by Nora Roberts
“I’m likely to give you plenty of cause for practice before we’re done.”
“Do you make a habit of annoying people?”
“Oh, aye. I’m a difficult man.” They strolled by the stream, where damp ferns and rich moss spread and foxglove waited to bloom. “My mother says I’m a brooder, and my father that I’ve a head like a rock. They should know.”
“Are they in Ireland?”
“Mmm.” He couldn’t be sure unless he looked—and he damn well didn’t want to know if they were lingering nearby, watching him.
“Do you miss them?”
“I do, yes. But we … keep in touch.” It was the wistfulness in her voice that had him glancing down as they walked into her clearing. “You’re missing your family?”
“I’m feeling guilty because I don’t miss them as much as I probably should. I’ve never been away alone before, and I’ m—”
“Enjoying it,” he finished.
“Enormously.” She laughed a little and fished her keys out of her pocket.
“No shame in that.” He cocked his head as she unlocked the door. “Who are you locking out?”
Her smile was a little sheepish as she stepped inside. “Habit. I’ll put the tea on. I baked some cinnamon rolls earlier, but they’re burned on the bottom. One of my misses.”
“I’ll take one off your hands.” He wandered into the kitchen behind her.
She kept the room neat, he noted, and had added a few touches—the sort he recognized as a kind of nesting. Female making a home. Some pretty twigs speared out of one of Belinda’s colorful bottles and stood in the center of the kitchen table beside a white bowl filled with bright green apples.
He remembered when she’d scouted out the twigs. The wolf had walked with her—and had regally ignored her attempts to teach him to fetch.
He sat comfortably at her table, enjoying the quiet patter of rain. And thought of his mother’s words. No, he wouldn’t look that deeply. He didn’t mind a skim through the thoughts, but that deliberate search was something he considered an abuse of power.
A man who demanded privacy had to respect that of others.
But he would pry without a qualm.
“Your family lives in San Francisco.”
“Hmm. Yes.” She had the kettle on and was choosing from one of Belinda’s delightful collection of teapots. “They’re both college professors. My father chairs the English department at the university.”
“And your mother?” Idly, he slipped the sketch pad out of the bag she had tossed on the table.
“She teaches history.” After a mild debate, she selected a pot shaped like a fairy, with wings for the handle. “They’re brilliant,” she continued, carefully measuring out tea. “And really marvelous instructors. My mother was made assistant dean last year and …”
She trailed off, stunned and just a little horrified when she saw Liam studying her sketch of the wolf.
“These are wonderful.” He didn’t bother to look up, but turned another page and narrowed his eyes in concentration at her drawing of a stand of trees and lacy ferns. Peeking through those airy shapes were the suggestion of wings, of laughing eyes.
She saw the fairies, he thought, and smiled.
“They’re just doodles.” Her fingers itched to snatch the book, close it away, but manners held her back. “It’s just a hobby.”
And when his eyes shot to hers, she nearly shivered.
“Why would you say that, and try to believe it, when you have a talent and a love for it?”
“It’s only something I do in my spare time—now and again.”
He turned the next page. She’d done a study of the cottage, made it look like something out of an old and charming legend with its ring of trees and welcoming porch. “And you’re insulted when someone calls you foolish?” he muttered. “It’s foolish you are if you don’t do what you love instead of wringing your hands about it.”
“That’s a ridiculous thing to say. I do not wring my hands.” She turned back to take the kettle off the bowl and prevent herself from doing exactly that. “It’s a hobby. Most people have one.”
“It’s your gift,” he corrected, “and you’ve been neglecting it.”
“You can’t make a living off of doodles.”
“What does making a living have to do with it?”
His tone was so arrogantly royal, she had to laugh. “Oh, nothing other than food, shelter, responsibility.” She came back to set the pot on the table, turned to fetch cups. “Little things like that from the real world.”
“Then sell your art if you’ve a need to make a living.”
“Nobody’s going to buy pencil sketches from an English teacher.”
“I’ll buy this one.” He rose and held the book open to one of her studies of the wolf. In it, the wolf stood, facing the onlooker with a challenging glint in his eyes exactly like the one in Liam’s. “Name your price.”
“I’m not selling it, and you’re not buying it to make some point.” Refusing to take him seriously, she waved him back. “Sit down and have your tea.”
“Then give me the sketch.” He angled his head as he looked at it again. “I like it. And this one.” He flipped the page to the trees and fern fairies. “I could use something like this in the game I’m doing. I’ve no talent for drawing.”
“Then who does the drawings for your graphics?” she asked, hoping to change the subject, and as a last resort, got out the burned buns.
“Mmm. Different people for different moods.” He sat again, absently took one of the rolls. It was hard and undeniably burned, but if you got past that, it was wonderfully sweet and generously filled with currants.
“So how do you—”
“Do either of your parents draw?” he interrupted.
“No.” Even the thought of it made her chuckle. The idea of either of her smart and busy parents settling down to dream with pencil and paper. “They gave me lessons when I was a child and showed an interest. And my mother actually keeps a sketch I made of the bay, from when I was a teenager, framed and in her office at the university.”
“So she appreciates your talent.”
“She loves her daughter,” Rowan corrected, and poured the tea.
“Then she should expect the daughter she loves to pursue her own gifts, explore her own talents,” he said casually, but continued down the path of her family. “Perhaps one of your grandparents was an artist.”
“No, my paternal grandfather was a teacher. It seems to come naturally through the family. My grandmother on that side was what I suppose you’d call a typical wife and mother of her time. She still keeps a lovely home.”
He struggled against impatience—and against a wince as Rowan added three spoons of sugar to her cup. “And on your mother’s side?”
“Oh, my grandfather’s retired now. They live in San Diego. My grandmother does beautiful needlework, so I suppose that’s a kind of art.” Her lips pursed for a moment as she stirred her tea. “Now that I think of it, her mother—my great-grandmother—painted. We have a couple of her oils. I think my grandmother and her brother have the rest. She was … eccentric,” Rowan said with a grin.
“Was she, now? And how was she eccentric?”
“I never knew her, but children pick up bits and pieces when adults gossip. She read palms and talked to animals—all decidedly against her husband’s wishes. He was, as I recall, a very pragmatic Englishman, and she was a dreamy Irishwoman.”
“So, she was Irish, was she?” Liam felt a low vibration along his spine. A warning, a frisson of power. “And her family name?”
“Ah …” Rowan searched back through her memory. “O’Meara. I’m named for her,” she continued, contentedly drinking tea while everything inside Liam went on alert. “My mother named me for her in what she calls an irresistible flash of sentiment. I suppose that’s why she—my great-grandmother—left me her pendant. It’s a lovely old piece. An oval moonstone in a hammered silver setting.”
In a slow and deliberate move, Liam set aside the tea he could no longer taste. “She was Rowan O’Meara.”
“That’s right. I think there was some wonderfully romantic story—or else I’ve made it up—about how my great-grandfather met her when he was on holiday in Ireland. She was painting on the cliffs—in Clare. That’s odd—I don’t know why I’m so sure it was Clare.”
She puzzled over that for a moment, then shrugged it away. “Anyway, they fell in love on the spot, and she went back to England with him, left her home and her family. Then they immigrated to America, and eventually settled in San Francisco.”
Rowan O’Meara from Clare. By the goddess, fate had twisted around and laid one more trap for him. He picked up his tea again to wet his throat. “My mother’s family name is O’ Meara.” He spoke in a voice that was flat and cool. “Your great-grandmother would be a distant cousin of mine.”
“You’re kidding.” Stunned and delighted, Rowan beamed at him.
“In matters such as family, I try not to joke.”
“That would be amazing. Absolutely. Well, it’s a small world.” She laughed and lifted her cup. “Nice to meet you. Cousin Liam.”
In the name of the goddess, he thought, and fatalistically tapped his cup to hers. The woman currently smiling at him out of those big, beautiful eyes had elfin blood, and didn’t even know it.
“There’s your rainbow, Rowan.” He continued to look at her, but he knew the colored arch had spread in the sky outside. He hadn’t conjured it—but sensed his father had.
“Oh!” She leaped up and, after one quick peek out the window, dashed to the door. “Come out and see. It’s wonderful!”
She raced out, clattered down the steps and looked up.
She’d never seen one so clear, so perfectly defined. Against the watery blue sky, each luminous layer stood out, shimmering at the edges with gold, melting into the next color, from rose to lavender to delicate yellow to candy pink. It spread high, each tip grazing the tops of the trees.
“I’ve never seen one so beautiful.”
When he joined her, he was both disconcerted and touched when she took his hand. But even as he looked up at the arch, he promised himself he wouldn’t fall in love with her unless it was what he wanted.
He wouldn’t be maneuvered, cajoled, seduced. He would make his decision with a clear mind.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t take some of what he wanted in the meantime.
“This means nothing more, and nothing less, than the other,” he said.
“What?”
“This.” He cupped her face, bent down and laid his lips on hers.
Soft as silk, gentle as the rain that was still falling through the pearly sunlight. He would keep it that way, for both of them, and lock down on the needs that were fiercer, more keen than was wise or safe.
Just a taste of that innocence, a glimpse of that tender heart she had no idea how to defend, he told himself. He would do what he could to keep that heart from falling too deeply, or he might be forced to break it.
But when her hand came up to rest on his shoulder, when her mouth yielded so utterly under his, he felt those darker needs clawing for freedom.
She couldn’t stop herself from giving, could hold nothing back against such tenderness. Even when the fingers on her face tightened, his mouth remained soft, easy, as if teaching hers what there was, what there could be.
Instinctively she soothed her hands over the tension of his shoulders and let herself sink into him.
He eased away before desire could outrace reason. When she only stared up at him with those exotic eyes blurred, those soft lips parted, he let her go.
“I guess it’s just, ah, chemistry.” Her heart was pounding in great hammering leaps.
“Chemistry,” he said, “can be dangerous.”
“You can’t make discoveries without some risks.” It should have shocked her, a comment like that coming out of her mouth, such an obvious invitation to continue, to finish. But it seemed natural, and right.
“In this case it’s best you know all the elements you’re dealing with. How much are you willing to find out? I wonder.”
“I came here to find out all sorts of things.” She let out a quiet breath. “I didn’t expect to find you.”
“No. You’re looking for Rowan first.” He hooked his thumbs in his pockets, rocked back on his heels. “If I took you inside, took you here, for that matter, you’d find a part of her quickly enough. Is that what you want?”
“No.” It was another surprise to hear the denial, when every nerve in her body was sizzling. “Because then it would be as you said before. Simple. I’m not looking for simple.”
“Still, I’ll kiss you again, when I’ve a mind to.”
She angled her head, ignored the quick flutter in her belly. “I’ll let you kiss me again, when I’ve a mind to.”
He flashed a grin full of power and appreciation. “You’ve some of that Irishwoman in you, Rowan of the O’Mearas.”
“Maybe I do.” It pleased her enormously just then to think so. “Maybe I’ll have to find more.”
“That you will.” His grin faded. “When you do, I hope you know what to do about it. Pick a day next week and come over. Bring your sketchbook.”
“What for?”
“An idea I have brewing. We’ll see if it suits both of us.”
It couldn’t hurt, she mused. And it would give her some time to think about everything that had happened that morning. “All right, but one day’s the same as the next to me. My schedule’s open these days.”
“You’ll know which day when it comes.” He reached out to toy with the ends of her hair. “So will I.”
“And that, I suppose, is some kind of Irish mysticism.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” he murmured. “A good day to you, Cousin Rowan.”
He gave her hair an absent tug, then turned and walked away.
Well, she thought, as days went, it hadn’t been half bad so far.
* * *
And when he came to her again in dreams, she welcomed him. When his mind touched hers, seduced it, aroused it, she sighed, yielded, offered.
She shivered in pleasure, breathed his name and sensed somehow that he was as vulnerable as she. For just that moment, just that misty space of time, he was tangled with her, helpless not to give what she asked.
If only she knew the question.
Even when her body glowed, her mind soared, part of her fretted.
What should she ask him? What did she need to know?
In the dark, with the half-moon spilling delicate light through her open windows, she woke alone. She burrowed into the pillows and listened with her heart aching to the sound of the wolf calling to the night.
Chapter 6
Rowan watched spring burst into life. And, watching, it seemed something burst into life inside her as well. Daffodils and windflowers shimmered into bloom. The little pear tree outside the kitchen window opened its delicate white blossoms and danced in the wind.
Deep in the forest, the wild azaleas began to show hints of pink and white, and the foxglove grew fat buds. There were others, so many others; she promised herself a book on local wildflowers on her next trip into town. She wanted to know them, learn their habits and their names.
All the while she felt herself begin to bloom. Was there more color in her face? she wondered, more light in her eyes? She knew she smiled more often, enjoyed the sensation of feeling her own lips curve up for no particular reason as she walked or sketched or simply sat on the porch in the warming air to read for hours.
Nights no longer seemed lonely. When the wolf came, she talked to him about whatever was on her mind. When he didn’t, she was content to spend her evening alone.
She wasn’t entirely sure what was different, only that something was. And that there were other, bigger changes yet to come.
Maybe it was the decision she’d made not to go back to San Franc
isco, or to teaching, or the practical apartment minutes from her parents’ home.
She’d been cautious with money, she reminded herself. She’d never felt any particular urge to collect things or fill her closet with clothes or take elaborate vacations. Added to that was the small inheritance that had come down to her through her mother’s family. One she had cautiously invested and watched grow neatly over the last few years.
There was enough to draw on for a down payment for a little house somewhere.
Somewhere quiet and beautiful, she thought now as she stood on the front porch with a cup of steaming coffee to welcome another morning. It had to be a house, she knew. No more apartment living. And somewhere in the country. She wasn’t going to be happy in the bustle and rush of the city ever again. She’d have a garden she planted herself—once she learned how—and maybe a little creek or pond.
It had to be close enough to the sea that she could walk to it, hear its song at night as she drifted toward sleep.
Maybe, just maybe, on that next trip to town she’d visit a Realtor. Just to see what was available.
It was such a big step—choosing a spot, buying a house—furnishing it, maintaining it. She caught herself winding the tip of her braid around her finger and deliberately dropped her hand. She was ready to make that step. She would make it.
And she’d find work, the kind that satisfied her. She didn’t need a great deal of money. She’d be blissfully content puttering around some little cottage of her own, doing the painting, the repairs, watching her garden grow.
If she found something nearby, she wouldn’t have to leave the wolf.
Or Liam.
With that thought, she shook her head. No, she couldn’t add Liam into the equation, or make him part of the reason she was considering settling in the area. He was his own man, and would come and go when and where he pleased.
Just like the wolf, she realized, and sighed. Neither one of them was hers, after all. They were both loners, both beautiful creatures who belonged to no one. And who’d come into her life—helped change it in some ways, she supposed. Though the biggest changes were up to her.
It seemed that after three weeks in the little cabin in the clearing, she was ready to make them. Not just drifting anymore, she thought. Not just wondering. Time to take definite steps.
The subtle tug at her mind had her eyes narrowing, her head angling as if to hear something soft whispered in the distance. It was almost as if she could hear her name, quietly called.
He’d said to come to him, she remembered. That she’d know when the time was right. Well, there was no time like the present, no better time than when she was in such a decisive mood. And after the visit, she’d drive into town and see that Realtor.
* * *
He knew she was coming. He’d been careful to keep his contact with her limited over the past several days. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to stay away completely. He did worry about her just a bit, thinking of her alone and more out of her element than she knew.
But it was easy enough to check up on her, to walk to her door and have her open it for him. He could hardly deny he enjoyed the way she welcomed him, bending down to stroke his head and back or nuzzle her face against his throat.
She had no fear of the wolf, he mused. He made her wary only when he was a man.
But she was coming to the man, and would have to deal with him. He thought his plan a good one, for both of them. One that would give her the opportunity to explore her own talents—and would give each of them time to learn more about the other.
He wouldn’t touch her again until they did. He’d promised himself that. It was too difficult to sample and not take fully. And on those nights he allowed himself to take her with his mind, he left her glowing and satisfied. And left himself oddly unfulfilled.
Still, it was preparing her for him, for the night when he would make those half dreams full reality. For the night when it was his hands and not his mind on her.
The thought of it had his stomach knotting, his muscles bunching tight. Infuriated with the reaction, he ordered his mind to clear, his body to relax.
