Magic

ELEVEN

September 12, 1931

Great luck at Monte’s. Mrs. R. very accommodating.

September 21, 1931

Clement sisters staying with H. Langely. Real gems.

Must call again.

September 25, 1931

Langely off to San Francisco. Golden opportunity.

Thank you, C. sisters.

Bryan shifted his back against the headboard, sighed, and turned the page. So far Arthur Drake’s journal was providing him with nothing but an account of the man’s rather promiscuous love life. He couldn’t imagine what Porky and the Rat would have wanted with it, but he figured he had only a short time to find out. They would be back to claim the thing, of that he was certain.

Why did they want Drake House? What did Porchind’s relative, the late Mr. Pig, have to do with it?

Money. That word came to him strongly, but it didn’t make any sense. The condition it was in, Drake House wasn’t worth anything. The property itself might have had development possibilities, but that didn’t strike him as the reason. There was no adjacent development in the works. Anastasia already had its share of inns and hotels. There was some other reason, and it had to do with money and this little black book he held pressed to his bare chest.

It was nearly two A.M. They had settled Aunt Roberta in Rachel’s room for the night. Rachel lay snuggled against him, sound asleep. She looked so young when she was sleeping, so pretty, so free of worry. Desire stirred in him anew. He would have liked nothing better than to rouse her with kisses and make love to her again, but she was exhausted and he had work to do.

He turned another page in the diary.

September 27, 1931

Party with A.W. at Garner’s. My friend has a dangerous tongue. Worked to my advantage tonight. Caught Cecilia Jonstone unawares while Archie made a friend.

September 29, 1931

Pig getting too fat and sassy. Must roast soon.

October 10, 1931

Stuck pig. Ducky outfoxed the pig! My turn to get fat.

“Stuck pig,” Bryan mumbled. He ran a hand back through his disheveled hair. “Stuck pig.”

“Mmmm?” Rachel mumbled in her sleep.

She turned over and snuggled closer to him still, kicking the sheet off and using his belly for a pillow. Bryan bit his lip against the groan that rose up in his throat. Her cheek was soft and cool against his skin. Her warm breath swept across his groin as she sighed. As she settled down he forced his attention back to the book.

October 12, 1931

Can’t find A.W. anywhere. Worried he said the wrong thing to the wrong person.

Rachel murmured something unintelligible in her sleep and Bryan had to choke back another groan as her lips brushed against his stomach muscles. She nuzzled against him and brought her hand up his thigh to rest it in a spot that made sweat break out on his forehead. A contented smile curved her mouth as she stroked him. Molten heat seared his veins, pooling in the pit of his belly.

His body’s reaction was inevitable, which seemed to please the sleeping Rachel. She mumbled something softly and the vibration of her lips against his skin just about sent Bryan over the edge. He tried to ease away from her, but her fingers closed around him and all he could do was close his eyes and whimper. She was giving him a five-star arousal and the little minx was sound asleep!

“Rachel,” he said, abandoning the journal on the cluttered nightstand. He stroked a shaking hand over her hair. “Rachel, sweetheart.”

Rachel lifted her eyelids just enough to peer up at him. His face was flushed. His blue eyes seemed unusually bright. His expression was pained.

“Why is the light on?” she mumbled.

“The better to see you with, my dear,” he quipped, baring his teeth.

“Are you feeling all right?” she asked, concern knitting her brows.

“Wonderful,” he said sardonically. “Can’t you tell?”

The last fog of sleep drifted out of her head as she realized she was at eye level with his belly button. Her gaze snapped downward, and she gasped. Bryan was roused and ready, and her fingers looked very guilty considering where they were.

“Caught red-handed with the loaded gun, so to speak,” Bryan said. He chuckled as he took in the blush that bloomed on her cheeks. “I’ve heard of sleepwalking, but sleep seducing is a new one on me. What have you got to say for yourself, Miss Lindquist?”

Her initial embarrassment evaporated in the sensual heat that was rolling off him. Beneath her cheek his stomach muscles were like rock. He smelled deliciously male and musky. Desire rippled through her. Scooting down a little farther on the bed, she turned onto her stomach and looked up at him, her hair a wild golden mane around her head and shoulders, her eyes nearly purple with passion.

“I always finish what I start,” she whispered in a languid, smoky voice.

“An admirable trait in a young woman,” Bryan said through his teeth as she lowered her head. He groaned long and with feeling.

Somewhere below them a scream split the air.

“A man could die from this kind of frustration,” Bryan complained as he threw his long legs over the edge of the bed and reached for his jeans. “Cases have been documented. You could look it up.”

Rachel wasn’t interested. She had already thrown on a robe and was rushing down the hall toward Addie’s room in her bare feet.

“Mother? Mother, are you all right?”

“Rachel?” Addie burst out of her room, clutching her pink chiffon robe to her chest with one hand. In the other hand she clutched a rock. “Someone’s broken into the house! Call your father!”

Bryan dashed past them, threw one leg over the mahogany banister, and shot down the polished railing to the foyer. Lights flashed at the end of the hall. The alarm on his electronic sensor buzzed furiously. He ran for the study, adrenaline pumping through him.

“Aunt Roberta!”

Roberta stood in the center of the room, her green eyes wide, her hair literally standing on end. “Oh, my stars, Bryan! I am so glad you’re here! I can’t tell you. I just can’t tell you!”

Bryan flipped off the alarm, pulled off his glasses, and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, heaving a weary sigh. Aunt Roberta had always demonstrated an amazing talent for setting off his machines.

“I came down to fix myself a little snack,” Roberta said, pulling a bent cigarette and a lighter out of the pocket of her ratty blue robe. She paused to suck a gallon of smoke into her lungs. “This place is a maze. A maze. I’ve never seen the like, have you, Regina?” she asked Rachel, smoke billowing out of her nostrils. She patted Bryan on the arm. “I don’t know why you’d want such a big place, honey. These old houses are a beast to heat, you know. An absolute b-”

“What happened?” Bryan asked, his normally generous patience wearing thin. He could have been upstairs in the throes of bliss if it hadn’t been for his batty aunt.

“I got lost. Lost.” Roberta said, waving her cigarette at him. Ash sprinkled to the floor. “So, I’m wandering down the hall, and I decide to ask that pale, thin fellow how to get to the kitchen.” She turned to Rachel again, shaking her head. “I hope he’s not your boyfriend, Renita. He is one ugly dude. Ugly. My gosh, he’s ugly.”

Bryan perked up. “A thin man with sunken eyes and white, white skin?”

“White as a ghost. As a ghost! All dressed in white. Pale as death. I guess I startled him. Kind of a flighty guy, isn’t he? Well, I followed him in here and all hell broke loose with these crazy machines going off. Just about gave me a heart attack. A heart attack!” She shook her head and crossed herself reverently with her cigarette. “My gosh.”

“What did the man do?” Bryan asked as he rewound the film in his camera.

“Grabbed a stack of books off the shelf and ran out that way.” She waved her cigarette in the general direction of the French doors which stood open. “Strange time of the day to be going to the library, don’t you think? Very strange.”

While Bryan went to investigate, Rachel introduced her mother to their new guest. “Mother, this is Bryan’s Aunt Roberta. Roberta, my mother, Addie Lindquist.”

Addie stared at the woman, obviously confused. “Who is she? The maid? Of course I knew that, Rachel. You needn’t introduce me to the maid.”

“A little off her rocker, eh?” Roberta whispered behind her hand to Rachel, nodding knowingly. “That’s all right, Renée. I understand.”

Rachel looked from one to the other helplessly. She honestly didn’t know what to say. She felt like Alice must have in Wonderland.

“Great hair, Adelle,” Roberta rasped, blowing out a jet stream of smoke. She reached out to fluff Addie’s pinking-shears special, taking another deep drag on her cigarette. “Did you get it done around here? My gosh, I really like that. I do.”

“Well, there’s no sign of him now,” Bryan said, coming back into the room. “I suggest we all go back to bed.”

The two older women wandered off together, talking beauty secrets.

Rachel stood in the doorway, hugging her robe around her, watching as Bryan stood on a chair and carefully removed the cassette from the video camera he had mounted in the corner above the door.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope for to think they might be having identical hallucinations.”

“It’s unlikely,” Bryan said. He rattled the video cassette. “Just as it’s unlikely that a ghost could pull an iron railing loose or track mud into the house or step through rotted wood. I believe we’ll have all the proof we need right here to show that Rat is our mystery man.”

Rachel shook her head. “I don’t understand why Rasmussen and Porchind would try to drive us out. They know I’m interested in selling the place.”

“They also know Addie doesn’t want to move,” Bryan pointed out. “In any case, they could be trying to frighten you into dropping the price, make you so desperate to leave that you’ll practically give the place to them rather than put it on the market and let someone else have a chance at it.”

He went very still, staring past Rachel, his eyes clear and intense. “Don’t let anyone else have a chance at it,” he repeated. “Yes.”

Rachel ignored his odd trance. She was getting used to such behavior, much to her surprise. “What about Addie’s whimsy? Are you finally giving up that ridiculous belief in ghosts?”

“Not at all. I haven’t figured out where Wimsey fits in yet, but I will.”

Bryan smiled brightly, happy as a clam with his evidence. One mystery was well on its way to being solved. The whole thing would come to a head soon. He could sense it.

Rachel stepped out into the hall. “I’ll see you upstairs. I’m going to go make sure Mother and Roberta aren’t giving each other crew cuts.”

“I’ll be right up,” Bryan promised.

He reset his equipment on the off chance of a return appearance by their ghoulish visitor, then poured himself a drink from the bottle that still resided in the desk drawer. He had told Rachel he would purchase the desk himself, but he needn’t have worried. For some odd reason the study had remained virtually untouched throughout the tag sale. People had avoided the room. He had a strong feeling he knew why.

Now he raised his glass to whatever presence might have lingered in the room and said, “I don’t know where you fit in yet, Wimsey, but I’m going to find out.” He took a drink, then turned and stared long and hard at the portrait of Arthur Drake. The man was gesturing out toward him with an infuriatingly enigmatic expression on his face. “And I’m going to find out where you fit into this too, Arthur. See if I don’t.”

The videotape showed the back of a man’s head. That was it as far as evidence went. The rest of the show was Aunt Roberta, shouting, screaming, waving her arms. She managed to block the culprit out of the picture entirely. The film in the still camera was no better-mainly photographs of Aunt Roberta getting the bejeepers scared out of her. It was a disappointment, to say the very least.

His call to Shane didn’t exactly improve Bryan’s morning.

“I didn’t turn up anything on either one of them,” Callan said. “Porchind was teaching literature at some two-bit junior college in Oregon until this summer. Rasmussen ran a used-book store. They haven’t had so much as a parking ticket between them. Sorry.”

Bryan managed a smile. Shane apologized as if it would have been infinitely preferable to have discovered the men were notorious serial killers.

“Any clue as to what brought them to Anastasia?” Bryan asked.

“None. But Faith says you should talk to Lorraine at the Allingham Museum on Seventh Avenue. Apparently, she’s lived here forever. She should be able to answer questions concerning the history of the place.”

Bryan pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket, located his pencil behind his left ear, and jotted the message down.

“Faith also says to tell you you need a haircut.”

“Thanks,” Bryan said, scowling at his reflection in the hall mirror.

“Anytime. You know where to call if things get exciting.”

Bryan smiled as he bid his friend good-bye. Shane seemed perfectly at ease at Keepsake Inn, working on his music and his poetry. He was a wonderful father and a dutiful, doting husband to Faith, but Bryan sensed Faith hadn’t domesticated the agent completely.

Stuffing his notes back into the pockets of his khaki chinos, Bryan set off in search of Rachel, his mind mulling over what little information Shane had been able to give him. He pictured Miles Porchind in an ill-fitting tweed jacket, spraying the students in the front row of his stuffy classroom with spittle as he read aloud from Chaucer. He imagined Felix Rasmussen creeping around the musty stacks of books in a dark little store on some dingy side street.

Literature. Books. Porchind had come to the tag sale for books. Their late-night visitor had snatched an armload of books on his way out. Was it possible they weren’t after Drake House at all, but something in it?

“Bryan, they’re driving me insane,” Rachel said, coming out of the kitchen, wringing her hands in a dishtowel.

“Who?”

Rachel stared at him as if he had completely lost his head. “Who? Who do you think? Tweedledee and Tweedledum. My mother and your aunt.”

He waved a hand to dismiss the subject. “They’ll be fine once they get to know each other.”

“How can they get to know each other? My mother is perpetually confused, and your aunt never calls anyone by the same name twice. They’re like squirrels chasing each other’s tails!” She did a wickedly accurate imitation of Roberta, substituting a ballpoint pen for the ever-present cigarette. “ ‘My word, Rochelle, you make good eggs!’ Then my mother says, who’s Rochelle? ‘Your daughter, for heaven’s sake, Amelia! Your daughter, Roxanne!’ Then they start the whole thing over again! It’s worse than having breakfast with Abbott and Costello!”

“Honey, relax,” Bryan said with a cheerful smile. He pulled a quarter out of her ear, handed it to her, and patted her cheek. “Buy yourself a cup of coffee. They’ll be all right. It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”

Rachel stared at him in exasperated disbelief as he turned and headed for the front door. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To get a haircut!” he called, waving at her over his shoulder.

Rachel ground her teeth, Wasn’t that just like him to blithely wander off on some silly errand, leaving her to deal with the problem.

No, she corrected herself as she slumped back against the wall, that was like Terence. Her stomach churned at the thought. Bryan was sweeter than Terence had ever been, and less self-absorbed, but when it came to accepting responsibility, it was looking more and more as if they were peas in a pod, smoothing the rough spots over with platitudes, leaving her to deal with reality while they chased rainbows.

When Bryan returned to Drake House several hours later, he was brimming with barely contained excitement. Unfortunately, Rachel was in neither the mood nor the position to hear his latest theories and the history behind them.

Bryan unfolded himself from behind the wheel of Rachel’s Chevette, staring in stunned disbelief at the scene that greeted him. Addie was hanging out her bedroom window, flinging Rachel’s clothes out onto the lawn one article at a time. Rachel stormed around the yard, gathering up undergarments, pulling her bras off bushes, digging her shoes out of the shrubbery.

“What’s going on?” Bryan asked with a quality of innocence that earned him a scathing glare from Rachel.

“Mother is upset with me because I let a realtor into the house this morning.”

“Traitor!” Addie shouted, and let fly a pair of loafers.

“She’s taken all my things and locked herself in her room.”

“Oh, dear.” Bryan frowned. “Where’s Aunt Roberta?”

“She went scuba-diving with someone named Brutus, an old friend of one of your brothers,” Rachel said, retrieving one of her shoes from the hood of her car. “If you want my frank opinion, the man did not appear to be mentally balanced, but who am I to judge?” She gave a brittle laugh that managed to combine fury and hysteria.

Bryan’s brows shot up in surprise at the news.

“This is all your fault.” Rachel glared at him and shook a loafer under his nose. “You told Mother we wouldn’t have to move. Naturally, she has no trouble remembering that little gem of information. Thanks a lot, Bryan,” she said, smacking him on the arm with the shoe. “You’ve made my job so much easier.”

Bryan winced and rubbed his arm. “But Rachel-”

“You keep saying you want to help me,” she ranted, running under a pair of jeans as they floated to earth. “Then you turn around and undermine my efforts to get Mother to accept the inevitable.”

“But honey, it’s not-”

They both broke off as a brown Ford Galaxy rattled up the drive. The car coughed to a halt and Porchind and Rasmussen emerged from the interior. A rock sailed down from above and richoceted off the grille of the car with a ping! All heads turned to see Addie wielding a bra-turned-slingshot.

“It’s Porky and the Rat!” she shouted, loading a bra cup and letting another stone fly. “Get away from my house!”

“Please excuse my mother, gentlemen,” Rachel said as they all took cover on the porch. “She’s been hallucinating a lot lately.”

“We’ve come to retrieve our books, Miss Lindquist,” Porchind said without preamble, tugging at his brown vest in a vain attempt to get the garment to cover his protruding girth.

“Books,” Rasmussen echoed. He cast a glance at Bryan, his sunken eyes gleaming with restrained temper. Bryan merely smiled at him inanely.

“Oh, yes,” Rachel said, giving Bryan her own fierce look. “I’m so sorry about the mixup. Bryan will get them for you.”

“They’re in the study,” he said, pleasantly unrepentant. Opening the door, he motioned everyone inside. Rachel stomped past him. Porchind and Rasmussen sidled by, reluctant to turn their backs on him. “Wasn’t that funny-those two stacks of books getting switched around that way?”

His only reply came in the form of three furious stares, which rolled harmlessly off his shield of innocuous enthusiasm.

“My, that old journal was certainly interesting reading,” he said brightly as they went into the study.

The two visitors turned abruptly to each other, their complexions paling from white to ashen.

“I couldn’t make head or tail out of it myself,” Bryan said with a grin. He fought the urge to chuckle as Porchind and Rasmussen relaxed visibly, letting out a collective breath.

They sank down on the leather love seat, apparently weak with relief as Bryan handed the little stack of books over to them. Porchind’s fingers, as stubby and round as breakfast sausages, curled greedily over the bindings as he pressed the books to his ample belly.

“I’ve spoken to a realtor about the house,” Rachel said abruptly, drawing startled glances all around. She leaned back against the desk, crossed her arms over her chest, and gave Bryan a mutinous look.

“We were hoping to save you the trouble, Miss Lindquist,” Porchind said with a nervous twitter.

“I had to get a fair idea of the market value,” Rachel explained.

“You’re certain you’re going to sell, then?”

“Yes,” she said, avoiding Bryan’s intense look.

“There’s still the little matter of Mrs. Lindquist,” he said pointedly. “It is, in fact, her house.”

Rachel reined in her temper and her own feelings of guilt. She hated to have it come down to a competency hearing. She had the ominous feeling that all hope of a reconciliation with Addie would be utterly destroyed by that. But the situation was getting desperate. Their funds were dwindling, and the IRS was breathing down their necks. She could see no way out other than her original plan of selling the house and going on to her new job in San Francisco. Her emotions were only complicated by Bryan’s unreasonable opposition. She felt as if he were betraying her.

“And there is the little matter of my contract with Mrs. Lindquist,” he continued. With a tremendous effort of will he ignored the fury rolling off Rachel in waves and resurrected his foolish grin. He turned to the gentlemen and began juggling a trio of red foam balls he had produced from thin air. “I’ve been hired to find the ghost.”

“There are no such things as ghosts, Mr. Hennessy,” Porchind said as if he were admonishing a ten-year-old.

Immediately both he and Rasmussen gave a little squeal of surprise and leapt forward a bit on the love seat. Their heads swiveled simultaneously, looking behind them as if they expected to see daggers protruding from the back of the chair. Everyone then glared accusingly at Bryan, who went on happily juggling, ignoring their unspoken accusation that he was somehow to blame.

“Sure there is,” he said enthusiastically. “This one’s name is Archibald Wimsey. He was staying here in 1931 as a guest of Arthur Drake. Mysteriously disappeared. I’m quite convinced that his spirit inhabits Drake House to this day.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Porchind said severely.

“Absurd,” Rasmussen reiterated.

Together they popped up from the love seat, their eyes and mouths round O’s of surprise, their hands going to their backsides.

Rachel sent Bryan a withering glare, then stepped forward to console her guests. “The springs must be going in that old thing. No wonder no one wanted to buy it yesterday.”

She walked the men to the front door, promising them she and her mother would come to a definite decision about the house very soon. When she returned to the study, she gave free rein to the fury that had been building inside her all day.

“Of all the childish, infantile tricks!” she shouted, standing toe to toe with Bryan. “Booby-trapping that chair with your magic gizmos. Isn’t that just like you!”

“Well, yes,” Bryan admitted grudgingly. “But I didn’t do it.”

“Oh, sure,” Rachel said with a sneer. She turned and began pacing back and forth in front of him in an effort to burn off some of her anger before she exploded. “What do I have to do to get through to you, Bryan? I have got to sell this house.”

“No, you don’t,” he said. Suddenly he was grinning again with almost boyish excitement. “I think I’ve found out why Porky and the Rat want it.”

“I don’t care why they want it. I don’t care if they want to set up a nudist colony for the terminally strange.”

Bryan grimaced. “There’s an ugly thought.”

Rachel’s eyes flashed. “It’s nothing compared to what I’m thinking about you at the moment.”

That was true. The signals he was intercepting were more than a little hostile. He cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and took the plunge.

“I think they’re after gold.”

Rachel halted her pacing and stared at him in disbelief. “What?”

“Porchind’s late relative, Pig Porchind, was a bigtime bootlegger back in the days of Prohibition,” he explained, visibly warming to his topic. “According to the gossip of the time, he had a fortune in gold stashed somewhere around Anastasia.”

“What has that got to do with Drake House?” she asked impatiently.

“At that same time in history there was a notorious cat burglar on the loose around here. His targets were the homes of wealthy lumber barons and shipping magnates. There were rumors about the theft of an enormous amount of gold from old Pig. It was apparently never found. Neither was Archibald Wimsey, an old British chum of Arthur Drake’s who was visiting during the summer of 1931. By coincidence, all concerned in this story were either dead or gone missing shortly after it all happened, and most everyone forgot about it.”

“That’s a very entertaining story, Bryan,” Rachel said. “Does it have a point?”

“Of course it has a point,” he said irritably. “Wimsey is your mother’s invisible friend, and Porky and the Rat think the stolen gold is stashed somewhere in Drake House.”

“That’s absurd,” Rachel said. “If there were a fortune in gold in this house, don’t you think someone would have found it by now? It’s been more than sixty years since Prohibition.”

“And almost that long since these rumors were in circulation. Why would anyone look for something they didn’t know was there?” he asked reasonably.

“Why would anyone look for something that doesn’t exist?” Rachel countered. “Did you find any mention of this legend in that journal?”

“Uh-no,” he admitted, “not precisely.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “This whole tale is so farfetched, I can’t believe you’re telling it to me. Who gave you all this golden information anyway?”

“Lorraine Clement Carthage, who was a debutante at the time and is mentioned-er, fondly in the diary.”

“And who is now, no doubt, as senile as my mother.”

He couldn’t quite meet her eyes after that state ment. Lorraine hadn’t exactly been in step with the world around her, he had to admit, but to his way of thinking the evidence was all adding up very nicety. Lorraine had thought the dashing Wimsey was the thief. Apparently Pig Porchind had thought the same thing and had probably had Wimsey done away with, which explained the restless spirit. The fact that the gold had never been recovered meant it still had to be around someplace, and Drake House appeared the likely spot since attention was being focused on it by the late Pig’s relative.

“Bryan, don’t you see this is all a wild goose chase?” Rachel asked wearily. “All you’ve got are some moldy old rumors and half-baked speculation. It would be wonderful to find a fortune in lost gold. It would be the answer to my prayers. But life doesn’t work that way.”

“Not if you don’t let it,” he muttered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you have to believe a little.”

Rachel closed her eyes and counted to ten, but the anger was still there afterward, the anger and all the old bitterness. “You think problems can be solved by magic?” she asked. “You think all we have to do is believe in fairy tales and everything will end happily ever after? Magic is for fools and children.”

Bryan’s head snapped back as if she had slapped him. His jaw tightened ominously. “Well, it certainly isn’t for martyrs, is it?” he asked darkly.

Rachel stared at him, her eyes round with hurt.

In a saner moment he would have called himself a bastard, but he had some pent-up pain of his own to vent, and he was only human.

“I think you don’t want to believe there could be a painless solution to your problems because you’re so damned determined to sacrifice yourself to Addie,” he said, leaning over the desk toward her, unconsciously trying to intimidate her with his size. “You’ve got it all mapped out in that pragmatic head of yours how you’re going to make it up to her for wanting a life of your own. You’ve probably got it figured out to the nth degree the exact amount of suffering you’ve got to do to redeem yourself.”

Silence hung between them like the blade of an ax. Bryan stood on one side of the walnut desk, his chest heaving in the aftermath of his outburst. Rachel stood on the other side, her shoulders stiff with pride, her eyes shining with tears she refused to shed.

After a long moment she said quietly, “I’m not a masochist, Bryan. I’m a realist. In the real world people have to learn to deal with problems in a realistic way. Now, If you’ll excuse me, I have to go see to mine.”

She turned and went to the door, praying she could make her getaway before the dam burst, but the study door wouldn’t open. She grasped the knob with both hands, twisted it, rattled it, yanked on it, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Dammit,” she swore, sniffling as she yanked on the knob and kicked the door with the toe of her sneaker simultaneously. “Damn this stupid old house.”

Bryan watched her, his whole being aching with a ferocious attack of remorse. He’d meant every word he’d said, but he had certainly never meant to say them out loud. He would have done anything to spare Rachel hurt, yet he had just inflicted her with a verbal forty lashes because he was feeling frustrated. It would serve him right if she never spoke to him again, he thought morosely. It would serve him right if she threw him out. Or maybe he should just go…

Apologize, stupid.

He hesitated, but suddenly his feet were moving forward. He felt almost as if some outside force were propelling him toward Rachel, who was still struggling with the door. He stopped behind her and reached out to carefully cup her shoulders in his big hands. She jumped and stiffened as if she expected him to become violent. Bryan winced. It wasn’t enough that he had to deal with his own pain for what he’d done; now he had to feel Rachel’s as well. It was apt punishment, he supposed, but he couldn’t help but curse his sixth sense just the same.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, bending his head down so the fresh scent of her hair teased his nostrils. “I’m sorry, angel. I shouldn’t have said any of that. I know you’re doing what you think is best. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

Rachel tried to hold herself rigid, but she wasn’t able to sustain it against the strangely physical pressure to lean back against him. The sting of his words was still bringing tears to her eyes, but she had to admit to feelings of regret herself. She’d been the first one to draw blood, bursting Bryan’s bubble of enthusiasm with the pin of practicality. Maybe he wasn’t realistic or responsible, but he was trying to help her in his own misguided way. And she couldn’t deny the fact that she loved him, or that it hurt her to hurt him.

She sighed as the fight drained out of her and Bryan wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry too.”

She was sorry for a lot of things, not the least of which was the inherent differences in their philosophies. She was sorry fate had thrown them together at such an inopportune time. She was sorry she couldn’t believe in magic the way he did.

“I don’t want us to fight,” she whispered, twisting around in his embrace and throwing her arms around his neck. Their time together was going to be too short as it was, she thought, her heart aching. There was no sense wasting it on senseless battles about ideology.

Bryan hugged her tight, closing his eyes against another wave of pain. He had to find some way to show her that her life didn’t have to be all sacrifice. He especially had to find a way to show her they didn’t need to sacrifice their love, that it would be strong enough to withstand anything if only she would believe.

He gave her a tentative, heart-stealing smile, his blue eyes brimming with vulnerability. “Friends again?”

Rachel nodded. She sniffed, blinked back the last of her tears, and lifted a hand to brush at the errant lock of tawny hair that fell across Bryan’s forehead and into his eyes. A gentle smile curved her mouth.

“I thought you were going to get a haircut.”

His expression went comically blank, then guilty. A warm blush colored his high cheekbones. He ducked his head sheepishly. “Um… I guess I forgot.”

“Come on,” Rachel said, chuckling softly. “Maybe we can get Mother to do it for you. She’s a whiz with a scissors, you know.”

They shared a smile, letting the moment heal the wounds they had inflicted, then Bryan turned the doorknob with suspicious ease and they walked out of the study together.