by Nora Roberts
He lay like a dead man, but it didn’t seem to matter.Dying for such an experience didn’t seem too high a price to pay right at the moment.
He felt as though he’d been hulled out. Every care, every worry, every spare thought carved away to be replaced by pure sensation.
He might not be able to walk or speak or think again, but those were minor inconveniences. He was going to pass out of this world a very happy man.
Ripley made a little purring sound. Aha, he thought vaguely. He could still hear. That was a nice bonus. Then her mouth closed over his. His body could still register sensation. Better and better.
“Mac?”
He opened his mouth. Some sound came out. It wasn’t words, but there were a great many forms of verbal communication. He’d make do.
“Mac?” she said again, and slid her hand down his body, closed her fingers over him.
Oh, yeah, he was definitely able to feel sensation.
“Uh-huh.” He cleared his throat, managed to open one eye. He wasn’t blind, after all. Another plus. “Yeah. I wasn’t asleep.” His voice was rusty, but there. And he realized his throat was desperate with thirst. “I was having a near-death experience. It wasn’t bad.”
“Now that you’re back from beyond . . .” She slithered up his body again, and rendered him speechless when he saw she still had that gleam in her eye. “Again.”
“Hey, well.” He had some trouble breathing when her lips trailed down his chest. “You’re going to have to give me a little time to recover, you know. Maybe a month.”
She laughed, and the wicked sound of it rippled over his skin. “In that case, you’re just going to have to lie there and take it.”
Her mouth kept going. He melted into the bed. “Well, if I have to, I have to.”
Ripley knew shewas in trouble. She’d never shared power with a man before. Never felt the need or desire to do so. With Mac, it had been a kind of compulsion, a deep, drowning need to extend that intimacy, link that part of her with him.
There was no longer any doubt that she was in love with him, or any hope that she could rationalize it away.
Traditionally, Todds waited a long time to fall in love, and when they did it came hard and fast, and it was forever. It looked as if she was upholding the family name.
But she didn’t have a clue what to do about it.
Right at the moment, she couldn’t seem to care.
As for Mac, he felt slightly drunk and saw no reason to fight the sensation. The wind had started to rise. The sound of it shivering against the windows only made the cottage cozier. It was as if they were the only two people on the island. As far as he was concerned, it could stay that way.
“What was that stuff you wanted to tell me?”
“Hmm.” He continued to play with her hair and thought he could happily stay under those tangled sheets with her for the rest of his life. “It can wait.”
“Why? I’m here, you’re here. I’m thirsty.” She sat up, scooped her hair back. “Didn’t you say something about wine?”
“Probably. You sure you’re up for wine and conversation?”
She angled her head. “It’s that, or you’ll have to get up for something else.”
As lowering as it was to admit it, he was certain if she jumped him again, he would never live through it. “I’ll get the wine.”
She laughed as he rolled out of bed. “Here.” He pulled open a drawer, tossed her some sweats. “Might as well be comfortable.”
“Thanks. Got any food?”
“Depends on your definition.”
“Just some munchies. I’ve got a craving.”
“Tell me about it. I’ve got potato chips.”
“That’ll do.” She tugged on the sweatpants, adjusting the drawstring until she was reasonably sure they’d stay up.
“I’ll dig them out.”
When he was gone, she pulled on the sweatshirt and indulged herself by sniffing at the sleeves, exploring the sensation of wearing something that was his. It was foolish and female, she admitted, but nobody had to know about it but her.
When she walked into the kitchen, he already had the wine open, two glasses out, and a bag of chips on the counter. She snagged the chips, plopped down in a chair, and prepared to gorge.
“Let’s not, ah . . . do this in here,” Mac began. Nerves pricked at his bubble of contentment. He had no idea how she would react to what he had to tell her. That was just one of her fascinations for him—her unpredictability.
“Why?”
And there was another, he thought. She asked why nearly as often as he did himself. “Because we’ll be more comfortable in the other room.”
“The living room? We’ll sit on your equipment?”
“Ha-ha. No, there’s the couch, it’s still in there. And we can get a fire going. Are your feet cold? Want some socks?”
“No, I’m fine.” But he wasn’t, she noted. Something was making him jumpy. She pondered it as she followed him back into the living room. Since they had to squeeze their way through to get to the sofa, she doubted he’d used it for its intended purpose since he’d taken over the cottage.
He put the wine on the floor, then began to move stacks of books off the cushions and set them aside. She opened her mouth to protest the trouble, then shut it again with an almost audible snap.
Wine, conversation, a cozy fire. Romantic. Just the sort of romantic setup, she imagined, a man might want when he told a woman he loved her.
Her heart began to beat thickly.
“Is this an important conversation?” she asked him through lips that felt trembly and soft.
“I think so.” He hunkered down in front of the hearth. “I’m a little nervous about it. I didn’t expect to be. I’m not sure how to start.”
“You’ll figure it out.” Her legs wobbled a little, so she sat down.
He set logs, kindling, then glanced back at her. It took her a minute to clue in to his speculative look. What she thought of as his scientist look. “Yes, I could start it from here,” she told him. “But I won’t.”
“Just wondering. Ah, lore holds that making fire is the basic form of magic, usually the first learned and the last lost. Would that be accurate?”
“I guess if you’re talking about a tangible form, one that requires direction, focus, control.” Because she felt hot and itchy, she shifted. “Mia’s better than I am at explaining that sort of thing. I don’t—haven’t been—thinking about it for a long time. She never stops.”
“That’s probably why the control and philosophy come more naturally to her.” He struck a long wooden match, set it against the starter. “Your power’s more—I don’t know—explosive, while hers is more centered.”
He got to his feet as the flames began to lick, rubbed his hands on the hips of his jeans. “I’m trying to think how to approach what I want to tell you.”
A flock of sparrows dive-bombed in her stomach. “You could just say it.”
“I work better with a buildup.” He bent down to pour the wine. “I had it pretty well set in my head before tonight. But, first seeing you, understanding to some extent what you went through, what you feel, then being with you. Ripley.”
He sat beside her, handed her the wine, then touched the back of her hand. “I want you to know that it’s never been like it is with you. Not with anyone else.”
There were tears in her throat, and for the first time in her life she found the taste of them lovely. “It’s different for me.”
He nodded, felt a little hitch in his heart as he took that to mean she experienced intimacy differently because of what she was. “All right. Well, what I’m trying to say here is that because of what’s—” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Because you matter, because what’s between us matters to me, the rest of it is a little more complicated. I guess I’m concerned that, especially after I get into the rest, you might think you matter to me only because of my work. That’s not true, Ripley. You just matter.”<
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Everything smoothed out inside her, like silk brushed with a loving hand. “I don’t think that. I wouldn’t still be here if I did. I wouldn’t want to be here, and I do.”
He took her hand and, kissing her palm, sent a long, slow ripple sliding from her toes to her throat. “Mac . . .” she whispered.
“Originally I was going to tell Mia first, but I want to tell you.”
“I—you—Mia?”
“Theoretically, she’s the main connection. But it’s all linked, anyway. Plus I realized I needed to tell you first.” He kissed her hand again, somewhat absently this time, then sipped his wine like a man wetting his throat before preparing to lecture.
Her lovely mood went ragged at the edges. “I really think you’d better spit it out, Mac.”
“Okay. Each one of the sisters had children. Some stayed on the island, others left, never to return. And others traveled, married, then came back to the island to raise their families. I imagine you know all that, and that their children did the same, and so on down the generations. As a result, some of their descendants have always remained on Three Sisters. But others scattered over the world.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“I’d probably be better off showing you. Hold on a minute.”
She watched him get up, then wind his way through the equipment. Hearing him curse lightly when he stubbed his toe gave her small, but vicious, satisfaction.
The son of a bitch, she thought, rapping her fisted hand on the cushion. He wasn’t about to pledge his undying love, to pour out his heart, to beg her to marry him. He’d circled right back around to his stupid research while she’d been sitting there starry-eyed.
And whose fault is that? she reminded herself. She was the one who’d gotten it all twisted up. She was the one who’d left herself open for the clip on the jaw.She was the stupid one, the one who’d gone all mushy with love and stopped thinking clearly. She would just have to fix that.
Not the love. She was a Todd and accepted that she loved him and always would. But she certainly could get her head on straight again and start thinking.
He was the one meant for her, so he was going to have to deal with it. Dr. MacAllister Booke wasn’t just going to study witches. He was damn well going to marry one. As soon as she figured out how to make him.
“Sorry.” He skirted the equipment more carefully this time. “It wasn’t where I thought I put it. Nothing ever is.” His expression changed with the glittering look she sent him. “Ah . . . Something wrong?”
“No, not a thing.” Playfully, she patted the cushion beside her. “I was just thinking it’s a waste to sit alone in front of the fire.” When he sat, she slid her leg intimately over his. “Much better.”
“Well.” His blood pressure began a steady rise as she leaned in and rubbed her lips over his jaw. “I thought you’d want to read this.”
“Mmm. Why don’t you read it to me?” She nibbled lightly on his earlobe. “You have such a sexy voice.” She took the glasses out of his pocket. “And you know how turned on I get when you wear these.”
He made some sound, then fumbled the glasses on. “These are, ah, photocopied pages. I have the original journal in a vault, because it’s old and fragile. It was written by my great . . . well a number of greats, grandmother. On my mother’s side. The first entry was made September 12, 1758, and written on Three Sisters Island.”
Ripley jerked back. “What did you say?”
“I think you should just listen. ‘Today,’ ” he read, “ ‘my youngest child had a child. They have named him Sebastian, and he is hale and healthy. I am grateful Hester and her fine young man are content to remain on the island, to make their home and family here. My other children are so far away now, and though from time to time I look into the glass to see them, my heart aches that I am unable to touch their faces, or the faces of my grandchildren.
“ ‘I will never leave the island again.
“ ‘This, also, I have seen in the glass. I have time yet on this earth, and I know death is not an end. But when I see this beauty of life in this babe of my babe, I am saddened that I will not be here to see him grown.’ ”
He risked a quick glance at Ripley, saw she was staring at him as if she’d never seen him before. Best to finish it all, he told himself. Just get it all out at one time.
“ ‘I am saddened that my own mother did not choose life,’ ” he continued, “ ‘that she denied herself the joy I have felt this day on seeing a child come from one of my own.
“ ‘Time moves swiftly. What comes from this boy will one day balance the scales, if our children remember and choose wisely.’ ”
Though she’d forgotten she held it, Ripley’s knuckles were white on the stem of her glass. “Where did you get this?”
“Last summer I was going through some boxes in the attic of my parents’ house. I found the journal. I’d been through those boxes before. I used to drive my mother crazy because I was always pawing through the old stuff. I don’t know how I missed it, unless you subscribe to the theory that it wasn’t there for me until last June.”
“June.” When a shudder worked through her, Ripley got to her feet. Nell had come to the island in June—and the three had linked. She sensed that Mac started to speak, and she held up a hand. She needed to focus.
“You’re assuming this was written by an ancestor.”
“Not assuming. I’ve done the genealogy, Ripley. Her name was Constance, and her youngest daughter, Hester, married James MacAllister on May 15, 1757. Their first child, a son, Sebastian Edward MacAllister, was born on Three Sisters Island. He fought in the Revolutionary War. Married, had children, settled in New York. The line runs down through my mother, and into me.”
“You’re telling me you’re a descendant of . . .”
“I have all the documentation. Marriage records, birth records. You could say we’re really distant cousins.”
She stared at him, then turned to stare into the fire. “Why didn’t you tell us when you first came here?”
“Okay, that’s a little sticky.” He wished she would sit back down, cuddle up against him again. But he didn’t think that was going to happen until they got through this. “I thought I might have to use it as an incentive, a kind of bargaining chip.”
“Your ace in the hole,” she remarked.
“Yeah. If Mia put up roadblocks, I figured this information would be a good way to knock some of them down. But she didn’t, and I started to feel uncomfortable about withholding it. I was going to tell her tonight. But I needed to tell you first.”
“Why?”
“Because you matter. I realize you’re ticked off, but—”
She shook her head. “Not really.” Unsettled, she thought, but not angry. “I’d’ve done the same thing to get what I wanted.”
“I didn’t know you’d be here. You know what I mean. You. I didn’t know we’d be involved like this. I’m in what most people consider an illogical field. It’s only more essential to approach it logically. But under it, on a personal level, I’ve been pulled to this place all my life without knowing where it was that I was being pulled. Last summer I finally knew.”
“But you didn’t come.”
“I had to gather data, research, analyze, fact-check.”
“Always the geek.”
She sat on the arm of the couch. It was, he thought, a step. “I guess. I dreamed of the island. Before I knew where it was—or if it was—I dreamed of it. I dreamed of you. All of that was so strong, so much a part of my life, that I needed to approach it the way I’d been trained. As an observer, a recorder.”
“And what do your observations tell you, Dr. Booke?”
“I’ve got reams of data, but I don’t think you’d be interested in reading it.” She shook her head at his questioning look. “Right. But I’ve also got one simple feeling. That I’m where I’m supposed to be. I have a part in this. I just don’t know, yet, exactly what it is.”
She was up again. “A part in what?”
“Balancing the scales.”
“Do you believe, in that detail-filing brain of yours, that this island is doomed to fall into the sea? How can you buy some centuries-old curse? Islands don’t just sink like swamped boats.”
“There are a number of respected scholars and historians who would argue that point, using Atlantis as their example.”
“Of which you would be one,” she said sourly.
“Yeah, but before you get me started on that and I bore you senseless, let me just say that there’s always room for less-than-literal interpretations. A force five hurricane, an earthquake—”
“Earthquake?” She’d felt the earth tremble under her feet. She’dmade the earth tremble. And didn’t want to think of it. “Jesus, Mac!”
“You don’t want me to start on plates and pressure and shifts, do you?”
She opened her mouth, shut it again, and settled for shaking her head.
“Didn’t think so. I’ve got degrees in geology and meteorology, and I can get really boring. Anyway, put simply, Nature’s a bitch and she barely tolerates us.”
She studied him consideringly. Earnest, sexy, quiet. Somehow unshakably confident. Hardly a wonder that she’d fallen for him.
“You know what? I bet you’re not as boring when you get going as you think.”
“You’d lose.” Because he thought she would accept it now, he reached out to take her hand. “Heaven and Earth, Ripley, do more than hold us between them. They expect us to deserve it.”
“And we have to decide how far we’ll go.”
“That pretty much wraps it up.”
She puffed out her cheeks, blew out a breath. “It gets harder to tell myself this is all crap. First Nell, then you, and now this,” she added glancing down at the copies of journal pages. “It starts to feel like somebody’s added bars to a cage, so there’s less and less chance of squeezing out again.”
She frowned down at the pages as another thought sprang into her head. “You’ve got a blood connection to the Sisters.” Her gaze flashed up to his. “Do you have magic?”
“No. Seems like a rip-off to me,” he said. “I may have inherited the interest, the fascination, but none of the practical usage.”
She relaxed and slid down on the seat beside him. “Well, that’s something at least.”
Fifteen
Mia read thefirst journal entry while sitting at her desk in her office. A freezing rain had come in behind the wind and was now battering her window.
She’d dressed in bright, bold blue to dispel the gloom and wore the little stars and moons Nell had given her for her last birthday at her ears. As she read, she toyed with them, sending star colliding with moon.
When she’d finished the entry, she leaned back and studied Mac with amusement. “Well, hello, cousin.”
“I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.”
“I try to take things as they come. May I keep these a while? I’d like to read the rest of them.”
“Sure.”
She set the pages aside, picked up her latté. “It’s all so nice and tidy, isn’t it?”
“I realize it’s quite a coincidence,” he began, but she stopped him.
“Coincidence is often what tidies things up. I can trace my family back to its start on the Sisters. I know some stayed, some scattered. And I remember now, there was a MacAllister branch. The one son, among three daughters. He left the island, survived a war, and began to make his fortune. Odd, isn’t it, that I didn’t think of that until now, or connect it with you? I suppose I wasn’t meant to. Still, I felt something for you. A kinship. That’s nice and tidy, too. And comforting.”
“Comfort wasn’t my first reaction when I put it all together.”
“What was?”
“Excitement. Descended from a witch and a silkie. How cool is that?” He broke off a piece of the applesauce muffin she’d urged on him. “Then I was pretty irked that I didn’t get any power out of the deal.”
