by Sarah Hegger
“Yes, you do.” He gestured with his fore and middle fingers between them. “You can trust me because this fucking insane thing between us, I feel it too.” His gaze pinned and held her. “And it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life.” His smile softened and became self-deprecating. “I need to know you, Bronwyn.”
Those words played across her like a harp, and she forced her ass to stay in her seat.
“Excuse me.” Alexander leaned to the table to his right.
It was the German woman from the tour, but she’d swapped her Man U sweatshirt for a white blouse with chubby, cheerful bumblebees on it. “Yes?”
“I’d very much like to take this beautiful lady to dinner, but she’s wary of me being a stranger.” His smile could have melted the wax off a candle.
The German woman rallied and gave Bronwyn an approving nod. “You cannot be too careful.”
“What if you took a photograph of us and if she’s not at breakfast tomorrow morning, you can take it straight to the police?” Alexander looked at Bronwyn and raised his brow in a question.
“Well…I suppose.” The woman frowned and glanced at the man dining with her.
He shrugged and looked at Bronwyn. “Would you like to go to dinner with this gentleman?”
“Yes.” Right now more than the next breath she took.
“Good.” He nodded and raised his cellphone. He snapped a picture of them together. “There, you see. Now all is good.”
“For you.” Alexander put the bottle of wine and two glasses on their table and offered her his hand again. “Shall we?”
Outside, the night was mild with a soft brine-laden breeze. Alexander led her down the sidewalk to a low-slung vintage sportscar. He jerked his head at it. “This is us.”
Her hesitation returned, and Bronwyn stared at the car. She didn’t know much about cars, but the gleaming walnut dash screamed expensive.
Hands in his pockets, Alexander waited for her to make up her mind. If Deidre were here, she would tell her life was short. She would give that great cackle of hers and wink and say, Trust yourself, darling. Deidre would also be quick to point out the undeniable hotness of Alexander.
He opened the door for her, and she climbed in.
Neither of them spoke as he drove them down the main street and into a more residential area. Smaller houses gave way to bigger ones, spaced more widely apart.
For better or worse, she’d made the decision to go with her gut. “Where are we going?”
“To the best place around here for food.” He flashed her a smile and went back to watching the road.
Ambient light etched the perfection of his profile against the night. She’d never met anybody quite so good looking before. He was almost too perfect to be real.
He turned between a pair of stone gateposts and stopped in the circle driveway in front of a beautiful stone manor house. Rectangles of welcome light shone from the mullioned windows and the portico over the door.
She leaned forward to get a better look. “This is your place.”
“Yes.” He made no move to get out the car. “Once you enter that door, abandon all hope. I have you in my evil clutches, and I shall never let you go.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
He laughed, his teeth flashing white in the dark. “I’m going to feed you, give you a great glass of wine and get to know you.”
“Okay.” She returned his smile.
Inside the manor was everything the exterior promised. Gleaming wooden floors were partially covered by large rugs that deadened the sound of their footsteps. She caught glimpses of immaculate antiques, wainscoting and large oil canvases. She wanted to stop and examine everything, but Alexander led her through and into a large, renovated kitchen.
Heat from a huge range taking up one entire wall of the kitchen made it feel cozy. Light gleamed off copper pans hanging above a massive central island topped with creamy white granite. The cabinets were dark sage on the bottom and creamy white on the uppers. It was pretty much her dream kitchen.
“Here.” Alexander pulled out a wooden stool at the counter and patted the seat. “You sit here while I plot your demise.”
“Will I get that wine while you’re plotting?” She perched on the stool and watched him move about the kitchen. He looked completely at home in the space.
He disappeared into a pantry and came back with another of those dusty bottles that she suspected were vintage. After pouring deep ruby wine into two crystal goblets, he put one in front of her and took the second. He raised the glass. “To new friends.”
“To new friends.” The connection hummed gently between them, turned down to a comfortable level now.
Alexander rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Muscle and sinew flexed in his forearms as he flipped the cuffs of his shirt. “Right.” He pulled a butcher block closer. “Food.”
She took a sip of her wine and made a surprised hum of delight. It was definitely not what she’d been drinking at the pub.
He looked up from chopping onions and smiled. “Good?”
“Yes.” She wanted to bask in the male beauty of that smile. There was something about it that felt as if he smiled like that for her alone.
Alexander swept the chopped onions into a large pan. “So, Bronwyn, tell me all about you.”
He crushed garlic with the flat of a knife blade and then chopped it. Everything about him radiated self-assurance and confidence. It intrigued her but left her feeling discombobulated. “Why don’t you tell me about you instead?”
“Fair enough.” His smile had a rueful edge. Garlic joined the onions, and he added olive oil as he turned to the range. And wouldn’t you know it, but his ass was as perfect as the rest of him.
“Not much of interest really.” He raised his voice over the sound of frying. “I’m the product of thousands of years of inbreeding to create the idiot you see before you.” The smell of onions and garlic frying made her mouth water. “Overbearing mother, absentee father, privileged upbringing, insufferable sense of my own importance.”
There was a whole lot more to the story than that, she’d lay money on it, but he made her laugh anyway. “Overbearing mother?”
“Complete nightmare.” He put a saucepan of stock on to boil. “I’m warning you now so you can never say I didn’t tell you.”
It was odd, and she was pretty sure he was joking, but then again not. His eyes were darker than pitch and hard to read. A soul deep weariness hung about him, the sort that should belong to a much older person. The man in front of her couldn’t be older than thirty. “Have you always lived in Greater Littleton?”
“My entire life,” he said. “I was born here, raised here, and I will most certainly die here.”
Again the oddness of the last part of that struck her. “Why are you so sure you’ll die here?”
“It’s my home.” He chuckled. “And I did tell you about the overbearing mother.”
“She probably won’t live forever.”
He laughed and said, “I’d take that bet.”
“What do you do? For a living.” Her sense of him being so familiar jibed with mining for information. It was almost as if she should have known the answers to the questions she asked.
“I manage the family business,” he said. “We’ve been at it for a few years, and now it’s my turn at the helm.”
“Family business as in?”
“Mostly land. A few investments and businesses.” He turned from his cooking and topped up her wineglass. “The pub is another of those family businesses.”
Now the cringing waitstaff made more sense. “Ah. You’re the owner?”
“Guilty as charged.” He sipped his wine, dark eyes studying her over the rim. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been there as much as I would have liked lately, and standards have slipped.”
“And by land, you mean ancestral land.” He was a lord after all.
“Now you have the full story.” His smile warmed hi
s eyes and she grew slightly breathless. “Your turn.”
“Oh.” She didn’t want to talk about herself, but to delve deeper into him. Still, turnabout was fair play. “Only daughter, no father, mother died when I was three, raised by my grandmother.”
Sadness crept into his expression. “I’m sorry, Bronwyn. Nobody should lose a mother that young.”
“Thank you.” His empathy crept under her skin and warmed her. “My grandmother raised me. She was like a mother.”
He motioned her to him. “I need you to stir.”
“What am I stirring?” She rounded the island to join him at the range. “And I should warn you I can’t boil an egg.”
“Risotto.” Up close, his smile hit her like a brick to the back of the knees, as he shifted her between him and the range and put a spoon in her hand. “Stir, and when the liquid is absorbed, add another ladle of stock.”
He moved away, and she immediately missed his nearness.
She stirred as he worked beside her. No question he knew his way around the kitchen. The atmosphere was easy as he chopped mushrooms and something that looked like bacon. “What is that?”
“Pancetta.” He dropped the pancetta in a hot pan, and it hissed, smelling as divine as only cooking bacon can smell.
“That’s fancy Italian bacon, right?”
He grinned. “Yup, but la pancetta è poesia, il bacon la Colonna dei necrology.”
Bronwyn almost choked on her next swallow of wine. “And you speak Italian.”
“Add more stock.” He jabbed a thumb at her pan. “I speak Italian, French, Spanish, Greek, German and enough Russian to argue over taxi fare.” He cocked his head and smirked. “Are you impressed yet?”
“Are you trying to impress me?”
“Absolutely.” He shrugged and sipped his wine. “I’m throwing out some of my best material here.”
Bronwyn laughed. The easy flirtatiousness was more comfortable than the intense, breathless excitement at the pub. Perhaps it was because they were in his home, but he seemed more at ease, less…she struggled to find the right word…focused.
“Tell me about your grandmother.” He removed the cooked pancetta to a plate and dropped the chopped mushrooms in the pan.
“Deidre was wonderful. We were very close.” Maybe because she’d lost both her daughters young, but Deidre didn’t believe one moment of life should be wasted. You don’t have another life in the closet, darling. This is the one you get, so make it count.
“Just the two of you?” Alexander had a way of concentrating on her that made her feel like they were in a vacuum.
She found herself telling him more than she’d intended. “Actually, I had a sister too, but she died before I was born. My aunt, my mother’s sister, died when I was sixteen.”
“I’m more sorry than I can say.” He took her hand and squeezed it. Warm tingles spread from the contact up her wrist and arm. It felt too intimate too fast, and she took her hand back.
“It’s fine.” She wanted to lighten the mood. “I mean it’s not, but it is what it is. We don’t seem to live long in my family.”
“And your grandmother?”
The grief snuck up on her and Bronwyn had to blink back tears. “Last year.”
“I’m sorry, little witch.” He closed his hand over hers as his dark gaze nearly swallowed her whole.
Warmth from his touch spread up her arm, and she had the insane desire to press her face into his chest and have him hold her. Seeking distraction, she said, “You’ve called me that twice before.”
“Have I?” With a last squeeze, he dropped her hand and went back to grating parmesan.
“At the statue and then at the…” Bronwyn thought back. At the pub she’d heard him whisper little witch, but she couldn’t be sure he’d said it. It was confusing, so she shifted the subject. “Actually, my grandmother is the reason I’m here.”
He raised an eyebrow and sipped his wine. “Tell me.”
“She wanted me to take this trip and trace our roots.” Bronwyn raised her glass, but she had finished it.
Alexander reached behind him, snagged the bottle and topped her glass up. “And your roots brought you here?”
“I did one of those ancestry tests and it told me I am one hundred percent English and Irish and traced me to here.” She shrugged and sipped her wine. “And here I am.”
He toasted her with his glass. “And I, for one, am glad you are.”
Chapter Five
All through making dinner, Alexander kept it light and easy, disguising the compulsion that drummed through his blood like a second heartbeat. Mine, mine, mine. He could dress as a modern man, even ape the mannerisms and speech of one, but beneath the urbane exterior, his true self lurked: a man born in a savage time who had survived by being the strongest and the most feral.
After dinner he daren’t linger. With his senses finely attuned to her, he craved her. It wasn’t a polite or a gentle thing, his craving. It demanded he lose himself in her, that he take her, and in so doing, surrender himself completely to her.
He’d seriously underestimated the pull of the prophecy. He had brought her to his manor to keep her away from Rhiannon’s prying eyes, knowing those same prying eyes would report back that he’d taken her home.
“Tell me what you thought of the statue.” He needed to understand how sensitive this dormant witch was.
She started. “Why would you ask that?”
“You spent some time staring at it this morning. It took all of my devastating charm to draw your attention away.” She was guarded around her abilities, which suggested someone had taught her to hide them. That same someone had probably saved her life.
It could be a coincidence that the sole remaining bloodline of water witches had an alarming tendency to die young. Like it was plausible that every one of them was so clumsy or careless of their own lives that they got into car accidents, fell off cliffs, drowned in calm seas—he’d been doing his homework on Bronwyn’s family. Or it could be that someone had been systematically targeting and eradicating them.
Her magic smelled of honey and sage, and it clung to her like a subtle perfume. It taunted him to press his skin to hers and absorb her scent.
She turned in her seat to look at him as he drove. “Do you know anything about Sir Roderick?”
“A little.” The crippling strength of Roderick’s sword arm, the bone crunching impact of Roderick’s punch, and Alexander most definitely knew enough to get the hell out of the way when Roderick swung that war hammer of his.
She tucked one leg under her and shifted closer. “Is that him in the statue?”
“It most certainly is.” The warm silk of her skin made his mouth water. He could kiss her, pull the car over and kiss her. She would let him too, but he was not so sure he would be able to stop. Strike that. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop with a few kisses. How thrilled Mummy dearest would be to know how well that prophecy worked.
“Hmm.” She wrinkled her nose like she wasn’t certain. “Hermione is not sure. She said it might be him.”
“I’d stake my life on it. It’s Sir Roderick all right.” The confines of his car made him painfully aware of how easy it would be to touch her.
“How do you know?”
That was a long story, and one that would end in her running screaming into the night, and away from him. Unfortunately for her, he was all that stood between her and Rhiannon. “Old family, goes way, way back. All the way back to good old Sir Roderick.” And then he added because he couldn’t resist how much it would piss Roderick off if he could hear it. “My ancestors say he was a bit of an arse.”
“Bitter feuding families?” A teasing lilt lit her voice and made him want to taste it from her lips.
“The bitterest.” He threaded his car through the quiet village. It was late enough for the streets to look abandoned, but Rhiannon’s spies would be out there, watching, reporting.
“Do you know who the woman in the statue is?”<
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Maeve. Sweet, beautiful, innocent Maeve. Grief prevented him from replying immediately. The first time he’d seen Maeve, she had been peering at him through a window while he seduced another woman into doing Rhiannon’s will. Even then, being so much Rhiannon’s creature as he had been, the purity of Maeve had struck him. So different from the grasping creature he’d been intent on bending to Rhiannon’s will, Maeve’s presence had washed over him like cool, fresh spring water. Diminutive and delicate, like a spun sugar confection, she’d pierced the solid exoskeleton of blood magic Rhiannon had woven around him. With her flaxen hair and giant azure eyes, Maeve had been so much stronger than she looked. She’d have to be for the task Goddess had chosen for her.
“Maeve.” He cleared his throat and repeated a name he had no right to speak. “Her name is Maeve.”
Bronwyn gasped and she stared at him. “You’re sure her name was Maeve.”
“I am.” Bronwyn chewed on her bottom lip and stared out her window. She was definitely hiding something from him about Maeve. “Why so interested in them?”
She made a dismissive motion with her hand and lied again. “It sounds like a romantic story.”
“Romantic.” Alexander laughed. He couldn’t help it. Roderick would have given his left ball, maybe even his right as well, for it to be have been romantic between him and Maeve. Unfortunately for Roderick, the old bastard’s legendary luck with women had failed him with sweet, innocent Maeve. “Sir Roderick certainly liked the ladies, but nobody would ever accuse him of being romantic.”
Bronwyn leaned closer to him in her eagerness. “So were they lovers?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” he said. And not for lack of wanting on Roderick’s part. “Roderick was her…guardian. He looked after her.”
“Did she need looking after?”
Bronwyn was so close that if he turned his head, their mouths would meet. He kept his attention on the road. “More than either of them could have believed.”
“Who sculpted the statue of them?” Bronwyn sensed a story, and she wanted to know it all.
“That is impossible to say.” He pulled up outside the Hag’s Head and parked. Before temptation got the best of him, he hopped out of the car and came around to her side. Opening her door, he held his hand out to her. “Here we are. Back safe and sound.”
