Travers stood, set his napkin beside his plate, and started after her. Zoe caught his arm.
“Let her go,” Zoe said.
“But—”
“Let her go,” Zoe repeated.
“She needs space, Dad,” Kyle said. “She always has. Remember?”
Because she was an empath. Because the only way she knew her true emotions was to distance herself from other people’s.
Somehow she had learned that much. Despite her lack of training, she had learned a little.
“I’ll go,” Rob said.
“I think you’ve done enough,” Travers said.
Rob felt the anger he’d been suppressing rise. “What does that mean?”
“Using my sister’s abilities to seduce her? That’s pretty low, even for a billionaire playboy.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Rob said.
“Sure it was,” Travers said. “She was easy, wasn’t she? I’ve read about you. You like to have women dripping off you, and you took the first available one on this little adventure. My sister.”
Rob clenched both fists. He was leaning over the table, facing Travers, whose fists were also clenched.
Rob wanted to leap across the table and strangle that arrogant man.
“If you guys spill my chili, I’ll never forgive you,” John said.
The break was just enough to hold Rob back. He could almost hear John in his head: Words, Rob. We have to learn to work with words.
All right. He would work with words, then.
“Do you think so little of your sister that you believe I’d take advantage of her, and she’d let me?” Rob said.
“She’s been taken advantage of before,” Travers said.
“Maybe because her family never took care of her.” Rob was leaning on the table so hard that it moved slightly.
“We always cared for her,” Travers said.
“Yeah,” Rob said, “that’s why you fight with her so much.”
“I fight with her because I love her,” Travers said.
“And don’t respect her.”
Travers reached across the table and stuck a finger in the center of Rob’s chest. “I wouldn’t talk about respect if I were you, pal.”
“I can talk about respect if I want to,” Rob said. “I’ve shown her nothing but respect.”
“Oh, yeah?” Travers poked his finger into Rob’s chest once more. Travers hadn’t trimmed his fingernail, and the movement sent a small, sharp pain through Rob. “That’s not what I’m hearing.”
“Your sister is an amazing woman,” Rob said.
“I know.” Travers kept his finger against Rob’s shirt. Rob was doing his best to ignore the provocation.
“I wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t for her.”
“Because you can manipulate her,” Travers said.
“Dad,” Kyle said. The boy sounded agitated.
“Because I respect her,” Rob said.
“You have a funny way of showing it,” Travers snapped.
That comment made Rob catch his breath. Travers was right, but not for the reasons he thought—Rob had not deliberately manipulated Megan, not once. No, Rob wasn’t showing her respect now by standing here, arguing with her brother when she was in distress.
Rob pivoted, a military movement, and walked away from the table.
“Hey!” Travers yelled. “Where are you going?”
Rob could hear chairs move, and Kyle make a distressed noise, and Zoe say, “Trav, don’t!” but Rob kept walking.
He heard footsteps behind him. Let that man come near him. Let him, and see what would happen.
“Leave her alone,” Travers said. “You’ve caused enough trouble.”
Rob kept walking.
“Touch my sister again, and I’ll—”
Rob turned. Travers was right behind him. Travers stopped speaking the moment that Rob faced him.
“You’ll what?” Rob asked softly. “Take me on? You? An untrained mage?”
Travers stopped. He was holding his ground rather admirably, considering.
John had stood up. Kyle was watching, his eyes wide. Zoe was still sitting, shaking her head. And the Fates, bless them, were eating as if this was all for their entertainment.
That angered Rob even more.
“Or will you resort to the manly defense?” Rob asked. “Are you just going to hit me? Because I’ve been spoiling for a fight for weeks now. You want to accommodate me?”
“Dad,” Kyle said. “He’s a good guy, really.”
Travers met his gaze. The man was rethinking his impulsiveness. “You know how many times she’s been hurt?”
So that was it. Travers was angry because he finally understood why his sister had gotten into a variety of bad relationships—all impulsively, it probably had seemed to him.
“Yeah,” Rob said softly. “I’m beginning to realize that.”
“Then you understand why I don’t want you near her.”
“No,” Rob said. “I don’t understand that. Because if I don’t go to her now, I’m no better than those other guys. I have to explain what’s going on and how I didn’t manipulate her, at least not intentionally. If I don’t, then everything falls apart.”
Travers bit his lower lip. His frown deepened, but his anger seemed to be fading—or at least the impulse to hit Rob was.
“She’s fragile,” Travers said. “You be careful with her.”
Rob shook his head ever so slightly. “She’s not fragile, Travers. If she were fragile, she’d have broken long ago under the weight of everyone’s emotions.”
Travers raised his chin. Was that the anger coming back? The urge to argue?
“But,” Rob said, to stave him off. “I will be careful. I promise. I have more at stake here than you do.”
Travers studied him for a long moment. Rob wasn’t sure if the man was going to hit him or spit at him. But Travers did neither. Instead, he nodded once.
“I’m not sure I like you,” Travers said.
Robin smiled. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’m finally beginning to like you.”
Thirty-two
Megan let herself into her suite and then leaned on the closed door. The place was a mess—the coffee table moved, the chairs to the side, her other shoes still on the floor.
But it was quiet here, and the emotions that had her so agitated seemed muted.
An empath. That explained so very much.
Her earliest memories were of drowning in emotion. She always felt out of control. Her moods would swing wildly—happy, sad, frightened, angry—and often without reason.
She could remember her mother saying, I don’t know what to do with you, Meg, honey. Your reactions never make any sense to me.
And her father picking her up—she was maybe three and so happy to see him—and as she pressed against his wool jacket, she burst into tears.
The sadness had been his that day, not hers.
She might not have made it through the day-to-day if it hadn’t been for Great-Aunt Eugenia. That woman frightened her (or maybe she had frightened her great-aunt? Wow. That was a concept), but just before Megan had gone to school, she managed to have a quiet moment with her great-aunt.
Megan, you’re a very sensitive little girl.
And Megan had nodded.
You need to make walls between yourself and the world. Let me show you.
Great-Aunt Eugenia had touched her head, her shoulders, and helped her bring up shields—that’s what Megan eventually called it. Later, her therapist called it a Star Trek metaphor: whenever Megan didn’t want to deal with something, she raised shields.
But there had been more to that day that simple shields. Her great-aunt had smiled at her and cupped her face.
You need the walls, honey, just to get through the day. But remember, never ever wall off your heart.
Had she done that? She wasn’t sure. It had certainly been hurt enough.
She walked toward the living room and
sank into the chair where Rob had been sitting before dinner. She ran her fingers over the arm, remembering how his hand on her thigh had soothed her.
All those men. She had tumbled into bed with some of them because their lust infected her. But she had stayed away from just as many—or more. Some of them had seemed like they had a cloud around them, a cloud of confusing emotion—part lust, part hatred, part admiration.
Stalker emotions, she’d told her friend Conchita. There’s something off about these guys.
How do you know? Conchita would ask.
Megan would shrug. I just know.
And that was the worst part. Quantifying things. She had always been intuitive, always relied on her gut and not her head. That was the main reason she fought with Travers. He was all logic—at least until he met Zoe—and Megan was all emotion.
Only Megan’s emotion had logic, and beneath Travers’ logic, there was always a little too much emotion.
But Rob, Rob had seemed pure to her from the beginning. Not pure in a sexual sense—he clearly wasn’t (she smiled)—but his reactions were clear, his emotions untainted.
He had been intriguing from the first, in that weird outfit in the desert after all the streetlights had gone out, and then in his office, and in her apartment, and finally here, when he had decided to prove to her how he felt.
How could he think he had manipulated her when he was being so honest? He had just wanted to show her how he felt.
And she had known it. She had felt it, all of his emotion, all of it, and had almost gotten lost in it.
Then she had separated from it and tried to figure out her own—
And couldn’t.
Because she had walled off her heart, despite what Great-Aunt Eugenia had told her? Was that why Megan had never, ever fallen in love? Because she had blocked every opportunity?
Was that why her eyes had teared up when Rob touched her? Because her heart was struggling against a wall, trying to break free?
Raised voices came to her from the next room—Rob and Travers—and bits of emotion. She was good at blocking out emotion from room to room—she had learned that from Great-Aunt Eugenia, too.
Megan actually had to concentrate to see what the emotion was: a mixture of fear and panic and anger—and guilt.
She closed her eyes: concentrated. She could actually separate out the emotion by person. She had never really tried that before, although she had done it in counseling sessions. If she focused on a person, actually looked at them, she could get a sense of them.
But she had always thought that part of her concentration, not as magical gift.
Both men were feeling the anger and both, oddly enough, were feeling guilt. But Rob was feeling the fear, and Travers was feeling panic.
Because of her? Why?
She let the emotions go, stood up, and walked as far from the other suite as she could. She touched the edge of the table, where the map had been, and frowned.
Rob had always been up front with her. Why then, was he so adamant about her not going into Faerie? Every time he had said that, she had gotten angry because he used the word control.
(And oh, boy, did that make sense now. Always, always people accused her of being out of control, of needing control, of needing help, of needing someone else to take charge because she was too emotional.)
He knew what she was, so he wasn’t trying to get her to control her emotions, and while he was being protective, he hadn’t treated any other woman in the room paternally. So something else was going on.
She closed her eyes, remembered, trying to see if she could sort out the emotions that had been flying through this room.
And what she got, again, was fear.
What would terrify the great Robin Hood?
She opened her eyes. She had already seen what terrified him. It was the very thing that had closed him down for so very long. For centuries, actually.
Robin was afraid of loss. He had lost Marian. He was afraid of losing Megan.
Really?
Or was that her ego talking?
And why would going into Faerie mean that he had lost her?
Someone knocked on the suite door. She frowned, resisting the urge to get a sense who it was. She had separated herself long enough. She needed to get back to Travers’ suite to make sure her brother and her lover didn’t kill each other.
She went to the door, and pulled it open.
Rob stood there, his head bowed. He looked almost boyish, like a child who expected to be yelled at for something he had already done.
“May I come in?” he asked.
She nodded, and backed away from the door. Despite her resolution, she was having difficulty opening her heart. It almost felt like something blocked her, something reluctant inside her kept her boxed in.
Rob stepped into the room, and closed the door behind himself. He started to reach for her, and then stopped. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to manipulate you.”
“I know that too,” she said.
His brow furrowed, just a little, as if this wasn’t going the way he expected. “I really do love you.”
“I know,” she said again.
He shook his head slightly. “Then why did you leave?”
“A few minutes ago?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I needed time to think.” Away from the noise, away from the untidy emotions. Away from Rob.
“Do you want me to go, then?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I want you to answer a question.”
“All right,” he said cautiously.
“I want you to tell me what would happen to me if I went to Faerie.”
The fear that rose from him was palpable. She could actually feel him work to tamp it down.
She decided to try something, something she used to do impulsively with some of her more distressed clients.
She touched his arm, and sent soothing warmth his way.
His fear lessened.
His eyes widened. “Who taught you that?”
She shrugged. “I think I picked it up on my own. It works then?”
“It’s part of your magic.”
“I thought women don’t have magic until they get older.”
He smiled. “It’s a rule designed by Zeus. But a few things got missed. Like empathy. That’s not an emotion he understands, so he doesn’t recognize empaths as magical.”
“Strange,” Megan said. “So he has that much control, then?”
“He has more than you can imagine.”
“But I thought he ruled with all the others.”
“He does,” Rob said, “but he leads them and he manipulates them. He’s not a good man.”
“I’ve figured that out.” She let her hand drop from Rob’s arm. The fear he had felt was gone now. “You still haven’t told me about Faerie.”
And the fear bobbled back, just a little, and then it stayed constant.
Rob sighed. “You’re not going to just trust me on this, are you?”
“I’m curious,” she said, “and besides, if it’s something I should worry about, I’d rather know about it.”
His entire expression changed. Somehow those words calmed him. Perhaps because they made sense to him.
“Let’s go sit,” he said.
He led her into the living room, and he took the armchair again. She didn’t sit on the arm because she wanted to see his face. So she sat on the couch, her hands threaded together and resting between her knees.
“Faerie,” Rob said. “It’s a scary place.”
“I’m gathering that,” Megan said. “It looked kind of familiar.”
“The Faeries get some of their magic from luck. They steal as much of it as they can.”
She nodded, knowing he was still hesitating.
“But it’s also a cold place, Meg.” He sounded like a man who knew. “There are rumors—and I don’t kno
w if they’re true—that the Faeries themselves don’t understand emotion. They can’t experience it. Or won’t.”
“Aren’t they—human?—like you guys?” She asked. “Or us? I am one of you guys, right?”
He smiled. “Right.”
“So, we’re human, right?”
“Kind of,” he said. “I don’t want to use the word superhuman, because that has all kinds of terrible connotations. We’re more than human, I guess. Enhanced humans. Or maybe human is just normal, and we’re a little more than normal. You know, like intelligence. People have a range of intelligence, but most fall in the average category. We’re above average, I guess. I’m trying not to make us sound better, because we’re not. We’re just different. And amazingly the same, at the same time.”
Surprisingly, his words didn’t confuse her. He valued regular people—he had fallen in love with one and still loved her, even though she had been gone for centuries. He thought of himself as having more gifts, but not as being better.
And Megan’s heart opened at that. Warmth flooded her, almost overwhelming her.
She did love him. She had loved him from the moment she met him, but this—this realization that he cared about all kinds of people, and on a deep, deep level—this somehow broke down that last wall.
The wall that said she wasn’t good enough or thin enough or smart enough — or, as she had learned in the last few hours—magic enough for him to love her.
These distinctions didn’t matter to him. He valued people, just like she did, whether they were rich or poor, fat or thin, smart or dumb.
Magic or not.
Her eyes filled with tears again.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked.
She shook her head and then wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Go on.”
He frowned, then blinked at her. Then said, “I lost my place.”
She let out a small laugh—mostly because she had been nervous—and then said, “I sidetracked you. I asked if Faeries were human, but then I asked if you and I were too.”
He smiled. “Oh, yeah. And yes, I think Faeries are. But I don’t know. We all look different—redheads, blonds, brunettes, different skin colors, just like the rest of the human race. But Faeries all have black hair and pointed ears and upswept eyebrows. They look different, and they might be different.”
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