Gift of Fire

  Verity scowled, instinctively opening her mouth to leap to Jonas’s defense. But Jonas forestalled her by responding first.

  “Pure and noble scholarship and fifty cents won’t even buy a cup of coffee these days,” Jonas said with surprising mildness. “I was never all that taken with purity and nobility when it comes to scholarship, anyway. What about you?”

  “Me?” Spencer shrugged. His coffee cup rattled in the saucer as he picked it up with fingers that trembled slightly. “I agree with you. Screw pure and noble scholarship. It won’t buy shit.”

  “True,” Jonas remarked with a pointed glance at Spencer’s fragrant pipe. “But then, not all of us are in the market for shit.”

  Verity shot Jonas a withering glance. Spencer turned a dull red and everyone else at the table suddenly became very busy with their food. Jonas’s comment had been an all too obvious reference to Spencer’s drug problems.

  “You think that degree after your name entitles you to make cracks like that?” Spencer asked hoarsely.

  “No, I’d probably make the same kind of cracks even without the degree “

  It was Doug Warwick who stepped in to save what was left of the conversation. “As I was saying, I’d like to have that report for my buyers as soon as possible. Now that we know the villa is authentic, they’ll move on the deal.”

  Maggie Frampton overheard the remark as she emerged from the kitchen. She heaved a sad sigh. “The last thing old Digby would have wanted was to see this place turned over to a bunch of real estate developers,” she muttered. “He said that only a real scholar could ever appreciate this villa. Don’t rightly think he would have thought of developers as scholars.”

  Warwick smiled soothingly. “I know how you feel. But the fact is, Maggie, no one but a consortium of developers could ever afford this place.”

  “Digby and me got by.”

  “You wouldn’t have for much longer. By the time I inherited it there was a year’s worth of back taxes to be paid, and that was just the beginning. No, the only solution is to sell it.”

  Elyssa spoke up. “Honestly, Maggie, you’d think this was your ancestral home, the way you carry on. I can’t imagine why anyone would feel such an attachment to this old pile of rocks.”

  Maggie glowered at her. “Maybe you can’t imagine it because you ain’t had much experience staying attached to anything for longer than a couple of nights.”

  A second shocked silence struck the table. Yarwood looked furious, and this time it was Elyssa who turned red with anger. Doug Warwick spoke up again.

  “That’s enough, Maggie,” he said bluntly. “We’re ready for dessert.”

  Elyssa turned on her brother as Maggie stalked out of the room. “We should never have allowed her to stay here all this time. You were far too kind to her. Her type doesn’t appreciate kindness and generosity.”

  “What was I supposed to do, Elyssa?” Doug asked wearily. “We’ve needed someone here to look after the place. I can’t imagine anyone else being willing to take the job, can you?”

  “I’ll be glad when this place is finally sold and she gets kicked out on her ear,” Elyssa muttered.

  Verity arched her brows at Jonas in silent comment. He gave her a fleeting grin of acknowledgment. Little Miss Sunshine did not take well to being denied mating privileges with her chosen psychic stud. The cracks were starting to show in the mask of her gracious, smiling serenity.

  Elyssa seemed to realize she was ruining her image. She stood up abruptly. “If you’ll excuse me, I feel the need of some fresh air. I’m going to take a walk.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Preston Yarwood said grimly. “I’d rather you didn’t,” Elyssa replied stiffly.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Are you both nuts?” Doug asked. “It’s cold out there. And it’s going to start raining again soon.”

  Elyssa ignored him and left the room. Yarwood followed hard on her heels. Verity was not unhappy to see them go.

  The atmosphere in the room lightened as soon as Elyssa and Yarwood had gone. Verity glanced at Doug Warwick. “I almost forgot to mention that I saw a small boat in one of the little coves this morning.”

  “Probably a fisherman or a tourist,” Doug said without much interest. “There are hundreds of islands in these waters, and a lot of boaters enjoy exploring them. Uncle Digby never minded people putting in here for a while, as long as they didn’t bother him.”

  Verity nodded and looked at Jonas. “Are you going back to work after lunch?”

  “Yeah, it’s what I’m being paid to do, remember?” he said with a lazy smile. “Spencer’s right. Screw pure and noble scholarship. I’m in this for the money. Another couple of days should wrap this up.”

  Spencer glared at him and got to his feet. “I need a drink.” He left the room.

  “I’ll come with you,” Doug Warwick said to Jonas. “I want to see how things are progressing.”

  When everyone else had left the dining room, Oliver Crump looked at Verity. “You’ve told him?” he asked quietly.

  Verity smiled. “I told him.”

  “He’s pleased.”

  “He doesn’t seem to mind as much as I thought he would,” she admitted cautiously.

  “He’s definitely pleased. Probably because he sees it as another link in the chain that binds you to him. He’s a possessive man.”

  “You seem to know a lot about Jonas.”

  Crump shrugged and reached into his pocket for the large shard of yellow crystal he carried. “Your ankle is back to normal.”

  “You can tell that from looking at the crystal?”

  His mouth twitched in a rare smile. “No, I can tell that because I can see you aren’t using the cane.”

  Verity laughed. “Brilliant deduction. I think your poultice might have helped, Oliver. Or maybe it was the crystal. At any rate, thanks.”

  He turned the crystal in his hands, frowning down at it. “You’re welcome.”

  “What are you going to do with the crystal now?”

  Oliver looked up, the intent frown still lining his features. “I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. If you don’t mind, I’d like to try an experiment.” He put the crystal in the center of the table where she could reach it if she stretched out her hand.

  “Sure, I’m game,” Verity said cheerfully. “What are we going to do?”

  “Cure Maggie Frampton’s headache.”

  “I didn’t know she had one.”

  “She does,” Oliver said. “She told me about it before lunch.”

  “I thought she looked a little off color. Does she want to be the subject of a crystal experiment?”

  Maggie came through the door to pick up the last of the dishes. “What’s this about an experiment?” she demanded.

  “Oliver says you have a headache. Want to see if he can cure it with the crystal?”

  “Bunch of damned nonsense,” Maggie said stoutly. But she sat down next to Oliver. “Digby would never have approved of this crazy stuff.”

  “It can’t do any harm,” Oliver said reassuringly.

  “True enough, I suppose.” Maggie rubbed her head. “And the aspirin I took isn’t doing much good. I’m willing to give the crystal a try. What do I do?”

  Oliver picked up the crystal and gave it to her to hold. “Just keep this in your hand. Close your eyes and try to relax. Try to let your mind go blank.”

  “Blank, eh?” Maggie sounded skeptical but she did as instructed and closed her eyes.

  Oliver motioned to Verity to come around the table. Without a word she got up and did so.

  “I’m going to put my hand on the crystal Maggie’s holding,” Oliver said in his calm, soothing voice. “I want you to put your hand on top of mine, Verity.”

  “Okay.” She
waited until he was lightly touching the crystal. Then she put out her fingers and rested them briefly on his hand.

  Something was just a tad off-center.

  “Do whatever you think needs doing, Verity.” Oliver’s voice was very soft.

  Verity frowned and closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. Her red crystal earrings felt warm in her ears. She thought for a moment and found herself unable to describe what it was that seemed slightly out of alignment. She didn’t have the words. But she sensed a way to straighten it out.

  “Here,” she said, moving Oliver’s fingers slightly. “This way. Yes, that’s it. Right there.”

  “Yes, I’ve got it now. That feels right, doesn’t it? Thank you, Verity. You can take your hand away now.”

  Verity opened her eyes and stepped back. She watched in fascination as Oliver bent over the crystal in Maggie Frampton’s hand. He began talking quietly to Maggie in a gentle, relaxing chant.

  Time passed and Oliver finally stopped speaking. He took the crystal out of Maggie’s hand. “Open your eyes, Maggie.”

  She blinked at him suspiciously. “Hmmm.” Experimentally she turned her head first to one side and then the other. “Better,” she announced. “I declare. That’s a lot better, all right. Maybe you’re onto something with that crystal thing.”

  “Or maybe the aspirin finally kicked in,” Oliver Crump said wryly. “We’ll never know for sure.”

  “Well, either way, I appreciate it,” Maggie said as she rose to her feet. “Just hope the cure lasts.” She nodded at Oliver and Verity and left the room.

  There was a short silence. Oliver was staring at Verity thoughtfully. She wanted to ask him more about crystals, but something made her glance toward the doorway.

  Jonas stood there watching them. His eyes were unreadable. The lazy masculine satisfaction that had shone warmly in that golden gaze all during lunch was gone. “I came back to see if you knew what happened to my notebook, Verity. I can’t find it.”

  “I think you left it in the salon. I noticed you writing something down in it just before lunch.” She smiled at him and wondered why he was lying. He knew perfectly well where he’d left the notebook. She would have bet her life on it.

  Without a word Jonas vanished from the doorway.

  “That,” Oliver Crump observed thoughtfully, “is a man who could be driven to kill if he thought he was going to lose you.”

  Verity was shocked to the core. “He would kill me?” she whispered.

  “No,” Crump said, shaking his head with grim finality. “Never you. But any man who tried to take you away from Quarrel would soon discover that his life wasn’t worth much. I think Jonas has seen more violence that most men see in a lifetime. Perhaps he caused some of it himself. Whatever the reason, it is a part of his nature, and you must be prepared to accept that.”

  Verity spread her fingers on the tablecloth and looked down at them. Jonas had experienced violence from several lifetimes, she knew. He had a psychic affinity for it. She wondered if that sort of thing was an inherited trait. She took one hand off the table and touched her abdomen.

  Oliver Crump sat alone at the table for a long while after Verity left. He had been right. Verity Ames had answers to questions he had been asking for a long time. She could teach him things he longed to know about working with crystals. Already he had learned more than he had ever expected.

  To think he nearly hadn’t allowed Elyssa to talk him into spending the week here at the villa. In the end, Crump had come out of sheer curiosity. He’d heard the rumors about Jonas Quarrel, and he’d wanted to learn the truth.

  But it was Verity who had captured Cramp’s immediate attention.

  It was odd that she seemed totally unaware of her power. Perhaps it was because she was linked so strongly to Quarrel. It wouldn’t occur to her to allow herself to form a mental bond with anyone else. On some fundamental level, Verity Ames was very innocent and very virtuous.

  Crimp didn’t understand the nature of her link with Quarrel, but he sensed the strength of it and it awed him. He knew that he had better learn what he could from Verity while she was here, because Quarrel would never allow her to get too close to any other man, not even one who sought only a psychic connection with her.

  Crump smiled wryly. Quarrel would very definitely not let her get close to any male who offered that kind of connection. In Quarrel’s eyes, such a bond would be more threatening than a physical seduction.

  Jonas Quarrel was an intelligent man. He was also a very possessive one.

  But Crump had just discovered that he, himself, was a greedy man in some ways. He would take as much as he could get from Verity, and hope he didn’t step so far out of line that Quarrel felt obliged to beat him to a pulp.

  Verity saw Preston Yarwood stride furiously back into the villa an hour later. She was alone in the salon at the time, curled up in an overstuffed chair, a book on her lap. But she wasn’t reading. She was thinking about babies’ names.

  The subject of names, she had just discovered, tended to have a sobering effect. In a strange way, it brought home the reality of her situation as nothing else had. It put a label on something that until now had not been totally real.

  She was pregnant, and the baby’s father wanted to marry her. Given that she loved the baby’s father and he claimed to love her, it seemed that a decision would have to be made soon. Verity knew she wasn’t going to be able to drag things out much longer.

  It would have been nice, however, if Jonas had gotten around to thinking about marriage before he learned of the baby, Verity thought with a lingering sense of resentment. But perhaps Laura Griswald had been right when she pointed out that Verity hadn’t done much to plant the concept of marriage in Jonas’s brain.

  Male brains, apparently, had to be carefully primed for certain subjects before they switched on and ran in the right direction.

  And the truth was, Verity had never given much thought to marriage. Emerson Ames had taught her a great deal as he dragged her around the world, but he had never taught her that she needed a husband. Verity had been happily becoming a successful, single career woman when Jonas Quarrel had arrived in her life.

  If she was honest with herself, Verity thought, she would admit that Jonas wasn’t the only one guilty of not bringing up the subject of marriage until faced with becoming a parent. She hadn’t thought much about marriage either, until she had found herself pregnant.

  Verity had just arrived at that distressingly honest realization when she heard Preston Yarwood’s angry footsteps on the stone staircase. She looked toward the door of the salon and caught sight of him hunched deeply in his coat as he climbed the stairs. She glanced out the window and saw that a light mist was falling again. Little Miss Sunshine had apparently stayed outdoors to commune with nature.

  Verity wondered uneasily if Yarwood had found out about Elyssa’s attempt to seduce Jonas in the torture chamber.

  She imagined how Jonas would react if he ever found himself in Yarwood’s shoes. Not that she would ever be tempted to betray Jonas with another man, that wasn’t the point. The point was that Jonas was possessive, aggressive, and protective. Verity knew that if she married him, she would have to accept and deal with those elements of his nature.

  Verity didn’t wonder about Elyssa again for several more minutes. She had gone back to her mystery and was deep in the middle of a convoluted conspiracy plot when her earrings suddenly felt warm against her skin.

  Verity absently reached up to adjust them, wondering at the way the red crystal occasionally seemed to absorb and radiate back her own body heat. Crump had said something about that being a property of crystals.

  A glance out the window showed that the mist had turned into a light rain. Elyssa must really be into the communing with-nature bit.

  Verity tried to go back to her book, but she found herself unable to conce
ntrate on the intricate plot. Restless, she wandered to the window to stare into the overgrown garden.

  An overpowering urge to go outside for a few minutes gripped her. Irritated, Verity turned away from the window. This was ridiculous. The last thing she wanted to do was go outside into that cold afternoon rain. She’d already had her walk this morning.

  But her craving for exercise was suddenly overwhelming. She had to take a walk. She was accustomed to working hard all day. This enforced relaxation was getting to her.

  Apparently she didn’t have any more sense than Elyssa, Verity thought as she went upstairs to get her parka. There must be something primeval and compelling about this Northwest rain.

  A few minutes later she was huddling under the hood of her jacket, wondering if this sort of irrational behavior was common among expectant mothers. She headed automatically for the cliffs. It was miserably cold, she thought, not at all like Hawaii. If she had any brains she would go back inside to sit in front of the fire.

  Verity reached the bluff overlooking the cove where she had seen the small boat earlier. She glanced down. The boat was still there, but something else was down there also. A bundle of white clothing lay sprawled half in and half out of the cold water. Verity would have recognized those white wool trousers anywhere.

  It was Elyssa Warwick who lay there, her head barely above the water’s edge. She wasn’t moving.

  Shocked, Verity realized that precious time would be lost if she ran back to the villa to find Jonas and the others. She immediately began to scramble awkwardly down the side of the short cliff. The most important thing was to get Elyssa out of the water. If she wasn’t already dead, the real threat was hypothermia. The cold waters could drain a person’s body heat in thirty minutes.

  The task of getting down to the beach wasn’t as difficult as Verity had anticipated. Adrenaline could accomplish a lot, she discovered as she half-slid, half jumped down to the pebbly beach. She landed on her feet amid a scattering of small rocks and pine needles and raced over to where Elyssa lay. Verity crouched beside her and felt for the pulse in Elyssa’s throat.