Once Upon a Star

by Nora Roberts

  She was a joy to watch. And when, he wondered, had he stopped letting joy into his life? The shadow of his fate had grown longer with each passing year. He’d huddled under it, he thought now, telling himself he was standing clear.

  He had let no one touch him, let nothing be important to him but his work. He had estranged himself from his father and his home. Those had been his choices, and his right. Now, watching Allena play tug-of-war with the big dog in a yard filled with sun and sailing white sheets, he wondered for the first time what he’d missed along the way.

  And still, whatever he’d missed, she was here.

  The pendant was here.

  The solstice was closing in.

  He could refuse it. He could deny it. However much this woman called to his blood, he would, at the end of that longest day, determine his own fate.

  It would not be magic that forced his destiny, but his own will.

  He saw Allena yank, Hugh release. She stumbled back, clutching something to her chest, then landed hard on her back. Conal was out the door and across the yard in a single skipping heartbeat.

  “Are you hurt?” He issued one sharp order to the dog in Gaelic that had Hugh hanging his head.

  “Of course not.” She started to sit up, but Conal was already gathering her, stroking, murmuring something in Gaelic that sounded lovely. Loving. Her heart did one long, slow cartwheel. “Conal.”

  “The damn dog probably outweighs you, and you’ve bones like a bird.”

  “We were just playing. There, now, you’ve hurt Hugh’s feelings. Come here, baby, it’s okay.”

  While Conal sat back on his heels and scowled, she hugged and cuddled the dog. “It’s all right. He didn’t mean it, whatever it was. Did you, Conal?”

  Conal caught the sidelong glance the dog sent him, and had to call it smug. “I did.”

  She only laughed and kissed Hugh’s nose. “Such a smart dog, such a good dog,” she crooned. “He found my bag and brought it home. I, on the other hand, am a moron. I forgot all about it.”

  Conal studied the oversized purse. It was wet, filthy, and now riddled with teeth marks. That didn’t seem to bother her a bit. “It’s taken a beating.”

  “I must’ve dropped it in the storm. Everything’s in here. My passport, my credit cards, my ticket. My makeup.” She hugged the bag, thrilled to have her lipstick back. “Oh, and dozens of things. Including my copy of Margaret’s itinerary. Do you think the phone’s working now?”

  Without waiting for him to answer, she leaped up. “I can call her hotel, let her know I’m all right. She must be frantic.”

  She dashed into the house, clutching the bag, and Conal stayed as he was.

  He didn’t want the phones to be working. He didn’t want that to break their bubble. Realizing it left him shaken. Here, he thought, at the first chance to reach out of their world, she’d run to do it.

  Of course she had. He pressed his fingers to his eyes. Wouldn’t he have done the same? She had a life beyond this, beyond him. The romance of it had swept her away for a while, just as it had nearly swept him. She would get her feet back under her and move on. That was as it should be. And what he wanted.

  But when he rose to go after her, there was an ache inside him that hadn’t been there before.

  “I got through.” Allena sent him a brilliant smile. She stood by the counter, the phone in her hand and what appeared to be half her worldly goods dumped on the table. “She’s checked in, and they’re going to ring her room. I only hope she didn’t call my parents. I’d hate to think they’d—Margaret! Oh, I’m so glad you’re—”

  She broke off again, and Conal watched the light in her eyes go dim. “Yes, I know. I’m so sorry. I missed the ferry and…”

  Saying nothing, he moved past her and got down mugs for tea. He had no intention of leaving her to her privacy.

  “Yes, you’re right, it was irresponsible. Inexcusable, yes, that, too, to leave you shorthanded this way. I tried to…”

  He saw the moment she gave up, when her shoulders slumped and her face went carefully blank. “I understand. No, of course, you can’t be expected to keep me on after this. Oh, yes, I know it was against your better judgment in the first place. You were very clear about that. I’m sorry I let you down. Yes, again.”

  Shame, fatigue, resignation closed in on her, a dingy fog of failure. She shut her eyes. “No, Margaret, excuses don’t matter when people are depending on you. Did you call Mom and Dad? No, you’re right. What would have been the point?”

  “Bloody bitch,” Conal muttered. They’d just see how Margaret liked being on the other end of a tongue-lashing, he decided, and grabbed the phone out of Allena’s hand. The buzz of the dial tone left him no victim for his outrage.

  “She had to go,” Allena managed. “Schedule. I should—Excuse me.”

  “No, damned if I will.” He took her shoulders in a firm grip before she could escape. There were tears on her lashes. He wanted Margaret’s neck in his hands. “You’ll not go off to lick your wounds. Why did you take that from her?”

  “She was right. I was irresponsible. She has every reason to fire me. She’d never have taken me on in the first place without family pressure.”

  “Family pressure? Bugger it. Where was her family concern? Did she ask if you were all right? What had happened? Where you were? Did she once ask you why?”

  “No.”

  A tear spilled over, slid down her cheek and inflamed him. “Where is your anger?” he demanded.

  “What good does it do to be angry?” Wearily, she brushed the tear away. “I brought it on myself. I don’t care about the job. That’s the problem, really. I don’t care about it. I wouldn’t have taken it if I’d had a choice. Margaret’s probably right. I bungle this way on purpose.”

  “Margaret is a jackass.”

  “No, really, she’s not.” She managed a wobbly grin. “She’s just very disciplined and goal-oriented. Well, there’s no use whining about it.” She patted his hand, then moved away to pour the tea. “I’ll call my parents after I’ve settled down a little, explain…oh, God.”

  Pressing her palms to the counter, she squeezed her eyes shut. “I hate disappointing them this way. Over and over, like a cycle I can’t break. If I could just do something, if I could just be good at something.”

  Shaking her head, she went to the refrigerator to take out last night’s soup to heat for lunch. “You don’t know how much I envy you your talent and your confidence in it. My mother always said if I’d just focus my energies instead of scattering them a dozen different ways, I’d move beyond mediocre.”

  “It should have shamed her to say such a thing to you.”

  Surprised by the violence in his tone, she turned back. “She didn’t mean it the way I made it sound. You have to understand, they’re all so smart and clever and, well, dedicated to what they do. My father’s chief of surgery, my mother’s a partner in one of the most prestigious law firms on the East Coast. And I can’t do anything.”

  There was the anger. It whipped through her as she slammed the pot on the stove. Pleased to see it, Conal folded his arms, leaned back, and watched it build.

  “There’s James with his glossy practice and his gorgeous trophy wife and certified genius child, who’s a complete brat, by the way, but everyone says she’s simply precocious. As if precocious and rude are synonymous. And Margaret with her perfect office and her perfect wardrobe and her perfect home and her perfectly detestable husband, who won’t see anything but art films and collects coins.”

  She dumped soup into the pot. “And every Thanksgiving they all sit around patting each other on the back over how successful and brilliant they are. Then they look at me as if I’m some sort of alien who got dumped on the doorstep and had to be taken in for humanitarian purposes. And I can’t be a doctor or a lawyer or a goddamn Indian chief no matter how hard I try because I just can’t do anything.”

  “Now you should be ashamed.”

  “Wha
t?” She pressed her fingers to her temples. Temper made her dizzy, and fuzzy-headed, which is why she usually tried to avoid it. “What?”

  “Come here.” He grabbed her hand, pulled her into the living room. “What did you do here?”

  “About what?”

  “What are the things you did in here?”

  “I…dusted?”

  “To hell and back again with the dust, Allena. Look here at your flowers and candles and your bowl of broken shells. And out here.”

  He dragged her to the door, shoved it open. “Here’s a garden that was suffering from neglect until the morning. Where’s the sand that was all over the walk that I didn’t even notice until it was gone? There are sheets drying in the wind out back and soup heating in the kitchen. The bloody shower doesn’t drip now. Who did those things?”

  “Anyone can sweep a walk, Conal.”

  “Not everyone thinks to. Not everyone cares to. And not everyone finds pleasure in the doing of it. In one day you made a home out of this place, and it hasn’t been one in too long, so that I’d all but forgotten the feel of a home around me. Do you think that’s nothing? Do you think there’s no value in that?”

  “It’s just…ordinary,” she said for lack of a better word. “I can’t make a career out of picking wildflowers.”

  “A living can be made where you find it, if a living must be made. You’ve a need to pick wildflowers and sea-shells, Allena. And there are those who are grateful for it, and notice the difference you make.”

  If she hadn’t loved him already, she would have fallen at that moment with his words still echoing and his eyes dark with impatience. “That’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” She laid her hands on his cheeks. “The very kindest.” Softly, she touched her lips to his. “Thank you.”

  Before he could speak, she shook her head, then rested it on his shoulder.

  8

  THEY SHUT OUT the world. Turned off time. Conal would have bristled at the idea that they were making a kind of magic, but for Allena there was no other word for it.

  She posed for him again, in the studio where the afternoon sun slanted through the windows. And she watched herself be born in clay.

  Because she asked, he told her of his years in Dublin. His studies and his work. The lean student years when he’d lived on tinned food and art. Then the recognition that had come, like a miracle, in a dingy gallery.

  The first sale had given him the luxury of time, room to work without the constant worry of paying the rent. And the sales that followed had given him the luxury of choice, so that he’d been able to afford a studio of his own.

  Still, though he spoke of it easily, she noticed that when he talked of Dublin, he didn’t refer to it as home. But she said nothing.

  Later, when he’d covered the clay with a damp cloth and washed in the little sink, they went for a walk along the shore. They spoke of a hundred things, but never once of the star she wore against her heart, or the stone circle that threw its shadows from the cliff.

  They made love while the sun was still bright, and the warmth of it glowed on her skin when she rose over him.

  As the day moved to evening, the light remained, shimmering as though it would never give way to night. She entertained herself mending the old lace curtains she’d found on a shelf in the closet while Conal sketched and the dog curled into a nap on the floor between them.

  She had the most expressive face, he thought. Dreamy now as she sat and sewed. Everything she felt moved into her eyes of soft, clear gray. The witch behind those eyes had yet to wake. And when she did, he imagined that any man she cast them on would be spellbound.

  How easily she had settled in—to him, his home, his life. Without a break of rhythm, he thought, and with such contentment. And how easy it would be to settle in to her. Even with these edgy flashes of need and desire, there was a comfort beneath.

  What was he to do about her? Where was he to put these feelings she’d brought to life inside him? And how was he to know if they were real?

  “Conal?” She spoke quietly. His troubled thoughts were like a humming in the air, a warning. “Can’t you put it aside for now? Can’t you be content to wait and see?”

  “No.” It irritated him that she’d read his mood in his silence. “Letting others shape your life is your way, not mine.”

  Her hand jerked, as if it had been slapped, then continued to move smoothly. “Yes, you’re right. I’ve spent my life trying to please people I love, and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere. They don’t love me enough to accept me.”

  He felt a hitch in his gut, as if he’d shoved her away when he should have taken hold. “Allena.”

  “No, it’s all right. They do love me, under it all, just not as much, or in the same way, or…however I love them. They want things for me that I’m not capable of—or that I just don’t want for myself enough to make a real effort. I can’t put restrictions on my feelings. I’m not made that way.”

  “And I can.” He rose, paced. “It’s not a matter of feelings, but of being. I can’t and won’t be led. I care for you more than should be possible in this short a time.”

  “And because of that you don’t trust what’s happened, what’s happening between us.” She nodded and, clipping the thread, set her needle aside. “That’s reasonable.”

  “What do you know of reason?” he demanded. “You’re the damnedest, most irrational woman I’ve ever met.”

  She smiled at that, quick and bright. “It’s so much easier to recognize reason when you have so little yourself.”

  His lips twitched, but he sat down. “How can you be so calm in the middle of all this?”

  “I’ve had the most amazing two days of my life, the most exciting, the most beautiful.” She spread her hands. “Nothing can ever take that away from me now that I’ve had it. And I’ll have one more. One more long and wonderful day. So…” She got to her feet, stretched. “I think I’ll get a glass of wine and go outside and watch the stars come out.”

  “No.” He took her hand, rose. “I’ll get the wine.”

  It was a perfect night, the sky as clear as glass. The sea swept in, drew back, then burst again in a shower of water that caught those last shimmers of day and sparkled like jewels.

  “You should have benches,” Allena began. “Here and here, with curved seats and high backs, in cedar that would go silver in the weather.”

  He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it himself, for he loved to sit and watch the sea. “What else would you have, were you me?”

  “Well, I’d put big pots near the benches and fill them with flowers that spilled out and spiked up. Dark blue crocks,” she decided, then slanted him a look. “You could make them.”

  “I suppose I could. Flowerpots.” The idea was amusing. No one had ever expected flowerpots from him before. He skimmed a hand over her hair as he sipped his wine and realized he would enjoy making them for her, would like to see her pleasure in them.

  “Dark blue,” she repeated, “to match the shutters when they’re fixed up with the paint I found in the laundry room.”

  “Now I’m painting shutters?”

  “No, no, no, your talents are much too lofty for such mundane chores. You make the pots, sturdy ones, and I’ll paint the shutters.”

  “I know when someone’s laughing at me.”

  She merely sent him a sly wink and walked down toward the water. “Do you know what I’m supposed to be doing tonight?”

  “What would that be?”

  “I should be manning the slide projector for Margaret’s after-dinner lecture on megalithic sites.”

  “Well, then, you’ve had a narrow escape, haven’t you?”

  “You’re telling me. Do you know what I’m going to do instead?”

  “Ah, come back inside and make wild love with me?”

  She laughed and spun in a circle. “I’m definitely putting that on the schedule. But first, I’m going to build a sand castle.”

 
; “A sand castle, is it?”

  “A grand one,” she claimed and plopped down on the beach to begin. “The construction of sand castles is one of my many talents. Of course, I’d do better work if I had a spade and a bucket. Both of which,” she added, looking up at him from under her lashes, “can be found in the laundry room.”

  “And I suppose, as my talent for this particular art is in doubt, I’m delegated to fetch.”

  “Your legs are longer, so you’ll get there and back faster.”

  “Can’t argue with that.”

  He brought back the garden spade and the mop bucket, along with the bottle of wine.

  As the first bold stars came to life, he sat and watched her build her castle of sand.

  “You need a tower on that end,” he told her. “You’ve left it undefended.”

  “It’s a castle, not a fortress, and my little world here is at peace. However, I’d think a famous artist could manage to build a tower if he saw the need for one.”

  He finished off his glass of wine, screwed the stem in the sand, and picked up the challenge.

  She added more turrets, carefully shaping, then smoothing them with the edge of her spade. And driven by his obviously superior talent with his hands, began to add to the structure, elaborately.

  “And what, I’d like to know, is that lump you’ve got there?”

  “It’s the stables, or will be when I’m finished.”

  “It’s out of proportion.” He started to reach over to show her, but she slapped his hand away. “As you like, but your horses would have to be the size of Hugh to fit in there.”

  She sniffed, rocked back on her heels. Damn it, he was right. “I’m not finished,” she said coolly. She scooped up more sand and worked it in. “And what is that supposed to be?”

  “It will be the drawbridge.”

  “A drawbridge?” Delighted, she leaned over to study the platform he fashioned with his quick, clever hands. “Oh, that’s wonderful. You’re definitely sand castle– skilled. I know just what it needs.”