Prince Charming Doesn’t Live Here

by Christine Warren

  “No, which is why I never thought you belonged at Parish Hampton. You’re too good for them, Niecie.” He threw back the duvet and left the bed, striding toward her with a complete lack of modesty. “Tell me, why did you want to be a lawyer to begin with?”

  Her jaw dropped. “Mac, you’re naked!”

  He shrugged and crouched in front of her. “If you’re embarrassed, close your eyes.” He took her hands in his. “Now, why did you decide to become a lawyer?”

  Danice squeezed her eyes shut, but the damage was done. She could picture him, every inch of him, perfectly in her mind, from his tousled blond hair to his long bare feet. And all the delicious inches in between.

  She swallowed hard and struggled to remember the question.

  He squeezed her hands. “Why, Danice?”

  She gave a self-conscious shrug. “Because I knew I’d be good at it. Because I like puzzles. And because I wanted to help people.”

  “Exactly. And instead of helping the people who need help the most, you’re stuck chasing around heiresses whose families don’t want to see their names get a little muddy. You could be doing so much more than that.”

  Danice opened her eyes, frowning. “That’s sounding a little self-righteous, there, McIntyre. I don’t think you get to judge my job or my decisions based on one roll in the hay.”

  “That’s not what I’m basing anything on. And you know perfectly well that that’s not all there is between us. You might want to tell yourself we’re still strangers, but the truth is that I know you, Danice Carter, and I know that this job isn’t making you happy. And neither will that partnership you keep trying to convince yourself you want.”

  “I do want it! I’ve worked hard for it, damn it, and I deserve it!”

  She pulled her hands from his and stood, looking around for somewhere else to go. There wasn’t anyplace. For a few minutes, she had forgotten that she was essentially trapped in a jail cell. As far as these things went, she supposed they could have been worse. In fact, considering some of the historical novels she had read over the years, she would say they could have been a lot worse.

  Sure, the cell had walls about two feet thick, judging by what she had seen as they entered the castle, and the door looked to be about six inches thick, made from solid wood and banded together with metal straps about as fragile as tank armor. And yes, the one tiny window had bars blocking out any hope of escape, but at least it looked clean. And she could see no skeletons of former residents hanging from the wall by rusted manacles, so it had that going for it as well.

  In fact, considering that a large fireplace took up most of one wall and a fire actually burned in its grate—blocked, of course, by a metal screen bolted solidly into the stone wall—the place could almost be considered cozy. As long as someone continued to stoke the fire from the opposite side of the wall and no members of the rodent family scurried out from under the bed, Danice figured she could have been kept prisoner in places far worse.

  Of course, none of that mattered when she had this burning need to get away from Mac and his ridiculous theories about her and her future and what it would take to make her happy. Damn him! Her work did make her happy. She got a rush every time she won, every time she settled a case to her client’s advantage, and every time she found the answer she’d been looking for, the precedent that proved her point and got her the win. She loved that!

  And so what if there were moments when she wondered if the clients she was winning for really deserved it? She wasn’t there to make value judgments; she was there to win cases. Her job might not include a lot of moral victories, but it wasn’t like she was defending murderers and getting them off to walk the streets. She dealt with business and contract law, and God knew that if she didn’t defend the interests of big corporations, there were a thousand other attorneys exactly like her, just waiting to step in and take her place. Someone would earn a partnership off the work she did for Parish Hampton, so why the hell shouldn’t it be her?

  “I never said you didn’t deserve it,” Mac said softly, dragging her attention back to him and away from her internal dialogue. “I just wondered whether or not you really, truly wanted it?”

  Danice folded her arms across her chest in a posture she knew was defensive. She told herself it was just because she was cold in the stone-walled room. “That’s not really your concern, now, is it?”

  Before Mac could answer, Danice heard the sound of the bar outside the cell being lifted, and both she and Mac turned to face the exit just as the door swung open and the most beautiful woman Danice had ever seen glided into the room.

  “Callahan, my darling boy! It has been too, too long since we’ve seen each other. Tell me where you’ve been! What you’ve been doing with yourself!”

  The woman reached out and placed a hand on each of Mac’s cheeks, pulling him toward her for a welcoming kiss. The gesture made both Mac and Danice stiffen, although Danice did notice that there was at least no passion in the gesture. It looked as perfunctory as a handshake.

  Mac, however, did not look to be in a very friendly mood.

  “Don’t pretend to be interested in what I’ve been doing now. It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? And you should know exactly where I’ve been, shouldn’t you? Since you’re the one who left me there. Mother.”

  Eighteen

  Tyra ni Oengus looked not a day older than the last time Mac had laid eyes on her. And considering he’d still been an infant at the time, that was saying something.

  Or it would have said something, if Tyra were human, but as Mac could easily attest, his mother suffered from not a drop of humanity in her admittedly royal blood. If she had normal human feelings, she might have felt some regret at abandoning her only son to his father’s care and never sparing him another thought. Luckily for Mac, his father had loved him enough for any child.

  Unluckily, his Fae memory had never managed to dim the sight of Tyra’s face, no matter how he tried. Over the years, he’d tried to file it away as his cross to bear, a strange quirk of his mixed heritage. He hadn’t expected the welling of rage that threatened to overcome him the next time he saw that face, thirty-four years later.

  “Oh, Callahan, my darling, don’t say you’re angry with me,” Tyra pouted, the expression enhancing rather than detracting from her beauty. “It’s been so long. Surely you can learn to forgive me.”

  He gripped her wrists and forced her hands from his face. He couldn’t bear her touch a second longer. “I wouldn’t count on that, Mother.”

  Behind him, he heard a choking sound. He turned to see an expression of wild disbelief on Danice’s face.

  “Mother?” she sputtered. “This is your mother?” She clutched the sheet tighter around her, and Mac thought he detected a faint flush of rose coloring her skin from her collarbone to her hairline. She fixed him with a pointed stare and hissed, “Mac, you’re not wearing any clothes!”

  Mac glanced down at his nude body. He’d forgotten about that. Looking from Danice to his mother, he shrugged. “It’s not as if either of you has never seen a naked man before.”

  Tyra laughed, the sound like chiming bells, while Danice sounded as if a dying frog had taken up residence in her throat. He didn’t have to debate over which rang more like music in his ears.

  “Mac, she’s. Your. Mother!”

  Mac shook his head. Sometimes he forgot how prudish human women could be. He reached for his jeans, which had been tossed to the floor sometime overnight, and stepped into them.

  “Is that better?” he asked, buttoning up the fly.

  “Marginally,” she growled.

  “Callahan, darling,” Tyra interrupted, stepping forward to eye Danice with blatant speculation. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  “Frankly, I’d rather not.”

  “Callahan!” Tyra scolded.

  Danice just gasped out an affronted, “Mac!”

  Mac frowned at her. “Don’t look like that, Nieci
e. It has nothing to do with you. I just don’t like my mother very much, and I see no reason to inflict her company on you. You’ve had a rough enough morning as it is.”

  Tyra appeared to ignore the insult. “Oh, it isn’t morning yet, my love. It’s still at least an hour before dawn, but I was only just informed of your presence here at court, so of course I came to see you immediately.”

  “Of course,” Mac drawled.

  Tyra turned to Danice. “How are you, my darling girl? Did my son say your name was Nee Cee?”

  “Danice,” she corrected. “Danice Carter. I’m, ah, pleased to meet you.”

  Mac stepped between the two women before Danice could offer to shake hands. “And now that we all know each other, why don’t you tell me what you want, Mother?”

  He couldn’t stop himself from emphasizing the title. It was one Tyra had never wanted, but he’d be damned if he’d let her pretend their relationship was anything else. At least not to his face. Besides, Tyra ni Oengus was notoriously vain. It would rankle to be constantly reminded of her adult son, despite her immortality. Even the Fae disliked growing old, and they especially feared the loss of their looks.

  “Why, to see you, of course.” She batted her lashes at him. They grew thick and long around eyes the color of stormy seas, dark despite the bright gold of her hair. He had inherited her coloring, but not, he liked to think, any of her spirit. “How could I resist the chance to lay eyes on my darling boy after so many years?”

  “You’ve managed well enough before now.”

  Danice drew in a sharp breath, but Tyra only laughed.

  “Oh, you’re still angry with me, aren’t you? You dear boy.” Tyra laid a hand on his arm, her skin pale and glowing like moonlight, her long, slender fingers decorated with shining silver and glittering jewels. “Of course you are. But only tell me what I can do to make your feel better? Anything you’d like! You have only to ask.”

  Instinct and logic urged Mac to refuse, to inform her that she had nothing to offer to him that would interest him in the least. She had lost her chance to make up to him decades ago, and now he wanted nothing to do with her.

  He didn’t, but Danice’s hand at his back reminded him of where he was, and why he’d come. Maybe his mother could prove useful at last. For the first time in either of their lives.

  “Maybe you can help, Mother,” he said, folding his arms over his chest and meeting her calculating gaze. She stood nearly as tall as he did, so he had a good view of the woman behind the bright Fae facade. “Danice and I came to Winter Home in the hope of making contact with someone, which we can’t very well do from this cell in Dionnu’s dungeon. If you could have us freed and gain us permission to talk to whomever we need to talk to, it would go a long way toward…softening my feelings toward you.”

  Mac watched the cold intellect in his mother’s eyes as she processed his request. He doubted that she cared much one way or the other how he felt about her, but she wouldn’t want the rest of court to see how little her son cared for her. It would be one thing if she were seen to reject him; after all, he was just a mutt. A half-human mistake. The evidence of a night of poor judgment on her part. At least, that was how the Fae would see it. But if he publically renounced her, that would be a different matter entirely. The Fae were convinced of their own superiority. They would not take kindly to a human looking down on one of their own. So how much did Tyra want to preserve her reputation?

  And could she possibly get anything else out of making things easier for him while Mac and Danice were in Faerie?

  Because that, Mac knew, would be the bottom line. How would helping Mac end up helping Tyra?

  He watched her eyes narrow for an instant as she made her decision. Then they opened again, wide and guileless. Provided you didn’t look just a little too closely.

  “Of course, my darling boy,” Tyra gushed, smiling like some kind of benevolent goddess granting a boon to her mortal subject. Which probably summed up at least part of how she viewed it. “Consider it done! In fact, I will arrange that tonight’s feast be held in your honor. Nothing but the best for my dearest Callahan.”

  “Right.” Not like she was laying it on a little thick, or anything.

  “But first, let me see to the essentials. You and your companion can hardly be seen looking less than your best.” She waved her hands at them to follow her and led the way out of the cell and down the corridor to a flight of stairs. The guards outside the door uttered not a word of protest.

  Danice, on the other hand, tried to rip his arm off when he attempted to lead her from the room.

  “Are you crazy?” she hissed, clutching the bedsheet to her chest like an armored breastplate. “It was bad enough for your mother to see me like this, but there is no way on God’s earth or this one that I am going to parade my naked ass around this castle for the whole world to see!”

  Mac felt his mouth twitch. “But it’s such a pretty ass.” He held up his hands and took a step back when it looked as if she might rip his heart out with her bare hands. Clearly, she wasn’t amused. Nor was she kidding about her self-consciousness.

  He leaned his head out the door. “Mother?”

  Tyra stopped halfway down the hall and raised an eyebrow. “What is it, dearest?”

  “Danice doesn’t feel comfortable walking through the palace without her clothes,” he explained, raising his voice to carry above her snarl. “You’ll have to give us a moment for her to dress.”

  “Oh.” Tyra displayed the normal reaction of the Fae when confronted with human modesty—complete lack of understanding. “Well, there’s no need for that. As I said, there will be a feast tonight, and I doubt either of you dressed in anything remotely suitable. Did you?”

  Mac thought about what constituted “suitable” for a feast into Winter Home’s great hall, and shook his head.

  “I thought not,” Tyra said. “So it would be silly to waste time dressing in your old clothes. I’ll have new ones sent to your room.”

  Considering the matter settled, the Fae woman turned to continue to the stairs.

  Mac sighed. “Mother. That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t change the fact that at the moment, Danice is not dressed and doesn’t want to be seen on the way to wherever it is we’re going.”

  “Oh. Well, why didn’t you say that in the first place, silly darling?” Tyra laughed. “That is easy enough to handle.”

  And with a clap of her hands, the sidhe woman magicked all three of them out of the dungeons and into a sumptuously appointed guest chamber somewhere on the grounds of the enormous castle.

  “There. Is that better?” she demanded, her animated expression clearly indicating that she would not understand if either of them said no. “You darlings can stay right here. There’s a private bathing room just through that door there, and I’ll have suitable clothing sent up immediately. And I’ll also make sure that no one disturbs you, if you two feel the need for more…sleep.”

  Her sly look and smirking smile possessed all the subtlety of a cricket bat to the side of the head. Mac felt Danice stiffen beside him. He reached out to take her hands, squeezing her fingers tightly.

  “That’s fine, Mother. We’ll see you this evening, then.”

  Tyra smiled wider, the expression reminding Mac of a fox in the door of a hen house. “Of course you will, darling boy. And I assure you, I’m already looking forward to the pleasure.”

  Then she gave another clap of her hands and disappeared from sight.

  Mac turned and watched as Danice sank to the edge of the bed, still holding on to the sheet like a security blanket. She looked exhausted and numb, or maybe that was forlorn. Either way, he didn’t like it.

  “So, uh, that was my mother,” he said dumbly, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “We don’t get along very well. We haven’t really spent any time together since I was a baby.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She didn’t even bother to look at him.

/>   “I’m sorry she just barged in on us like that. I never expected we’d run into her while we were here. I honestly don’t know what made her decide to come looking for me when she heard the Guard had locked us up.”

  At least that made her lift her chin and look at him. “Do you really think that your mother is our biggest problem at the moment?”

  He struggled to read her expression. “You did seem kind of upset about meeting her.”

  “No, actually, if you’ll remember, I was upset before she waltzed in on us having an argument,” she pointed out. “While naked.”

  She really did sound upset about the nudity thing. Mac made a mental note to remember that in the future. He preferred not to see her upset. Though, at the moment, just being in the same room with him seemed to be enough to upset her.

  “I wouldn’t really call it arguing,” he hedged. “We were having a discussion.”

  “You were questioning my moral integrity.”

  “No, I wasn’t!” Mac scrambled to remember what he’d said that could have given her that idea. “I was questioning whether or not you were happy at your job! I didn’t say a single word about your integrity.” He stepped toward her, instinctively wanting to put his arms around her and know she couldn’t just up and disappear on him.

  “Danice, I think you’re probably the most moral person I’ve ever met,” he assured her, reaching out tentatively to grasp her shoulders. She didn’t exactly step into his embrace, but neither did she jerk away and order him to keep his hands off her. At the moment he’d take what he could get. “I never intended to make you think I doubted that. I just wanted you to think for a minute about what your job is really worth to you.”

  She stared at a spot on his shoulder, studiously avoiding his gaze. “Whatever it’s worth to me isn’t the point right now. I said I would do a job, and I don’t walk out on that kind of promise. When I say I’ll do something, I do it.”

  “And I don’t doubt that for a second,” he said. “But just stop and think for a minute. That incredible determination of yours has landed you in a bit of a tough spot, don’t you think? I mean, what was your assignment originally? To interview Rosemary and get the information you need to file your boss’s lawsuits, right? Where in that description does it say you had to track her down to another dimension and put yourself in danger by following her there?”