“I know.”
“You promised.”
“I promised that I wouldn’t move too fast and that I wouldn’t batter at the walls. I didn’t promise not to knock.” His warm golden eyes were searching. “First dragon, Brooke. I have to start somewhere.”
She shook her head suddenly. “No dragon.” Her eyes were fixed unseeingly on Phantom. “Not exactly. I often wonder if my life would’ve been different if he’d lived longer. But he died when I was six.”
“Tell me about him,” Cody prompted softly.
“How?” She laughed shortly. “What does a six-year-old notice about someone she loves? That he was tall and strong and used to throw me up on his shoulder? That he had eyes the color of new grass and a voice I could listen to for hours?” Her voice dropped suddenly, became painful and bitter. “That he loved me so much it made my mother hate me?”
Cody saw the first dragon looming between them, not the father but given life by the father. And he wasn’t quite sure how to slay a six-year-old’s memory of the tangle of love and hate. He reached across the table to cover her hand, but Brooke snatched it away.
“Don’t.” Green eyes, filled with misery and confusion and pain, stared into his. “I—I can’t think when you touch me. I can’t tell you. And you have to know, don’t you? You have to.”
“I have to,” he agreed quietly.
Brooke nodded jerkily, falling silent for a while. When Cody was beginning to think she meant to confide nothing more, she finally spoke. “I guess I was about five when I realized Mother didn’t like me. She was never demonstrative; Daddy was. But it wasn’t that. I was psychic then; I picked up feelings rather than thoughts, and I didn’t understand. I always felt…twisted and ugly whenever Mother came near me. And she said things out loud to me when Daddy wasn’t around. That I was stupid. That I was ugly.”
Cody, swallowing anger, began to build a composite picture in his mind of a mother so driven by jealousy of her child that she cruelly undermined her confidence. Because Cody knew instinctively that Brooke had been a beautiful child, an innately sweet and giving child.
So lost in memory that she was unaware of Cody’s building anger, Brooke unconsciously validated his thoughts. “I tried to—to win her love. I tried to be a good girl. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t win her approval. And I was afraid to tell Daddy what I felt when I was around Mother; I was afraid he’d stop loving me.
“Then Daddy died.” Brooke blinked quickly for a moment, adding with unconscious starkness, “I missed him.”
Cody had forgotten the throbbing of his ankle, had forgotten the wolf lying quietly on his blankets watching them. He was staring at Brooke’s profile and hearing the puzzled anguish of a little girl.
She sighed raggedly. “There wasn’t any money, and Mother wasn’t trained for anything. She complained bitterly about having to wait on tables or clerk in stores. She ignored me, except when she wanted someone to yell at.”
The pain in her voice hurting him more than he would have believed possible, Cody tried to divert her mind. “Your uncle? Couldn’t your mother have turned to him for help?”
Brooke shook her head. “Daddy and Josh had a terrible argument when he married her. Josh thought that Daddy was too young, and that Mother wasn’t the wife he needed. They never saw each other again, and Daddy never told Josh about me. Mother—Mother had never met Josh, and she didn’t know where he lived. We were living in Alabama then.”
“I see.”
Brooke picked up her cup and drained the last of the cold coffee, seemingly unaware or uncaring that it was cold. “We lived in a tiny apartment, near enough to a school so that I could walk. And it was when I was in the first grade that everyone began to realize I was…different. My teacher noticed it first; I was answering questions before she asked them out loud, and she realized I was probably psychic. She’d graduated from Duke University in North Carolina, and she knew about the work they were doing there in paranormal research.
“She gave me a few simple tests herself, making them seem like games. Then she arranged a meeting with Mother after school one day. And she told her about my…gifts.”
Cody watched the still, silent profile for a few moments. He wondered what Brooke was thinking, wondered what had given birth to the diamond hardness he saw now in her face. Then the spell shattered.
Brooke stirred slightly and turned her head to meet his quiet gaze. “That’s Chapter One,” she said lightly. “Let’s leave Chapter Two for later, shall we?”
The forced lightness didn’t deceive Cody; he heard the strain in her voice and saw it in her eyes. And memories, he’d discovered, were best pulled from the dark recesses a few at a time; yanking open the door and allowing them all to rush in at once was possible only if one’s memories were mostly happy ones.
“Fine,” he agreed softly.
Restlessly she murmured, “You haven’t said much.”
“Just trying to decide whether to use my magic sword or my thrice-blessed dagger on those dragons,” he said solemnly.
In spite of herself Brooke started to smile. Wonderingly she realized that the recounting of her painful memories hadn’t hurt nearly as much as she’d believed they would. And Cody, the warm glow in his eyes undiminished, seemed so understanding. Of course, the worst was yet to come, but Brooke realized that Chapter Two, and all those chapters to follow, would come more easily.
She was grateful for that. Grateful to Cody and to his persistence. But she was also nervous and uneasy; she would be stripping layer after layer of her protective wall away until only her bare and wounded self remained. Would those half-healed wounds reopen when exposed to the light?
Would Cody hurt her?
Brooke pushed the silent questions away, and sought to follow his lead in lightening the atmosphere between them. “Thrice-blessed? I thought that twice did the trick.”
“Not with your dragons,” Cody responded feelingly. “S’matter of fact, I may have to get the thing blessed again. However, since three’s a magic number, we’ll hope it does the trick.”
“Three’s a magic number?”
“You should know.”
“I’m psychic, Cody—not a witch.”
“My mistake.”
“See that it doesn’t happen again.”
“Or?”
“Or I’ll feed you soup made of bats’ wings and eye of newt, and you’ll turn into a frog.”
“But then you could kiss me, and I’d turn back into a prince.”
“Back into a prince?”
“I’d hoped you wouldn’t notice that.”
“I notice everything.”
“Uh, I think I’ll practice reading your mind,” Cody announced calmly.
“Why?”
“Because this one-sided business is very unfair.”
“What brought this up?”
“I was just thinking.”
“Oh. Okay, then—practice. What am I thinking right now?”
“You’re hungry.”
Brooke stared at him, startled. “That’s—right.”
Cody smiled modestly, then started chuckling. “I’d better confess before you dip into my mind and discover that I didn’t dip into yours.”
After mentally untangling his sentence, Brooke shot him a suspicious glare. “You didn’t read my mind?”
“Nope.”
“Then how did you know…?”
“Well, I’m pretty observant myself, you know. Just before you challenged me to read your mind, you looked toward the refrigerator. So I guessed.”
“Princes don’t resort to sneaky tactics,” Brooke reproved him sternly.
“They do if princesses are psychic.”
“Even if. It’s unprincely.”
“All’s fair.”
“Don’t start throwing clichés at me.”
“I’ve already told you that I don’t throw things.”
“You’re looking more and more like a frog, pal.”
 
; “Trust me, lady. I’m a prince.”
That plea was made with such a soulful look that Brooke had to bite back a laugh. Shaking her head, she rose from her chair. “And on that note I’m going to fix lunch. Any preferences?”
“I have a sudden aversion to frogs’ legs.”
“Funny.”
Cody looked mildly pleased with himself. “Apropos, I thought.”
Brooke sighed. “Right. I repeat. Any preferences?”
“Nope. Nary a one.”
“Then I’ll see what’s in the cupboard.”
“Do that, Mother Hubbard.”
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist that.”
“If I’m getting predictable, I’ll quit,” Cody said, injured.
“Not predictable.” Brooke reflected. “Just not surprising.”
Cody frowned. “I’ll have to do something about that.”
Rummaging in the cabinets and refrigerator for the makings of lunch, Brooke sent him an amused look, but said nothing. Surprise, she knew, was the essence of many a battle plan, and she wondered if Cody had chosen deliberately to keep her slightly off-balance. Why? The better to fight her dragons?
Something clenched inside of her suddenly as Brooke remembered what she’d very nearly forgotten: that this man claimed to be in love with her. She found herself staring blankly at a box she’d taken from a cabinet and wondering rather desperately why she kept forgetting it. Was it a part of Cody’s plan, or was her own mind playing tricks on her?
“Why’re you staring at a box of breakfast cereal as if it were whispering the secrets of a universe?” Cody asked politely.
She blinked at him. “Oh…just thinking.”
Cody’s eyes narrowed suddenly, and then one corner of his mouth lifted in a funny little grin. “Hey, I think I’m beginning to get the hang of it. You were thinking about me, weren’t you?”
“That’s called vanity,” Brooke managed firmly.
He looked hurt. “You weren’t thinking of me?”
Brooke shoved the box of cereal back into the cabinet, more rattled than she looked—she hoped. Ignoring his question, she asked, “Is beef stew all right with you? We can give the leftovers to Phantom tomorrow.”
“Fine.”
He was watching her, Brooke knew. And with a disquieting smile, dammit. He hadn’t read her mind. No way. He’d just guessed again. She’d have enough trouble coping with a dragonslaying prince without adding telepathy to all his other virtues.
Virtues?
Damn the man.
After lunch Brooke removed the cold compress from Cody’s ankle to find that the swelling had begun to go down again. She bound it up in an elastic bandage, then found a pair of crutches left over from Josh’s broken leg, and told Cody that if he put any weight on the ankle before she said he could, she’d throw him out into the snow to fend for himself. Somewhat meekly Cody promised to obey the command.
The promised storm was fully blown by three o’clock, the wind howling outside, and a mixture of snow and sleet pelting the windowpanes. Brooke had turned on the kitchen radio, and the weather forecast from Butte was not in the least encouraging—unless one were a polar bear. Up to two feet of snow was forecast, and the announcer cheerfully mentioned power failures and impassable roads. He also told listeners to have a nice day.
Tacitly agreeing not to leave their canine houseguest alone in the kitchen, Cody and Brooke settled down at the kitchen table with a Scrabble game. Phantom, further warmed and filled by a second helping of chicken broth, blinked sleepily and then seemed to doze off, his pointed ears twitching occasionally at the sounds of their voices.
“That’s not a word.”
“It is too. Asphodel. It’s a Mediterranean plant.”
Cody looked suspicious. “Are you a botanist?”
“No. It was a hobby of Josh’s.”
“Great.”
“I guess I should tell you that Josh tutored me for years. And he was a brilliant man.”
“Uh-huh.” Cody sighed.
“Buck up. If you can just make a word with that Z, you’ll beat me. More points, you know.”
Cody frowned in thought for a moment, and then triumphantly produced ZENITH.
Brooke wrestled silently with an X for a while before coming up with XENON. She smiled at Cody across the table. “We’ve conquered two of the roughest letters; it should be downhill from now on.”
“Oh, yeah? What can I spell with this Q?”
“I can think of six words right off the top of my head.”
Cody stared at her, then defiantly spelled out QUACK on the board.
“Your mind’s telling on you,” Brooke observed.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Quack. As in charlatan. You’re doubting me.”
“For your information I was thinking of the sound a duck makes.”
She bit back a laugh. “My mistake.”
“That’s quite all right.”
“You’re very gracious,” she said approvingly.
“I’m a hell of a guy.”
“And modest.”
That first day spent together told Cody quite a lot. Though beginning to piece together the events of her past through the little Brooke had told him so far, he discovered that he was actually learning more about her just by being with her in the present. With the wolf comfortably inside with them now, she was no longer haunted by a mental cry she didn’t understand and was far more relaxed than Cody had yet seen her.
And throughout the afternoon his seemingly casual but intent observation of her behavior gave him clues as to how to go about slaying the dragons standing between them.
He noticed first of all that Brooke was intensely wary of being touched; drawing away seemed almost a reflex with her. While she could touch him with apparent calm when dealing with his injured ankle, or allow him to lean on her as she had the night before, the most casual of unnecessary physical contact caused an inner stiffening that Cody could sense more than feel.
With the neatly logical mind that made him a wizard with computers, Cody sifted the possibilities until he arrived at one that seemed to explain Brooke’s wariness. Gradually he realized that the inner stiffening he felt was simply a shoring up of her mental wall. Physical contact, he decided, probably made her more vulnerable to mental contact.
That explanation satisfied Cody’s critical scrutiny, so he set his mind to finding a way of dealing with the problem. The answer promised a great many sleepless nights for him; to become accustomed to anything a person had to be gradually exposed to it. And while his own inner conviction and strong desires might have led him to push Brooke into a relationship she wasn’t ready for, his innate wisdom and a caution born of love joined together in the voice of reason.
So Cody held on to his willpower with every atom of control and set about getting Brooke accustomed to being touched undemandingly. He had to overcome instincts within her, instincts that had been sharpened by her need to guard her mind. He slowly and carefully had to invade the private territory that every human being claimed and marked as personal; had to convince Brooke that there was no threat to herself in allowing him so close.
Brooke tensed slightly when Cody reached over to take her hand in a gentle clasp. They were sitting on a couch before a blazing fire in the sunken den. Supper was over and the wind was howling in the darkness outside.
His hand was large and warm, its strength only a promise since there was no force in his grip. Brooke, her unusual senses reacting to the contact as iron to a magnet, instantly and expertly slammed the door opening between them. She felt the lightness that had been the rule since lunch evaporate, felt tension and uneasiness creep into her awareness. She wanted to pull her hand away, but couldn’t seem to, and she couldn’t say a word.
Luckily for both Cody’s plans and Brooke’s composure, Phantom came into the room just then to create a timely diversion. The wolf moved steadily, swinging his splinted leg with a touch of awkwardness but seem
ingly in no pain. He negotiated the step down into the room cautiously, then came toward the pair watching him from the couch. He sniffed at the bearskin rug before the hearth and then, concluding that it wasn’t actively hostile, sank down on the snowy whiteness with an almost human sigh.
“I guess he didn’t want to be alone,” Cody noted.
“Looks that way.” Brooke tried to forget the hands clasped on the cushion between them, but her awareness of Cody—having nothing to do with her telepathy, she realized—wouldn’t let her forget. “Uh…how’s the ankle?” she asked rather hastily.
Cody glanced at his bound ankle, which was resting on a pillow on top of the coffee table. “Fine.” He sent a faint grimace toward the crutches resting against a nearby chair. “You’ll be able to put those things back in the closet soon.”
“When the ankle’s healed and not a minute sooner,” she told him firmly.
“Yes, Doctor,” he murmured with a smile.
“Don’t mock me.”
He lifted her hand and kissed it briefly. “Wouldn’t think of it.”
Brooke stared fiercely at the fire. Lips, she reassured herself silently, were very human things. They didn’t cause electric shocks; therefore, she hadn’t felt an electric shock when Cody’s lips had touched her hand. Period. It was all her imagination. She shifted restlessly. “Cody—”
“The wind’s dying down, don’t you think?” He cut her off with ruthless intent.
“No. No, it acts like that up here sometimes. Like the eye of a hurricane, or something. It’ll probably pick back up in a few minutes.” She hesitated. “Cody—”
“D’you think this storm will turn into an actual blizzard?” he asked casually, cutting her off yet again. “I’ve never been through a blizzard before.”
Brooke gave him a frustrated look, making one weak and fruitless attempt to pull her hand from his grasp. “You don’t go through a blizzard unless you’re out in it; if you’re lucky enough to be indoors, you just wait it out. And, yes, it sounds like a blizzard to me.”
“Good,” Cody said with every evidence of satisfaction.
“Good? Cody—”