Spellbinder: A Love Story With Magical Interruptions

by Melanie Rawn

  “Dad called me the other day—wants me to explain in person. All the shit he heard on the news —” Again he shrugged. “I wanted to get it all out of the way before you came home, so I told Dad I’d be over this afternoon. I could cancel —”

  “No, you can’t. Go. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  “Now, that’s gotta be the nicest thing I’ve heard in three weeks.”

  Taking her cue from his deliberately lighter tone, she said, “Of course, I’ll probably be in no mood to pay attention to you. I haven’t watched Gladiator in forever and I need my Russell Crowe fix.”

  He pulled a face. “What do women see in that guy?”

  Oh, yeah—she’d picked just the right thing to say. As she got out of the tub and reached for a towel, she replied, “Not much. He’s just the dictionary definition of‘gorgeous,’ is all.”

  “And I’m not?” he demanded, pretending to be hurt.

  She left off rubbing her hair dry long enough to peer at him from under the towel. “Hey, do I complain when you ogle those Baywatch girls?”

  With great and injured dignity he announced, “I. Do. Not. Ogle.”

  “You positively drool when that Pamela person bounces across the screen.”

  “I don’t ‘drool,’ either. Anyway, it’s different, he said with that air of genetic masculine superiority that punched every button she possessed.”Guys look at girls. We can’t help it.”

  “No shit, Sherlock! I got news for you—girls look at guys, too. And we can’t help it any more than you can.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a difference,” he insisted stubbornly. “There’s babes, and chicks, and girls, and women—and then there’s ladies.”

  “Aw, gee, let me guess—in descending order of breast size.” Holly reached down and rumpled his hair. “What do you want for dinner when you get home?”

  “Anything, as long as you don’t cook it.”

  AFTER HE WAS GONE—taking with him the wool scarf in the Lachlan set she’d picked up in Dublin for his father (she wanted to soften him up)—she unpacked. Then she sorted presents, among them three huge books on the collections of the Uffizi, the Pitti, and the Vatican for Evan, just as he’d asked. One of these days, she mused, she’d take him to every major museum in Europe. She could just see him wandering in a wide-eyed, glutted daze around the Prado, the Louvre … .

  Eventually she sought the deeply soothing anarchy of her office. She sat at the computer, intending to read e-mail—but somehow couldn’t make her fingers type the password. Instead, she picked up the phone and punched in a number.

  A half-hour later, shaken and furious and sickened, she called up a manuscript template on the computer and started writing.

  It was nearly three in the afternoon before she finished. She could barely shift her shoulders, her feet were almost numb, and the small of her back ached ferociously. Experience told her not to move too suddenly or too soon; circulation had to be restored first. So she leaned slowly back in her chair, flexed her neck warily, and tried to tell herself she’d dumped all her anger into the story.

  Not quite all.

  How could a man who probed other people’s lives and analyzed — anticipated—their actions know so little about his own heart? But was it any wonder he’d been scared to look? Abused children were shrewdly observant from an early age. For Evan, a child’s terror of examining a revered father’s failings had transmuted into a man’s fear of turning those instinctive skills of analysis on himself. Afraid, without even knowing it, of what he might find inside.

  Holly’s own past held no darknesses even remotely comparable. She’d been too young when her parents died to remember them; grief was something learned as she grew older and understood what had happened. For the rest — Aunt Lulah had raised her in the old farmhouse in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, ten miles outside a town where whole years could go by without Cousin Jesse—Sheriff McNichol—dealing with anything more serious than weekend rowdies and Old Man McCraw’s deer hunting off-season.

  Evan’s life should have seemed utterly alien to her. And yet she understood. Perhaps because it was him; probably because she had spent her childhood imagining, and her adulthood creating, worlds and people and events completely removed from rural Virginia. Imagining was her job—though she would have given much to be unable to imagine this.

  It should have ripped him apart long ago.

  You were supposed to love your mother. Even if you were scared of her, even if she was a drunk who spread her legs for any man who’d have her, including the parish priest — you weren’t supposed to hate her. It was forbidden. Evil.

  And your father—you could worship him, you had to worship him, because if he wasn’t one-step-from-God-perfect, then it meant that he cared so little about his own kids (about you) that he wouldn’t do anything—

  Holly shook her head, regretting it as neck muscles twinged. She needed to distance herself from an acute need to vent her rage on the only object left alive who deserved it: Daniel Patrick Lachlan. She knew she’d have to meet him soon. Before then, she’d have to bury her anger deep and forget where she put the shovel. Evan would scarcely appreciate it if his fiancée belted his father a good one in the jaw.

  Nine

  EVAN GOT BACK TO HOLLY’S at five, sodden with exhaustion. Although visits to his father’s house usually did that to him, this had been almost as bad as the night his mother died. Using his key, he let himself into the foyer and yelled for Holly.

  No answer.

  She wasn’t in the living room, Show Office, or real office. She was sprawled across the bed, sound asleep. He leaned over, kissed her forehead lightly, and settled onto the chaise where he could watch over her.

  After a while, during which he dozed a bit, she became aware that she was looking him over. “Everything’s right where you left it,” he said.

  “It better be. How’s your father? Everything all right?”

  “Yeah. He still drinks too much, but the doctors say he’s got a cast-iron liver.” He paused. “Y’know, it’s been ten years, but he still misses Mom. I guess they loved each other in their way. It’s just not any way I ever understood.”

  “You’re a completely different person.”

  “I’m a combination of them both. That’s DNA, babe.”

  She was quiet for a moment, then leaned over and switched on the bedside lamp. “My father didn’t look anything like his own father, but the minute I saw that photo of great-grandfather McClure, it was Papa down to the cleft chin. Things skip generations, Evan. Character traits as well as looks.”

  “Let’s hope our kids skip my parents’ generation completely.”

  “Umm … speaking of kids … .” Holly pulled in a deep breath. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m thirty-six. I can’t give you a dozen children. If you want more than a couple, you’ll have to find yourself some twenty-three-year-old.”

  “Did I say I wanted a dozen kids? Or a twenty-three-year-old? One boy, one girl—that’s my idea of a perfect family.”

  She exhaled in relief. “Not that I really thought you’d keep me barefoot and pregnant until my ovaries give out, but you never can tell with people sometimes. Are we going to decide their names now, too?”

  “You name the girl, I’ll name the boy.”

  “Fair enough. Speaking of names—I hope you don’t mind too much, but professionally I have to keep McClure.”

  “I know. It’s okay. That’s just good business.” He shot her a sideways smile. “God forbid your books should stop selling because nobody can find ’em.”

  “I have to stay McClure in legal matters, too. Everybody can call me ‘Mrs. Lachlan’ — I just won’t be Holly Lachlan officially—I mean, I’ll be Holly McClure Lachlan, but—oh, damn, this isn’t coming out right.”

  “You bet it ain’t,” he said through his teeth. “My wife will have my name. And so will my kids. I don’t care what you call yourself on your book covers, but you damned well better sign your na
me ‘Lachlan’ everywhere else or—”

  “Or what? Evan, be reasonable. Everything is in my name. I get paid in my name. I get taved in my name. Changing it all over to ‘Lachlan’ —”

  “—is exactly what you’re gonna do. Don’t you have a lawyer for that kind of stuff? Make him earn his retainer.”

  “He’s a she, and that’s not the point. My agent also has legal things to deal with. And he said long ago that unless there’s a pre-nup, he’ll fire me as a client.”

  “You want me to sign some goddamned paper that says I won’t rip you off if we get divorced?”

  “I’m perfectly aware that you’d rather have some waitress or secretary who makes half what you do, but that’s not the way things are.”

  “You sayin’ I should be grateful you don’t need me for a meal ticket?”

  “I’m saying shut up while I explain. I have stocks. I have property. I have a literary estate that’ll go on earning money for my heirs for seventy-fiveyears after I’m dead. All the pre-nup says is that what’s mine is my kids’.”

  He frowned, still suspicious. “Nothin’ about payin’ me off, or if we stay married for at least five years and then get divorced I get more money?”

  “Hell, no!” she said indignantly. “You make a good living—you can damned well support yourself, Lachlan. I’m not paying you a goddamned dime in alimony.”

  “Just so it’s clear I don’t want your fucking money.”

  “My hero,” she snapped. “Don’t do me any favors.”

  They glared at each other for a few more seconds—until Holly gave an unladylike snort. “This is perfect. We’re not even married yet and we’re arguing about the divorce.”

  Grudgingly he admitted, “I just didn’t think getting married would be so complicated. And that reminds me — how big is this shindig gonna be? Are you gonna go all formal on me? Big gown, a hundred yards of train, all like that?”

  “You’re just scared I’ll make you dress up in a morning coat.”

  “Careful, lady, or I’ll show up in a ruffled purple shirt and a Lachlan hunting-plaid jacket.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re much too vain not to want to look shatteringly gorgeous on your wedding day.”

  Rising, she grabbed clothes, and he grinned at the hip-twist it took her to get into tight jeans. “Now I know where all that Italian food went.”

  “It’s only three pounds—okay, five. And stop acting so damned superior—we’ve both got big Irish butts. You do this same thing, I’ve watched you.”

  “Yeah, but it’s cuter when you do it.” He rose, crossed lazily to her, and placed his hands around her ass, pulling her against him. “And I happen to like your Irish butt.”

  “We could go psychotically ethnic with the wedding, y’know,” she laughed. “Harp, shamrocks, green beer and soda bread at the reception—”

  “Dress up a few cousins as leprechauns instead of flower girls—”

  “I draw the line at corned beef for three hundred of our nearest and dearest.”

  “I thought you wanted small,” he began, then realized what she was really saying. “You’re — Holly, you’re not payin’ for this.”

  “Bride’s side always does. I’m the bride.” She gave a start. “I’m the bride. Tell you what—you buy the honeymoon.”

  “Ireland? Hawaii?” He grinned. “Hershey, Pennsylvania?”

  “I tell you here and now, Lachlan, you want a Hawaiian honeymoon, you’ll spend it alone. After one day I’d be burned to a crisp—”

  “Hey, I think you’d look cute with freckles all over your ass.”

  “O light of my eyes and pulse of my heart, what part of ‘I’m not going to Hawaii’ are you not understanding?”

  “Okay, okay. No Hawaii.” He sighed, as if regretting the thousands it would’ve cost him. “Maybe we should go someplace you’ve never been. Someplace just for us.” When she nodded, he asked, “So where haven’t you been?”

  She thought for a while. “Antarctica.”

  “Oh, terrific. Just you and me and the penguins, freezin’ our asses off.”

  “I didn’t say I want to go there, just that I’ve never been.”

  With vast patience, he asked, “So where d’you want to go?” Praying it wouldn’t be someplace outrageously expensive. It hit him then, for the first time, that he didn’t have to worry about it. Ever again. He was marrying Money.

  No, he told himself firmly, he was marrying Holly. Who happened to have money. And who evidently believed in What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine. Which was nice, but would have been better if what was his didn’t fall so far short of what was hers—

  “Charleston,” she said suddenly. “It’s close, it’s beautiful, it’s romantic — all those big old antebellum mansions—and the food’s fantastic. Ah’m a Suthanah, honey-lamb,” she drawled with a grin. “Even though Ah am marryin’ a Yankee.”

  “Mansions,” he said, and shook his head. “You want to go on a honeymoon to look at mansions?”

  “Some of them are bed-and-breakfasts now.”

  “That’s more like it. Tell me about the ‘bed’ part.”

  “How about a four-poster, the kind you need a stepladder to climb into? No, really, Evan, the houses are gorgeous. Miles of lawn, Spanish moss dripping from the oaks, us guzzling mint juleps on the balcony —” She stopped, seeing his expression. “You’ve never had a julep? That’s immoral! And you fixin’ to marry a Virginian! That settles it. We absolutely have to go South on our honeymoon.”

  “Because you want to play Scarlett O’Hara. Okay, Charleston it is.” He paused for effect. “But—frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

  Holly buried her face in her hands and groaned. Shamelessly satisfied with himself, he ambled into the kitchen to see what there might be to eat. He was just putting eggs back in the fridge when Holly spoke behind him.

  “Are you going to tell me why visiting your father upset you so much?”

  He swung around, nearly dropping the carton. His instinctive reaction was to snarl that it was none of her damned business. The part of him that already felt married made him bite his tongue. After a moment he shrugged.

  “Happens whenever I go over there. Every so often I see my old man in the mirror. And sometimes it scares the crap out of me. Mostly I don’t mind. He was a good cop. An honest cop. I think what defeated him was the heart attack, when he couldn’t work anymore. His job was his whole life. Even with a wife and kids to come home to—but we didn’t see much of him. We weren’t even half his life.”

  “We all only have so much to give to anything,” she said thoughtfully. “There’ve been times when I gave it all to my work—for years at a stretch, in fact.” She tapped a finger on his wrist. “But in case you need reminding, you’ve got me to come home to. I stake my claim to half your life.”

  “‘Hold Fast’?” He smiled whimsically.

  “You got it, lover-man.”

  Gratitude stung his eyes, the back of his throat. He turned his face from her before she could see his expression. “Anybody call while I was out?”

  “Pete. Very apologetic, but Elias needs your notes on the Croft case Monday morning.”

  “That son of a bitch! Croft, not Elias — no, Elias, too.”

  “Sometimes I’m not especially fond of His Honor, either,” she admitted. “But I’d like to invite him and Susannah over to dinner one of these days. It’d be nice if we could all hold a polite, civilized conversation over Isabella’s pot roast.”

  “I’m always perfectly polite.”

  “Yeah, and Elvis is gonna sing at our wedding. Come on, Evan.”

  “Okay, okay,” he groused. “Jesus, Holly, you’re already starting to sound like a wife.”

  She made a face at him. “Who’s Croft?”

  “Insider trading. He thinks he’s gonna get three years in Club Fed to work on his tennis game. The only time I really like Bradshaw is when he’s handing down a sentence.”

&nb
sp; Holly’s lips twisted wryly. “I’ve heard he’s good at that.”

  After dinner, he worked for an hour, formalizing his scribbled notes, then sat back, gazing idly at the icons on her desktop. Schedules, tax records, calendar, research, rough drafts of books, short stories, articles — he and she were alike in that they simultaneously juggled seven or eight projects in the normal course of things. There were a couple of unfamiliar icons that must be new projects—including one titled Evan. He opened it, thinking it was a note—she did that sometimes, wrote him letters which she then e-mailed to the office or his apartment. The ones that arrived at work were invariably erotic—Holly’s idea of fun, the sadistic bitch.

  Evan was not a letter. It was a short story. He couldn’t help but read, and with the first sentence his heart started thudding with sick dread.

  It was between Hallowe’en and his birthday that the photographs changed.

  Twelve-year-old boy pretending to be a pirate: bootblack for a beard, his mother’s gold hoop earring screwed precarriously to one lobe, rubber knife in his belt, blue bandanna wrapping the mop of thick dark hair. His pose was comically fierce, laughing, excited, a party coming up Tonight with girls—his first real party, though strictly chaperoned. He was very young, and trying to be older; the last of boyhood was soft in his face, with hints in his eyes of tbe man he would become. And a worthy manhood it would be: the face held a promise of great strength and greater tenderness that lacked only the learning years of adolescence to become self-knowledge and perhaps even wisdom.

  But at thirteen, mere weeks later, he didn’t have to try to look older. His face was thinner, his jaw longer, the round softness of childhood gone—and too quickly, much too quickly for the days separating that Hallowe’en from his birthday. All the laughter .had vanished, though the tenderness of the mouth lingered—but it was a wounded tenderness now. He was older than those scant weeks should account for, but without wisdom, without real knowledge of self. Those required time, and the years that should have separated this grim boy from the grinning pirate had been denied him. He had been forced into growing older.