Kiss of the Goblin Prince (22 page)

“I…” What did he say? “I should’ve asked first.”

She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have stopped.”

“You shouldn’t have pushed me away.” If she hadn’t, he was sure they’d still be standing in the garden and he’d be cursing himself for not being able to walk away.

Her gaze flickered over him. “I didn’t.”

Then she closed the distance and placed her hand on his chest the way she had in the garden and right over the talons. His breath hitched in his throat. This wasn’t a good idea. He covered her hand with his not wanting her to pull away. She was close enough that he could smell the cold still clinging to her skin, feel it seeping through his shirt and into the talons that bound him to the past. He wanted her to reach in and rip them out regardless of the price. The talons scrabbled as if unable to keep a hold of his heart.

For a heartbeat neither of them moved.

Then her tongue moistened her lip. He tracked the movement. Was she waiting to be kissed again? But Amanda leaned in and kissed him.

His hands moved to her hips and drew her close. Her body against his offered all the temptations he’d denied himself out of fear. With Amanda, those old doubts wilted. Her touch was every kindness he’d forgotten existed.

Her lips brushed his for only a second before she pulled back and looked up at him smiling. “They’ll be waiting.”

Let
them
wait.
But they couldn’t linger. He didn’t want everyone walking in and finding them like that. Yet he placed another light kiss on her lips and when she didn’t stop him, he stole another. For a moment longer, they remained nose to nose. Then he released her before he lost the strength to let her go.

“Another time.” Whatever was going on was on hold, not over. But the weight of the ghostly wings he was carrying remained. It was many, many years since he’d been this close to a woman—back then he’d been so young. This was different. They both knew where this was leading.

Together they walked into the dining room. On the dining room table was a chocolate cake shaped like a book. The symbol on the front was an ancient symbol of protection that most people now mistakenly associated with witchcraft and the devil. Dai raised a brow and looked at Roan. No doubt that was his idea of a joke.

If only it was a real book and he could open it up and find out what he needed. All he needed was one skin scroll on healing. He’d avoided handling it too much as he’d had suspicions he didn’t want to entertain about where that skin had come from. With the scroll, he could help Brigit and Fane and maybe himself.

Eliza dimmed the lights and pulled out a lighter.

Dai glanced at Brigit. “Let me.”

He snapped his fingers for effect, not out of necessity. The gold candle in the center burst into flame. When nothing else caught fire he let out a sigh. He was getting better.

Amanda smiled at him, her eyes molten in the shimmering candlelight. “Make a wish.”

Dai closed his eyes, but her image stayed with him. A wish. Just one and it had to be specific. Wishes were bite-sized pieces of magic. One wish with enough intent behind it had a real chance of coming true. Eliza’s wishes summoned Roan. What could he wish?

Feathers shifted and brushed against his back with a ghostly chill. Gooseflesh spread down his limbs.

To be free of Rome.

He blew out the candle.

He didn’t need a wish.

He needed a miracle.

Chapter 13

Amanda unclipped Sheriff’s lead and watched as he ran after Brigit into the playground. The dog did a lap of the equipment before settling at Amanda’s feet, happy to observe while Brigit went up and down the slide. Staying at Eliza’s was like a holiday for Brigit. New room, new yard, new park down the road. For Amanda it was like falling through the looking glass and into a world that was familiar yet alien. Right house, wrong man…except kissing Dai didn’t feel wrong.

She leaned back on the park bench. The winter sky was blue and clear with the promise of summer not far away. Usually as she sat with the sun on her back, watching Brigit play, she was content. This morning she couldn’t find calm or peace. She was an outsider in her own skin.

Her body created dreams out of one kiss that was more intense than anything she’d ever felt, even though their lips had barely touched, and turned them into cravings she hadn’t experienced or wanted for years. Had she ever felt like this before? Her skin ached, her heart rushed, and a stray thought could steal her breath.

It was illogical to be attracted to a man she barely knew.

And thrilling.

When Dai looked at her, he
looked
at her. Not her clothes, not the color of her hair or the size of her boobs. Her.

Men didn’t do that.

Had Matt?

The smile left her face as she scrambled through faded, scattered memories. She couldn’t remember how Matt looked at her. The details of their love were blurred, so only impressions remained. No matter how hard she tried she couldn’t bring back the memory. It was lost. Her throat closed and tears formed. But none fell. She’d finished crying for Matt years before. And when she stopped grieving, the edges had lost their sharpness. They couldn’t hurt her, but they couldn’t fill her either. When had she moved on? When had acceptance taken the place of grief? When had her heart healed enough to beat again?

Brigit came down the slide with one hand on her chest. Her lips more blue than pink. Amanda grabbed the bag and ran over, Sheriff bounding by her side as if it were a game. She helped Brigit with her inhaler and stroked her hair.

“I’m okay,” Brigit said, sitting on the slide as she caught her breath.

“We should go back to Eliza’s.”

Brigit shook her head, her brown eyes solemn. Sometimes she looked so much like Matt it made her heart ache. Not from her loss, but his. He never had a chance to know his daughter. Amanda kissed Brigit’s forehead as her panic subsided. This time it hadn’t been anything to worry about, but next time…

It was her fault. They shouldn’t have come to the park so early. In another hour the day would have warmed up a little more. Winter was the worst—colds, cold air, they could both trigger an attack. But Brigit wanted out and saying no had been too hard. Sometimes it was easier to go with the flow, plus getting away from Eliza and Roan for a few hours was nice. She was in their house, and they needed their space.

“Push me on the swing?” Brigit was so used to asthma that it was just a part of life.

She would never get used to watching her daughter struggle to breathe. Hopefully the healer would be able to do something. The halotherapy wasn’t helping as much as she’d like. It treated the symptoms, not the cause. If the healer couldn’t help there were other remedies, older and more expensive. So far they worked their way through the easy things, diet, and medication. Oils and crystals. They got through the winter with only one trip to the hospital. But it was one too many.

“Sure.” She smiled, but at the back of her mind in a corner she didn’t want to acknowledge she knew that she had to make every moment with Brigit count. Just in case the doctors were right.

“High.”

“Yep.” She slung Brigit’s bag over her shoulder and followed her over to the swings. Brigit sat and let her get the swing going. Amanda fell into the easy rhythm of pushing and rocking back. Sheriff got bored and pranced over to a beagle, his tail whipping from side to side with enough force to shake his bum. He wouldn’t go far, so she didn’t call him back.

“Mom?”

“Mmm.”

“Hailey’s mom is getting married.”

That would be Hailey’s mom’s third marriage. She never worried about what would happen if she fell in love and got her heart broken. Maybe some people’s hearts were better built and more resilient.

“And Hailey is going to be a flower girl.”

“You were just a flower girl and ring bearer for Eliza.” And she’d managed to drop the ring halfway through the ceremony. Not that anyone minded.

“I know, but if Hailey’s mom can get married again, why can’t you? Then I could be your flower girl.” Brigit looked over her shoulder, as if it were a perfectly natural question. Perhaps it was to a seven-year-old who just saw her aunt marry.

Sheriff came back and lay down, his sides heaving. Amanda pushed the swing in silence.

“Mom?”

“I might, one day, if I found the right person.” Could she be that lucky twice?

“How do you know if you’ve found the right person?”

If adults knew the answer to that, there would be no divorces and every marriage would be perfect and no kids would sit in her office torn up by custody battles.

“How did Cinderella know the Prince was the right one?”

“That’s a DVD, Mom; it’s not real.”

Amanda missed a push as the realization her little girl wasn’t a baby anymore hit her hard, like a shove to the chest. She didn’t know what to say. The little white lies she told Brigit were no longer working. How much longer until she stopped believing in the tooth fairy, Santa, and that Matt watched over her? Brigit only knew her father from old photos and the stories Amanda had told her. She sighed. There was no fairy godmother to help out when things got hard, or when she didn’t know what to do.

With the swing going again, Brigit was quiet for a couple pushes, but Amanda knew the next question was coming.

Brigit tipped her head up to stare at the sky. “Can we go to the beach after school tomorrow?”

“If it’s not raining.” In summer they’d spend every weekend at the beach. At first it was a way for Amanda to be at the places Matt had liked. It made her feel closer to him, then it’d become a habit.

How much of her life was habit and routine she’d set up to get through each day? She’d stopped living when Matt died, and she hadn’t noticed. It took Dai coming along to make her see what she was missing.

Her tongue slid across her lip, remembering the soft touch of his mouth. Their first kiss. She smiled to herself as a hundred butterflies exploded in her stomach. Maybe seeing him again would break up the night’s magic and reveal some of his secrets. With Brigit there, watching, they would only be able to talk and while she wanted more than that, but it was a start. To know if what they had would survive in sunlight, she was going to have to invite him to the beach.

***

By sleeping in daylight, Dai’s nightmares lost some of their intensity. They became wasted shadows that let him sleep, but they denied him any pleasant dreams. The eagle shrieked and swooped.

Dai turned to face the coming attack, but instead of being in the Shadowlands about to fight he was in a room filled with sunlight. He squinted and tried to orient himself. His living room. He was on the sofa where he fell asleep. Maybe in his dream he could’ve killed Claudius before history repeated and his knees got dirty. Probably not. It wouldn’t be a nightmare if he succeeded.

On the coffee table, his new cell phone rattled and rung. He reached out to shut it up, but the name on the screen stopped him.

Amanda.
His heart paused as he remembered the kiss. Why couldn’t he have dreamed of her instead? He picked up the phone and answered, wanting to hear her voice again, even though it had only been a few hours.

“Hello.” His voice betrayed him; he sounded half-asleep.

“Ah, hi. It’s Amanda. Did I wake you?”

He should say no. Normal people weren’t stretched out on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon.

“Just catching up after last night.” He could let her think he’d stayed up late to celebrate being another year older. One thousand, nine hundred and seventy. He could burn down the house with those candles.

“You stayed up?”

She’d gone to bed just before midnight and he’d left soon after.

Dai pushed his hair back. “For a bit.” The truth was more unpalatable, and for Amanda unbelievable.

“I was wondering if you’d like to see some of Perth’s beautiful beaches tomorrow.”

Why?

The word rested on his tongue, but he swallowed it down because he knew the answer. Amanda wanted to see him. Heat blanketed his skin as it remembered her touch. Blood pooled in his groin. How could he say no when his flesh craved her touch? He didn’t need to see the threads she was spinning to feel them reaching for him. Tentatively they reached out, waiting to see if he would brush them away. He didn’t. He wanted to feel them run through him. Watch as they threaded through his body, leaving only pleasure, not pain. Strands no thicker than spider’s silk, but a thousand times stronger. He fisted his hand. Amanda was Mave’s mother in this life. His past was tangling his future and he didn’t know what to do.

“Dai?”

He blinked and shook his head. “Sorry, still waking up. Which beach?”

“Cottesloe…do you want me to pick you up?”

“No.” He spoke too fast. The tenuous threads pulled back like he’d slapped them. He winced. He hadn’t meant to push her away. Yet a part of him whispered that would be the best idea.