"Don't waste my time, Donovan. And don't call me that." With a toss of her head, she strode to the car. She might not be psychic, but she knew he was grinning.
CHAPTER 2
Sebastian didn't go back inside, not even after he had watched the little gray car trail down the ribbon of Highway 1. He stood on the porch, both amused and faintly irritated by the sizzles of anger and frustration Mel had left behind to spark in the air.
Strong-willed, he mused. And just brimming with energy. A woman like that would exhaust a peaceful man. Sebastian considered himself a peaceful man. Not that he wouldn't mind poking at her a bit, the way a young boy pokes at glowing embers to see how often he can get a flame to shoot up.
It was often worth the risk of a few minor burns to make fire.
At the moment, however, he was just too tired to enjoy it. He was already angry with himself for having agreed to become involved. It was the combination of the two women that had done it to him, he thought now. The one with her face so full of fears and desperate hope, the other so vivid with fury and sneering disbelief. He could have handled one or the other, he thought as he descended the steps. But being caught in the middle of all that conflicting emotion, the sheer depth of it, had defeated him.
So he would look. Though he had promised himself a long, quiet break before taking on another case, he would look. And he would pray to whatever god was listening that he could live with what he might see.
But for now, he would take some time-one long, lazy morning-to heal his fatigued mind and ragged soul.
There was a paddock behind the house, attached to a low, gleaming white stable. Even as he approached, he heard the whicker of greeting. The sound was so ordinary, so simple and welcoming that he smiled.
There they were, the sleek black stallion and the proud white mare, standing so still that he thought of two elegantly carved chess pieces, one ebony, one alabaster. Then the mare flicked her tail in a flirtatious gesture and pranced to the fence.
They could leap it, he knew. Both had done so more than once, with him in the saddle. But there was a trust between them, an understanding that the fence was not a cage but a home.
"There's a beauty." Sebastian lifted a hand to stroke her cheek, her long, graceful neck. "Have you been keeping your man in line, Psyche?"
She blew into his hand. In her dark eyes he saw pleasure, and what he liked to think was humor. She whinnied softly when he swung over the fence. Then she stood patiently while he passed his hands over her flanks, down over her swollen belly.
"Only a few more weeks," he murmured. He could almost feel the life inside her, sleeping. Again he thought of Morgana, though he doubted his cousin would care to be compared to a pregnant horse, even as fine an Arabian as Psyche.
"Has Ana been taking good care of you?" He nuzzled against the mare's neck, comforted by her quiet good nature. "Of course she has."
He murmured and stroked for a while, giving her the attention they had both missed while he'd been away. Then he turned and looked at the stallion, who stood alert, his handsome head high.
"And you, Eros, have you been tending to your lady?"
At the sound of his name, the horse reared to paw the air, trumpeting a cry that was rich in power and almost human. The display of pride had Sebastian laughing as he crossed to the stallion.
"You've missed me, you gorgeous beast, admit it or not." Still laughing, Sebastian slapped the gleaming flank and sent Eros dancing around the paddock. On the second trip around,
Sebastian grabbed a handful of mane and swung onto the restless mount, giving them what they both wanted. A fast, reckless ride. As they soared over the fence, Psyche watched them, her eyes as indulgent-and as superior-as a mother watching little boys wrestling.
Sebastian felt better by the afternoon. The hollowness he'd brought back from Chicago was gradually being filled. But he continued to avoid the little yellow teddy bear sitting lonely on the long, empty sofa. And he had yet to look at the photograph.
In the library, with its coffered ceiling and its walls of books, he sat at a massive mahogany desk and toyed with some paperwork. At any given time, Sebastian might have between five and ten businesses of which he was either sole owner or majority partner. They were hobbies to him-real estate, import-export firms, magazines, a catfish farm in Mississippi that amused him, and his current pet, a minor-league baseball team in Nebraska.
He was shrewd enough to make a healthy profit, wise enough to leave day-to-day management in the hands of experts, and capricious enough to buy and sell on a whim.
He enjoyed what money could give him, and he often used those profits lavishly. But he had grown up with wealth, and amounts of money that would have startled many were hardly more than numbers on paper to him. The simple game of mathematics, the increasing or decreasing, was a never-ending source of entertainment.
He was generous with pet charities, because he believed in them. His donations were a matter not of tax breaks or philanthropy, but of morals.
It would probably have embarrassed him, and it would certainly have irritated him, to be thought of as an unshakably moral man.
He pleased himself until sunset, working, reading, toying with a new spell he hoped to perfect. Magic was his cousin Morgana's speciality. Sebastian could never hope to equal her power there, but his innate competitive streak kept him struggling to try.
Oh, he could make fire-but that was a witch's first and last skill. He could levitate, but that, too, was an elementary talent. Beyond that and a few hat tricks-that was Mel sneaking back into his mind again-he was no magician. His gift was one of sight.
In much the same way that a brilliant actor might yearn to sing and dance, Sebastian yearned to cast spells.
After two hours with little success, he gave up in disgust. He fixed himself an elaborate meal for one, put some Irish ballads on the stereo and uncorked a three-hundred-dollar bottle of wine with the same casualness another man might show in popping open a can of beer.
He indulged in a lengthy whirlpool, his eyes closed, his mind a blessed blank as the water jetted around him. After slipping into a silk pajama bottoms, he pleased himself by watching the sun set in bleeding reds. And then he waited for night to steal across the sky.
It couldn't be put off any longer. With some reluctance, Sebastian went downstairs again. Rather than flick on lights, he lit candles. He didn't need the trappings of the art, but there was comfort in tradition.
There was the scent of sandalwood and vanilla. Because they reminded him of his mother's room at Castle Donovan, they never failed to soothe him. The light was shadowy, inviting power.
For several long moments, he stood by the sofa. With a sigh-very like a laborer might make on hefting a pick-he looked at the photograph of David Merrick.
It was a charming, happy face, one that would have made Sebastian smile if his concentration hadn't been focused. Words gathered in his head, ancient words, secret words. When he was sure, he set the picture aside and lifted the sad-eyed yellow bear.
"All right, David," he murmured, and his voice echoed hollowly through the empty rooms. "Let me see."
It didn't happen with a blaze of light or a flash of understanding. Though it could. It could. He simply drifted. His eyes changed, from smoke to slate to the color of storm clouds. They were fixed, unblinking, beyond the room, beyond the walls, beyond the night.
Images. Images. Forming and melting like wax through his mind. His fingers were gentle on the child's toy, but his body had stiffened like stone. His breathing remained steady, slowing, evening out as it would in sleep.
To begin, he had to fight past the grief and fear that shimmered through the toy. Without losing concentration, he had to slip past the visions of the weeping mother clutching the bear, of a dazed-eyed father holding them both.
Oh, but these were strong, these emotions of sorrow and terror and fury. But strongest of all, as always, was the love.
Even that faded as he skimmed past,
going deeper, going back.
He saw, with a child's eyes, and a child's wonder.
A pretty face, Rose's face, leaning over the crib. A smile, soft words, soft hands. Great love. Then another, a man's face, young, simple. Hesitant fingers, rough and callused. Here, too, was love. Slightly different from the mother love, but just as deep. This was tinted with a kind of dazed awe. And- Sebastian's lips curved. And a wish to play catch in a nice backyard.
The images slid, one into the other. Fussy crying at night. Formless fears, soon soothed by strong, caring hands. Nagging hungers sated by warm mother's milk from a willing breast. And pleasures, such delight in colors, in sounds, in the warmth of sunlight.
Health, robust health, in a body straining to grow as a babe's did in that first dazzling year of life.
Then heat, and a surprising, baffling pain. Aching, throbbing in the gums. The comfort of being walked, rocked, sung to.
And another face, soft with a different kind of love. Mary Ellen, making the yellow bear dance in front of his eyes. Laughing, her hands tender and hesitant as she gathered him up, holding him high in the air and pressing tickling kisses to his belly.
From her, a longing, too unformed in her own mind to be seen clearly. All emotion and confusion.
What is it you want? Sebastian wanted to ask her. What is it you're afraid you can't have?
Then she faded away from him like a chalk portrait washed away in a shower of rain.
Sleeping. Dreaming easy dreams, with a slash of sunlight just beyond your fisted hand and the shade cool and soft as a kiss. Peace, utter peace.
When it was broken, there was sleepy irritation. Small, healthy lungs filled to cry, but the sound was cut off by a hand. Unfamiliar hands, unfamiliar smell, and then irritation turned to fear. The face-There was only a glimpse, and Sebastian struggled to freeze that image in his mind for later.
Being carried, held too tightly, and bundled in a car. The car smells of old food and spilled coffee and the sweat of the man.
Sebastian saw it, felt it, as one image stuttered into the next. He lost whole patches as the child's terror and tears exhausted him into sleep.
But he saw. And he knew where to begin.
Morgana opened the shop promptly at ten. Luna, her big white cat, slinked in between her feet, then settled down in the center of the room to groom her tail. Knowing the summer trade, Morgana went directly behind the counter to check the cash register. Her belly bumped gently against the glass, and she chuckled.
She was getting as big as a house. And she loved it. Loved the full, weighted sensation of carrying life. The life she and Nash had created between them.
She remembered how just that morning her husband had pressed kisses to that growing mound, then jerked back, eyes wide, as whoever was sleeping inside kicked.
"Jeez, Morgana, a foot." He'd cupped a hand over the lump, grinning. "I can practically count the toes."
As long as there's five to each foot, she thought now, and she was smiling when her door jingled open.
"Sebastian." Fresh pleasure filled her face as she held out both arms to him. "You're back."
"A couple of days ago." He took her hands, kissed them soundly, then drew back, wiggling his brows as he studied her. "My, my, aren't we huge!"
"Aren't we just?" She patted her belly as she skirted around the counter toward him.
Pregnancy hadn't dimmed her sexuality. If anything, it had enhanced it. She-as they say about brides and expectant mothers-glowed. Her fall of black, curling hair rained down the back of an unapologetically red dress that showed off excellent legs.
"I don't have to ask if you're well," he commented. "I can see that for myself."
"Then I'll ask you. I've already heard you helped clean up Chicago." She said it with a smile, but there was quiet concern in her eyes. "Was it difficult?"
"Yes. But it's done." Before he could say more, before he was certain he wanted to, a trio of customers strolled in to explore the crystals and herbs and statuary. "You're not working here alone?"
"No, Mindy will be here any minute."
"Mindy is here," her assistant announced, bounding into the shop wearing a white catsuit and a flirtatious smile for Sebastian. "Hello, handsome."
"Hi, gorgeous."
Instead of heading out of the shop, or ducking into the back room as was his habit when customers filed in, Sebastian prowled around, fiddling restlessly with crystals, sniffing at candles. Morgana took advantage of the first lull to join him again.
"Looking for some magic?"
He frowned, a smooth, obsidian ball in his hand. "I don't need visual aids."
Morgana tucked her tongue in her cheek. "Having trouble with another spell, darling?"
Though he was very taken with it, Sebastian set the ball down. He'd be damned if he'd give her the satisfaction. "I leave the casting to you."
"Oh, if only you would." She picked up the ball and handed it to him. Morgan knew her cousin too well. "Here, a gift. There's nothing like obsidian for blocking out those bad vibrations."
He let the globe run from palm to fingertips and back. "I suppose, being a shop owner, you'd be up on who's who in town at the moment."
"More or less. Why?"
"What do you know about Sutherland Investigations?"
"Sutherland?" Her brow creased in thought. "It's familiar. What is it, a detective agency?"
"Apparently."
"I think I- Mindy, didn't your boyfriend have some business with Sutherland Investigations?''
Mindy barely glanced up from ringing a sale. "Which boyfriend?"
"The intellectual-looking one, with the hair. Insurance."
"Oh, you mean Gary." Mindy beamed at her customer. "I hope you enjoy it. Please come back. Gary's an ex-boyfriend," she added. "Much too possessive. Sutherland does a lot of stuff for the insurance company he works for. Gary says she's as good as they get."
"She?" Morgana glanced back at Sebastian with a cool smile. "Ah."
"There's no 'ah.'" He tweaked her nose. "I've agreed to help someone, and Sutherland is involved."
"Hmm. Is she pretty?"
"No," he said with perfect sincerity.
"Ugly, then."
"No. She's- unusual."
"The very best kind. What are you helping her with?"
"A kidnapping." The teasing light went out of his eyes. "A baby."
"Oh." Automatically she covered her own with her hands. "I'm sorry. The baby- Is the baby- Do you know?"
"He's alive. And well."
"Thank God." Even as she closed her eyes in relief, she remembered. "The baby? Is it the one who was taken from his playpen, from his own backyard, just a couple of months ago?"
"That's right."
She took his hands. "You'll find him, Sebastian. You'll find him soon."
He nodded. "I'm counting on it."
It just so happened that Mel was at that very moment in the process of typing up a bill for Underwriter's Insurance. They had her on a monthly retainer-which kept the wolf from the door-but in the previous few months she had had some additional billable expenses. She also had a fading bruise on her left shoulder where a man supposedly suffering from whiplash and slipped discs had popped her a good one when he'd discovered her taking pictures of him changing a flat tire.
A tire she had herself discreetly deflated.
Bruises aside, it had been a good week's work.
If only everything were so simple.
David. She simply couldn't get David out of her head. She knew better-had been trained better. Personal involvements meant you messed up. Thus far, she'd only proven that rule.
She'd canvassed Rose's neighborhood, questioning people who had already been interviewed by the police. And, like the police, she'd come up with three different descriptions of a car that had been parked half a block from Rose's apartment. She also had four markedly different descriptions of a "suspicious character."
The term made her smile a little. It was so dete
ctive-novel. She'd certainly learned that life was much blander than fiction. In reality, investigative work consisted of mountains of paperwork, hours of sitting in a parked car fighting boredom while you waited for something to happen, making phone call after phone call, talking to people who didn't want to talk. Or-often worse-people who talked too much and had nothing to say.
And, occasionally, there was the extra added excitement of being pushed around by a two-hundred-pound gorilla in a neck brace.
Mel wouldn't have traded it for a mountain of gold dust.
But what good was it, she wondered, what good was making a living doing what you loved, and having the talent to do a good job of it, if you couldn't help a friend? There hadn't been so many friends in her life that she could take Rose and Stan for granted. They had given her something just by being there, by sharing David with her. The connection to family that she'd always done without.
She would have walked through fire to bring David back to them.
All his vital statistics were there-his height and weight and coloring. She had his footprints and his fingerprints. She knew his blood type and was aware of the tiny dimple on the left side of his mouth.
But the reports didn't say that the dimple deepened so sweetly when he laughed. It couldn't describe the engaging sound of that laughter, or how it felt when he pressed that soft, damp mouth to yours in a kiss. It didn't say how his pretty brown eyes sparkled when you lifted him high over your head to play airplane.
She knew how empty she felt, how sad and frightened. Just as she knew that if she multiplied those emotions by a thousand it wouldn't come close to what Rose was living with every hour of every day.
Mel opened the folder and drew out the formal studio shot of David at six months. It had been taken only a week before the kidnapping. He was grinning at the camera, his pudgy chin creased in a smile as he clutched the yellow bear she had bought for him on the day he'd come home from the hospital. His hair had begun to thicken, and it was the shade of ripening strawberries.
"We're going to find you, baby. We're going to find you and bring you home real soon. I swear it."
Books by Nora Roberts Page 254
