AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But his words now haunted Eileen with a different meaning. He would not play until he was confident of winning. Buying her publisher was surely the opening gambit of his play. So what was it that he hoped to win?
Feeling suddenly restless, she grabbed her cloak and headed for a walk in the woods. Without her conscious volition, her feet led her to the dryad’s clearing. Her ward stone glittered blue and white in the sunlight, now just a pretty trinket twisting in the light breeze.
The dryad stepped out of the wych elm, her arms crossed beneath her breasts.
“Is it you, then?” she asked in Gaelic.
“Aye. It’s sorry I am to be disturbing you,” Eileen answered in the same tongue. “I was only just out for a bit of a wander.”
Reassured that Eileen wasn’t going to trap her inside again, the dryad slipped back into her tree. Eileen felt a brief surge of hot emotion, demanding the tree woman be chained within her elm with no hope of ever escaping. But that was foolish. The dryad’s binding that prohibited her from enchanting mortal men to their deaths had been broken by a leprechaun. Restoring the binding was sufficient action. To punish her further simply for being what she was would be wrong.
When Eileen had confronted the dryad after stopping her attack on Dermot, she had forced the dryad to seek refuge within her tree and then trapped her there. But that had been a matter of expediency. She’d needed to make certain the dryad wasn’t enticing anyone else to her tree while Eileen was caring for her victim. After Dermot left, she’d released the dryad and reset the binding to the proper level, allowing the creature her freedom, so long as she caused no harm.
“No harm,” she whispered. She’d explained that tenet to Dermot. Maybe the best way to test the temper of his intentions was to see whether or not he was acting in accordance with her beliefs. Was he doing as he wished, regardless of others, or would he first ensure his actions caused her no harm?
When she looked at it that way, perhaps her haste to ascribe the worst possible motive to him reflected poorly on her. “Cause no harm,” she repeated.
Very well. She would fly to America and meet with him, to discuss the possibility of a talk show appearance.
Her blood heated at the thought of seeing him again. Although it had been two weeks, she could still taste his lips on hers, and feel the imprint of his body. His lovemaking had transported her in a way she hadn’t known was possible. She’d salved her pride by insisting it had been a lingering effect of his encounter with the dryad, enhancing his appeal. He’d certainly seemed less than appealing when he’d hurried away from her without a by-your-leave, and all but ordered her to schedule another session of lovemaking. In retrospect, she may have overreacted to his innate arrogance. He was an American, after all, and a rich one. He was used to giving orders. It didn’t mean he thought less of her, any more than her brogue meant she was a fool.
Now that she’d found a way to soothe her conscience and see him again, she eagerly anticipated finding out if it could be as good as she remembered.
Humming softly to herself, Eileen turned to leave and spotted a branch that had fallen from the dryad’s tree, and been half-buried in the mud. She plucked the fallen branch from the ground, then knocked it against her leg to dislodge the dried mud clinging to the smooth gray bark. She’d clean it up and bring it to America with her. The thought of striking Dermot’s firmly muscled ass with the supple branch made her breath quicken and wet heat build between her legs.
Swishing the wych elm stick through the air, she trotted back to her cottage.
* * * * *
Dermot scanned the line of passengers coming from the Aer Lingus flight to the luggage area. He’d given Eileen first class tickets, so she should have been one of the first people off the plane. But that didn’t mean she’d be one of the first to reach the luggage carousels. She might have gotten a slow line through customs.
He turned to his driver, Chris, looming behind him for protection. “If I don’t tell you otherwise, take us to my apartment and cancel Ms. Daniells’s reservation at the Niko.”
The driver couldn’t quite conceal his smirk. “And keep the limo’s privacy screen up and the intercom off. Yes, Mr. Stone. You’ve already given me thorough instructions.”
Struggling to control his rising impatience, Dermot schooled his features to polite indifference and went back to searching the crowd for Eileen. There! His breath caught in his throat. Still wearing the cloak he remembered so well, she seemed to float down the corridor, a breath of Irish breeze mysteriously finding only her among the crowd of passengers and wafting through the soft curls of her honey gold hair.
Lifting his arm, he waved to her. “Eileen!”
Those incredible blue-green eyes focused on him, going wide as she realized who had called her name. Then, like sunlight breaking through a cloud-filled Irish sky, she smiled.
“Dermot.”
She stepped out of the flow of people, and crossed to meet him.
Chapter Five
At the sight of Dermot waiting for her, a warm glow of contentment filled Eileen. He looked out of place in the crowded airport, standing as still and unmoving as the stone he was named for while currents of passengers broke and swirled around him.
Threading her way through openings in the crowd, she crossed to his side.
“I didn’t expect you to meet me.”
“Officially, I sent my driver to meet you.” He nodded his head to the side, directing her attention to the man in a charcoal gray suit and mirrored sunglasses standing behind him to the left.
The man nodded. “Ma’am.”
“Hello.” She smiled and nodded in return, then turned back to Dermot. “Unofficially?”
