Magic (12 page)

“I don’t know if I’m strong enough to go through that again,” he whispered.

You are. Love makes you strong
.

He thought of Rachel holding her mother, whispering assurances through her tears. Love was the most powerful thing in the world. It could endure time and turmoil, hurt and heartache, pride and pain. Love was magic.

Bryan’s broad shoulders rose as he drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with cool air, and a deep, abiding calm settled inside him with the kind of acceptance that comes only from the heart. It might not have been smart or logical for him to love Rachel Lindquist, but love her he did, and if he could give her magic, he would.

“ ‘I love a maiden fair with sunlight in her hair. Her beauty was so rare, but she did scorn me,’ ” Bryan sang as he trailed along behind Rachel and Faith Callan like a wandering troubador.

They were systematically working their way through Drake House, making an inventory. Faith, who had experience with antiques, was identifying each piece, then Rachel looked the item up in a dealer’s catalog, and they tried to arrive at a fair market value. Bryan tagged along behind them, jotting down their findings in the inventory book. Addie followed them to each room, then stood in a strategic spot and glared at them as they went about their business.

She wasn’t taking it well at all, he thought, stealing a surreptitious glance at the older woman. The peace mother and daughter had made the day before had already been wrecked. Addie was sulking in the corner of the room near the window, her mouth pinched into a line as she twisted the end of her braid. She dug a hand into the patch pocket of her cotton housedress, pulled out a long stalk of celery, and began to munch on it angrily.

Bryan knew Rachel had explained to her that the antiques would have to be inventoried and sold because they needed the money, and Addie had seemed to comprehend the situation, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. He couldn’t blame her. Her independence was being taken away from her bit by bit. A proud woman like Addie wasn’t likely to accept it with a smile.

Still, Bryan thought with a sigh, he had promised to try to ease this transition for both Addie and Rachel. Drawing in a deep breath, he broke into song again.

“ ‘She was a maiden fair with sunlight in her hair. Her name was Addie.’ ”

Addie scowled at him and gave him a loud raspberry, spraying bits of celery out at him.

“I think she likes me.” Bryan grinned, and winked at Faith. “What do you think?”

Faith giggled, dark eyes twinkling. The sun streaming in the window caught in her mop of burnished curls, turning them more red than gold. She poked Bryan in the ribs with the eraser end of her pencil. “Behave yourself, Hennessy, or we’ll send you out to do some real work.”

“You could have brought along my darling godchildren,” he said with a hint of reproach. “They would have kept an eye on me.”

“No doubt. Lindy would make you toe the line. You know how she bosses Nicholas around.”

“He’s just biding his time,” Bryan said. “In another few years he’ll be towering over her. We’ll see who the boss is then. I can give him some pointers on diabolical brother-type revenge.”

Rachel listened to their good-natured bantering. It was clear that Bryan and Faith were as close as brother and sister. There was a special understanding between them, evident when they smiled at each other. She envied them that. She had never felt that kind of kinship with anyone, not even with Terence.

As she was thinking it, Bryan turned and regarded her with the same warm expression, the same keen knowing in his blue eyes. There was an invitation in his gaze, an invitation for her to share that kind of special friendship with him.

Temptation pulled at her. A part of her wanted badly to accept. It would have been nice to have a friend to lean on, but another part of her flatly denied her that option. She had to take her responsibilities on her own shoulders, because she knew from experience she couldn’t count on a man like Bryan to give support forever.

Not that she blamed him. She couldn’t see how anyone in his right mind would want to take on the task she was facing if he didn’t have to. Why would anyone ask to share that kind of pain?

The word love passed fleetingly through her brain, but she dismissed it. She had given up on the idea of romantic love, just as she had given up on the notion of rainbows and happy endings. She couldn’t afford romantic fantasies any more than she could afford to lose sleep over the erotic dreams she’d been having lately.

Bryan Hennessy was proving to be one big distraction from the things she needed to concentrate on most. One big, handsome distraction …

She stared at him as he made a note in the book he cradled on his right arm. He wore faded jeans that hugged his lean male body in all the right places. A polo shirt clung to his strong shoulders. The color matched the blue of his eyes in a way that made Rachel’s breath catch. Glossy strands of tawny hair fell across his broad forehead.

His glasses were slipping down his nose. Without looking up from his work, he reached up and pushed at the wire bridge with the middle finger of his left hand. It was a gesture she’d seen him perform a hundred times, and yet, for some inexplicable reason, this time she thought it was curiously sweet.

Her gaze focused on his hands, and longing rippled through her. Those big hands were strong, yet so gentle, almost as gentle as his lips had been against hers. She’d dreamed of those hands caressing her every night. It seemed like eons had passed since he’d touched her, kissed her. It had been three days. She probably could have said how many hours and minutes had passed.

It irked her that she’d spent so much time thinking about it. She had told herself she couldn’t get involved with Bryan Hennessy. That should have been the end of the longing. Since their argument, she had avoided him as best she could, considering they were living in the same house. She had been as cool toward him as possible without being out and out rude.

And still he was sweet to her. The growing bouquet of roses on her dresser was testimony to that. There was one waiting for her on her pillow every night when she went up to bed. It seemed only a sweeter gesture when he denied knowledge of it.

She couldn’t stop thinking about him. If she had been the fanciful sort, she might have thought he’d cast some kind of magic spell on her. Instead, she blamed it on the flowers. She had always been a sucker for roses.

“Rachel?” Faith asked for the third time

Rachel snapped out of her musings with a start. “I’m sorry. What?”

A gentle smile turned the corners of Faith’s mouth, setting her heartshaped face aglow. “I was just going to suggest a coffee break.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Rachel stammered, embarrassment heating her face. She stifled the urge to rub at the spots of color blooming on her cheekbones, winding her hands more firmly around the book she clutched against the front of her baggy pink T-shirt.

Suddenly Addie stamped her booted foot. “You’re thieves, the lot of you! You’re going to steal my bird cages. I won’t stand for it, I tell you. I’m going to call the police!”

“Mother!” Rachel wailed, at the end of her emotional rope. She had been over this with Addie a half dozen times. It was difficult to tell herself that Addie had undoubtedly forgotten every one of those conversations, that she wasn’t being difficult deliberately. “Don’t go dragging that horrid deputy out here again.”

“He’ll get to the bottom of this business,” Addie said. “He can find that ugly ghost while he’s out here, too, and haul you all away together.”

“If he hauls anyone away, it’ll be you, Mother. He’s angry enough with you as it is.”

Addie tossed the last of her celery stalk at her daughter and stomped toward the door. Bryan headed her off.

“Hennessy, get out of my way,” Addie commanded.

“Not a chance, beautiful,” he said with an amicable grin. “You know you have the most lovely complexion, Addie. How do you keep it that way?”

Addie blushed like a schoolgirl. She had always been vain about her flawless skin. Bryan’s compliment bolstered her flagging ego and easily derailed her thoughts from calling the police.

“All the Gunther women have beautiful skin,” she said coyly, patting a hand to her pale cheek. “It’s an old family secret.”

“Ah, a secret,” Bryan said with great relish. He took her arm and tucked it in his. “I’ve got one too. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours. Then we’ll dance the tango on the lawn.”

Rachel watched, bemused by the strange mix of feelings inside her as Bryan led her mother away. “Is he ever serious about anything?”

“Oh, yes,” Faith said on a long sigh of remembrance. Heedless of the layer of dust, she settled herself on an old desk and folded her hands in the lap of her worn jeans. “We went for a long time without seeing Bryan smile after he lost Serena.”

“Serena?”

“His wife,” Faith said gently. She paused then to let Rachel absorb the information, compassion welling inside her at the look of shock on the woman’s face. “She passed away about a year and half ago. Cancer.”

“I—I didn’t know.” Rachel felt as if she’d been hit by a truck. Her knees wobbled, and she sat down on a huge square iron bird cage.

Bryan had been married. He had been in love with a woman who had died. Oh, Lord, she thought, unable to stop the tears that flooded her eyes, what a disservice she’d done him, thinking he had never had to endure pain or accept responsibility.

“So if we seem a little overindulgent of his silliness,” Faith went on, “it’s only because we missed it so much. Besides,” she added, summoning up one of her sunny smiles, “there’s a lot more to Bryan than meets the eye.”

“I’d already guessed that,” Rachel mumbled.

Dammit, she thought, she felt completely off balance. She felt utterly guilty and mean and self-centered. Anger struggled to life inside her. She didn’t need this. She had enough emotional baggage to deal with. She couldn’t afford to spend her energy on dealing with Bryan’s as well. It was just one more reason she shouldn’t get more deeply involved with him.

If they’d met at some other place and time in their lives, things might have been different. But the facts remained: she had her mother to take care of, Bryan had his own wounded heart to heal, and they wanted to deal with those issues in two completely different ways. She could see no answer other than practicality, no matter how unpleasant it might be. He chose to gloss everything over with magic and foolishness.

Rachel looked up suddenly, and in the next instant Bryan danced through the door with Addie in his arms. Her mother’s cheeks were flushed, and she held a rose between her teeth. He deposited her in a high-backed chair and strode toward Rachel purposefully, stopping before her with an earnest look on his face.

“Dorothy,” he said. “I believe the munchkins have arrived.”

“The what?” Faith asked.

Rachel, however, knew exactly what he was referring to. She had spoken of this place as Oz. But who exactly the munchkins were, she didn’t know. Her eyebrows lifted in question.

Bryan glanced back over his shoulder to make sure Addie wasn’t listening. She was twirling her rose by its stem and softly singing a snatch of something from
Aida
. He turned back to Rachel. “There are two rather remarkable-looking gentlemen at the front door, asking to speak to you about purchasing Drake House.”

“But I haven’t put it on the market yet,” Rachel said. “How did they know it was for sale?”

“I wonder,” Bryan said, stroking a hand back through his sandy hair. Behind his glasses his eyes took on a faraway look. “I wonder.”

Rachel excused herself and went out into the hall, wondering why she wasn’t eager to meet these prospective buyers. She’d been worried that they would have trouble unloading the house, it was in such a sad state of disrepair. She should have been bubbling over about this turn of events, but she wasn’t.

Swinging the heavy front door back, she immediately saw what Bryan had meant by “remarkable-looking.” One of the men was about five feet tall and nearly as wide. His head was as round and bald as a bowling ball. His companion was a few inches taller, built like a rail, and had a face with sharp, sly features and deepset eyes. There was a fading blue bruise on his left cheek.

Rachel cleared her throat delicately and offered her visitors a polite smile. “Can I help you? I’m Rachel Lindquist.”

The rotund one stuck out a dimpled hand. “Miles Porchind, Miss Lindquist,” he said with a smile, “and my partner, Felix Rasmussen. May we take a few moments of your time to discuss some business?”

Her immediate reaction to the men was dislike, but she reminded herself beggars couldn’t be choosers, and invited the prospective buyers inside. She led the way to the study, the skin on her back prickling as she felt their gazes on her.

Once in the room, Porchind and Rasmussen looked around with hungry eyes, taking in the paneling, the old furniture, the bookshelves—particularly the bookshelves, with their dusty old tomes. Their expressions were like those of starving men who had stumbled into a bakery. Rachel half expected them to start salivating. Grimacing in distaste at the thought, she seated herself behind the desk and motioned the men to help themselves to seats. Oddly, they chose to sit side by side on the leather love seat, with Porchind taking up more than half of it.

Bryan wandered in then, jugging two apples and an orange. “Hello again,” he said, sending the men his most innocuous grin. He caught two pieces of fruit against his chest with his right arm, caught the remaining apple in his left hand, and promptly took a bite out of it.

“We’re here to discuss business with Miss Lindquist,” Porchind said with a trace of annoyance.

“So you said. Care for a piece of fruit?”

They merely stared at him, then turned to Rachel, clearly hoping she would toss Bryan out on his ear.