Spellbound Falls [5] For the Love of Magic (14 page)

She turned the key and rolled down her window. “One?” she mumbled past her mouthful of peach as she shook the fruit at him, making him lift his now-laughing eyes to hers. “You brought back only
one
?”

He plucked the peach out of her hand, took a
really large
bite, then handed it back to her. “I have more,” he said around his own mouthful, arching a brow as he quickly swallowed without even having the decency to savor it. “But knowing their value, I decided to put them up as a prize.” He gestured at the peach oozing juice all over her hand, his eyes gleaming with challenge. “That one was merely to whet your appetite for a little wager. Say, an entire bushel of Atlantean peaches to the winner of a race between that pretty racing sloop of yours and my new boat.”

Rana took another bite as she thought about having a whole bushel all to herself, seeing how Titus didn’t have a single boat in his little fleet that could touch her sloop. In truth, it would be like taking candy—no, taking
peaches
from a baby.

“And,” he added roughly when she started licking juice off her fingers, “if you somehow manage to beat me by at least half a league, you will also win . . .” His eyes lifted to hers. “One favor from me.”

She stopped licking. “What sort of favor?”

“Your any wish will be my command.”

She looked down at the peach in her hand. “And if I should lose this wager?”

“You will give me your first metal sculpture.”

She shot him a smile. “Then prepare to be—”

“And,” he continued, “grant me one favor.”

She stopped smiling. “What sort of favor?”

His eyes dropped to her mouth again. “My choice.”

Rana took another huge bite to disguise her scowl. The dirty rotten scoundrel; he knew how much she loved peaches, and was only using them to get what he really wanted. She shoved what remained of the fruit at him. “Here, you’ve obviously overestimated the value of your prize and underestimated me.”

“Forgive me, madam,” he said, his eyes lighting with laughter again as he took the peach. “I thought I was challenging the reigning queen of the regatta, not some shy young maiden who hadn’t even
boarded
a boat until she sailed off on her honeymoon.”

Rana snatched the peach back before he could sink his teeth into it. “Well, fine then,” she snapped, hitting the button to lift her window. “Consider yourself challenged.” She stopped the window halfway up. “And it had better be a
full
bushel.”

“Wait,” he said when she clamped the peach in her teeth and reached down to start the truck. “The weather is supposed to be warm tomorrow with a stiff breeze. Shall we meet at the point of land guarding the fiord at ten
A.M
. and lay a course down Bottomless, around its most southern island, and back?”

Still sucking on the peach, she merely nodded and hit the window button again.

“Wait,” he repeated, his eyes turning serious as he gestured behind him, where she only just noticed his motorcycle parked beside her truck and realized she must have been too busy humming and groaning and
savoring
to hear him arrive. “I was just on my way to the Drunken Moose for dinner,” he continued, “and wondered if you would mind following me down the mountain.”

Now what was he up to? Rana pulled the peach from her mouth and batted her eyes at him. “Why?” she murmured, running her tongue over her lips and stifling a smile when his gaze dropped to her mouth again. “Are you hoping to impress a shy young maiden with your prowess for handling a hundred horses on a winding mountain road?” Seeing he was still staring at her mouth, she pouted. “Or do you hope to throw me off my game tomorrow by giving me a glimpse of your recklessness tonight?”

And there was that gleam again when his gaze lifted to hers. “It’s a hundred and sixty horses, and I was hoping to impress a beautiful—” He went silent when she started sucking her sticky fingers, and turned away with a very un-kingly curse. “Just try not to run me off the mountain,” he growled as he strode to his motorcycle.

“Take that, you blackguard,” she muttered, starting her truck as she scowled at him slipping on his helmet. “Thinking to trick me with your little wager, were you? Let’s see how clever you’re feeling tomorrow afternoon, when I’m sitting in my crooked little hovel with my bushel of peaches and you’re
swimming
back to the marina.”

But her scowl soon turned into a smile when she pulled up to the guardhouse behind the shiny red motorcycle and realized she wouldn’t be descending the mountain alone after all.

Rana stopped tightening her jib line when she spotted the tall mast traveling behind the narrow peninsula separating the fiord from the main body of Bottomless, and frowned that she didn’t recognize the brightly colored sails—only to gasp when the fast-moving vessel rounded the point. She then watched in utter and complete awe as the
modern
catamaran caught the strong sea breeze and one of its pontoons lifted clean out of the water, exposing a narrow, mid-hull dagger and equally long tiller.

For the love of Zeus, forget his being a blackguard and scoundrel; she was married to a no-good-rotten
cheater
.

Rana scrambled to finish tightening her jib, then rushed back to the helm and turned her sloop to catch the wind, planting her feet against the steep cant of the deck as the boat rolled onto its side and surged forward. She glanced over her shoulder at her competition and realized that even though their sails were nearly equal in size, her sloop was probably twenty times the weight of that catamaran. And two skinny fiberglass pontoons—even with both of them in the water—had very little drag compared to an
ancient
wooden mono-hull.

Where in the name of Hades had he gotten that boat? “New,” she whispered. “I was so busy savoring that damn peach that I didn’t even notice when he slipped the word
new
into his challenge.” Sweet Athena, not only had he known exactly how to distract her, he had actually had her acting like a fifteen-year-old starry-eyed maiden. Forty years of marriage and she was
still
falling for his tricks.

“Good morning, wife!” the no-good-rotten cheater shouted as he pulled up off her port side as effortlessly as if she were dragging an anchor. He loosened the line on his mainsail to dump some of the wind so he would keep pace, then reached into a large dry bag lashed to the trampoline, pulled something out, and sank his teeth into—

A peach! He was eating one of her peaches!

“That better not be from
my
bushel!” she yelled.

Despite the distance between them, she could see his brow arch as he chewed and grinned and nodded. “Pretty damn sure of winning, are you?” he said around his mouthful of sweet, succulent peach.

“That’s not even your boat!”

“It is now,” he said, licking the juice running down the side of his hand. “Care to put that pretty sloop back on its mooring and spend the day on a real racer? I’ll let you drive, and I might even be persuaded to share my prize,” he magnanimously offered, gesturing at the bag on the trampoline.

“You can’t share something you haven’t won yet,” she called out, even as she adjusted her course to fill her sails with wind again. “Play fair,” she shouted over her shoulder as she angled away, “and perhaps I’ll share my prize with you!”

Rana laughed when her husband straightened in surprise, only to gasp when he tossed the half-eaten peach in the water in order to reef in his mainsail.

And with that, the race was on. Titus might in theory have a faster vessel, but Rana knew from personal experience that skill and timing and even plain old simple luck could just as easily carry the day. So with that knowledge fueling her determination, she set a course toward Spellbound Falls.

Surrounded by mountains covered in spruce and pine and various hardwoods, Bottomless was more than fourteen miles wide at its northern end and, not counting the fiord, stretched thirty-nine miles south to Turtleback Station. The large inland sea was dotted with islands varying in size from small exposed ledges to several hundred acres, its seemingly endless shoreline coiling in and out of the rugged terrain to narrow the waterway to only a few miles in several places.

As Titus had predicted, today couldn’t have been more perfect for sailing if it had been custom ordered. The air temperature flirted with sixty degrees, which was veritably
balmy
for northern Maine in early April, and a stiff breeze hovered around fifteen knots. After a glance back to see her competition had apparently decided to tack southeast rather than follow her, Rana altered her course to avoid a raft of kayakers paddling out from town. Satisfied the few fishing boats scattered about were holding steady courses, she locked the wheel to run parallel to the shoreline, then relaxed back against the stern with a sigh of delight to be at the helm of her beloved sloop again.

Probably the thing she loved most about sailing—right behind feeling powerful to be controlling the wind—was the solitude. She enjoyed being alone with her thoughts at sea; her senses sharpening to the task at hand, no one but Mother Nature demanding anything of her, and time seeming to stand still as the rest of the world simply faded away.

She often found it hard to believe she’d never set foot on a boat until she had met Titus, no more than she could believe she had spent the entire first day of her honeymoon throwing up over the side of his beautiful sailing ship. However, that might have had less to do with the rolling swells and more with her being the fifteen-year-old bride of a rich and powerful and very magical young warrior.

“If only you hadn’t been so handsome,” she murmured past her smile, “I might have stood a chance.” And charming. And humorous. And so very tender. “Well,” she said with a laugh, “tender when you were certain no one was looking.”

And persistent. Sweet Athena, the man had skulked around for weeks trying to catch her eye. And once he’d gotten her attention, he’d gone after her heart.

It scared her sometimes to think that she might have missed out on a lifetime of loving Titus but for her mother’s wisdom. Annabelle Proust hadn’t seen wealth or power or even the magic when Titus had introduced himself to her; she had seen a man desperately needing to be loved.

What mother encouraged her mere mortal daughter to marry a god, Rana remembered crying in dismay. A mother, Annabelle had quietly answered, that had raised a daughter who was brave enough not to let
what
he was stop her from marrying the man her love would make him.

It had been known far and wide that Titus Oceanus preferred living with mortals rather than in the ethereal world, and that he in fact had little stomach for the violent wars the gods constantly waged against each other at mankind’s expense. Within a year of marriage he’d started making plans to do something about it, but little had Rana realized his decision to champion humanity would eventually send him—and her and young Maximilian—into exile.

It was then she’d learned that not only was Titus capable of being just as violent as his fellow gods, but that her mighty husband was really quite devious. While slowly gathering mankind’s knowledge into what he referred to as the Trees of Life, he’d also set about building a secret island upon which to safeguard the mystical grove. He had then scoured the earth to find a small, hand-chosen army of intelligent and courageous mortals, personally trained them in the ways of the magic, and charged those first drùidhs with protecting the Trees while nurturing—and sometimes nudging—mankind’s conscience.

But not three months before Carolina was born, the gods finally caught wind of what he was doing and Titus had been forced to move his young family into his partially completed palace, scatter most of his Trees and drùidhs around the world as an extra precaution, and sink the island and everyone on it into the ocean. And thanks to her devious husband and now Maximilian, mythical Atlantis had remained out of reach of the gods and demons bent on destroying it, and out of sight of unbelieving mortals.

Becoming aware that she could hear the fast-approaching catamaran cutting through the water, Rana continued looking toward the western shoreline to hide her smile, and even managed not to flinch when Titus crossed her stern close enough that she could have reached out and touched him. She did yelp in surprise, however, when a big, fat, juicy peach landed on her lap, then burst into laughter when she picked it up and saw a bite had been taken out of it.

He immediately turned into the wind, nearly stalling as he changed tack before his mainsail and jib snapped taut and he surged forward again. “You’re not going to win by daydreaming,” he shouted as he cut across her bow, this time looking over his sail as the pontoon he was now
standing
on rose out of the water.

Rana also stood and ran forward to get a better look at the harness he was wearing. There appeared to be a cable running from high up on the mast down to his waist, allowing him to brace his feet on the flying pontoon and use his body as ballast to stop the boat from capsizing. Which made sense, she realized as she took a bite of peach, since there wasn’t a weighted keel to offset the push of the wind.

Oh, she really needed to sail that catamaran.

And then she needed to find a way to steal it for her fleet.

“Sweet Zeus, woman, tack!” Titus shouted, the pontoon he was standing on dropping like a stone when he released his mainsail, making him have to scramble onto the trampoline to keep from falling in the water and getting dragged by the harness.

Rana snapped her head around and saw she was closing in on one of the small ledges. Clamping the peach in her teeth, she broke the line on the jib and scrambled back to the helm, unlocked and spun the wheel and locked it again, ducked the boom as it swung from starboard to port, then ran forward and hauled in the line to retighten the jib. And then she ran back and flopped down behind the wheel, pulled the peach from her mouth, and huffed and puffed to catch her breath.

Wow, why was she winded?

Oh, that’s right; she was lugging around ten extra pounds.

“Are the peaches making you homesick?” Titus asked, his sharp green eyes studying her face as he returned to keeping pace beside her again. “Near as I can tell, you’ve spent the last hour daydreaming.”

She tucked some escaping hair inside her hat and relaxed back against the stern. “They’re not making me homesick, exactly.” She shot him a lopsided smile. “I was just remembering how you charmed my mother into persuading my father to let you marry his little girl.”

“You’re thinking of your parents?” he said in surprise, his eyes darkening with an old, familiar pain. “Why, Stasia?”

“No, not in a sad way,” she quickly assured him. “I was thinking about something Mom said when she was persuading
me
to marry you.”

He edged his boat dangerously closer. “What did Annabelle say?”

Rana stood up at the wheel and shot him another smile—this one smug. “The answer will cost you
one catamaran
,” she said, turning the sloop tighter to the wind and surging away to his booming laughter.

They spent the morning tacking back and forth down Bottomless like two drunken sailors, all while avoiding a seemingly suicidal old whale and frisky pod of orcas—Kitalanta at the front—bravely running interference in an attempt to level the playing field for their queen. Her only real worry was for the fishermen who thought they were safely trolling open water only to find themselves on a collision course with a fast-moving catamaran. Apparently unaware of how agile a cat could be, she would watch in dismay as the shouting fishermen quickly reeled in their lines and sped away.

Rana was the first to round the southernmost island, but only because she had very unsportingly sailed past her capsized husband—twice!

Hey, she had
waved
.

She’d also thrown the peach pit at him. She had good aim, too, and had hit him right on his regal head of wet white hair just as he was struggling to pull the catamaran back upright.

But was it her fault he was making her feel fifteen years old again?

“I wish to call a time-out!” Titus shouted as he raced past her starboard side. “I need a nap.”

“Oh, thank the gods,” Rana whispered, turning into the wind to stall the sloop. Not that she was about to admit
to him
that she’d spent the last hour fighting to keep her eyes open. It must be the extra pounds making her tired and not the fact that her muscles certainly didn’t feel fifteen years old.

“Drop your anchor and loosen your sails,” he said as he approached her port side and released his own sails. “I’ll come aboard and let the cat drift off your stern.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, brushing down the front of her spray-drenched jacket, “but I don’t allow no-good-rotten cheaters on my boat.”

He grabbed the sloop to hold them drifting together. “I come bearing gifts.”

She shrugged. “I’ve gotten my fill of peaches.”

“Are you over your fondness for figs, too?”

She snapped her gaze up to see him pull a small burlap sack from the dry bag lashed to his trampoline. “You brought some of Mathew’s figs?” she asked.

“Mind telling me what you were thinking to give Olivia our royal gardener? The boy he left in charge had already eaten half our crop.”

“I couldn’t very well move Maude here and not her husband.” She stepped up to the rail. “If I let you come aboard, do you promise to behave?”

He set the figs on the pontoon precariously close to the edge and reached in the bag again. “I also raided our wine cellar,” he said, pulling out a bottle and
not
answering her question, she couldn’t help but notice. He tucked the wine between his legs and, while still holding on to her boat, reached in the bag again. “Your goat herd is exploding with new kids this spring,” he continued, pulling out a small container of what she knew for a fact was the most delicious goat cheese on the planet.