Magic

FOURTEEN

Bryan turned to quit the room, but the door had swung shut and refused to open when he tried it. He hung his head and let out a slow, measured breath, struggling to rein in his temper. Rachel had made it clear where he fit into her life-nowhere. He wanted only to make a graceful exit, but that privilege was being denied him. He had a feeling he knew why, but he was in no mood for interference from a sixth sense or anything else. Both his pride and his heart were still stinging from Rachel’s rejection. He wanted only to leave.

Cursing under his breath, he stood back and gave the door a kick that clearly demonstrated an acquaintance with martial arts. Part of the jamb splintered away, and the door flew open. An odd thud sounded on the far side of the hall, and a vase teetered on its stand.

Rachel watched him go, her eyes wide, her heart pounding. He was leaving, leaving Anastasia, leaving her. The final barrier to their happiness had been eradicated, and he was leaving!

She scrambled to her feet and dashed out of the study and down the hall.

On the porch Deputy Skreawupp and another of Anastasia’s finest were reading Porchind and Rasmussen their rights. The pair of erstwhile criminals stood glumly side by side with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Porchind’s bowling-ball head was red with indignation. Rasmussen looked as if he would have been stark white even without his greasy makeup. The thin man rolled his shoulders uncomfortably against the straps of the contraption he and his cohort had devised to make the mystic smoke that had floated around him as he had “haunted” Drake House.

“I never should have listened to you,” Porchind hissed. “You should have known it was a trap, stupid.”

“A trap,” Rasmussen mumbled miserably, his head lolling from side to side.

“Moron,” Porchind grumbled.

“Clam up, Porky,” Skreawupp ordered, shaking a stubby pencil beneath the man’s nose. “I’ll muzzle you like a fat circus bear, and I can do it.”

Shane Callan leaned indolently back against a post, watching the scene with an almost feline smile of amused satisfaction. His hands were tucked casually into the pockets of his black jeans. The butt of his pistol peeked out from under his left arm.

Addie watched the proceedings from Skreawupp’s elbow with avid interest.

“I knew they were up to no good,” she said, earning herself a scowl from the sour-faced deputy. “It took you long enough to figure it out, Deputy Dope.”

“They needed evidence, Addie,” Bryan said.

She waved a hand at him. “Twaddle.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” the deputy said to Porchind. He shot a dark look at Addie. “That goes for you, too, honey bun.”

She blew a loud raspberry at him and wound up to sock him one. Rachel caught her by the arm and swung her toward the door. “Mother, why don’t you go in and find a sweater… before the deputy decides to charge you with harassment,” she added under her breath as her mother clomped away.

“Miss Lindquist, we’d appreciate it if you’d come down to the station in the morning to make a statement,” the younger deputy said.

“And we’d really appreciate it if you left your mother at home,” Skreawupp added. Rachel’s narrow look glanced off his double chins as he turned to his captive scoundrels and herded them down the steps. “All right, you two scum balls, it’s the slammer for you. The cooler, the can, the county condo. I’ve seen your kind a hundred times. You stalk the helpless on little cat feet and strike in the dark of night. Makes me sick.”

“He’s one of a kind,” Shane commented mildly as the deputy’s voice faded away and the doors slammed on the squad car. He lit a cigarette and sighed a stream of blue smoke into the night air. “Thank God.”

“Thank you for helping, Mr. Callan,” Rachel said, wrapping her arms around herself in a vain attempt to ward off the damp chill of the night as it seeped through her T-shirt and into her skin.

Shane just shrugged as he pushed himself away from the post. “That’s what friends are for.” His cool gray eyes slid from Rachel to Bryan. “I’ll see you back at Keepsake?”

Bryan nodded. “Later. Thanks for the hand.”

“You made my day,” Callan said dryly, shooting his friend a handsome grin. He trotted down the front steps and disappeared into the night.

“He’s an intriguing man,” Rachel said, more to fill the uncomfortable silence than anything. Bryan was standing less than five feet from her, and yet he felt as distant as the moon-and as cool.

“I have to go pack.” He turned stiffly toward the door.

“Would you like a cup of coffee first?” she asked, stalling for time. She felt like a coward for the first time since she’d stood up to her mother five years earlier.

“No.”

The blasted man wasn’t going to make this easy for her, was he? She swallowed a little more of her pride and tried again. “I’d like to hear the whole story behind the gold and Porchind and everything.”

“Does it matter?” Bryan asked, giving her a sharp look. “The gold is yours. I wouldn’t think you’d care how it got there.”

Rachel sucked in a breath at the blow. “That’s not fair.”

Bryan steeled himself against the hurt he’d caused her. She had dealt her share of it earlier. He gave a careless shrug of his broad shoulders. “Well, as I’ve been told time and again,” he said, a sardonic smile twisting his mouth, “life isn’t fair. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

“Bryan.” Rachel abandoned all pretense of subtlety or pride and grabbed at the sleeve of his sweatshirt as he started through the door. She looked up at him with pleading eyes. “I don’t want you to go.”

“That’s not what you told me this afternoon,” he said, his expression carefully blank.

“Things were different this afternoon. I was upset and angry and-”

“And now you’re rich?” he suggested sarcastically.

Rachel took it on the chin and plowed right ahead. “I won’t have to sell the house. I won’t have to worry about the kind of care I can provide for Mother. The gold changes everything.”

He gave her a bleak look. “Does it?”

“Bryan, I love you,” she said, the beginnings of desperation coloring her voice.

Instead of filling with joy, his earnest blue eyes only grew sad behind his glasses. “And it took something as solid, as tangible as gold to get you to trust in that love, to get you to believe it can work and last,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t worth taking a chance on before, but now, since you’re rich, what the heck? How is that supposed to make me feel, Rachel?”

She didn’t answer. She knew how it made him feel. That same horrible, hollow feeling was yawning inside her. At that moment she would have given the lion’s share of the gold to be able to take back everything she’d said to him that afternoon.

“Love can’t be contingent on financial security,” Bryan said gently. “It can’t be contingent on anything at all. Tell me what happens when the gold runs out? Will you stop believing? Will it no longer be sensible or practical to be in love with me? The vows say for richer or poorer, Rachel. For better or worse. In sickness and in health. They don’t say anything about convenience. I sat by and watched someone I loved die. Do you think that was easy or convenient or fun?”

“No,” she whispered, tears clinging to her thick golden lashes.

“No,” he echoed softly, his eyes shadowed with remembered pain. “I won’t stay here because it’s suddenly become easy for you to love me, Rachel. There are lots of times when love has to subsist on nothing more than hope and a belief in magic. When you’re ready to believe that…” His words trailed off on a tired sigh, as if he had already given up on the idea. “Ill leave you the number of a Mr. Huntingheath in London. He knows how to find me.”

He turned then and went into the house. Rachel’s hand fell to her side. Her fingers closed around the memory of touching him, and she raised her fist to press it to her mouth. She watched Bryan go up the grand staircase, but she made no effort to stop him. She wasn’t sure if she had the strength or the right to. Instead, she went to the study and curled up in the corner of the leather love seat to think.

To her left, amid the dark bricks of the fireplace, the exposed bar of gold gleamed dully in the soft light. She stared at it dispassionately. It was the answer to all her prayers save two: It couldn’t bring her mother’s health back, and it couldn’t keep Bryan from walking out on her.

What was it worth, then? Nothing. Less than nothing. It would pay her debts and secure her future, but her future would be empty without Bryan and the magic he brought to her life.

Bryan folded his shirts mechanically. Packing was a routine that had long ago become automatic to him. His hands knew what to do. His mind was free to wander.

He had no taste for a trip to Hungary. The work might prove to be a good diversion, but he could dredge up none of his usual enthusiasm. Maybe he would go home first and visit his parents or take a trip to Connecticut and spend some time with his brother J.J. and Genna and their kids.

But thoughts of family only sharpened the ache of loneliness inside him. He wanted a family of his own. He wanted a wife and children and a home he wouldn’t be a visitor in. For the second time in his life he had had that kind of happiness within his reach, and again the rainbow had eluded his grasp.

It hurt. Maybe it hurt worse because he believed so strongly that wishes could come true. Maybe Rachel was right in expecting the worst from life. At least then you couldn’t be disappointed when that was what you got.

Rachel. He loved her. She loved him. But she wasn’t willing to believe in magic, and he wasn’t willing to settle for less.

“Being a bit hard on the girl, aren’t you, Hennessy?”

Bryan looked up at the sound of the cultured British voice. His gaze went to the cracked mirror above the dresser. In the reflection of the room he could see himself and a shadowy figure standing some distance behind him, near the armoire. The man was tall and slender, an elegant figure in formal attire; a pale, thin man with the insolent bearing of aristocratic breeding. His hair was combed straight back. His suit was immaculate, his bow tie just slightly imperfect-the mark of a true gentleman of his day.

“Archibald Wimsey, I presume,” Bryan said, not exhibiting the least sign of surprise. “I was wondering when you were going to come out of hiding.”

“Hiding?” Wimsey frowned but chose not to challenge the remark. “Work to be done, don’t you know, dear fellow. Couldn’t be the life of the party what with all these good deeds to do, now, could I?”

“Good deeds?”

Wimsey leaned against the armoire as if the thing could actually support his translucent form. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his trousers and scowled up at the ceiling. “I’ve been stuck in this wretched house for fifty-nine years, waiting for some great humanitarian act to perform so I could go on to a more appropriate afterlife. Fifty-nine years! Rather the ultimate story of a house guest overstaying his welcome, eh?”

He dropped his gaze back to Bryan and shrugged. “I wasn’t inclined to muck up my chances by showing myself to one and all just so you could get your name into some bloody obscure pseudoscientific journal.”

“In fifty-nine years you haven’t had a single opportunity to redeem yourself?” Bryan asked dubiously.

“The closest I came was setting fire to Cornelia Thayer’s collection of miniskirts in 1969,” Wimsey reflected with a fond smile of remembrance that faded into a look of disgust. “The woman possessed thighs to rival the trunks of the great redwoods, don’t you know. Unfortunately, eradicating an affront to refined sartorial tastes was not deemed sufficient to get me out of my spiritual exile, To make matters worse, Cornelia took to wearing hot pants.” He shuddered in revulsion at the memory. “Confined myself to the attic over that ghastly turn of events. Finally drove the Thayer’s to sell by pouring buckets of ooze down the walls of their bedroom. Don’t reckon that garnered me any brownie points in the great beyond,” he added thoughtfully, rubbing his long chin.

“I don’t imagine,” Bryan agreed, rolling his eyes. “What landed you here in the first place?”

Wimsey gave him a shrewd look. “I think you’ve figured that one out, chum. You tell me.”

“All right. While your pal Ducky was quietly robbing everyone blind, you let people think you were the gentleman bandit because the ladies thought it was romantic. Unfortunately, the ladies weren’t the only ones who believed it. Pig Porchind believed you stole his gold and he-”

Wimsey made a face and held up an insubstantial hand to cut him off. “Don’t let’s relive the truly unpleasant past.”

“You didn’t know where the gold was, did you?”

“You think I’d be here now if I had?” he asked incredulously, straightening away from the armoire and hovering near the bed. Frowning darkly, he shook out one of Bryan’s dress shirts and refolded it to his own satisfaction. “I’d have bloody well told old Pig where it was and what he could do with it. Ducky had it hidden someplace until it was already too late for me, then he apparently brought the stuff in already disguised as bricks. I hadn’t the vaguest idea where it was.”

He directed his frown at Bryan again. “If I’d figured it out ahead of you and revealed the stuff to Addie or the girl, perhaps I wouldn’t still be here.”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Wimsey snorted. “After fifty-nine years of dead boredom I finally get a shot at redeeming myself. You pinch it, and the best you can do is tell me you’re sorry? I say, that’s really frightfully inadequate.”

Bryan shrugged helplessly. “Well, what would you have me do?”

Wimsey smiled brightly and patted Bryan’s shoulder. “Do kiss and make up with the girl. There’s a good chap.”

“Rachel?”

“Of course Rachel,” he said irritably. “Who do you think I mean? I’ve been playing cupid for you all along, you ungrateful swine. The least you can do is marry her.”

Bryan sighed. “I’m afraid that’s up to her.”

“Bloody hell,” the ghost murmured, crossing his arms cover his chest. He shook his head. “I’m not cut out for this humanitarian work. Never been comfortable with charitable behavior.” He waved a hand as if to ward off a denial that wasn’t forthcoming. “Oh, yes, I gave the odd quid to Oxfam in my day, but all this-this-personal stuff.” He shuddered again, his distaste for his task more than apparent. “All that selflessness goes quite against my grain, I don’t mind saying.”

“Probably has something to do with why you’re here,” Bryan suggested dryly.

“Don’t be glib, Hennessy. It’s really quite irritating.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t tell me, tell Rachel,” he insisted. “Getting the two of you together is my last hope of getting out of here. I did what I could to help her reconcile with Addie, and that didn’t solve my dilemma. You’ve got to be the key. So stop slacking off and do your duty. I’m fed up with being subtle, holding the doors shut and shoving the two of you together. By the way, I was not amused by your little jujitsu demonstration downstairs.”

“Tae kwon do,” Bryan corrected him with a bland smile.

“Don’t split hairs,” Wimsey snapped. “This facetious manner of yours is damned annoying. “Pon my soul, if I were alive, you’d be giving me a roaring headache. Do make up with the girl and get on with it.”

Bryan arched a brow. “Does coercion count in the good-deeds category these days?”

Wimsey screwed up his mouth in annoyance. “You really are too flip by half. Just wait until you get stuck in an alternate plane of existence. We’ll see how amusing you are then.”

Bryan sighed and put on his most contrite look. He wasn’t in the mood for jocularity. Encountering Wimsey had lifted his spirits, but the fact remained, he was losing Rachel. Their difference of philosophy was a wedge between them, and he could see no way over, under, or around it. The next move had to be hers.

“I’m truly sorry, Wimsey. I’ve done all I can. The rest is up to no one but Rachel.”

“That’s what you think,” the ghost muttered darkly.

A knock sounded at the door. Rachel’s voice floated through. “Bryan? Can I come in?”

“Yes.” At least he would get the satisfaction of seeing her face when he introduced her to Wimsey, he thought with a wry smile. He went on folding clothes as she swung the door open and stepped inside the room.

“Who were you talking to?”

He opened his mouth to tell her as he straightened. His gaze went to Rachel’s reflection in the mirror, then his own, then-Wimsey was gone. A black scowl pulled his brows together. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and grumbled, “Myself.”

“Oh.” Rachel looked confused. “That’s funny. I thought I heard another voice.”

“I do that when I’m talking to myself,” he said irritably. “I make up another voice. It makes the conversation seem so much more realistic.”

“That’s kind of odd.”

“I’m an odd person,” he said curtly, snapping his suitcase shut and reaching for another. “What do you expect?”

“I expect you to give me a straight answer,” Rachel said, more than a little irritated by his nasty mood. She’d come there in contrition, after all. The least he could be was polite.

“Fine,” Bryan said, abandoning his packing. “You want a straight answer? I was talking to a ghost. I was talking to a man who was killed in this house fifty-nine years ago. Archibald Wimsey. He was here, but now you can’t see him, so, as we all know, he must not really exist. He’s just a figment of my overactive, irresponsible imagination.”

Rachel winced. “I’m sorry I called you irresponsible. We have different ways of looking at things, you and I. We have different ways of dealing with problems.”

“But I do deal with them, Rachel. I don’t just brush them off and expect you to clean up the mess.”

“I know,” she mumbled, head down.

“Do you?” he asked sharply.

She looked up at him, nibbling the corner of her lip. “I’m willing to learn,” she said sincerely. “Are you willing to show me?”

Bryan sighed wearily, his wide shoulders sagging in defeat. “I’ve been trying to show you all along.”

Rachel thought back across the memories she had stored up in the past weeks, memories of Bryan intervening when things had been going badly between herself and Addie, of his silly diversionary tactics that had kept her from dwelling on her problems. She thought of the way he had come back to find the gold for her and to trap Porchind and Rasmussen. If it hadn’t been for him, she probably would have sold Drake House to the pair and been glad to get what little she could for the place.

Bryan had looked out for her all along. He was simply so unorthodox in his methods, she hadn’t realized what he was up to. Still, she had fallen in love with him in spite of his eccentricities, in spite of thinking he was just another hopeless dreamer. Now she loved him even more.

She put her hands on his solid forearms and looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. “I love you, Bryan. You said you needed me to believe in magic. I believe I love you. I believed that even when I was sure you were the last thing I needed in my life. Isn’t that a kind of magic-believing in something even when you think you shouldn’t?”

“I guess so,” he whispered, lifting a hand to brush at the soft, wild tendrils of spun gold that curled around her face. She was so lovely, and he loved her so much, the thought of leaving her was like cutting out his own heart.

“I do need you in my life, Bryan,” she said, leaning closer. “I need you more than all the gold in California. Please don’t leave me.”

As he stared down at her, his blue eyes misty, there was a strange scraping noise in the hall. It sounded suspiciously like heavy furniture being pushed across the floor. Rachel’s eyes rounded as something bumped against the closed door. She snuggled closer to Bryan, her arms sneaking around his lean waist.

“What was that?” she asked weakly.

Bryan smiled and shook his head. “Just someone trying to make sure I don’t leave you.”

She gave him a puzzled look.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, giving in to the powerful longing. “I don’t have any intention of leaving you for the next hundred years or so.”

Rachel’s spirits soared. “You mean that?”

“I do.”

“What about Hungary and Mr. Huntinglodge?”

“Neither one of them is as important to me as you are. Will you marry me, Rachel?” he asked softly.

“I will,” she whispered, tilting her face up to meet his kiss.

His lips were warm and solid against hers, masculine and welcoming, and trembling just enough to bring a lump to her throat. She melted into his arms, never questioning the sensation of coming home. This was where she belonged. This was where she was safe and warm. This was where she wanted to spend the rest of her days-in the arms of a man who brought magic to her life, who lightened every darkness and put a rainbow in her heart.

“I say, good show.”

Rachel bolted in Bryan’s arms, but he held her fast. He raised his head to shoot the intruder a meaningful look. “No show. Beat it, Wimsey.”

“Wimsey?” Rachel asked, goose bumps pebbling her flesh to the texture of sandpaper.

Bryan nodded, tilting his head in the direction of the mirror that hung above the old dresser. Rachel turned and looked. Her mouth dropped open so hard, it was a wonder it didn’t put a dent in her chest.

There he stood-the figment of her mother’s imagination, the whimsy Bryan had refused to give up on, the ghost she didn’t believe in. His image was slightly translucent. He was handsome and smiling, decked out in formal attire. And he was holding a rose.

Her heart skipped a beat as her gaze fastened on the perfect white bud of the flower. Then her eyes went to the eyes of the man who held it. Wimsey nodded in answer to the questions she couldn’t quite force into words. It had been Wimsey all along.

Now he held the rose out toward her. Rachel turned away from the mirror, twisting in Bryan’s arms to face the apparition that stood by the armoire.

“Thank you,” she whispered, taking the flower by the stem.

“Thank you, my dear,” he murmured in return, his pale eyes shining as he handed her the rose.

Then, in a flash of brilliant white light, he was gone.

“Where did he go?” Rachel asked, never once questioning that he had been there.

“Where he belongs,” Bryan said with a soft smile. “Where he belongs.”

“Then we’re alone?”

He nodded.

With a beguiling smile, she wound her arms around his neck. “It seems like now might be a good time for you to start teaching me all about magic.”

“Hmm, yes,” Bryan agreed, his eyes twinkling as he pulled her with him to the bed. They tumbled across the coverlet, laughing and breathless, Rachel’s hair spilling around them like moonlight.

Bryan kissed her cheeks and her eyelids and the corners of her mouth.

“Why don’t we start with making the earth move?” he suggested. “That’s a trick you seem to have a natural aptitude for.”

Rachel grinned and hugged him, loving him with every fiber of her being. He might have been slightly crazy, and he might have been something of a puzzle, but he was all hers, and he would fill her heart with magic every day of her life.

She threaded her fingers through his tawny hair and pulled him down for a long, slow kiss that left him with only one reverent word to say.

“Abracadabra.”