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Daughter of the Spellcaster
“At the current rate, it’s earning about five hundred thousand per year.”
Her jaw dropped.
“As for you, Bahru, Ernst left you exactly what you asked for. The guesthouse on the vineyard, with the caveat that it’s all right with Magdalena—”
“What’s this?” Ryan asked, sounding angry again.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Easy, Ryan.” And then she turned to the bearded holy man. “Bahru?”
He smiled softly. “He wanted me to stay close to the child, Magdalena. To advise you and your baby just as I have advised him, and to watch over things.”
“And is that what you want?”
“I want nothing more.”
“Well, you got more,” the lawyer said. “He’s leaving you enough stock to provide a small income for the rest of your life, Bahru. And he told me not to take no for an answer.”
Bahru’s face darkened. “I told him no money!”
“He insisted.”
Lena smiled, recognizing the irony of what she was about to say. “It’s what Ernst wanted, Bahru. It would be an insult not to take it.”
He frowned but looked down. After a moment, though, he met her eyes again and nodded once. “I accept—if you will accept my presence in the guesthouse, Magdalena.”
“Of course I will.”
“Lena, I don’t know about all this,” Ryan began, but he stopped when she sent him her patented glare. She had learned it from her mother, who could wilt roses with it.
“Fine. Fine. It’s not like I have any say in it anyway.”
“That’s right, Ryan.”
He was really fuming. She knew he’d never trusted Bahru, but surely he could see now that the guru had never been after his father’s fortune. He’d been clearly angry when Ernst had left him money.
“Are we finished here, then?” Ryan asked.
“Actually,” Samuels said, “Lena and Bahru can go now, but I need one more moment with you, Ryan.”
Ryan sent Lena a look, as if to ask if she would be okay without him for a few minutes. She had been okay without him for her entire life, minus eight blissful weeks, she thought, but she didn’t say it out loud.
“I’ll venture into the reception,” she said with a nod toward the door. “Come on, Bahru. It would be rude of us not to at least put in an appearance.”
Nodding, Bahru got to his feet. Lena turned back to Ryan. “I’ll wait for you, okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll find you when I’m done here.”
She didn’t know whether to look forward to that—or dread it.
Ryan rose when they left, then stood there staring blankly at the door for a long moment. It was like a twister had just swept through his life. He’d buried his father and found out he was going to be one himself, inherited billions he’d never wanted, and learned that the man he disliked more than anyone he knew was being installed as a fixture in his child’s life, when he himself had not yet been granted access. All in one day.
“Are you all right, Ryan?”
“Yeah. I—” He shook his head hard, as though he was shaking away the fog. “Yeah. Good. Let’s get on with this. I’ve got… a lot to deal with.”
“That’s got to be the understatement of the year.” The lawyer bent to pick up an oversized briefcase, then laid it on the giant antique desk and snapped open the clasps. He opened it and picked up a wooden box that looked centuries old, at least. Its lid was completely engraved, so that there wasn’t a smooth spot anywhere. Vines with leaves and buds, stars and spirals in between.
As the attorney held it out to him, Ryan took it and looked more closely, realizing that the more you looked at the thing, the more you saw. Swirls in the vine’s barklike texture revealed an eye here, a hand there, a crescent moon in another spot. He wanted to roll his eyes. “I don’t know how many times I told the old man I just wasn’t into all his spiritual hocus pocus bull. I guess he just had to try one last time to capture my interest.”
And he had. The box was spectacular—there was no denying it as a work of art. And that spoke to Ryan’s soul, though he would never admit it. But there was more. Something that seemed to grab his attention and pull him in.
He lifted the lid to see what was inside.
There was no earthly reason for him to feel as if he’d been hit between the eyes with an invisible blast, and yet that was what he felt at his first glimpse of the blade. It was a simple piece. A double-edged dagger with a gleaming gold hilt. It looked real. Weighed enough, too.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. He said I was to give it to you in private, and to tell you to keep it to yourself.”
“And why’s that?”
Samuels shrugged, snapping the briefcase closed. “I don’t know any more than that, Ryan.” Then he rose and extended his hand.
Ryan closed the lid of the wooden box and accepted the gesture. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’m sure we’ll be in touch. Let me know if there’s anything you need. And again, Ryan, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks.”
The lawyer nodded and left. Ryan watched him go. Then he opened the box again, wondering what the hell this was all about.
He went to pick the knife up, but his hand stalled just before making contact, as if he was afraid to touch it. Which was completely illogical. And then his palm started tingling like nothing he’d ever felt before. For just the barest instant the golden blade seemed to glow.
There was a knock at the door, and he slammed the lid as fast as if he’d spotted a cobra inside. Damn, he was jumpy. Emotional overload. A trick of the light. Some weird combination of the two.
“Ryan?”
It was Lena’s voice. He shoved the box onto a nearby shelf and went to open the door. She searched his face, hers full of concern. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Fine. It’s just been… it’s been a crazy day, that’s all.”
“I know it has. For me, too. And the energy out there is just…” She raised her hands to her head and made the universal gesture for crazy.
“Nuts?” he asked.
“Frenetic. And fake, too. A lot of those people are only here for their own ends. To see or be seen, or… I don’t know. Definitely not out of any love for Ernst, that’s for sure.”
“They told you that?”
She frowned, cocking her head and wiggling her fingers in a woo-woo gesture. “Of course not. Witch, remember?”
He almost smiled, because he’d forgotten how expressive she was with her hands. And her face. She could never hide her feelings, and he didn’t think she saw much reason to try. “Right.”
“I’ve got to get back home, Ryan. I don’t like it here anymore, and it’s upsetting the baby.”
He nodded, stepped aside and took her arm, drawing her back into the den. Then he closed the door behind her. “We can slip out the back, and I’ll drive you to the hotel and your car.”
“I took the bus.”
“The bus?”
“Don’t act like I just said I rode a donkey. For crying out loud, Ryan, not everyone can afford a three-hundred-dollar flight for a day trip.”
“No, not everyone. But you can. Now.”
She met his eyes, and hers flashed with what looked like anger. “I will never touch a penny of that money. It’s all going to fold right back into itself for the baby. I don’t want it, didn’t ask for it and don’t need it.”
“All right, all right, I wasn’t insulting you.” Damn, she was sensitive.
She shrugged and turned away.
“Listen, I want to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Bahru. I don’t trust him, Lena.”
“You never have. But I thought his insistence that he didn’t want any money from your father’s estate might have convinced you that he was sincere.”
“His insistence wound up getting him an income for life and a free place to live. Not to mention a VIP pass into the life of my child, who, in case you forgot, just inherited a fortune.”
“Your child?”
“Our. I meant our.” He turned away, pushing one hand through his hair, knowing he was blowing this utterly.
“You’re jealous, aren’t you?” she asked.
He gave her a don’t-be-ridiculous look, but she went on anyway. “You’ve always been jealous of Bahru. And no wonder, Ryan. Your father abandoned you but took Bahru with him, and that was wrong of him. As much as I loved the man, I know that was wrong. But it wasn’t Bahru’s fault.”
“I am not jealous.”
“How could you not be? You were eleven. Your mother had just died, and your father left you behind and walked away with his guru. No one in their right mind could blame you for how you felt. And now it looks as if Bahru has once again usurped your place, this time in the life of our child. But you’re forgetting one very important element in all this, Ryan.”
“What element is that?” he asked. He knew he sounded angry, sarcastic, and while he regretted it, he couldn’t seem to help himself.
She walked up to him, slid a hand over his shoulder. “Me.”
Frowning, he lifted his head and turned to face her even though there were hot tears burning in his eyes, tears he hadn’t thought he had in him—not for his father.
“I am not a stupid woman. Nor am I a gullible one. I am, in fact, probably the most powerful woman you’ve ever met in your life—besides my mom, anyway—even though I’m powerful in ways you don’t respect or even understand. But you can trust me on this, Ryan. I would never keep you from being in our baby’s life.”
“I don’t know if I believe that.” How could he believe it? he wondered. “I mean, look at you. You’ve been pregnant for how long? And you never said a word.”
She sighed as if emptying her lungs to the bottom, nodding, not arguing. “I know it looks bad. But, Ryan, I truly had no intention of keeping this from you. I just kept putting it off, and the next thing I knew months had gone by. And the longer I waited, the harder it was. But I always meant to tell you—and I swore I’d do it before she was born. That’s the truth.” She lowered her eyes, then they shot back up to his. Laser beams. “You know I don’t lie.”
He nodded. “I remember that about you.”
“So you believe me, then?”
Long pause, then he nodded. “I believe you.”
“And you can believe me about this, too. There is no way Bahru will ever be more involved in our child’s life than her father. Not unless that’s the way you want it to be.”
His doubts thinned. Her honesty had never been a question to him. She didn’t lie. His tension eased a little. “Thank you for that,” he said.
“I’m not finished yet.”
He gave her a half-genuine smile. “I didn’t think you were.”
“Am I talking too much? I am, aren’t I?”
“You always talked too much. I’ve missed the hell out of it.”
She averted her eyes all of a sudden. Had she felt what he had just then? That old familiar unnh, right between the belly button and points south? “Besides,” he went on, “you’re one of the smartest people I know. So please, keep on talking.”
She got a little pink-faced at the compliment, but then something else replaced embarrassment in her eyes. Sympathy. Like she could feel the unexpected heartbroken sensation in his chest. Like she knew how he was hurting right then. Like she could see it in his eyes, but even more, like she could feel it.
“All right, I will.” Her voice came out more softly than he’d heard it since she’d come back into his life this morning. Maybe softer than he’d ever heard it. “I just have one piece of advice for you today. Don’t let things outside yourself control the way you live your life. Not your father, not all he put on you—the businesses, the money—”
What a notion that was. Not to let the 3000-ton weight on his back knock him flat. If only that were possible.
“And not me,” she added, compelling his attention. “Not even this baby. You need to make up your mind what you honestly, truly want and then do it, no matter what it is. You want to keep being the spoiled, rich playboy? Then go ahead. Let the boards of directors run the companies, cash your checks and bag a different supermodel every night of the year. You want to be involved in your daughter’s life? Then figure out a way to do that. That’s all you can do. It’s all you’re supposed to do. Life should be lived, Ryan. Relished. Not spent enslaved to ‘I shoulds.’“
He looked at her face, her beautiful face, the one he’d missed way too much, and wondered how she ever got to be so smart.
“As for me, I’m gonna catch a cab to Port Authority and a bus back home, because I had no idea how much I’d miss Havenwood. This has all been… too much.”
He drank in the sight of her for a long moment. “I have a better idea.”
“Really? And that is?”
“I’ll drive you home. How ‘bout that?”
She gave him a quizzical look, like a puppy who’d just heard an odd noise.
“Maybe I’ll stay awhile,” he said, leaning in to kiss her.
She dodged his mouth with an elegant dip and a bob, and wound up standing a foot away. She looked scared. “I said you could be in our child’s life, Ryan. Not in mine.” Turning, she headed for the exit. “She’s due in February. You can come and visit then, if you want.”
4
Lena didn’t know what she was expecting when she made her exit. Maybe for him to come chasing after her, begging her not to go. Maybe at least an apology. But he did nothing, said nothing, just let her leave. So she sat amid the masses of humanity on the bus ride home, hiding behind a pair of very large, very dark sunglasses. She’d picked them up for three times their worth at Port Authority when she’d realized she was teetering on the brink of tears for the twelfth time since she’d jumped into the taxi.
Stupid to cry over him. So freaking stupid. Stupid to keep remembering that last night, the awful things he’d said. Stupid.
She leaned back in the seat, closed her eyes and thought about it anyway.
She’d decided she was going to tell him she was pregnant that night. It was time, she’d thought. She’d cooked dinner at his place, and she hadn’t thought of it as trying to show him how domestic she could be or anything, although she could see where someone else might have thought so. She roasted a small chicken with lots of veggies and dollops of sour cream. It was nice.
He wasn’t.
Oh, they were getting along great at first. And then, after they’d eaten, when they were all snuggled up on his sofa and surfing through the pay-per-view channels, she sort of took the cowardly way in. She told him a friend of hers was pregnant, and that she was wondering what the guy she’d been dating was going to say about it, and what did he think about that?
And it went zoom, right over his head. “If the guy has any brains, he’ll run screaming in the other direction,” he said, and he was dead serious.
Lena felt like he’d slapped her. “Why’s that?” she managed to ask through her rapidly closing windpipe.
He was manning the remote, pausing to read the info on anything that looked interesting to him, not looking at her. “Isn’t it obvious? She’s trying to get him to marry her.”
“That’s not true! She doesn’t want to marry the guy. She just thinks he has a right to know he’s going to be a father.”
“Right. She doesn’t want to marry him.” There was more sarcasm in his tone than there had been sour cream on their roasted veggies. “Tell me this, does he have money?”
“Well, yes. Quite a lot of it, actually. But that doesn’t mean—”
“Yeah, it does.” He set the remote down and looked at her. “No one gets pregnant by accident in this day and age, Lena. And believe me, before I met you, every woman I dated was after one thing and one thing only—my father’s fortune. They’d have done anything. Some of them even tried, but I was too smart. I was careful. I protected myself.”
“Did you, now?” She focused on her hands in her lap, thinking she needed a manicure, unable to meet his eyes. Mainly because there were hot, angry tears surfacing in her own.
“I did.” He shook his head. “I pity the guy, but it was his own stupidity. Guys with money need to be more careful than anyone about shit like this. He should have known better. Now he’s doomed.”
“Doomed?” That brought her head up, and the anger burning a path up the middle of her chest rose with it. “Marrying her would be his doom?”
“Marrying a woman who tricked him into it, yeah. Doom.” He smiled at her, still completely oblivious. “You know, this is something I wanted to talk to you about right at the beginning, and I kept getting distracted. Totally your fault, by the way.” His eyes softened, and he pushed her hair behind her ear and kissed the lobe, sending a warm shiver down her spine, despite how pissed off she was at him. She wished she could grab that warm shiver by its neck and choke it to death.
“Talk to me about it now, then,” she said. She didn’t think she was going to like this discussion, but she figured she needed to hear it.
“Well, I just… you know… have no intention of… you know…”
“No, I don’t know. I’m a witch, not a psychic. You have no intention of what?”
He sat back, and the lightbulb finally went on in his eyes. “Whoa. You’re pissed.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “No, I’m not.” She sighed, then shook her head hard. “Yes, dammit, I am. I thought we had something wonderful happening between us, Ryan.”
“We do,” he said quickly. “We really do. I mean, it’s been great. I’m enjoying the hell out of being with you.”
“But you don’t want anything… more?”
“No.” He looked away. “I mean, certainly not now, anyway. It’s been eight weeks, Lena. Don’t you think it’s way too soon for this particular conversation?”
“Oh. You think I should wait until I’ve put in eight months and then find out I’ve been wasting my time?”
He was hurt. She saw it in his face. She was being completely irrational. Under any other circumstances it would be too soon to be having this conversation. But she was carrying his child. Not that he would ever believe she hadn’t planned it. She realized that now, and it was crushing her heart slowly. Like a vise with some big guy gradually turning the screw.
“You think that unless we’re heading for marriage, you’re wasting your time?” he asked, handsome and dense and so out of touch with his feelings that it was beyond belief.
Or was he just out of touch with her feelings? With who she wanted him to be? Her dream prince. The one who would have died for her.
She lowered her eyes, knowing she’d hit on the truth. “No. Of course I don’t think that. Our time together has been…” She tried to swallow and couldn’t. “It’s been the best time of my life, really.” Her tears were audible that time, her voice tight and strained and an octave deeper than usual.
He tried to look at her eyes, but she turned her face away. “Are you crying?” he asked.
“I have to go.” She got up, went to the door, needing to escape. Now.
“Hey. Wait a minute.” He followed. “What the hell just happened here?”
She turned slowly and forced herself to look up at him. To let him see her tears. It was the honest thing to do, though it made her feel like a fool. She saw him through her swimming eyes and knew beyond doubt that if she told him she was carrying his child, he would believe she had planned it that way, intending to trick him into marrying her so she could get her hands on his dad’s billions.
Which was a joke. Ernst adored her. If she’d wanted money, she probably could have just asked him for it. But she didn’t want his money. She wanted his son. She had allowed herself to fall—had fallen willingly, knowingly—into her own childish fantasies, where he had been her exotic desert prince and she had been his beloved slave girl.
“Lena?” he asked. And he sounded genuinely puzzled.
“I think we want very different things, Ryan.” It was hard to talk, hurt to force the words through her spasming larynx. “I think my feelings for you are getting close to the point of no return. If you’re not heading in the same direction, then…” She let the sentence just hang there.
He stared at her as if she’d grown a second head. “It’s good between us. Why fix what isn’t broken?”
“Because if I stay, it’ll be my heart that gets broken.” She blinked as fresh tears flooded, and then she stood on tiptoe and pressed her mouth against his, drinking in the taste of him one last time, promising herself to remember it forever. “I don’t regret a day of it, though.”
And then she turned and she left. She knew his head was spinning, and that he must think she’d lost her mind. But he’d made himself clear. Which meant she didn’t have a choice.
Lena snapped herself out of the memory, realizing it was doing her no good. She was more eager than ever to return to the rural community she now called home, the low-key people there, the easy, laid-back pace. The peace and serenity of it. That old vineyard had healed her since she’d been living there with her mom. She’d just reopened an old wound, that was all. Maybe she had to let out a little of the poison that had been festering there. She would heal again. Just as soon as she returned to Havenwood, her little piece of heaven.
Ryan sat in the den, doing what he supposed could be described as brooding, until it hit him that his father’s mansion was emanating a feeling of emptiness. The post-funeral gathering must have ended. No one had come in to bother him. No one had come in to say goodbye. He doubted anyone even knew he was in there, other than Bahru, and God knew there was no love lost between the two of them.
The funeral and the attendant gathering were over. It was all over. Lena was gone, and she’d taken his baby with her.
Sighing, he got up out of the chair where he’d been sitting like a tranced-out zombie for the past two hours. He had to get home.
Why? What’s the hurry?
Shut up.
He went to the bookshelf to get the ornate wooden box, and for some reason he opened it again. The gold-colored knife lay there nested in its red velvet. He reached for it, and that same tingling sensation started up in his palm, but he ignored it this time. Pushing past it, he closed his hand around the gleaming hilt and picked up the knife.
The tingling moved up his arm, and as he frowned at that golden blade, it seemed to glow again. Just like before. Only the sun had gone down now and the desk lamp was on the far side of the room, so there was no believable explanation for that glow.
“What the hell is this?”
He lifted the knife a little higher, turning it slowly to examine that gleaming double-edged blade and then the engravings he realized were inscribed into every millimeter of the hilt. There was even a symbol on the flat end of it, he noted, and he tipped the blade forward to get a better look.
There was a pop and a recoil, snapping his wrist back as if he’d just fired a gun—and the curtains were on fire!
Ryan swore a blue streak, lunging across the room to yank the drapes, poles and all, out of the windows and stomp on them before they set off every fire alarm in the place. Finally it seemed he’d put it out. And he just stood there in the smoke, staring down in disbelief at the blackened edge of a burn hole about the size of a grapefruit and the way the thin gray ribbons still winding up from it encircled his calves.
Blinking, he looked from that smoke to the blade in his hand, and then, after a few final stomps to be sure the fire was out, he retrieved the box and pulled out the red velvet in search of an explanation.
Underneath the velvet lining there was an envelope with his name scrawled across the front in his father’s unmistakable handwriting. He opened it and started to read.
Ryan,
I found this knife in an undiscovered burial mound in the Congo. Could’ve been arrested if I’d been caught smuggling it home, but something told me I had to. That you needed it. I know you don’t believe in that kind of thing, but I do, son. I do. And I’m sorry I haven’t been a better father to you since your mother died. I fell apart. I don’t know why, but something told me this was the best way I could make up for it. To get this blade for you. So I did. And I keep dreaming that you’re not supposed to tell anyone you have it. So, keep it to yourself. It’s something to do with you and Lena. That’s all I know. I love you. And I’m sorry.