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“What do you want?”
She only laughed again, shook her head. “It’s for you to figure out.” She reached out a hand, coyly inviting him to join her. Jewels sparkled at her wrist, little points of brilliant fire. “What will you give me?”
Frustration beat through his blood. “More of these,” he said, touching the gems at her wrist. “As many as you want, if that’s what you want.”
She held her arm out, turning it so the stones shot fire. “Well, I can’t say I mind having such things, but it’s not enough. What else have you got?”
“I’ll take you to all the places you want to see.”
She pouted at that and picked up a glittering comb to run it through her flowing hair. “Is that all?”
Temper snaked up, hissed in his throat. “I’ll make you rich, famous. Put the damn world at your feet.”
Now she yawned.
“Clothes,” he snapped. “Servants, houses. The envy and admiration of everyone who sees you. Everything you could ask for.”
“It’s not enough.”
He saw that this time when she spoke, her eyes wept. “
Can’t you see it’s not enough?”
“What, then?” He reached for her, intending to pull her up, to make her answer, but before his hands could touch, he slipped, stumbled, and was falling.
The voice that followed him wasn’t Darcy’s, but Gwen’s. “Until you know and give, it won’t be done. Until you do, it won’t begin.”
He shot out of sleep like a man at the edge of drowning, heart thundering, breath raw. And even then, awake, aware, he heard the faintest whisper.
“Look at what you already have. Give what’s only yours to give.”
“Christ.” Shaken, he got out of bed. Darcy shifted closer to the warmth he’d left, and slept on.
He started toward the bathroom, for water, then yanked on his jeans instead and went downstairs. Three A.M., he thought when he saw the clock. Perfect. He got down the bottle of whiskey and poured a stiff three fingers into a glass.
What the hell was wrong with him? But he knew, and knocked back the whiskey, hissed at the heat, set down the glass. He was in love with her. With a half laugh, he pressed his fingers to his eyes. Fell in love over bagels, he decided.
He’d been doing fine until then, he thought. Holding his own. Attraction, affection, interest, sex. Those were all safe and sound, those were all controllable.
Then she brings him a bagful of baked goods and he’s gone. Joke’s on you, Magee, he thought. You’ve been on your way since the first minute. The last slide just took you by surprise.
Hell of a slide, too.
He hadn’t thought he had it in him. After Sylvia, when he’d done everything he could to be in love, had planned it, orchestrated it, and failed so miserably at it, he’d been sure he simply wasn’t capable of that kind of emotion toward a woman.
It had worried him, dismayed him, angered him. Then he’d accepted it as likely for the best. If a man lacked something, it was only logical, efficient even, to compensate for it elsewhere. Work, his parents, his sister. The theater.
It had been enough, nearly enough. He’d convinced himself of it. And convinced himself that he could want Darcy, have Darcy, care for Darcy without it ever being more than that.
Now, without plan, without effort, it was . . . she was everything.
Part of him was thrilled. He wasn’t incapable of love. But there was just enough fear snaking through that thrill to remind him to be cautious. Be careful.
He went to the back door, opened it to cool his head with air gone damp and misty. He needed a clear head to deal with Darcy.
Magic, she’d said. There was magic tonight. He believed that, and was beginning to accept that there had been magic all along. In her, in this place. Maybe it was fate, and maybe it was luck. He’d have to work out if that luck was good or bad. Loving Darcy wasn’t going to be a smooth and easy road. Then again, he’d never really wanted the smooth and easy.
He didn’t want what his grandparents had—the chill formality of their marriage with no passion, with no humor or affection. There’d never be anything like chilly formality with a woman like Darcy.
He wanted her, and would figure out how to keep her. He didn’t doubt that. It was just a matter of calculating what to offer, how to offer, and when to offer what she wouldn’t be able to resist.
The last echo of the dream drifted back to him. Give what’s only yours to give.
He closed the words out, shut the door. He’d had enough of magic for one night.
SEVENTEEN
THE MORNING WAS misty. Darcy woke to light gray with rolling fog, and the bed empty beside her. There was nothing new in either. The fog would burn off before long if it was meant to. And as far as she could tell, Trevor was always up before dawn.
The man was a robot when it came to such matters.
She rolled over, wishing he was there to cuddle up against and knowing that because he wasn’t she wouldn’t sleep for wondering what he was up to. She supposed neither of them had gotten a reasonable night’s sleep since they’d become lovers. But running on sexua
l energy seemed to be working.
She felt wonderful.
She rose to take her robe from the hook in the closet. She had clothes in there as well and other things she deemed necessary for basic living throughout the cottage. It was a kind of living together they were doing, she knew, and had been all summer. Though neither of them mentioned it. In fact, they took great pains to avoid the subject, as if it were politics or religion.
He had a few things in her rooms over the pub, for the times he stayed there. And though it was a first for her, this having her things on a man’s shelf and his on hers, it had been a casual process, this shifting of items from place to place and melding of homes and lifestyles. Casual, she thought as she walked into the bath to turn on the shower, because that’s how they treated the entire business between them.
Yet there had been nothing casual in what had happened the night before. The scope of it was . . . She stepped under the spray, closing her eyes, tilting back her head. It was beyond anything she’d experienced before, anything she’d known two people could create between them.
It had to have been the same for him. He couldn’t have touched that way, been touched by her that way, unless he felt something deep and something true.
Lovemaking. Dreamily, she circled soap over her wet skin while the steam rose and closed her in. She hadn’t understood what that meant before Trevor. Not what it could mean. Vulnerability. She’d never realized that being vulnerable to someone else could be beautiful. Safe and warm and lovely. Just as knowing that for that stretch of time, in that soft world, he’d been vulnerable as well.
Here, at last, was a man she could open herself to completely, could promise herself to. And trust, and love, and cherish. They would spend their lives together, going wherever fate took them, grabbing hold of what life offered and making more from it. Through rushed days or quiet nights, in solitude or crowds. Making children, building homes.
She would make her mark beside him, and open all the doors she’d always longed to pass through.
It was possible to have everything after all, she thought. All you needed first was love.
He heard her singing of it when he stepped into the bedroom, of love and longing. It made him ache. He stood, while her voice slipped through the door she hadn’t quite closed and twined around him. He waited until her song ended, until he saw her moving around the room through the narrow opening.
He’d spent part of his wakeful night deciding just what to do about her.
He gave the door a quick knock with his knuckle, eased it open. She’d already wrapped a towel around herself and was slathering on the cream she kept in a little white pot. He thought it smelled like warm apricots, and it never failed to whet his appetite.
Her hair was wet and curled and wild as it was in the painting she had in her room. It reminded him, uncomfortably, of his dream.
“I brought you some tea.” “
“That’s lovely. Thanks.” She took the cup, smiling at him. Her eyes were still dreamy from her song. “I thought maybe you’d gone on to work already. I’m glad you didn’t.”
She moved closer to touch her mouth to his. She felt soft everywhere from wishing he’d take her back to bed to make love again as they had in the night.
“I was about to come up and wake you.” Wanting her clouded his brain, just as the steam clouded the bath. So he stepped out, kept the door open. “You beat me to it.”
She sipped the hot tea as the air in the bedroom shivered in and chilled her. “And what did you have in mind for after you’d waked me?”
A man with a single-digit IQ and no libido would have caught the invitation. Stay on track, Trevor warned himself. “A walk.”
“A walk?”
“Yeah.” He moved across the room to sit on the edge of the bed. He didn’t intend to touch her and lose focus, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t watch her dress and torture himself. “You usually walk down to the village anyway. So we’ll take a walk, then I’ll drive you down.”
She was pink and warm and fragrant from her shower, naked but for a towel, and the man wanted to go tramping around in the mist. A woman with less confidence, Darcy thought, would wonder if she’d misplaced her sex appeal during the night.
It didn’t mean she couldn’t be miffed. “
“Don’t you have to work?” Prepared to pout, she turned to the closet.
“I can take the morning. Mick’s coming in to keep an eye on things. Between him and Brenna I can spare a couple hours.”
The fact was, he could have spared days. Even weeks. It would have been more
