Captivated (23 page)

Settle it, she thought with a vivid premonition of disaster. Why did that phrase sound so much like “end it”? Bracing, she started to follow him into the kitchen, but found her courage fading. Instead, she turned into the living room and sat on the edge of a chair.

He needed his coffee, she told herself. And she needed a moment to regroup.

She hadn’t expected to find him so angry, so cold. The way he’d looked when he’d spoken to Leeanne the day before. Nor had she had any idea how much it would hurt to have him look at her with that ice-edged and
somehow aloof fury.

She rose to wander the room, one hand placed protectively over the life beginning in her womb. She
would
protect that life, she promised herself. At all costs.

When he came back, a steaming cup in his hand, she was standing by the window. Her eyes looked wistful. If he hadn’t known better, he would have said she looked hurt, even vulnerable.

But he did know better. Surely being a witch was the next thing to being invulnerable.

“Your flowers need water,” she said to him. “It isn’t enough just to plant them.” Again her hand lay quietly over her stomach. “They need care.”

He gulped down coffee and scalded his tongue. The pain helped block the sudden need to go to her and take her into his arms, to whisk away the sadness he heard in her voice. “I’m not much in the mood to talk about flowers.”

“No.” She turned, and the traces of vulnerability were gone. “I can see that. What are you in the mood to talk about, Nash?”

“I want the truth. All of it.”

She gave him a small, amused smile, turning her palms up questioningly. “Where would you like me to begin?”

“Don’t play games with me, Morgana. I’m tired of it.” He began to pace the room, his muscles taut enough to snap. His head came up. If she had been fainter of heart, the look in his eyes would have had her stumbling
back in defense. “This whole business has been one long lark for you, hasn’t it? Right from the beginning, from the minute I walked into your shop, you decided I was a likely candidate.” God, it hurt, he realized. It hurt to think of everything he’d felt, everything he’d begun to wish for. “My attitude toward your . . . talents irritated you, so you just had to strut your stuff.”

Her heart quivered in her breast, but her voice was strong. “Why don’t you tell me what you mean? If you’re saying I showed you what I am, I can’t deny it. I can’t be ashamed of it.”

He slapped the mug down so that coffee sloshed over the sides and onto the table. The sense of betrayal
was so huge, it overwhelmed everything. Damn it, he loved her. She’d made him love her. Now that he was calling her on it, she just stood there, looking calm and lovely.

“I want to know what you did to me,” he said again. “Then I want you to undo it.”

“I told you, I didn’t—”

“I want you to look me in the eye.” On a wave of panic and fury, he grabbed her arms. “Look me in the eye, Morgana, and tell me you didn’t wave your wand or chant your charm and make me feel this way.”

“What way?”

“Damn you, I’m in love with you. I can’t get through an hour without wanting you. I can’t think about a year from now, ten years from now, without seeing you with me.”

Her heart melted. “Nash—”

He jerked back from the hand she lifted to his cheek. Stunned, Morgana let it fall back to her side. “How did you do it?” he demanded. “How did you get inside me like this, to make me start thinking of marriage and family? What was the point? To play around with the mortal until you got tired of him?”

“I’m as mortal as you,” she said steadily. “I eat and sleep, I bleed when I’m cut. I grow old. I feel.”

“You’re not like me.” He bit off the words. Morgana felt her charm slipping, the color washing out of her cheeks.

“No. You’re right. I’m different, and there’s nothing I can do to change it. Nothing I would do. If you’re finding that too difficult to accept, then let me go.”

“You’re not going to walk out of here and leave me like this. Fix it.” He gave her a brisk shake. “Undo the spell.”

The illusion fell away so that she stared at him with shadowed eyes. “What spell?”

“Whatever one you used. You got me to tell you things I’ve never told anyone. You stripped me bare, Morgana. Didn’t you think I’d figure out that I’d never have told you about my family, my background, if I’d been in my right mind? That was mine.” He released her, and turned away to keep from doing something drastic. “You tricked it out of me, just like you tricked all the rest. You used my feelings.”

“I never used your feelings,” she began furiously, then stopped, paling even more.

When he noted the look, his lips thinned. “Really?”

“All right, I used them yesterday. After your mother called, after you’d told me all those things, I wanted to give you some peace of mind.”

“So it was a spell.”

Though her chin came up, he wavered. She looked so damn fragile just then. Like glass that would shatter at his touch. “I let my emotions rule my judgment. If I was wrong, as it’s obvious now I was, I apologize.”

“Oh, fine. Sorry I took you for a ride, Nash.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. “What about the rest?”

She lifted a shaky hand to her hair. “The rest of what?”

“Are you going to stand there and tell me you didn’t cause all of this, manipulate my feelings? Make me think I was in love with you, that I wanted to start a life with you? God, have children with you?” Because he still wanted it, still, his anger grew. “I know damn well it wasn’t my idea. No way in hell.”

The hurt sliced deep. But, as it cut, it freed something. His anger, his sense of betrayal and confusion, was nothing compared to what bubbled inside her. She reined it in with a light hand as she studied him.

“Are you saying that I bound you to me with magic? That I used my gifts for my own gain, charmed you into loving me?”

“That’s just what I’m saying.”

Morgana released the reins. Color flooded back into her face, had her eyes gleaming like suns. Power, and
the strength it brought, filled her. “You brainless ass.”

Indignant, he started to snap back. His words came out like the bray of a donkey. Eyes wide, he tried again while she swooped around the room.

“So you think you’re under a spell,” she muttered, her fury making books fly through the room like literary missiles. Nash ducked and scrambled, but he didn’t manage to avoid all of them. As one rapped the bridge of his nose, he swore. He felt a moment’s dizzy relief when he realized he had his own voice back.

“Look, babe—”

“No, you look.
Babe
.” On a roll now, she had a gust of wind tossing his furniture into a heap. “Do you think I’d waste my gifts captivating someone like you? You conceited, arrogant jerk. Give me one reason I shouldn’t turn you into the snake you are.”

Eyes narrowed, he started toward her. “I’m not going to play along with this.”

“Then watch.” With a flick of her hand she had him shooting back across the room, two feet above the floor, to land hard in a chair. He thought about getting up, but decided it was wiser to get his breath back first.

To satisfy herself, she sent the dishes soaring in the kitchen. Nash listened to the crashing with a resigned sigh.

“You should know better than to anger a witch,” she told him. The logs in his fireplace began to spit and crackle with flame. “Don’t you know what someone like me, someone without integrity, without scruples, might do?”

“All right, Morgana.” He started to rise. She slapped him back in the chair so hard his teeth rattled.

“Don’t come near me, not now, not ever again.” Her breath was heaving, though she was struggling to even it. “I swear, if you do, I’ll turn you into something that runs on four legs and howls at the moon.”

He let out an uneasy breath. He didn’t think she’d do it. Not really. And it was better to take a stand than to whimper. His living room was a shambles. Hell, his life was a shambles. They were going to have to deal with it.

“Cut it out, Morgana.” His voice was admirably calm and firm. “This isn’t proving anything.”

The fury drained out of her, leaving her empty and aching and miserable. “You’re quite right. It isn’t. My
temper, like my feelings, sometimes clouds my judgment. No.” She waved a hand before he could rise. “Stay where you are. I can’t trust myself yet.”

As she turned away, the fire guttered out. The wind died. Quietly Nash breathed a sigh of relief. The storm, it appeared, was over.

He was very wrong.

“So you don’t want to be in love with me.”

Something in her voice had his brows drawing together. He wanted her to turn around so that he could see
her face, but she stood with her back to him, looking out the window.

“I don’t want to be in love with anyone,” he said carefully, willing himself to believe it. “Nothing personal.”

“Nothing personal,” she repeated.

“Look, Morgana, I’m a bad bet. I like my life the way it was.”

“The way it was before you met me.”

When she said it like that, he felt like something slimy that slithered through the grass. He checked his hands to make certain he wasn’t. “It’s not you, it’s me. And I . . . Damn it, I’m not going to sit here and apologize because I don’t like being spellbound.” He got to his feet gingerly. “You’re a beautiful woman, and—”

“Oh, please. Don’t strain yourself with a clever brush-off.” The words choked out of her as she turned.

Nash felt as though she’d stuck a lance in his heart. She was crying. Tears were streaming out of her brimming eyes and flowing down her pale cheeks. There was nothing, nothing, he wanted more at that moment than to take her in his arms and kiss them away.

“Morgana, don’t. I never meant to—” His words were cut off as he rapped into a wall. He couldn’t see it, but she’d thrown it up between them, and it was as solid as bricks and mortar. “Stop it.” His voice rose on a combination of panic and self-disgust as he rammed a hand against the shield that separated them. “This isn’t the answer.”

Her heart was bleeding. She could feel it. “It’ll do until I find the right one.” She wanted to hate him,
desperately wanted to hate him for making her humiliate herself. As the tears continued to fall, she laid both hands on her stomach. She had more than herself to protect.

He spread his own impotent hands against the wall. Odd, he thought, he felt as though it was he who had been closed off, not her. “I can’t stand to see you cry.”

“You’ll have to for a moment. Don’t worry, a witch’s tears are like any woman’s. Weak and useless.” She steadied herself, blinking them away until she could see clearly. “You want your freedom, Nash?”

If he could have, he’d have clawed and kicked his way through to her. “Damn it, can’t you see I don’t know
what I want?”

“Whatever it is, it isn’t me. Or what we’ve made together. I promised I wouldn’t take more than you wanted to give me. And I never go back on my word.”

He felt a new kind of fear, a rippling panic at the thought that what he did want was about to slip through his fingers. “Let me touch you.”

“If you thought of me as a woman first, I would.” For herself, she laid a hand on the wall opposite his. “Do you think, because of what I am, that I don’t need to be loved as any man loves any woman?”

He shoved and strained against the wall. “Take this damn thing down.”

It was all she had—a poor defense. “We crossed purposes somewhere along the line, Nash. No one’s fault, I suppose, that I came to love you so much.”

“Morgana, please.”

She shook her head, studying him, drawing his image inside her head, her heart, where she could keep it. “Maybe, because I did, I somehow drew you in. I’ve never been in love before, so I can’t be sure. But I swear to you, it wasn’t intentional, it wasn’t done to harm.”

Furious that the tears were threatening again, she backed away. For a moment she stood—straight, proud, powerful.

“I’ll give you this, and you can trust what I say. Whatever hold I have on you is broken, as of this instant. Whatever feelings I’ve caused in you through my art, I cast away. You’re free of me, and of all we made.”

She closed her eyes, lifted her hands. “Love conjured is love false. I will not take, nor will I make. Such cast away is nothing lost. Your heart and mind be free of me. As I will, so mote it be.”

Her eyes opened, glittered with fresh tears. “You are more than you think,” she said quietly. “Less than you could be.”

His heart was thudding in his throat. “Morgana, don’t go like this.”

She smiled. “Oh, I think I’m entitled to at least a dramatic exit, don’t you?” Though she was several feet away, he would have sworn he felt her lips touch him. “Blessed be, Nash,” she said. And then she was gone.

He had no doubt he was going out of his mind. Day after day he prowled the house and the grounds. Night after night he tossed restlessly in bed.

She’d said he was free of her, hadn’t she? Then why wasn’t he?

Why hadn’t he stopped thinking about her, wishing for her? Why could he still see the way she had looked at him that last time, with hurt in her eyes and tears on her cheeks?

He tried to tell himself she’d left him charmed. But he knew it was a lie.

After a week, he gave up and drove by her house. It was empty. He went to the shop and was told by a very cool and unfriendly Mindy that Morgana was away. But she wouldn’t tell him where, or when she would be back.

He should have felt relief. That was what he told himself. Doggedly he pushed thoughts of her aside and
picked up the life he’d led before her.

But when he walked the beach, he imagined what it would be like to stroll there with her, a toddler scampering between them.

That image sent him driving down to L.A. for a few days.

He wanted to think he felt better there, with the rush and the crowds and the noise. He took a lunch with his agent at the Polo Lounge and discussed the casting for his screenplay. He went alone to clubs and fed himself on music and laughter. And he wondered if he’d made a mistake in moving north. Maybe he belonged in the heart of the city, surrounded by strangers and distractions.