. “Kyle! I left him there. We have to
go back!”

“He’ll be fine,” Rob said.

She shook her head. “I don’t know your
friend John, and the Fates are locked up and Kyle might just take
matters into his own hands.”

Rob wanted to tell her that John was
very capable. In fact, he had an innate understanding of children,
which Rob had always relied on.

But he didn’t say anything. Instead,
he snapped his fingers again, taking the two of them back to the
office.

As they shifted, he felt an acute
sense of disappointment. He wanted to be alone with her.

Maybe this was Fate-caused. Maybe this
woman was his test, not the silly spinning wheel.

And then he was back in the reception
area, Megan beside him. The young boy, Kyle, sprinted across the
room and wrapped his arms around her, shooting Rob an angry
glance.

John had a bemused expression on his
face. He was looking at Rob and Megan fondly, as if he couldn’t
quite believe Rob had taken her away.

The door to Rob’s office rattled, and
muted female voices cried out, their words muffled by the door’s
thickness.

“You’re not upset,” Kyle said to his
aunt as he stepped back slightly from the hug.

Her gaze met Rob’s. He felt a shared
moment in that look, as if what he had told her made her value him.
His heart fluttered, and he wished it would remain
still.

He didn’t want to find any other woman
attractive.

He didn’t want to feel that heady,
almost giddy feeling of someone in the first stages of
courtship.

“Mr—Hood?—was trying to help me
understand this magic you’re all talking about,” Megan
said.

“Chapeau,” Rob said. “I’m Rob
Chapeau.”

Her eyes widened slightly, and that
flush she’d had became a full-blown blush.

She obviously recognized the name. She
hadn’t put two and two together before, but she had now.

He cursed that media image John had
insisted on creating for him. The billionaire playboy, the one who
hadn’t cared about anything.

It was so far from the truth, but it
enabled him to walk in circles that he wouldn’t get into
otherwise.

“Chapeau
Enterprises.” Her voice was cold. “Forgive me. I had somehow missed
that you were
the
Chapeau.”

The way she said it made him feel
ridiculous. The chapeau. As if he were nothing more than a hat to
her.

“It’s not like it seems,” he
said.

“Well, you’ve proven to me that
nothing is.” She kept her hand on her nephew’s shoulder, but she
pulled all the way out of the hug. “You and Kyle and those three
women and my goofy brother. Are you all trying some kind of upscale
David Copperfield thing? Am I the preferred guinea pig? Is that why
Travers has been calling me for the last few days? Did he give you
pictures of my condo? Is that how it worked?”

The boy was frowning. John’s smile had
grown, just a little, and he crossed his massive arms. The door
rattling had become door banging.

“I don’t know any Travers,” Rob
said.

“He doesn’t, Aunt Meg,” Kyle said. “He
really isn’t trying to trick you either.”

She looked at her nephew, then back at
Rob. “Rob Chapeau, according to the press—”

“Is a manipulative man who doesn’t
care how he makes his money,” Rob said. “Does that sound like Robin
Hood to you?”

“Maybe you’ve given up on
the nobler parts of the legend,” she said. “Maybe it’s the party
side that continued to appeal to you. Or did you just think you’d
rather be on the side of the winners?”

He winced when she said that. It
echoed words he’d used throughout the centuries—how he hated that
the cheaters, liars, and destroyers were often the ones on the top
of the heap, either in wealth or power or both.

“Rob has never been what he seemed,”
John said, moving forward to physically insert himself into the
conversation. “He’s always been something other. Even back in
Sherwood, he maintained a duel identity. He was born into
privilege, and could have lived that way despite what the sheriff
and King John were doing. Or didn’t you know that part of the
legend?”

Her face didn’t soften, but her eyes
did. Those compassionate eyes.

Rob frowned. She had almost
disappeared in those moments when he’d been telling her about
Marian (and what was that about? He never told any other woman he’d
been near—let alone the ones he’d been involved with—about Marian.
These days, only John knew. John and those horrible women still
locked in Rob’s office). Megan had become the perfect listener in
those moments, almost as if she could absorb his pain into
herself.

It was when the attention focused on
her that she became unsettled. When she thought someone was
deliberately making a fool of her.

She had been hurt, too,
and no one had ever noticed.

“I’m not making fun of you,” he said
gently. “This isn’t a scam that anyone planned with me. Those are
the Fates in my office, and I’m not some billionaire playboy
testing a new entertainment system.”

Although he was richer than he liked.
It was necessary for the work he did. Most of the money he made,
however, went into the various corporations that he ran, which then
distributed it to worthy causes around the globe.

“I think you should let the Fates out
of your office,” she said quietly. “I’ll take them back to the
hotel.”

The door truly was banging now.
Eventually, those three women would get it open from sheer force of
will.

“It won’t be that easy.” John cast a
wary eye on the door.

It actually might be since it was
becoming clearer and clearer that the Fates had no magic. And with
no magic, they were truly vulnerable to those who hated them. Rob
could control them if he wanted, with just the flick of a
finger.

He wouldn’t, of course. It wasn’t his
way.

But he knew a lot of mages who didn’t
have those qualms.

A movement caught the corner of his
eye. Young Kyle was nodding. When Kyle saw Rob looking at him, Kyle
said, “I’ve seen mages try to hurt them. Zoe protected them. My
Uncle Dex did before.”

Rob didn’t have to be
psychic to understand the implications of that sentence. Now, for
some reason, the Fates expected him to help them.

“You help other people,” Kyle said, as
if he and Rob had been having an out-loud discussion.

“Needy people,” Rob said.

Megan was watching him. Her right hand
still rested securely on Kyle’s shoulder. She clearly didn’t follow
all of the conversation, but she was paying attention.

“The Fates are needy,” Kyle
said.

“The Fates are bossy, and they don’t
understand anything, and they hurt people, young man. The sooner
you learn that—”

“They’re here to learn how to be
better Fates.” The boy’s voice rose. “That’s why they gave up their
magic, so they could learn diplomacy and how to be helpless, and a
whole bunch of other stuff. Then they found out that it was all a
scam, and they’d been made fools of so that Zeus could put his
daughters in as Fates—”

“Which daughters?” Rob asked. “Athena
wouldn’t be bad at it.”

Megan’s eyebrows rose. That was the
second time he’d seen her do that, and he was beginning to like it.
It gave her face even more warmth.

“I don’t know,” Kyle said. “You’d have
to ask the Fates.”

“I’m not talking with them,” Rob
said.

“Rob, you have to.” John extended his
meaty hands. “If they get back into power—”

“I’ll worry about it then.” He was
about to spell the Fates somewhere else when he caught Megan’s
eye.

That amusing eyebrow-raised expression
was gone, replaced by one of concern.

“What?” he asked, trying
not to snap at her. He liked her too much to snap at her. And she
was sensitive about things aimed at her. He didn’t want to hurt her
in any way.

She took a deep breath. Kyle grinned
up at her as if he already knew what she was going to say. And, of
course, he did.

“Your…intervention,” she said,
obviously choosing her word with great caution, “…leads me to
believe that there is magic in the world. And if there
is—”

“There is,” John growled.

She ignored him. Rob understood her
caution. She was still feeling her way in this new
world.