Mistress of Magic (7 page)

The heat inside her seemed to flash and grow, streaking throughout her body. She wanted to jump up immediately, to forget the role that she played, to run in swift, sure panic.

Maybe he knew that he had that effect on her.

Okay, maybe Max had been right for a long time. Maybe she did need to get a life. But Wesley Blake seemed to be just a little too confident for her liking. Perhaps she had been out of the mainstream for a long time. She still wasn’t going to give an inch to this stranger.

Her eyes narrowed. She flipped the boa around his neck and pulled tight.

“Oh, I did find a live one out here, I did, I did!” she drawled to Alise.

There was a slight shifting in Wes’s legs. “Very much alive,” he murmured huskily.

The folks closest to them heard him. They started laughing.

Bob was a definite showman. He was down from the stage immediately, twirling his fake black mustache with his fingers.

“Patricia, honey, I’m over here. Remember me?”

She leaned forward, slipping her arms around Wes’s neck, letting her eyes focus hugely on his. “What was that?”

The audience howled.

It was a mistake. She felt his body tensing beneath hers. Felt the warmth increase.

Felt his eyes. Warm. Acute. And she saw the slow curve of his smile and felt a steady sinking in her heart.

“I said, I’m over here, honey!” Bob repeated. More laughter. He sighed dramatically and took a huge step over to the two of them. “Excuse me, sir, would you?” He set a finger underneath Reggie’s chin, turning her face to his. “Patricia, remember me?” He fell down on a knee before her. “Why, I’m going to cast aside my evil ways and make an honest woman out of you, honey! You’re in love with me, honey—’scuse me, sir, your lap is in the way there! You’ve made an honest man of me, Patricia.”

“Oh, yes!” She exclaimed, blinking. “And your name was what …?”

Again, the audience filled with laughter. It was probably one of the best shows they had ever done. It was killing her.

“Martin. Martin Van der Crime. Ah, excuse me, sir, she does have to marry me, sir.”

“I do?”

“She does?”

“Yep. You can’t have her, sir!”

“I can’t?” Wes said. Another smile flickered across his features. “Why not?”

“’Cause I’m in this show, sir, and you’re not!” Bob told him.

She liked the way Wes laughed then. Good-naturedly. Willing to be part of the fun. Willing to believe in the magic.

Just as he had been that morning. With Dierdre Dinosaur.

“Well, heck, if you put it that way …” Wes murmured regretfully.

She jumped off his lap. She didn’t want to fall for this much fantasy herself. She knew the other side to the man. There was a hard core to him as rigid as steel. He was interested in her. Ah, yes. He was interested.

Because he had come for the truth. And he seemed to see her as a way to get to that truth.

They were still in the middle of a show. Bob was staring at her, waiting.

He had cast a cue line right into her lap.

“Martin, oh, yes, Martin! I’ll be delighted if you’ll make an honest woman out of me. Marriage! Why, yes, marriage! It sounds just wonderful.”

“And you’ll pledge your heart to me forever?” Bob said dramatically, his hands atop each other and playfully palpitating over his heart.

“Why, sure, honey!” she said. Bob slipped an arm around her and they started through the audience toward the stage.

But she was a showman herself. She couldn’t help flicking the boa over her shoulder. It flounced over Wesley’s shoulder and trailed across his face. Once again, the audience howled.

She and Bob leaped on the stage with Alise and Stevie and they all joined in for the final number about the triumph of good over evil. There was wonderful applause, and the foursome hurried off the stage.

“Oh, that was great, great!” Alise laughed as soon as they had reached the wings. “Gosh, Reggie, it would be wonderful if you would work with us every day. That was one of the best shows we’ve ever done.”

“It was great,” Bob agreed, pulling off his fake mustache. “The audiences here are usually fun, but it’s rare to find a total stranger that you can play off of so easily! That guy was wonderful—”

“Thanks,” a husky voice interrupted. “But I’m not a total stranger.”

Reggie stiffened immediately. There he was again. Wesley Blake. Lounging negligently against the wall of the short hallway leading to the dressing rooms. His hands were in his pockets. He seemed so casual, so easy.

All but those eyes of his …

“Oh, so he’s a friend of yours!” Bob said, grinning. He offered a hand to Wes. “Hi! Any friend of Reggie’s is welcome. And to you, especially—thanks!”

Reggie forced a smile to her lips. “He’s not exactly a friend of mine,” she murmured. “This is Wesley Blake. Major stockholder in our corporation.”

“And don’t you forget it!” he said lightly. Reggie introduced the three performers. Wes shook Bob’s hand, Stevie’s, then Alise’s. She had a puppy-dog look about her brown eyes that made Reggie long to slap some sense into her.

“You’re wonderful!” Alise said. “I mean—you were wonderful. The audience was just eating it all up.”

He smiled at her. “But all to no avail.”

“What?” Alise said. She still had his hand.

His grin deepened. “Bob was right.”

“How so?”

“Well, he was the one in the show. He walked away with the girl.”

“Oh!” Alise laughed.

“But I do have a dinner date with her, right?” he said, looking at Reggie.

“Do you?” Reggie murmured.

“Don’t I?” He looked at Alise. “I was supposed to have a dinner date with her last night. Somehow, she eluded me.”

“That’s terrible!” Alise told him.

“That’s what I thought.”

To her annoyance, Reggie felt hot color flash to her cheeks. “I’m afraid I was busy making dinner for others,” she murmured. “I am sorry—”

“Really?” he asked politely.

She could hear her own teeth grinding. “I tried to reach you this morning—”

“Did you?”

“Yes, I did.”

She didn’t owe him anything! Still she felt the most curious edge as she watched him. Was he really angry with her? She couldn’t tell.

“Well,” he murmured, “we do have a dinner date tonight, right?”

“So it seems,” Reggie agreed less than graciously, her eyes suddenly downcast. Was he a wolf in sheep’s clothing? No, just a wolf. The man made no pretenses.

And the thing that made her so uneasy was herself. He was attractive. Too attractive. And she was just a means to an end for him, while he intended to pry into every single aspect of her brother’s life. And maybe even into her own.

Again, she felt defensive. Every barrier had to be kept in place against this man!

“Well,” Alise said with a soft sigh, “you two have a nice dinner. I guess it will be pizza and beer for me with this duo!”

“Gee, Bob, doesn’t she make that sound like a great compliment?” Stevie asked.

“Boy, that’s right. I could get a Mel Gibson complex, just listening to her!”

Alise gave him a swat in the arm. “See ya!” she said to Reggie, leading the other two down the hallway toward the dressing rooms.

Reggie suddenly felt tense and vulnerable. She pointed in their direction. “I’ll just change—”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean, you don’t think so!” Reggie demanded. “I’m dressed as a nineteenth-century floozy—”

“Hey, that’s your problem. I’m not leaving you for a minute. Not tonight.”

“Oh, now you are being absurd!” Reggie said. She started to turn. He caught hold of her arm.

And the hold was fierce. Unyielding.

He drew her around to face him. She saw that his jaw was twisted and set. He was a man determined.

One who didn’t seem to give any quarter.

“Let me go!” she insisted in a whisper.

“Not on your life.”

“I have to change!”

“Feel free. But from this minute on, Miss Delaney, whither thou goest, I goest also.”

Reggie tried to jerk free. “How dare you!”

“Trust me. I dare anything. I don’t appreciate being stood up.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I’m sure you didn’t. I could tell yesterday afternoon just how anxious you were to have dinner with me.”

“I’m going to go change—”

“That’s fine. I won’t mind at all.”

Reggie stared at him, ready to scream.

But she sensed suddenly that screaming wouldn’t get her anywhere at all.

“I’m not leaving your side,” he reminded her softly, gold eyes glittering in challenge. “So tell me, Miss Delaney, just what shall it be?”

Chapter 5

H
e had to hand it to her, Wes thought an hour later.

Miss Regina Delaney could be a very stubborn woman.

They were seated at a table in Larkin’s Lobster House, a well-known fish house with an excellent reputation and a crowded dining room, and his companion for the evening—he didn’t dare call her a date!—was still clad in a garish red old-western-saloon-floozy’s outfit, complete down to the outrageous fishnet stockings.

She wasn’t happy about her mode of dress. She had come through the entryway as quickly as possible, stoically ignored the stares of the hostess and maître d’ and hurried to the booth in the back.

The place boasted a fantastic salad bar, but Miss Delaney had opted to turn it down, choosing a small spinach salad with her twin lobsters. She wasn’t about to get up.

He would have felt guilty about her discomfort, except for the fact that she
could
have changed. All she had to do was bring him along with her right to the door of the dressing room. Maybe she hadn’t realized that he would stop there. Maybe she was just a little bit afraid of him.

And maybe that was good.

And maybe it was a good thing that she seemed so determined to keep a certain distance from him. After the dinosaur play in the park that first day, things had gone rather badly. She seemed to think that he was out to hurt her and Max in some way. He wasn’t. He’d do anything in the world for either of them and he was just as convinced as Reggie that Max was innocent. She didn’t understand. And he wanted her to. Too much. His attraction to her was frightening. Maybe because he’d never felt quite this kind of thing before.

This type of thing … He growled inwardly. He wanted her. It was simple. It wasn’t anything magical.

It was just strong. Harder, stronger, more insistent than any feeling he’d had before. Max’s twin was beautiful. But he didn’t think it was the beauty. He’d known many beautiful women. Shelley had been beautiful, and even with her, the longing had been something that had grown.

Longing and love. He had loved Shelley, he thought almost numbly. He scarcely knew Reggie Delaney.

But still, there were things that created the longing in him that were far stronger than any simple draw of beauty. She was a contrast of so many things. There was a shyness about her—unless she was cloaked in dinosaur foam or in the flagrant crimson of the dance hall girl. There was something in her eyes that spoke of innocence.

Yet when it came to defending her brother, she was a lioness.

And then again, there had been the way she had been with him. When she had been dressed as Dierdre Dinosaur, she’d been having fun—a lot of it. She didn’t mind teasing, and she didn’t mind playing. But she did like the cloak of anonymity.

He sighed softly, watching her sip an iced tea and look around the room from beneath the rich shade of her luxurious dark lashes. She was obviously wishing she had sent her pride to the wind and had gone ahead and changed into street clothing—with or without him.

He suddenly wished they could start over again.

But they couldn’t. You could never go back in life. He knew that. Maybe he could convince her that he wasn’t her enemy.

But then again, maybe he was her enemy in a way, because he would use her to get at the truth if he had to, and he did have to get at the truth.

He couldn’t help teasing her, just a bit. He leaned forward. “Others may not appreciate it to the fullest extent, but have I told you yet? That’s really a great dress.”

She smiled sweetly, setting her tea glass on the table. “Have I told you yet, Mr. Blake? I really think that you should eat dirt!”

He laughed. “Maybe I had that coming.”

“You certainly did.”

Their waitress arrived with their lobsters. They looked great. Cracked, broiled with butter—just flown in from Maine that morning, according to the placards on the walls.

“Would you like another beer with your meal, sir?” the waitress asked him. He glanced at his bottle. “Sure. One more. Reggie? How about a glass of wine?”

“I don’t care for wine, thank you.”

“A beer then.”

“I don’t—”

“Just a beer for me then, please,” he told the waitress pleasantly. “Sorry—my date here is just a wondrous pillar of virtue.”

He thought Reggie’s smile was about to crack, but she kept it in place for the waitress, who had been looking wide-eyed at Reggie’s costume.

“One must try to be virtuous when out with the date from hell!” she said with a soft, sweet sigh.

The waitress looked at them both as if they were crazy, but kept up a valiant smile, then hurried away for another beer.

“You’re just staring at your food,” Wes commented.

“I’m waiting for you.”

He passed her a shell cracker. “I’m all set.”

She cracked into her first claw. She did it so hard that a piece of shell flew straight into the air, then landed on Wes’s plate with a big clicking sound. He stared at her, arching a brow. She flushed slightly. “Sorry.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a beer or something? Anything, just to relax? Or are you really such a pillar of virtue?”

“Well, you know, really, I don’t believe in sloshing my way through a date—”

“Aha! So it is a date!” he said with a laugh. “Well, trust me, I appreciate the fact that you don’t want to slosh your way through it. I don’t want to slosh through it, either. But truly, I don’t think that one drink would send you passing out limply in my arms.” She gazed at his arms as he said the words. He could have sworn that a little shudder passed through her. Was it really all that bad?