In fact, sometimes, when he saw an elderly couple holding hands, enjoying their last few years together, he felt cheated. He wanted a normal life with his lady love. He wanted a belief that even though the life ended, the love endured—and not just in story and song.
He wanted to feel his mortality, not her mortality.
“Was she pretty?” John asked.
“Of course she was pretty,” Rob said. “You knew her. She was the most beautiful woman on earth.”
“No.” John’s voice was soft. “The woman who burst your bubble.”
Rob hit the sleep button, and stared at the darkening screen, not seeing it but the woman. She lacked a modern beauty. She had curves where modern women had angles. Her face was full, not bony, and her eyes were the most spectacular green he had ever seen. She had perfect auburn hair—the color of a Sherwood sunset in the fall—and a generous, kissable mouth.
Her face was too lush for Da Vinci, too pleasant for Rembrandt. There was nothing classic about her. Nothing expected — not even that deep, rich voice.
“Pretty?” Rob repeated. It seemed like a small word for that woman. She wasn’t beautiful, not like Marian, who had been a true English rose, with pale skin and dark hair and even darker eyes. “She was too amazing to be pretty.”
“Amazing.” John smiled approvingly. “So you chatted her up, used the old Hood charisma, and wrapped her around your little finger, right?”
“Of course not,” Rob said.
“But you at least got her number, right?”
“Number?”
“As in telephone number?” John said. “You know, the way people in the new millennium do it?”
“I liked the old millennium,” Rob said.
“Then I take it you didn’t get her number,” John said.
“Why would I?”
“Because she’s the first woman that interested you in eight hundred years.”
“That’s not true. There was Charise.”
“Two dinners, a goodnight, and a thank you? Four hundred years ago?”
“Her parents scared me away.”
“They just wanted to meet you.”
“They wanted me to marry her.”
“Dating wasn’t a common thing in the early sixteenth century.”
“I know.” Rob wanted out of this conversation. “I lived through it, remember?”
“That’s what we were discussing,” John said. “You didn’t live through it. You floated through it.”
“Says the man who has never made a commitment in his entire life.”
“I’m committed to causes, not women.”
“Well, so am I,” Rob snapped, hoping his tone would close the door on the conversation.
“What happened to the man who said you couldn’t have a cause without a woman to support it?”
Rob glared at him. Even after all these years, he hated discussing Marian. And John was wrong. Rob had been involved with other women, and not just Charise (whom he always brought up to irritate John). He’d known several widows who wanted nothing more than he had—some companionship, some shared times, and a warm bed.
Then there was that dancer in Paris in the 1920s—the only woman he’d lived with since Marian. She’d been interesting, and the entire fling had felt daring.
But he wasn’t a fling sort of man. He was monogamous. In fact, he was a one-woman kind of man.
The only problem was that his one woman had shown up—and died—at the beginning of his very very very long life.
The conversation had to end. It was making his sour mood even darker. He was going to change the subject.
But John got there first. “Were you afraid of her?”
“Go to work, John,” Rob said. “Get out of my office.”
“Because it seems like you were if you didn’t get her number. Tell me you at least got her name.”
“Out. Now.”
Judging by John’s expression, it was good he no longer carried a staff, or he would have thwacked Rob on the head with it. “You should’ve at least gotten her name.”
“I could fire you.”
“It hasn’t worked before.”
“I can still whup you,” Rob said.
“Right,” John said. “With the help of security.”
Rob smiled for the first time that morning. “Whatever it takes.”
John smiled back and eased out the door, closing it gently behind him. Rob stared at it.
John knew him well. Rob was afraid. He wasn’t afraid of dating or seeing a new woman or even spending time with a companion.
He didn’t mind meeting someone new.
He was afraid of something old.
He wasn’t going to give his heart to a mortal again.
He wasn’t going to go through that kind of grief ever again.
Five
Rob arrived at the office about six in the morning, ready to work. Exercise and a few hours’ sleep always rejuvenated him, but they reminded him how different his life was these days. It had been a lot easier to take care of the poor and oppressed in a small village—even before he realized he had magical powers—than it was to care for them now.
Of course, over the past several centuries, his perspective had changed. He no longer believed that the imposter King of England, John, and his henchman, the Sheriff of Nottingham, had created poverty all by themselves.
In fact, over the years, Rob had come to realize that the Bible was right; the poor would always be with us.
That didn’t mean a man had to stop trying to help them.
He still robbed from the rich to give to the poor, but now he did it legally, through charitable corporate entities that he’d set up over the space of decades. And now the rich pretended to enjoy the privilege, believing they would get a return on their dollar.
They rarely did.
He pushed papers aside on the Lucite desk that some designer had thought would be a pleasure to work on, and pulled his plush chair away from the window.
Outside, the Vegas strip winked at him — its bizarre architecture ruining the view of the mountains that he’d had when this office was built sixty-five years ago. The desert had its own stark beauty: the browns of the sand, the greens of the cacti, and the subtle whites and grays of the mountains in the distance.
He used to love the clear air, the way that the land met the horizon so softly that they seemed to blend into each other. But over time, the air had become the most polluted in the nation, the buildings had destroyed the view of the horizon, and the city had sprawled so far across his lovely desert that he couldn’t find a comfortable place to fly his falcon any more.
Rob sighed and adjusted the window tint to dark before he sat down. Now he tried to avoid the Vegas office as much as possible. He worked out of New York and London whenever he could. The cities were what they had always been: centers of commerce, places where humans congregated, places where he would never consider setting his falcon free for a hunt.
The office itself looked stark and foreboding in the shaded morning light. The plants, all some form of desert succulent, seemed faded, the furniture that horrible see-through stuff that he’d been meaning to replace for some time.
Even the rug’s geometric design—a black triangle bisecting a gray square—irritated him. He just couldn’t justify a remodel on an office that he used only three times a year.
And unfortunately, this was one of those times. Vegas cooled to 102 degrees at night—if 102 degrees could be called “cool” (and he supposed it could, considering the temperatures were 115 during the day)—and was the warmest place on the planet this side of hell.
Even though he hadn’t lived in England full-time since the nineteenth century, he still considered himself an Englishman at heart, and Englishmen preferred their cool nights to have a bit of ground fog, a touch of rain, and temperatures below 55. Anything else was a complete and utter abomination.
He sighed again. Perhaps the exercise and sleep hadn’t improv
ed his mood. It was still as foul as it had been yesterday evening when John had kicked him out of the office and told him to take care of himself.
As if on cue, the door opened, and John Little poked his head in. The man was hideously misnamed. He was six-seven and two-seventy-five when he was trim, and he wasn’t always trim. He’d gone on the Atkins Diet a few years ago, saying it reminded him of the Good Old Days, and had lost about fifty pounds, making him seem less like a treehouse and more like a tree.
The name John worked—although over the centuries he had sometimes called himself the Irish version, Sean, and occasionally (always under duress) the French Jean. He’d use different variations on Little, too—sometimes opting for Petit and sometimes for Pequeño.
He’d had fun with his name in ways that Rob couldn’t. Even though John Little had lived on through the mythology as Little John, the name wasn’t nearly as recognizable as Robin Hood.
“You don’t look happy,” John said as he stepped inside. He crouched as he did so. While the other doors in the building had been redone to accommodate John, this one hadn’t.
Rob liked to keep his office tailored to his own size—which wasn’t exactly small, except in comparison to his best friend.
“Happiness is overrated,” Rob said.
John shook his head. “You never used to say that.”
“Overrated is a relatively new term.” Rob tapped the computer on the far side of his desk out of sleep mode. The day’s stock reports were already updating themselves.
“Relatively is a relatively new term,” John said, “but you know what I mean.”
Rob glanced at the Dow, watching the lines move, knowing that the money lost with each downturn could feed a thousand families for a year. Sometimes he lost faith, that was all. Sometimes he felt like everything he did—everything he had always done—was completely futile.
“You’re ignoring me,” John said. “The midnight falconry didn’t work, huh?”
“It was the woman.” The words left Rob’s mouth before he even thought about them. He raised his head.
John’s bushy eyebrows hit the edge of his curly brown hair. “Woman?”
Rob grabbed the mouse and clicked open his NASDAQ window. The lines were moving on that thing, too. Making and breaking fortunes all over the world.
Pretend money.
He missed gold pieces.
“What woman?”
Rob shook his head. “A pretty thing. She drove her car right into my bubble.”
“That’s not possible.”
“That’s what I thought, but it happened.”
“And it made you unhappy?”
“Threw me off my rhythm.” He had thought about her for the rest of the night, not about falconry and magic and the lovely—albeit desolate—scenery.
“A woman did that?” John’s gray eyes glinted.
“We hardly spoke to each other. I was just a bit startled that she had appeared, that’s all.” Rob tried to focus on those lines for what they meant to him—a double-check to see if he had talked with the right CEOs about the right investments, so that they would make the right amount of money, so that they could funnel an even righter amount of money into his nonprofits.
“She was magic, then,” John said.
“No.”
“She’s going to be magic, then,” John said.
“I have no idea.”
“She’s attractive, then,” John said.
“Well, of course,” Rob muttered.
“Aha!”
The “aha” startled him, and made him realize he’d answered the questions out loud. He really was off his game this morning.
“You haven’t found a woman attractive since Marian died,” John said.
Rob crossed his arms. “Have to.”
“Have not.”
“That’s eight hundred years ago. A man would have to be dead not to find another woman attractive.”
“If the shoe fits,” John said.
“I wasn’t dead,” Rob said. Even though he had wanted to be.
For a very, very long time, he had wanted to be.
In fact, sometimes, when he saw an elderly couple holding hands, enjoying their last few years together, he felt cheated. He wanted a normal life with his lady love. He wanted a belief that even though the life ended, the love endured—and not just in story and song.
He wanted to feel his mortality, not her mortality.
“Was she pretty?” John asked.
“Of course she was pretty,” Rob said. “You knew her. She was the most beautiful woman on earth.”
“No.” John’s voice was soft. “The woman who burst your bubble.”
Rob hit the sleep button, and stared at the darkening screen, not seeing it but the woman. She lacked a modern beauty. She had curves where modern women had angles. Her face was full, not bony, and her eyes were the most spectacular green he had ever seen. She had perfect auburn hair—the color of a Sherwood sunset in the fall—and a generous, kissable mouth.
Her face was too lush for Da Vinci, too pleasant for Rembrandt. There was nothing classic about her. Nothing expected — not even that deep, rich voice.
“Pretty?” Rob repeated. It seemed like a small word for that woman. She wasn’t beautiful, not like Marian, who had been a true English rose, with pale skin and dark hair and even darker eyes. “She was too amazing to be pretty.”
“Amazing.” John smiled approvingly. “So you chatted her up, used the old Hood charisma, and wrapped her around your little finger, right?”
“Of course not,” Rob said.
“But you at least got her number, right?”
“Number?”
“As in telephone number?” John said. “You know, the way people in the new millennium do it?”
“I liked the old millennium,” Rob said.
“Then I take it you didn’t get her number,” John said.
“Why would I?”
“Because she’s the first woman that interested you in eight hundred years.”
“That’s not true. There was Charise.”
“Two dinners, a goodnight, and a thank you? Four hundred years ago?”
“Her parents scared me away.”
“They just wanted to meet you.”
“They wanted me to marry her.”
“Dating wasn’t a common thing in the early sixteenth century.”
“I know.” Rob wanted out of this conversation. “I lived through it, remember?”
“That’s what we were discussing,” John said. “You didn’t live through it. You floated through it.”
“Says the man who has never made a commitment in his entire life.”
“I’m committed to causes, not women.”
“Well, so am I,” Rob snapped, hoping his tone would close the door on the conversation.
“What happened to the man who said you couldn’t have a cause without a woman to support it?”
Rob glared at him. Even after all these years, he hated discussing Marian. And John was wrong. Rob had been involved with other women, and not just Charise (whom he always brought up to irritate John). He’d known several widows who wanted nothing more than he had—some companionship, some shared times, and a warm bed.
Then there was that dancer in Paris in the 1920s—the only woman he’d lived with since Marian. She’d been interesting, and the entire fling had felt daring.
But he wasn’t a fling sort of man. He was monogamous. In fact, he was a one-woman kind of man.
The only problem was that his one woman had shown up—and died—at the beginning of his very very very long life.
The conversation had to end. It was making his sour mood even darker. He was going to change the subject.
But John got there first. “Were you afraid of her?”
“Go to work, John,” Rob said. “Get out of my office.”
“Because it seems like you were if you didn’t get her number. Tell me you at least got her name.”
/> “Out. Now.”
Judging by John’s expression, it was good he no longer carried a staff, or he would have thwacked Rob on the head with it. “You should’ve at least gotten her name.”
“I could fire you.”
“It hasn’t worked before.”
“I can still whup you,” Rob said.
“Right,” John said. “With the help of security.”
Rob smiled for the first time that morning. “Whatever it takes.”
John smiled back and eased out the door, closing it gently behind him. Rob stared at it.
John knew him well. Rob was afraid. He wasn’t afraid of dating or seeing a new woman or even spending time with a companion.
He didn’t mind meeting someone new.
He was afraid of something old.
He wasn’t going to give his heart to a mortal again.
He wasn’t going to go through that kind of grief ever again.
Six
Someone stood beside her. She could hear him breathing. And he smelled of waffles and scrambled eggs. Bacon, too. And coffee. Oh, how she wanted coffee.
Megan opened her eyes. A man in uniform stared down at her. He had lovely blue eyes, fringed with long black lashes, a zit on his right cheek, and stubble beside it. His cap was a little too big, settling on the back of his head as if it were glued there.
He held a tray in one hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said as if he’d repeated it more than once. “But the kid has disappeared.”
Kid? What was a man, wearing a uniform and holding a tray, doing in her bedroom? And what did he mean by kid?
Megan blinked again, started to roll over, and realized she wasn’t in her room at all. She was in a hotel room, in a suite to be exact, a suite Travers had voluntarily and shockingly paid for to be even more exact, and she was sleeping on the couch.
Her neck ached, her shirt had bunched up over her stomach (which the kid with the tray was trying hard not to look at), and the waistband of her jeans dug into her left side.
Travers should have come back by now. He should have awakened her much earlier.
And who was this man with the patience of Job?
“Ma’am, I’m really sorry. But the tray? And I need you to sign for this.”
Fates 06 - Totally Spellbound Page 6
