Honest Illusions

by Nora Roberts

  “Mouse? Married?” Luke gave a quick spontaneous laugh that had tears swimming in Lily’s eyes. “No shit? How did that happen?”

  “Alice came to—to work for us,” Lily said carefully. It wouldn’t do to say that Roxanne had hired her as Nathaniel’s nanny. “She’s bright and sweet, and she fell head over heels for Mouse. It took her two years to wear him down. I don’t know how many hours she spent helping him tinker with engines.”

  “I’m going to have to meet her.” Silence fell, taunting him. “Can you tell me about Max?”

  “He won’t get better.” Lily lifted her coffee again. “He’s gone someplace none of us can reach him. We didn’t—we couldn’t put him in a hospital so we’ve arranged for home care. He can’t do anything for himself. That’s the worst, to see him so helpless. It’s hard on Roxanne.”

  “What about you?”

  Lily pressed her lips together. When she spoke, her voice was strong and steady. “Max is gone. I can look into his eyes, and there’s no Max there. Oh, I still sit with his body, and feed it or clean it, but everything he was has already died. His body’s just waiting to catch up. So it’s easier for me. I’ve done my grieving.”

  “I need to see him, Lily.” He wanted to reach out. His fingers were inches from touching hers before he curled them away. “I know Roxanne might object, but I need to see him.”

  “He asked for you, dozens of times.” There was accusation mixed with the hurt. She couldn’t prevent either. “He’d forget that you weren’t there, and he’d ask for you.”

  “I’m sorry.” It seemed a pitiful response.

  “How could you do it, Luke? How could you leave without a word and break so many hearts?” When he only shook his head, she looked away. “Now I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I don’t have any right to question you. You were always free to come and go as you pleased.”

  “Direct hit,” he murmured. “Much more accurate than anything Rox threw at me last night.”

  “You devastated her.” Lily hadn’t known the hot anger was trapped inside until it burst free. “She loved you, since she was a little girl. She trusted you. We all did. We thought something terrible had happened to you. Until Roxanne came back from Mexico we were sure of it.”

  “Wait.” He gripped her hand, holding tight. “She went to Mexico?”

  “She tracked you there. Mouse went with her. You have no idea what shape she was in.” Frightened, pregnant, heartsick. Lily shook her hand free and rose. Her temper, always so even, was all the more effective when it spiked. “She looked for you, afraid you were dead or sick or God knows. Then she found your plane and the man you’d sold it to. And she knew you didn’t want her to find you. Damn you, I didn’t think she’d ever get over it.” She shoved the chair against the table hard enough to make china rattle. “Tell me you had amnesia. Tell me you got hit on the head and forgot us, forgot everything. Can you tell me that?”

  “No.”

  She was crying now, big silent tears coursing down her face while he looked on miserably.

  “I can’t tell you that, and I can’t ask you to forgive me. I can only tell you that I did what I thought was best for everyone. I didn’t see a choice,”

  “You didn’t see a choice? You couldn’t see your way clear to letting us know you were alive?”

  “No.” He picked up a napkin and stood to dab at her tears. “I thought about you every day. In the first year I’d wake up at night thinking I was home, then it would hit me. I’d reach for a bottle instead of Roxanne. I might as well have been dead. I wish I could have forgotten, that I could have stopped needing my family.” He balled the napkin in his fist as his voice thickened. “I was twelve before I found my mother. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life without her. Tell me what I need to do to convince you to give me another chance.”

  For Lily love was a fluid thing. No matter how strong the dam, it would always flow free. She did the only thing she could do. She opened her arms and took him into them, rocking and stroking when he buried his face in her hair.

  “You’re home now,” she murmured. “That’s what matters.”

  And it was all there, just where he had left it. The softness, the sweetness, the strength. Emotions rose up in him like a river at flood point. He could only cling. “I missed you. God, I missed you.”

  “I know.” She lowered into a chair and let him lay his head in her lap. “I didn’t mean to yell at you, sweetie.”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to see me.” He straightened so that he could touch a hand to her cheek, feel that creamy skin. “I never deserved you.”

  “That’s silly. Most people would say we deserved each other.” She gave a watery chuckle and hugged him hard. “You’ll tell me about it sometime soon, won’t you?”

  “Whenever you want.”

  “Later. I just want to spend some time looking at you.” Sniffling, she held him at arm’s length, studying his face with a mother’s eagle eye. “Well, you don’t look any the worse for wear.” She smoothed the faint lines at the corner of his eyes with her fingertips. “You look a little thinner maybe, a little tougher.” With a sigh, she pressed a kiss to his cheek, then fussed the imprint of her lipstick away with her thumb. “You were the most beautiful little boy I’d ever seen.” When he winced, she laughed. “Do you still have magic?”

  “It kept me alive.” He took both of her hands and pressed them to his lips. Shame and simple gratitude ran riot through him. He’d tried to prepare for her anger, for the chill of her resentment, even her disinterest. But he had no defense against the constancy of her love. “You were beautiful last night. Watching you and Rox onstage, it was like the years between never happened.”

  “But they did.”

  “Yes, they did.” He stood then, but kept her hand in his. “I don’t have an incantation to make them disappear. But there are things I can do that might set it right.”

  “You still love her.”

  When he only shrugged, she smiled, rose and cupped his face in her hands. “You still love her,” she repeated. “But you’ll have to have more than a pocketful of tricks to win her back. She’s not a pushover like me.”

  His mouth grimmed. “I can push hard.”

  With a sigh, Lily shook her head. “Then she’ll just push back. Max would say you catch more flies with honey than with a rolled up newspaper. Take it from me, a woman—even a stubborn one—likes to be wooed.” He only snorted, but Lily pressed on. “I don’t just mean flowers and music, honey. It’s a kind of attitude. Roxy needs to be challenged, but she also needs to be courted.”

  “If I got down on one knee, she’d plant a foot in my face.”

  Absolutely, Lily thought, but thought it politic not to agree. “I didn’t say it would be easy. Don’t give up on her, Luke. She needs you more than you could possibly understand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just don’t give up.”

  Thoughtfully, he drew Lily back into his arms. “That’s not the kind of mistake I’d make twice. I’ll do what needs to be done, Lily.” His eyes darkened as he stared at something hateful only he could see. “There are scores to settle.”

  “And there was a big dog in the park. A gold one. He peed on all the trees.”

  Roxanne cuddled Nate in her lap, laughing as he recounted his adventures of the morning. “All of them?”

  “Maybe a hundred.” He looked soulfully into his mother’s face with his father’s eyes. “Can I have a dog? I’d teach him to sit and shake hands and play dead.”

  “And pee on trees?”

  “Uh-huh.” He grinned, turning in her lap to wrap his arms around her neck. Oh, he knew how to charm, she thought. He’d been his father’s child since his first toothless grin. “I want a big one. A big boy one. His name’s gonna be Mike.”

  “Since he’s already got a name, I suppose we’ll have to look into it.” She twirled one of Nate’s glossy curls around her finger. Much like, she thought wryly, her s
on twirled her heart around his. “How much ice cream did you eat?”

  His eyes widened. “How come you know I had ice cream?”

  There was a telltale smear of chocolate on his shirt and a suspicious stickiness on his fingers. But Roxanne knew better than to use such pedestrian clues. “Because mothers know all and see all, especially when they’re magicians too.”

  His lip poked out as he considered. “How come I can never see the eyes in back of your head?”

  “Nate, Nate, Nate,” she sighed lustily. “Haven’t I told you they’re invisible eyes?”

  Abruptly she dragged him up into her arms, holding him tight with her eyes squeezed shut against tears. She couldn’t say why she felt like weeping, didn’t want to consider the reasons. All that mattered was that she had her child safe in her arms.

  “Better go wash your hands, Nate the Great.” Her voice was shaky, but muffled against his neck. “I’ve got to get to my appointment.”

  “You said we were going to the zoo.”

  “And we will.” She kissed him, set him on his short, sturdy legs. “I’ll be back in an hour, then we’ll go see how many monkeys look just like you.”

  He raced off, laughing. Roxanne stooped to gather the miniature cars, plastic men and picture books that were scattered over the rug. “Alice? I’m heading out. Be back in an hour.”

  “Take your time,” Alice sang back and made Roxanne smile.

  Soft-voiced, reliable, unshakable Alice, she thought. Lord knew she would never have been able to continue her work without the steady support of the ethereal Alice.

  And to think she’d nearly turned Alice aside because of her frail appearance and whispery voice. Yet out of the legion of prospective nannies she’d interviewed, it had been Alice who had convinced Roxanne that Nathaniel would be safe and happy in her care.

  There had been something about her eyes, Roxanne thought now as she walked into the hallway. That pale, almost translucent gray and the quiet kindness in them. Her practical nature had nearly swayed her toward the more prim and experienced applicants, but Nate had smiled at Alice from his crib, and that had been that.

  Roxanne still wondered who had done the hiring. Now Alice was family. That single smile from a six-month-old infant had added one more link to the Nouvelle chain.

  Roxanne chose the stairs and walked one flight down to face another link. The missing link, she thought nastily and had her shoulders braced when she rapped on Luke’s door.

  “Prompt as always,” Luke commented when he opened the door.

  “I only have an hour, so let’s get down to business.” She sailed past him, leaving a faint trace of wildflowers to torment his system.

  “Hot date?”

  She thought of her son and smiled. “Yes, and I don’t like to keep him waiting.” She chose a chair, sat and crossed her legs. “Let’s hear the setup, Callahan.”

  “Whatever you say, Nouvelle.” He saw her lips twitch, but she conquered the smile quickly. “Want some wine before lunch?”

  “No wine, no lunch.” She gestured, a regal flick of the wrist. “Talk.”

  “Tell me how you played the press conference.”

  “Where you’re concerned?” Arching a brow, she sat back. “I told them I was bringing someone into the act who would dazzle them. A sorcerer who’d been traveling the world learning the secrets of the Mayans, the mysteries of the Aztecs and the magic of the Druids.” She smiled faintly. “I hope you’re up to the hype.”

  “I can handle it.” He picked up a pair of steel handcuffs from the coffee table and toyed with them as he spoke. “You weren’t all that far off. I learned a number of things.”

  “Such as?” she asked when he handed her the cuffs for inspection.

  “How to walk through walls, vanish an elephant, climb a pillar of smoke. In Bangkok I escaped from a trunk studded with nails. And walked off with a ruby as big as your thumb. In Cairo it was a glass box dropped into the Nile—and emeralds almost as green as your eyes.”

  “Fascinating,” she said and yawned deliberately as she passed him the cuffs. She’d found no secret catch.

  “I spent nearly a year in Ireland, in haunted castles and smoky pubs. I found something there I’d never found anywhere else.”

  “Which was?”

  “You could call it my soul.” He watched her as he snapped the cuffs to his wrists. “I recognized Ireland, the hills, the towns, even the air. The only other place I’ve been that pulled me that way was New Orleans.” He tugged his wrists apart so that the metal snapped. “But that might have been because you were there. I’d take you to Ireland, Rox.” His voice had softened, like silk just stroked. “I imagined you there, imagined making love to you in one of those cool, green fields with the mist rising all around like witch smoke and the sound of harp strings sobbing on the air.”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off his, or the image he so skillfully invoked. His magic was such that she could see them, tumbled on the grass, blanketed in fog. She could all but feel his hands on her skin, warming it, softening it as those old needs crackled like dried wood to a hot flame.

  She dug her nails hard into her palms, then tore her eyes away. “It’s a good line, Callahan. Very smooth.” Steadier, she stared back at him. “Try it on someone who doesn’t know you.”

  “You’re a hard woman, Roxy.” He held the cuffs up by one end and dropped them into her lap. There was a small sense of satisfaction when she smiled.

  “You haven’t lost your touch here, either, I see. Odd though. If you’ve been plying your trade so successfully all these years, why didn’t I hear about you?”

  “I imagine you did.” He rose to answer the knock on the door and spoke casually back to her. “You’d have heard of the Phantom.”

  “The—” She bit her tongue as the room-service waiter wheeled in a tray. Rubbing her palms together she waited while lunch was set up and Luke signed the check. Naturally, she’d heard of the Phantom, the strange, publicity-shy magician who appeared in all corners of the world, then disappeared again.

  “I ordered for you,” Luke said as he took a seat at the table. “I think I remembered what you like.”

  “I told you I don’t have time for lunch.” But curiosity had her wandering over. Barbecued chicken wings. Her lips thinned even as her heartbeat thickened. She wondered how he’d managed it when she knew very well it wasn’t on the hotel’s menu. “I lost my taste for them,” she said and would have turned away but he grabbed her hand.

  “Let’s be civilized, Rox.” He flicked a rose out of the air, offered it.

  She took the bud, but refused to be charmed. “This is as good as it gets.”

  “If you won’t eat with me, I’m going to think it’s because the menu reminds you of us. And I’m going to think you’re still in love with me.”

  She wrenched away, tossing the rosebud onto the table. Without bothering to sit, she snatched up a piece of chicken and bit in. “Satisfied?”

  “That was never a problem with us.” Grinning, he handed her a napkin. “You’ll make less of a mess if you sit.” He lifted his hands. “Relax. Nothing up my sleeve.”

  She sat and began to wipe sauce from her fingers. “So, you worked as the Phantom. I wasn’t sure he really existed.”

  “That was the beauty.” Luke settled back, cocking one foot on his knee. “I wore a mask, did the gig, took a bit extra if something appealed and moved on.”

  “In other words . . .” The sauce was damn good. She licked a bit from her thumb. “You went on the grift.”

  That put the fire in his eyes and, she hoped, in his gut. He shot her a look that could have smelted iron. “It wasn’t grifting.” Though he had made a few dollars early on with Three Card Monte and the Cups and Balls. “It was touring.”

  She gave an unladylike snort and went back to her chicken. “Right. Now you’ve decided you’re ready for the big time again.”

  “I’ve always been ready for the big time.” His only outward s
ign of annoyance was the tapping of his fingers on his ankles. But she knew him, knew him well, and was delighted to have scored a hit. “You don’t want any explanations on where I went or why, so let’s just say I was on sabbatical.”

  “Great word, sabbatical. Covers so much ground. Okay, Callahan, your sabbatical’s over. What’s the deal?”

  “The three gigs hinge together.” He poured the golden wine for himself and left her glass empty. “The performance, the auction and the hit. All the same weekend.”

  She raised her brows. It was the only reaction she chose to give him. “Ambitious, aren’t we?”

  “Good is what I am, Rox.” The smile was a dare, the sort Lucifer might have aimed toward heaven. “As good as ever, maybe better.”

  “And as self-effacing.”

  “Modesty’s like tact. It’s for wimps. The performance is the diversion for the auction.” He showed his empty palm, then turned his hand and danced a Russian ruble along his fingers. “The auction draws the eye from the job at Wyatt’s.” The ruble vanished. After snapping his fingers, he poured three coins into her glass.

  “An old trick, Callahan.” Willing to play, she dumped the coins into her hand. “As cheap as talk.” With a flourish, she turned her palm up to show that the coins had turned into small silver balls. “This doesn’t impress.”