The Magic Of Christmas (4 page)

However, it also made him a little sad.  None of these people recognized him.  The illusion of his life was that complete and perfect.  Here in the town where he had grown up, surely someone should have seen through his mask.  But no one did.

It was just as well, he decided as he slid easily from one illusion to the next.  By tomorrow, he would be someplace warm.  Wherever his agent could book him for an extended stay in a hotel.

For now, though, he needed to concentrate on the next illusion, the one that had made him famous.  The Great Flaming Water Escape, he called it.  As an illusion, it wasn't a very difficult one, just some basic bait and switch.  But the fire and the water and the chains?  They all added to the danger and mystique.  Just the way he liked it.

Quickly he scanned the audience looking for the streak of green glow-in-the-dark paint that Alexandra had placed on the volunteer when she shook her hand earlier.  No one else could see it, but his special contact lenses allowed him to see the streak in the dark.  He could easily spot the paint from the stage without anyone being the wiser.

He found the woman easily enough.  She was wearing a black knit jersey dress that clung to her curves, her auburn hair falling in loose waves around her shoulders.  She must have been wearing some kind of sparkling earrings because he could see flashes of light every time she moved.  Her face was difficult to see in the dark, but it didn't matter.  For a time, he could pretend it was Cecilia.  At least until the woman spoke.

She probably had a high-pitched voice, unlike the lovely alto that had been Cecilia's trademark throughout her life.  She had never had the voice of a child.  Always the voice of an adult, much to everyone's surprise.  That was one of the things that had initially attracted him to her.  She was so different than anyone else he knew.  Young in years but not in soul.

Her soul was probably one of the oldest he had ever encountered, and over the years, he had met a great number of people.  Cecilia had seen in him something that others could not.  She had seen promise and hope, the very same things that Aunt Agatha had seen the first time she looked at him.  It made him worship Cecilia all the more, not that she needed to be any more perfect in his eyes.

But she wasn't here.  She wasn't in this theater packed with well-dressed patrons who had come out for an evening of illusion as a compliment to their holiday season.  She would never see him perform and would never know that every illusion that he performed was, in some small way, partly because of her.

Because she and her family had believed in him enough to get him help, to fight for him to have a better home with his beloved aunt.

More than anything Drake wanted to be worthy of that kind of faith.  He wasn't, but he wanted to be.  So with each show he did, every illusion he performed, he attempted to be worthy and to be a better man.  He wanted to prove to all of the Lindens, but Cecilia in particular, that he had been worth the efforts they had gone through to help him and to save him.  

He knew the grief and aggravation they had endured from the close-knit community of locals when they had extended their help to him.  It had cost them all something, including Cecilia.  At the time, he had been unaware, too grateful for the help to realize its impact on the Lindens.  It was only later that he had learned that they had suffered, the prejudices of a small town coming back to haunt a family with a good heart.  Oh, it might have only been in little ways, like Cecilia losing a few friends or William being passed over for a promotion at the school a few times, but their help to him had come with a price.

Drake had never wanted that.  So now, he did his best every night, tried to make a good life - the women and fast cars aside - so that even if they never discovered the truth of who he really was, in his heart, he would know that he was worthy of the trust they had given him.  Not to mention all they had given up to save his worthless life so long ago.

So as he walked off the stage and into the audience to "randomly" select his volunteer from the first row of seats, all the while using his sexiest voice to convince the audience that what they were about to see was real, he was thinking of nothing more than Cecilia and wondering where she was that night.  He hated to think that she was home in bed with her husband, but that was more likely than not precisely where she was.

He was thinking about her so much that he wasn't entirely surprised when he approached the woman with the streak of paint on her hand and looked down to see the real Cecilia peering back up at him.  At first, it seemed perfectly logical, as if merely by thinking of her he could conjure her out of thin air.

But it wasn't her.  It couldn't be.

He blinked a few times to clear his vision, believing that the vision of an adult Cecilia, lovely, beautiful, and oh-so-desirable, would soon fade away leaving another woman's face behind.

Except that it didn't.  No matter how many times he blinked, the face remained the same.  Cecilia.  She was here.  She was looking directly at him.  And she was holding his hand.

He had reached for her unthinkingly, so used to this part of the illusion that he no longer thought about it.  After all, night after night, the women were merely interchangeable faces in the crowd.  But not tonight.  Tonight, it was her.  And he found that there was only one word he could utter, not even caring or realizing that his microphone was on.  Someone on his crew, however, must have realized that something was amiss because he heard the familiar pop of the microphone switching off.

"Cecilia?"  Drake whispered her name like a prayer.

"Logan."  She looked up at him, her eyes wide as if she was seeing a ghost, her breath hitching just a little, as if she was as stunned as he.  She probably was.  "I knew it was you.  I knew it."

For a moment, he was stunned into silence before his professionalism kicked in and he grasped her hand tighter so that he could lead her to the stage, unwilling to allow her to slip from his grasp.  "We'll talk later," he whispered, finally coming to his senses enough to look back at Alexandra who still waited on stage for him to return with the volunteer.

He made a small motion with his hands and he heard the soft click of his microphone being turned back on.  "I think we have our volunteer for the night, ladies and gentlemen!" he announced to the crowd, not wanting anyone to know that something as amiss.  "If this lovely lady will do me the honor of accompanying me back to the stage, we can begin."

Cecilia followed him without another comment, as if she was just as stunned as he was.  However, he could hear her friends whispering behind him as they departed, comments about how strange it was that Cecilia had known from the beginning his true identity.

Damn it.  Now everyone would know.  The illusion of his life would be shattered.

Then Cecilia stopped and turned back to her friends.  She held a single finger to her lips and, amazingly, both women stopped talking.  She had their loyalty and their silence, it seemed, and they both appeared to be willing to extend it to him as well.

He saw the corners of her mouth turn up in what he knew was a smile and she nodded, probably in gratitude.  Then she turned back to him and fixed him with that dark, sexy gaze of hers.  She gave him a slight nod and he could see from the expression on her face that she would follow where he head, as if she somehow knew that he didn't want anyone to guess his true identity.  She had guessed however, but she was also willing to keep his secret and make certain her friends did the same.

Once they were back on the stage, he began preparing for the illusion, all the while his brain racing.  Cecilia was here.  With him.  She knew who he was.  And for the first time in his professional life, Drake wasn't certain he could complete an illusion.  He was afraid that he might fail.  If that happened his entire life would shatter in the space of one night.

Cecilia saw the look of uncertainty in Drake eyes.  And, in this moment anyway, he was Drake.  There was no sign of the Logan she remembered from her youth.  He was also off balance, at least mentally.  She could see that as well.  She was the last person he had expected to see in the audience, let alone to be his volunteer.

I trust you,
 she mouthed silently to him, knowing that any words she spoke would be picked up by the microphones all around them.  The last thing she wanted was to destroy his professional image.  That was why she had made certain that both Lily and Amanda kept quiet about his real identity.  If he had wanted people to know who he was, he would be performing under his own name.  Clearly he didn't, and she didn't have the right to destroy in an instant what he had worked so hard throughout his entire life to build.  Neither did her friends.

And he had worked hard.  That much was clear as she stood there watching him as he went about preparing for his grand illusion.  She could see scars on his body, and while she didn't know specifically what had happened to him after he'd left College Heights, she did know he had moved on to a far better life, so it was unlikely that they were the result of any more beatings.

Instead, she suspected they were from illusions gone wrong as he learned to perfect his craft.  Some looked like burn marks, probably from the fire he was noted for using in his illusions.  There were others, however, that were clearly older.  Those, she suspected, were from the time before, from the time when he was known as Logan.  For some reason, the sight of those scars made her heart twist in her chest.

"Ready, 
mon cher
? He asked, his voice so smooth and sexy that it made her shiver a little bit as she imagined him kissing his way up her spine, just as she had so many times in her dreams.  For Cecilia wasn't too proud to admit that she had dreamed about him over the years.  More than once.

"I trust you," she said, giving voice to the words she had only mouthed to him before.  "Just tell me what you want me to do."

Drake swallowed hard.  What he 
wanted
 was for her to go back to his hotel room, strip naked and wait for him in bed so that he could finally indulge in all of the dark, delicious fantasies he had been conjuring up in his mind for years.  Instead, he settled for offering her his hand once more.

"If you'll follow me, we can begin."  He wanted to add "again" to the end of that sentence, but he had no right.  Not to mention that it would probably confuse the hell out of his audience.

"Lead the way."  Cecilia was aware that her voice was no more than a whisper as he took her smaller hand in his.  She was also aware that he was trembling just a little.  That touched her heart in a way she could not explain.  He was afraid.  Of her.  Though he had no reason to be.  He already knew she was going to keep his secret.

Her mind was so filled with thoughts of Logan and the man now known as Drake that she was unaware when he led her behind a black gilded screen to begin the illusion.  When he guided her to a plush chair and ordered her to tuck her feet up beneath her, however, she found herself looking up at him again and getting lost in his eyes.  They were black now, rather than the golden hue she remembered, but she suspected that contact lenses hid his real eyes, another part of the illusion.

Beneath her, she could feel the stiffness of the chair she sat in, the faint scratchiness of the fabric and smooth softness of her dress.  She could smell something, perhaps oil, wafting around them as the crew prepared for the illusion, the music from the small orchestra off to the side of the stage swelling around them.  They played jazzy renditions of Christmas carols, probably to cover the squeaking, grinding noises that the props made as they were wheeled into place around the chair where she sat, the crew preparing the box that would lock around her.

It was all so strange and foreign to her, and she felt something rise up in the pit of her stomach.  It could have been fear or trepidation, she supposed, but rather it felt like confusion.  And maybe something more.  Something wholly dark and carnal and completely inappropriate for where they were.

"Drake?" she asked when he began to pull away, unwilling to allow his fingers leave her grasp.  They were loosely laced together at the moment, and something inside of her mourned the idea of losing contact with his body however slight it was.

"Trust me, 
mon cher
," he said softly, and it was then that she realized that the audience was still listening.  She also slowly became aware of the stage crew watching them with rapt attention.  "I will not hurt you."

Those words could have so many different meanings, Cecilia realized as she started at Drake, their eyes locked.  To the audience, she was certain that she sounded like a flighty, nervous woman and he was only trying to calm her down.  To his crew, she probably looked like another enraptured fan who was overwhelmed by the sheer presence and sexuality of Drake Vale.  And she was.  But for her alone, his words had an entirely different meaning, one filled with more past than present.

"I know," she whispered back, choosing her words carefully, tightening her fingers around his for a brief moment before letting him go so that he could finish his illusion.

She watched him swallow and take a deep breath, supremely conscious that his crew was still watching.  They had noted Drake's odd behavior, knew that this night something was different.  Off.  Wrong.  She saw the curiosity on their faces and the barely concealed jealousy on Alexandra's.  But in this moment, she was aware that all Drake was seeing was her.  Cecilia.  The young girl from his past now grown into a woman.