Ha. Then she’d, like as not, fling herself from my terrace forty-three floors up merely to escape me, he thought, getting up and propping one of the terrace doors slightly ajar.
He stared out over the quiet city—as quiet as Manhattan ever got, still humming, even at four in the morning. Fickle March weather, the clime had been fluctuating for days, rising and dropping as much as thirty degrees in a few hours. Now it was temperate again, but the light rain could well turn to snow by midmorn. Spring was trying to beat back winter and failing, rather mirroring his bleak internal landscape.
Blowing out a gusty breath, he sat down to immerse himself in the third Book of Manannán. This final tome, then he would go. Not on the morrow, but the next day. He’d done all he could here. He doubted what he wanted was in the tome anyway. There’d once been five Books of Manannán, but only three were extant. He’d already read the first two; they’d dealt with the legends of Ireland’s gods before the arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danaan. This third volume continued the tales of the gods, and their encounters with the first wave of settlers to invade Ireland. As slowly as the historical timeline was moving, Dageus suspected the arrival of the race of creatures he was interested in would not be addressed until the fifth volume. Which no longer existed except mayhap in one place: the Keltar library.
Whether he liked it or not, he was going to have to go home. Face his brother so he could search the Keltar collection. He’d wasted many months trying to find a solution on his own, and time was running out. If he waited much longer . . . well, he dare not wait longer.
And what of the lass? his honor roused.
He was too weary to bother lying to himself.
Mine.
He would endeavor to seduce her with her own desires first, make it easier for her, but should she resist, one way or another, she was going with him.
Chloe stood in the hot spray of seven jetting shower heads—three on each side, one above—sighing with pleasure. She’d been feeling like the poster child for grunge. The door was locked and the chair Dageus had brought her to prop beneath the handle was propped snugly beneath the handle.
After dreaming about him and waking in the middle of the night to find him watching her with virtually the same look he’d worn in her dream, she’d hardly been able to meet his gaze when he’d untied her this morning. Just thinking about the dream made her feel flushed and shaky.
I’m no’ a good man, he’d said. He was right. He wasn’t. He was a man who lived by his own rules. He stole other people’s personal property—though he insisted he was “borrowing” and, oddly, left more valuable items. He held her captive—though he cooked scrumptious meals and, frankly, she’d agreed to cooperate for a bribe. Criminal at worst, at best he existed on the fringes of civilized society.
Then again, since she’d accepted his bribe, she supposed she was on those fringes now too.
Still, she mused, a truly bad man wouldn’t bother warning a woman that he wasn’t a good man. A truly bad man wouldn’t stop kissing a woman when she said stop.
What an enigma he was, and so strangely anachronistic! Though his penthouse was modern, his demeanor was distinctly old-world. His speech also was modern, yet he lapsed, at times, into an infrequent, curious formality, splashed with old Gaelic colloquialisms. There was something more to him than she was seeing. She could feel it dancing just at the edge of her comprehension, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t bring it into focus. And there was definitely something about his eyes . . .
She might not be as worldly as New York women, but she wasn’t completely naïve; she could feel danger in him—a woman would have to be dead not to. It dripped from him as liberally as testosterone oozed from his pores. Still, he tempered it with discipline and restraint. He had her at his complete mercy, and he’d not taken advantage of it.
She shook her head. Maybe for him, she thought, as easily as women must fall for him, it was the chase he enjoyed most.
Well, she thought, bristling, he could chase all he wanted. She might be on the fringes, but that didn’t mean she was just going to up and fall in bed with him, no matter how much she might secretly long to be initiated into the exotic, erotic, mysterious Dageus MacKeltar club. Salient word there being “club”—as in, with lots of members.
With that resolved, she shampooed her hair twice (she’d never gone without a shower for two days straight before) and stood under the pulsing spray until she felt squeaky clean. And then a bit longer. Those massaging shower heads were to die for.
Wrapping herself in a luxurious towel, she dislodged the chair and unlocked the door.
When she opened it, she gaped. Half her wardrobe was piled neatly on the bed. She blinked. Yup, there it was. In tidy piles. Panties (uh-hmm, and those were staying firmly on her butt), bras, dresses, sweaters, jeans, a lacy little nightie, socks, boots, shoes, the works. They were stacked in “outfit” piles, she noted, bemused. He’d not just grabbed clothing, but had matched things together as if envisioning her wearing them.
He’d even brought some of her books, she noticed, wandering over to the bed.
Three romance novels, the dastardly man. Scottish romance novels. What had he done? Poked through all her stuff while he was there? Right on top was The Highlander’s Touch, one of her favorite novels about an immortal Highlander.
She snorted. The man was incorrigible. Bringing her steamy, sexy things to read. As if she needed any help thinking steamy thoughts around him.
She could hear him downstairs, talking quietly on the phone. She could smell the scent of fresh-brewed coffee.
And though she knew she should be offended that he’d broken into her apartment and rummaged through her drawers, he’d put much thought into his selections, and she was oddly charmed.
He hardly spoke to her all day. He was in a downright brooding mood. Controlled and remote. Perfectly polite, perfectly disciplined. Utterly self-contained. His eyes were . . . strange again, and she wondered if maybe they took on varying hues under different lighting, like hazel sometimes went from greenish-blue to greenish-brown. Not amber, they were the dull shade of copper just before it blackened.
She’d perched on the counter and watched him cook breakfast—kippers, tatties, toast, and porridge with cream and blueberries—eyeing him while his back was to her. For the first time she’d noticed his hair. She’d known it was long; she hadn’t realized how long because he wore it pulled back. But now that she was behind him, she could see that he’d folded it up several times before binding it in a leather wrap.
She decided it must fall to his waist when it was free. The thought of his sleek black hair sweeping his naked muscled back drove her crazy.
She wondered if he ever wore it down. It seemed so in keeping with his character that it would be long and wild, but meticulously restrained unless he chose to free it.
She tried to make small talk, but he didn’t rise to any of the bait she cast. Fishing, trying to pick his brain, getting nothing but grunts and incoherent murmurs.
They sat together in silence for hours that afternoon, with Chloe delicately turning the pages of the Midhe Codex with tissues, and sneaking peeks at Dageus while he worked with the Book of Manannán, scribbling notes as he translated.
At five o’clock, she got up and turned the news on, wondering if there might be some small mention of her disappearance. As if, she thought wryly. One little girl gone missing in the wormy Big Apple? Both police and newscasters had better things to do.
He looked at her then, a hint of smugness playing about his lips.
She arched a questioning brow, but he said nothing. She listened absently while she read, then suddenly her attention was riveted to the screen.
“The Gaulish Ghost struck again last night, or so the police believe. Baffled might be the best way to describe New York’s finest. At an unknown time, early this morning, all the artifacts previously stolen by the Gaulish Ghost were left at the front desk of the police station. Once again, no
one saw a thing, which makes one wonder just what our police . . .”
There was more, but Chloe didn’t hear it.
She glanced down at the text she was holding. Then at him.
“I bartered for that one, lass.”
“You really did it,” she breathed, shaking her head. “When you went to my apartment for my things, you took them back. I don’t believe it.”
“I told you I was merely borrowing them.”
She stared at him, utterly flummoxed. He’d done it. He’d returned them! A sudden thought occurred to her. One she didn’t much care for. “That means you’re leaving soon, doesn’t it?”
He nodded, his expression unfathomable.
“Oh.” She pretended a hasty fascination with her cuticles to conceal the disappointment that flooded her.
Hence she missed the cool, satisfied curve of his lips, a touch too feral to be called a smile.
Outside Dageus MacKeltar’s penthouse, on a sidewalk crammed with people rushing to escape the city at the end of the long work week, one man wove his way through the crowd and joined a second man. They moved discreetly aside, loitering near a newsstand. Though clad in expensive dark suits, with short hair and nondescript features, both were marked by unusual tattoos on their necks. The upper part of a winged serpent arced above crisp collar and tie.
“He’s up there. With a woman,” Giles said softly. He’d just come down from rented rooms in the building on the opposite corner, where he’d been watching through binoculars.
“The plan?” his companion, Trevor, inquired softly.
“We wait until he leaves; with luck he’ll leave her there. Our orders are to get him on the run. Force him to rely upon magic to survive. Simon wants him back overseas.”
“How?”
“We’ll make him a fugitive. Hunted. The woman makes things simpler than I’d hoped. I’ll slip in, take care of her, alert the police, anonymously of course, and make his penthouse the stage of a cold-blooded, gruesome murder. Set all the cops in the city after him. He’ll be forced to use his powers to escape. Simon believes he won’t permit himself to be imprisoned. Though if he were, that might work to our advantage as well. I’ve no doubt time in a federal prison would hasten the transformation.”
Trevor nodded. “And I?”
“You wait here. Too risky for both of us to go up. He’s not to know we exist yet. If anything goes awry, ring Simon immediately.”
Trevor nodded again, and they drifted apart, to settle back and wait. They were patient men. They’d been waiting for this moment all their lives. They were the lucky ones, those born in the hour of the Prophecy’s fruition.
To a man, they would die to see the Draghar live again.
A messenger from a travel agency arrived shortly before the small crew of people who delivered dinner from Jean Georges.
Chloe couldn’t begin to imagine what something like that cost—didn’t think Jean Georges delivered—but she suspected that when one had as much money as Dageus MacKeltar, virtually anything could be bought.
While they ate before the fire in the living room, he continued working on the book that had initially landed her in this mess.
The envelope from the travel agency lay unopened on the table between them—a glaring reminder, chafing her.
Earlier, while he’d been in the kitchen, not quite brazen enough to tear open the envelope, she’d snooped instead through his notes—what she could read of them. It appeared that he was translating and copying every reference to the Tuatha Dé Danaan, the race that had allegedly arrived in one of several waves of Irish invasions. There were a few scribbled questions about the identity of the Draghar, and numerous notes about Druids. Between her major in ancient civilizations and Grandda’s tales, Chloe was well versed in most of it. With the exception of the mysterious Draghar, it was nothing she’d not read about before.
Still, some of his notes were written in languages she couldn’t translate. Or even identify, and that gave her a kind of queasy feeling. She knew a great deal about ancient languages, from Sumerian to present, and could usually target, at least, area and approximate era. But much of what he’d penned—in an elegant minuscule cursive worthy of any illuminated manuscript—defied her comprehension.
What on earth was he looking for? He certainly seemed to be a man on a mission, working on his task with intense focus.
With each new bit of information she gathered about him, she grew more intrigued. Not only was he strong, gorgeous, and wealthy, but he was unarguably brilliant. She’d never met anyone like him before.
“Why don’t you just tell me?” she asked point-blank, gesturing at the book.
He raised his gaze and she felt the heat of it instantly. Throughout the day, when he hadn’t been utterly ignoring her, the few times he’d looked at her, there’d been such blatant lust in his gaze that it was eroding every bit of common sense she possessed. The sheer force of his unguarded desire was more seductive than any aphrodisiac. No wonder so many women fell prey to his charm! He had a way of making a woman feel, with a mere glance, as if she were the most desirable woman in the world. How was a woman to stare into the face of such lust, and not feel lust in response?
He was leaving soon.
And he couldn’t have made it more clear that he wanted to sleep with her.
Those two thoughts in swift conjunction were abjectly risky.
“Well?” she pressed irritably. Irritated with herself for being so weak and susceptible to him. Irritated with him for being so attractive. And he’d just had to go and return those texts, confounding her already confounded feelings about him. “What, already?”
He arched a dark brow, his gaze raking her in a way that made her feel as if a sudden sultry breeze had caressed her. “What if I told you, lass, that I seek a way to undo an ancient and deadly curse?”
She scoffed. He couldn’t be serious. Curses weren’t real. No more than the Tuatha Dé Danaan were real. Well, she amended, she’d never actually reached a firm conclusion about the Tuatha Dé or any of the “mythological” races said to have once inhabited Ireland. Scholars had dozens of arguments against their alleged existence.
Still . . . Grandda had believed.
A professor of mythology, he’d taught her that every myth or legend contained some reality and truth, however distorted it had grown over centuries of oral repetition by bards who’d adapted their recitations to the unique interests of their audiences, or scribes who’d heeded the dictums of their sponsors. The original content of uncounted manuscripts had been corrupted by shoddy translations and adaptations designed to reflect the political and religious clime of the day. Anyone who devoted time to a study of history eventually realized that historians had succeeded in gathering only a handful of sand from the vast, uncharted desert of the past, and it was impossible to vouchsafe the terrain of the Sahara from a few mere grains.
“Do you believe in this stuff?” she asked, waving a hand at the jumble of texts, curious to know his take on history. As smart as he was, it was certain to be interesting.
“Much of it, lass.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Do you believe the Tuatha Dé Danaan really existed?”
His smile was bitter. “Och, aye, lass. There was a time when I didn’t, but I do now.”
Chloe frowned. He sounded resigned, like a man who’d been given incontrovertible proof. “What made you believe?”
He shrugged and made no reply.
“Well, then, what kind of curse?” she pressed. This was fascinating stuff, the kind that had led her to her choice of career. It was like talking with Grandda again, debating possibilities, opening her mind to new ones.
He looked away, stared into the fire.
“Aw, come on! You’re leaving soon, what harm is there in telling me? Who would I tell?”
“What if I told you that ’tis I who am cursed?”
She glanced about at his opulent home. “I’d tell you a lot of people would like to be cursed like
you.”
“You’d never believe the truth.” He flashed her another of those mocking smiles that didn’t reach his eyes. She realized that she’d give a great deal to see him smile, actually smile and mean it.
“Try me.”
It took him longer to respond this time, and when he did his gaze was filled with cynical amusement. “What if I told you, lass, that I’m a Druid from a time long past?”
Chloe gave him an exasperated look. “If you don’t want to talk to me, all you have to do is tell me that. But don’t try to shut me up with nonsense.”
With a tight smile, he nodded once, as if he’d satisfied himself of something. “What if I told you that when you kiss me, lass, I doona feel cursed? That mayhap your kisses could save me. Would you?”
Chloe caught her breath. It was such a silly thing to say, as silly as his joke about being a Druid . . . but so hopelessly romantic. That her kisses could save a man!
“I thought not.” His gaze dropped back to the text and the heat of it had been so intense she felt chilled by its absence.
She frowned. Feeling like the biggest coward, feeling strangely defiant. She glared at the infernal envelope from the travel agency. “When are you leaving?” she asked irritably.
“On the morrow’s eve,” he said, without looking at her.
Chloe gaped. So soon? Tomorrow her grand adventure would be over? Though only yesterday she’d tried to escape him, she felt oddly deflated by her encroaching freedom.
Freedom didn’t seem so sweet when it meant never seeing him again. She knew all too well what would happen: He would disappear from her life, and she would return to her job at The Cloisters (Tom would never fire her—not for missing a few days of work—she’d think of some excuse), and each time she looked at a medieval artifact she would think of him. Late at night, when she awakened filled with that terrible restlessness, she would sit in the dark, holding her skean dhu, wondering the worst question of all: What might have been? She would never again be wined and dined in a luxury penthouse on Fifth Avenue. Never again be looked at in such a way. Her life would resume its usual stultifying cadence. How long before she would forget that she’d once felt intrepid? Felt so briefly and intensely alive?