Dark Enchantment (5 page)

She slammed the door shut. He held his hand out to her, palm up.
The image of a young man on a moonlit beach, hand outstretched toward a castle window, morphed itself over his form.
Then the impression faded away, leaving her dazed and staring.

“Your keys,” he said.

“Wh-what?”

“To the boot.”

Confused, she frowned. “Boot?”

A controlled exhale of exasperation. “Is that not where you’ve stowed your bags?”

Oh, yeah. The trunk.
Arianna searched the floorboard for her purse. “Wait a minute. I left my purse on the front seat of the car. Keys in the ignition.”

Another impatient sigh escaped his lips.
Insufferable jerk!
“Hey, don’t blame me for that. Not with you dragging me bodily out of the car. I wasn’t thinking…”

Her words trailed off as he frowned a warning, and raised his index finger to tap a shushing motion against his lips.

That was just so…so…
Ohhh…
Arianna gritted her teeth. “Evidently you are unable to admit when you are wrong—”

Her protest slid to an unbelieving halt as he transferred the silencing finger from
his
lips to her own.
Of all the unmitigated gall!
Just that quick, she wanted to sink her teeth into the offending digit, but somehow managed to restrain herself. Just barely. Because, as wonderfully liberating as that would have been, it would have served only to get her
liberated
right back out into the icy rain.

Instead, she huffed and turned to stare out her window. But could the disagreeable oaf just let it drop there?
No, of course not.
He had to heave yet another all-too-audible sigh of annoyance as he pushed his door open.

That did it! “You know what? That’s it! You just sit right there. I may be stuck for a ride, but I’m not crippled. And I sure as heck don’t need a man to carry my bags.” As she was reaching for the door handle, a strong hand shackled her other wrist. “What?”

With a surprised glance over her shoulder, she ran headfirst into a long, mesmerizing gaze. Her emotions spiked like an elevator gone madly out of control. Soaring first to the heights of euphoria, she dropped then, plummeting into an incapacitating lethargy.

“
Stop
.” Freaky. His lips hadn’t moved, and yet she had heard him clearly. In her head. Just like the experience with her father on the night he had died.

An insane thought lodged in her chest like a rock-hard chunk of ice. Had she been consorting with a ghost all of these years? Had her nocturnal romps in the night with this man been some kind of haunting?

But no. Hadn’t she melted into his embrace tonight? Felt the warmth of his lips on hers, the strong beating of his heart? Who or what he was, she had no clue. She knew only that, right now, he was holding her immobile, restraining her with his eyes alone….

She could feel herself sinking, drowning in those fathomless depths, in eyes as deep and endless green as the Irish Sea itself. She felt drugged, her body weightless, afloat in a water world devoid of gravity. Somehow he was controlling her with his mind. And she knew, beyond a doubt, that she could not have moved at that moment…could not have disobeyed this man’s telepathic command…

Not if her very life had depended on it.

As the peaceful floating sensation took her under, her breathing adjusting to the slow and steady rhythm of his heartbeat, a disquieting insight settled over her. That her ability to resist the enigmatical man beside her might one day prove to be truly a matter of life or death.

Chapter Five

A
rianna must have lost time after that. Because when she became conscious of her surroundings again, they were making their way down the road. Staring blindly out the rain-spattered window as they plowed through the darkness, she might have been in a rocket hurtling through space, whisking her away to worlds unknown.

A peripheral study of the man beside her confirmed that he was unaware that she had awakened. A man lost in his own thoughts, he appeared relaxed, his demeanor unguarded. The unruly wisps of coal black hair framing his face served to soften his chiseled features. She felt an inexplicable sense of loss, comparable perhaps to what one must feel when a spouse suffers from amnesia. When the slate inscribed with all of the intimate, personal history of a couple’s life is wiped clean, but only for one of them.

She was fascinated by the way he drove, his right hand draped casually over the steering wheel, knees parted in a masculine sprawl. A placid façade. He was like a sleek, black cougar lying tranquil in the midday sun. A beast, wild and dark and beautiful.

And very, very deadly.

Not wanting to be caught staring at him unawares, Arianna stretched and gave a sleepy yawn. “Sorry I conked out on you. Guess I was more tired than I realized.”

The man flicked a startled glance in her direction, as if he had forgotten she was there. He grunted something unintelligible in response.

“I...um…my name’s Arianna Sullivan, by the way.”

“MacNamara,” he said in a voice devoid of inflection. “Caleb MacNamara.”

Apparently disinclined to further conversation, he went silent, his stony gaze fixed on the road ahead.

With an inward shrug, Arianna was turning back to the window when she heard the low rumble of his voice. “Excuse me?”

“I asked where you fancied being dropped off. You’re an American here on holiday, I presume. Have you reservations at a hotel?”

“Actually, I’m Irish,” she corrected pleasantly. “I was born here. In County Clare.”

“But you sound—”

“American, I know. I was raised in the States. This is my first trip back since...” Her voice wavered and she swallowed, tried again. “I lost my da a few days ago. We moved to the States when I was small, after the death of my mother. I had no idea he’d kept our old home in Ennistymon until....” Realizing she was babbling, she stopped and reached into her purse, retrieving a scrap of paper from her day planner. She held it out to him. “Anyway, this is where I’ll be staying. Do you know the area?”

Caleb took the proffered note. It was odd, the way the brush of his fingers against hers sent a comforting warmth through her body. After a quick glance at the paper, he drove the next mile or so in silence, his jaw visibly clenching and unclenching.

“I...uh, if it’s out of your way...”

His head gave a dismissive shake. “It’s barely a stone’s throw from my own place.”

“We’re neighbors then.”

“So we are. Arianna—”

“Caleb—” She gave an embarrassed titter. “I cut you off. You go first.”

The bluish glow emanating from the dashboard fell softly over his cherished face. Arianna realized that, with him, she felt strangely safe, cared for.

Caleb’s eyes met hers. An expectant glance. Arianna held her breath. Had he finally sensed the extraordinary connection between them?

“You were about to say?” he prompted.

“What?”

“When I interrupted you…”

“Oh.” Disappointment flooded her heart. “I was only going to tell you again how sorry I am for attacking you. It’s... I guess…being stranded alone in a strange place, in a storm like that, well, I kind of let my imagination get away from me.”

A faint smile touched his eyes; the effect was devastating
.
“Thought I was
The Highwayman,
did you?”

Charmed by his reference to the early twentieth century poem set to music a few years ago, Arianna’s expression turned sheepish. “The truth?”

“Mmm.”

“Well, at first—and only for a second, mind you—I kind of went back and forth, trying to decide whether you were a....” She winced. “Well, a vampire. Or the Coshta-bower.”

An incredulous look, then a slow chuckle rumbled from his chest. “You’ve quite an imagination there. And it seems a bit of knowledge about our auld Irish legends as well.”

She grinned. “Well, I do know about the wee people who live in the faerie raths beneath the green hills.”

Caleb’s gaze slid to hers, probing. “Do you now? And what would you be knowing about them?”

“Well, legend has it that they were a race of mortal kings and heroes with magical powers, known as the Tuatha de Danann. The fifth group to settle Ireland, like 3500 years ago, they were defeated a few hundred years later. Rather than leave their homeland, they chose to embrace their supernatural natures, becoming the faery people dwelling today in another dimension of time and space beneath Ireland’s crystal lakes and green fields.”

Gold-sparked green eyes glittered in the darkness as Caleb leaned closer, as if to share a secret. But with his deep voice velvet-edged and steeped in the lilting accent of his heritage, he posed a question instead. “And in your own homecoming, Arianna O’Sullivan, will you be discovering that the faeries are real?”

Was he serious or only teasing? From the look on his face, she couldn’t tell. But as an image of the will-o’-the-wisp she had seen earlier danced through her mind, she recalled her father’s final words:
“Remember our Lord said He has other sheep not of our fold.”

“Faeries?” she replied thoughtfully. ‘You know, I rather hope they are real.”

Apparently caught off guard by her response, his unsettled gaze bored into her. She sensed an intrusion, a strange fluttering in her mind, and the perpetual mask he had been wearing seemed to slip from his face. In that instant Arianna caught a glimpse of something alien. There was something ageless, something timeless about him. Something that terrified her to her very core.

She shivered and Caleb adjusted the heater to high. Reaching into the back seat, he snagged a woolen tartan blanket and dropped it into her lap. “Your clothes are damp,” he said, his tone gruff. “Best wrap yourself in this rug so you don’t catch your death.”

Rug.
The same word her father had used when referring to a blanket made her heart ache. Snuggling under the warmth of the wool, Arianna smiled her thanks for his thoughtfulness. But there was no answering curve of lips from the man beside her.
How does he
do
that?
she wondered in frustration. How can anyone go from warm and pleasant, to cold and brooding, within the space of a single breath?

Lord, she couldn’t even imagine trying to live with a mercurial man like that.

“Just what is it you’re doing here, Arianna?” The question came out of the blue, abrupt, all business. More interrogation than conversation.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“What brought you back to Ireland? Here, now? Where you know no one? Where you’ve no family, no friends? And so soon after laying your father to rest?” He fired the questions like ammo from an assault weapon.

Her lips tightened. “For your information, I
didn’t
lay my father to rest,” Arianna coldly explained. “I’ve brought him home. Brought his ashes back to scatter them from the Cliffs of Moher. To honor his…final wishes.” She choked on the last two words and hated herself for the display of weakness.

“
Bollocks
,” Caleb muttered darkly under his breath. “Sorry, I—“

Arianna put up a weary hand. “Forget it. Look, just get me to a taxi—”

“I said I’d take you home, so that’s what I’ll be doing.”

“
Fine
.”

He plucked a CD from the visor in front of her, then slid it into the stereo. “Music?” he inquired politely.

Arianna lifted a sulky shoulder and stared pointedly out the window, her body language a clear talk-to-the-hand. Delirious with exhaustion, she let herself melt into the buttery leather cradling her as the haunting notes of an old Celtic melody floated from the speakers. She felt her body relax, her soul set adrift on a sea of tranquility.

Caleb began to sing along softly in Gaelic, his rich, full baritone a quiet harmony. The overwhelming rush of love she felt for this stranger had her despairing of her sanity. God help her, she was totally messed up. Confused. Conflicted. While her heart insisted that Caleb and her dream lover were one and the same man, her common sense was standing there, hands on hips, with an “Are you kidding me?”

And the chiding voice didn’t stop there. It went on to point out that even if he were that one, life with a man like Caleb MacNamara would be a perpetual emotional roller coaster. The man was clearly an enigma, a dichotomy. A lover capable of taking a woman from freeze to burn—and back again—with a single glance.

With the soft Irish music dancing in the air around her, Arianna began to succumb to the long hours of travel, to the days with too much grief and too little sleep.

* * *

In spinning dreams of a tawny sunset, a fork of lightning split a cloudless sky, as moonlit seas splashed the heavens with a tempest’s fury. High above the crying wind, faeries strummed tinkling harps of gold, their songs of enchantment kept pace by the drumbeat of a distant thunder. At the command of the Fae Dark Prince, Arianna was swept up, up through the silvery mists, into a haze of diamond starlight. And clad only in silk and moonbeams, she danced with Caleb, her magic lover, high above the rainbow, beyond the stormy waters…

* * *

“Just what were you playing at, anyway?” Caleb cursed himself roundly for giving in to the urge to taste the woman’s plump, sweet lips. Left aching and inflamed, his appetite had only been whetted for more. “For something you can’t have,” he admonished himself sternly.

Why the devil had he engaged her in a test of wills to begin with? he questioned. There were, after all, other, far more expedient ways with which to have brought the situation under control.

At the corner, Caleb spotted a street sign swathed in darkness. No worries, though. With his intrinsic night vision, he could see that the name inscribed there matched the one scribbled on the crumpled paper in his hand. Downshifting into second, he prepared for a tight right onto the narrow country road. The abrupt downshift caused the fair-haired woman sleeping beside him to slump forward, her head hanging at an awkward angle.

Caleb’s hand shot out and caught her chin to support her neck. Eyes closed, he visualized the lever on the other side of her seat, and concentrated. The seatback jerked once, twice, and then began smoothly to recline.

Settling her back comfortably against the headrest, Caleb could hear her whispering in her sleep. “Found you. Finally…found you.” The words were disturbing, to say the least.

With a sleepy snuffle, she drew her right knee up onto the seat beside her, resulting in the blanket sliding off her lap to bunch at her feet on the floor. Caleb glanced at a creamy length of muscle-toned thigh exposed by her restless twisting and turning.

He drew in a breath. Blew it out. “Woman’s driving me bloody demented,” he muttered in frustration. Averting his gaze, he swept the blanket off the floorboards and covered her, his gallantry rewarded by the stirring of her light floral fragrance in the heated air. Bringing his wrist to his nose, he inhaled tentatively.
Brilliant.
Their invigorating tussle on the side of the road had left him all but saturated in her womanly scent.

Playing with fire, he was, and didn’t he know it well. Just as he knew there was too much at stake for him to allow this to go any further. Still, he couldn’t find it in himself to regret a single moment of tonight. In truth, he’d found it invigorating. To be sure, the little hellion intrigued him with her fascinating mixture of soft feminine curves and well-toned muscle. Of submission and aggression. Fire and ice, she was. And with a shocking mouth on her as well, he allowed with a smirk. He gave his head a shake. Considering her mouth brought certain other things to mind, things Caleb knew he’d best not to be dwelling on.

Oh, Arianna O’Sullivan had gotten under his skin alright. ‘Twas the very reason he’d reckoned to leave her waiting at her car for the gardai. ‘Twas the only way to escape this burning temptation, so it was. To avoid the siren call in those eyes of angel blue. He was a man, sure, and he’d have been pleased to oblige her—and himself.

If not for one minor detail:
Spill your seed inside the woman and she dies.

Caleb turned his head and cast the subject of his musings a cold, measured stare. He inhaled again, testing himself. Purposely breathing her in. There it was again.
Wildflowers and musk.
The same seductive fragrance the little mortal had been wearing all those years….

That she’d haunted his nights.