Fighting Fate: Book 2 of the Warrior Chronicles (7 page)

“You’re not helping my headache.” She said.

He grunted and made a sound so self-effacing she almost opened her eyes again. “You’re not helping the ache I’m feeling south of my head. The head I think with anyway.”

Taryn started to open her eyes, half hoping the towel was still there, half hoping it wasn’t. It was there, and sure enough a certain part of him was not immune to her visual caress.

“That was coarse.”

He shook his head. “Coarse? Lady, you’ve no idea just how…er…
coarse
I’m feeling.”

She started to get up and a sudden pain shot through her eye socket to the back of her head. She sat back heavily, letting her knees collapse. Morgan, the whippet, cried in empathetic sympathy as she licked the hand Taryn didn’t have cradling her skull.

“I’d love to drag you back to that shower and have my wicked way with you, but I think I could use some aspirin and a gallon of water first.” Taryn said, only partially joking. Half a gallon of water should do it.

Jesse disappeared into what Taryn thought was the bathroom and came back with a large glass of water and a small bottle of ibuprofen. When she finished fishing three small orange pills from the bottle and downed half the glass of water, Jesse gently pried each from her clenched hands. Setting them aside on the small table next to what she figured was his bed, Jesse placed one finger under her chin, gently lifting her face.

Brushing a lock of hair that had fallen over her brow behind her ear, he cupped the back of her head and softly kissed first one temple than the other, careful not to hold her too tightly. He took special care with her bruised temple, which felt like she had a baseball growing out of it. His touch didn’t ease the pain, but it did comfort her. She wanted to melt into this cocoon of safety he was wrapping around her and stay awhile, at least long enough to be transformed into something…something…
more.

His lips were warm and butterfly soft as they moved down her cheek, over the line of her jaw to the side of her neck, just below her ear and back again. Taryn wanted Jesse’s mouth on hers, she wanted to devour him. Instead he sat back, rubbing one thumb across her water moistened bottom lip.

With a rueful smile that held nothing but poignant regret he said, “I’d like nothing more at this moment than to oblige you and give you everything you desire.” He dropped his forehead to hers gently, avoiding the swollen side of her face, still cupping her nape with one palm. Sighing heavily he said, “Unfortunately, your mother and mine are most likely plotting our future as we sit here. Shay sent me the ‘get here quick’ signal on my cell right before you opened your eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Taryn pushed away from him, scrambled off the bed, willing her head to stop pounding as she flew toward her door.

She was halfway down the stairs when she heard him utter, “I still want to take you up on that shower…” Whatever else he may have said was lost as she rushed through the unfamiliar house to head off what could only be an impending mother induced disaster.

One plotting mother was bad enough. How was she ever going to handle two?

CHAPTER TWELVE

Jesse caught up with Taryn before she hit the back patio at the big house. The residents of Potter’s Woods were up and enjoying the grounds in full force. Some were fishing in the pond, some gardening. Others were enjoying Tai chi in the meadow and some were engaging in physical therapy outdoors, where the air was crisp instead of humid, and the sky was bright china blue dotted with a precious few clouds.

Of course the mothers would plot Taryn’s fate on such a perfect day, without her present to put a damper on their plans. Jesse was used to the women in his life steamrolling over everyone and everything they thought would or could or might make his life more difficult. He wasn’t sure that kind of female-force-of-nature was as common for Taryn. He sure hoped his family didn’t scare her away before she got a chance to know them and learned to like them enough to give them a pass on their life-interference tendencies.

Jesse grabbed Taryn’s arm and swung her around as gently as possible, as she made her way across the patio toward the back door at a near run.

“Hey, wait a minute. We need to go in there as one.”

“What do you mean?” She said, panting with the exertion from her run down the path connecting his house to Potter’s Woods.

She should have been wiped out after everything that had been done and said to her so far today, and yet she’d had the fortitude not to break down into a ball of tears. She even managed to be honest in her desires when most women he knew would have been coy or shown mock indignation. Both of those manufactured responses made him queasy, Jesse much preferred Taryn’s honest need.

“Whatever is going on in there between your mother and my family, it’s going to go easier for you if you have an ally in the room. I intend to be that ally.” Jesse said, knowing it was true.

“I don’t need your help.” Taryn pulled her arm away.

“Yes, you do.”

Her eyes flashed blue fire at him as they narrowed. Then something in them changed and for the life of him he couldn’t discern what was going through her mind. Her face went from transparent to door slamming ‘we’re closed’ mode so fast he didn’t know what to make of it or her.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

Because I didn’t jump you while you eye-fucked me. Because I brought you to my house after saving your ass. Because I’m willing to share the woman I love most in the world with you, even if it ultimately means I have to leave the only home I’ve ever known. Take. Your. Pick. Then never ask me that goddamn question again.

She must have sensed a drop of the ocean of emotion coursing through him, rushing through his ears like a breaking tidal wave because she backed up a step and her eyes lost most of their heat. Still, she didn’t apologize and she didn’t retract her question. He held her gaze a moment longer than necessary, probing. Then he unclenched his jaw, knowing he’d have pain there later.

“I’m done trying to convince you I’m trustworthy.”
Liar.
Telling himself to shut-up, he continued. “If I read the tenor of Shay’s message correctly, you may feel very alone in that room. I’m offering to stand by your side and help come up with a plan to keep you from being abducted that makes sense for you. I may be the only one who gives your feelings on the matter of your safety any consideration at all.
Trust
in that.”

It seemed to Jesse like a lifetime passed before Taryn inclined her head at him like a royal princess and took his hand in hers. Squaring her shoulders, as she tossed her long golden-blond hair over one shoulder she said, “Okay, Galahad. Let’s go.”

She’d left off the ‘
Sir
’ but Jesse didn’t argue the point. He simply led her through the communal family room, kitchen, formal dining room and the foyer, where she grabbed that damned leprechaun stick from Finn’s 1920’s art-deco umbrella stand on their way to the library.

Taryn stopped abruptly just short of the library. Mary Campbell’s voice was clear and precise as she spoke about some kind of treasure. Jesse looked at Taryn, allowing her whatever time she needed to prepare herself. She didn’t look at him for three long seconds. When she did, the expression on her face wasn’t angry, but earnest, almost pleading.

“Can I borrow your gun?”

Jesse laughed softly. Brushing a quick, sincere kiss across her pliant lips he answered her.

“No.” he said, a hand at the small of her back lending support and stopping a hasty retreat as they entered. He was suddenly feeling more lighthearted than he’d been since he found her, knowing that they could face whatever came together, as a team.

In that moment, Jesse knew with a quiet certainty that everything was going to be alright.

One look at Mary Campbell’s face and Taryn knew nothing was going to be alright again.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN             

Mary was getting into what Taryn referred to as ‘her snooty-scholar-rant’, which wasn’t fair given the fact that Mary was never snooty and always the consummate scholar. But, Taryn thought with a wry twist to her smile that was tempered with exasperated love, parents and their passions will contort their offspring’s view of reality every damned time, having come in second and sometimes third to those passions too often.

“She’s on a roll.” Taryn said,              more to herself than to Jesse.

Jesse raised both eyebrows and gave a slow whistle Taryn took to mean he was suitably impressed. “She sure is.”

Expounding on myth and legend in general and then narrowing her comments to James Campbell’s area of expertise, Celtic myth, Mary’s tone was professorial and precise. “There are all kinds of myths and legends in the Celtic pantheon. Some are well known like the myths of Ceridwen and Epona, others are more obscure and multifaceted like the tripartate Morrigan. Some are merely conjecture, the kind of thing that titillates scholars, armchair historians and those searching for a tie to the old ways of their ancestors. Stories that capture and captivate the collective unconscious have always been, and will always be, the core of who we are as a people.”

Shannon O’Shay spoke, capturing the attention of the room. He had the demeanor of a man who had somewhere else he needed to be but was polite in his attempt to steer the conversation away from the land of all things fae. “Your enthusiasm is contagious, Mrs. Campbell, but could you get to the part where any of this has to do with that bracelet you’re holding or the attempt to take Taryn this morning?”

Taryn saw the silver and gold chain in her mother’s hand and something like hot solder seared through her heart as it burned a path to her gut. She hadn’t seen that bracelet since she was seventeen when she had her first and last argument with her father.

That much loved scrap of metal catapulted her back in time. It was as if she had that fight yesterday. Her father had just missed her high school graduation, where she was salutatorian. He’d also missed every swim meet, every volleyball game, her award banquet for student counsel and her award dinner for best nationwide article by a high school newspaper editor. She was seventeen and pissed.

It was the last time she’d seen a charm he’d designed for her bracelet. It was the last time he talked to her about his search for proof of anything having to do with Celtic goddesses. It was the last time she saw that special spark in his eye or that special charge of energy he gave only to his work. It was the last time he shared his dream with her.

Taryn hadn’t realized until just now that something died inside her, and probably for him as well, when he put that bracelet away. She couldn’t have her father back, it was too late for that. Could she have a piece of him, of his dream, or was that dead too? Taryn fought to take in enough air to clear her head, only half listening to Mary’s response.

“Mr. O’Shay-”

He cut her off. “-Just Shay, ma’am.”

Mary inclined her head regally, her body language telling him and everyone else in the room,
pay attention. This next bit’s important.
“Perhaps,
Shay
, we shouldn’t stand on ceremony. I won’t call you Mr. O’Shay if you’ll agree to call me Mary instead of ma’am. It makes me feel like I’ve got blue hair and one foot in the grave.”

Shay winked at her and Mary actually blushed.
Can this day get any more surreal?

“People across cultures and throughout time have tortured, maimed and murdered to gain access to objects of great historical and mythological significance.” Mary said, once again capturing the attention of everyone in the library, including Jesse who stiffened beside Taryn at the mention of murder.

Jesse walked Taryn further into the library with one hand at the small of her back. He wasn’t pushing exactly, more like meaningfully guiding. It was a battle Taryn chose not to fight, allowing him to guide her to the couch, where she sat next to Reed. He remained standing, tall and so silent he seemed to become a part of the room more than separate from it, his eyes weighing every word Mary said and every nuance of her body language as she continued.

“I can see your skepticism, Shay. And since you are clearly needed elsewhere, I will try to connect the dots quickly by asking you to consider the quest for the Holy Grail in Christian mythos. What is it? Is it the search for an ideal? Does it exist as a tangible object, and if so, what miracles would it yield for the one who possessed it?”

Shay didn’t look impressed. Taryn had heard this analogy before, so it lost some of its punch for her too, although she’d heard her father wax poetic about it long before Indiana Jones or Dan Brown.

“I can see you are a born cynic, sir,” Mary said to Shay, sighing heavily for effect, something her mother did often in the classroom. “If the grail story doesn’t float your boat, then what about Hitler’s quest for the Spear of Destiny? How much mayhem do you think was unleashed in that megalomaniac’s name to find and secure the spear that pierced Christ’s heart? Items of spiritual significance are worth killing for in every culture, in every age. People will always believe in miracles and magic, legend and myth. I used two items from Christianity because those of us in this room are familiar with them and most of us have heard these stories since birth. We don’t question that these legendary objects may well be spiritually supercharged. Why would you doubt that other spiritual objects are worth killing or dying for to possess?”

No one spoke. Mary waited, letting them absorb the implications of what she was saying.

Jesse went to Mary’s side. He held out his hand and Mary dropped the charm bracelet into it. He looked at it, holding it up to the light that poured through the western windows. He turned to Taryn, still holding the bracelet.

“It’s a charm bracelet. Nice quality. But even to a collector, it can’t be worth more than fifteen hundred bucks. Why would anyone want to hurt you for a bracelet?”