Totally Spellbound (31 page)

Her eyes were lined with tears. “Don’t
make fun of me.”

“We’re not, darling,” Lachesis
said.

“You’re rarer than Kyle,” Atropos
said.

“Kudos to Eugenia,” Clotho said. “She
knew how to assemble the perfect family. We had our
doubts.”

“But she proved us wrong,” Lachesis
said.

Megan turned to Rob, her cheeks red.
“What are they talking about?”

He took both of her hands. Damn the
Fates for doing this in public. Damn them for putting him in this
position.

“You absorb emotion, Megan,” he said.
“You probably always have.”

Travers’ face had gone pale. “Is that
why we fight? Because you feel how pissed off I am and then you get
pissed off?”

Megan shook her head. “This can’t be
true. If it were true, I couldn’t be a psychologist.”

“Actually, that’s what makes you a
good one,” Rob said. “Somewhere along the way, you’ve learned to
block some of that emotion, but you still feel it. So when someone
tells you how he feels, you know whether or not he’s
lying.”

Megan frowned. Was she comparing what
he just said to what he had told her before?

“The Interim Fates told you what you
were,” Rob said. “But you didn’t ask me about it.”

He was feeling a little panicked. She
was being so quiet.

“I thought they were being snide,” she
said.

“Because they called me hottie?” he
asked, forcing a smile.

She shook her head. “You are. But they
weren’t the most polite people.”

“Oh, dear,” Clotho said. “Fates should
be polite.”

“On what planet?” John asked, and this
time, Rob’s grin was real. His gaze met his best friend’s, and John
shrugged, a smile dancing at the corner of his lips.

“Why, this one, of course,” Lachesis
said.

“Contrary to popular opinion,” Atropos
said, “we have no interest in other planets.”

“What?” Zoe asked.

“You’re side-tracking them,” Travers
stage-whispered.

“We’ve been accused of paying more
attention to other planets than our own,” Clotho said.

“We’ve been accused of many silly
things,” Lachesis said.

Rob tuned them out and turned toward
Megan. She was staring at her chili as if she’d never seen it
before.

“Are you all right?” he asked, even
though he knew it was a silly question. She wasn’t all right. She
was probably as far from all right as she could be.

“What did they mean?” she asked
softly. “About you using my talents?”

He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to
have this discussion in public. “Can we talk about it after
dinner?”

“No.” The word was forceful. The
conversation around them stopped. “We have the discussion
now.”

He opened his eyes. The tears were
gone from hers. Her expression was cool.

“Really,” Atropos said, “we have more
important things to deal with.”

“Like who rules other planets?”
Travers shook a spoon at them. “Sometimes you people just don’t
know when to quit.”

“Stop it,” Megan said. “I just asked a
simple question. I want one straight answer.”

She looked at Rob, and she was going
to ask it again.

“How did you use my talents?” she
asked.

“Oh, child,” Clotho said, “it’s not as
devious as it sounds.”

“Unless, of course, he thought of it
first,” Lachesis said, mostly to the other Fates.

“Which we’re sure he didn’t,” Atropos
said to Megan.

Rob held up a hand. He wanted them to
stop talking. He wanted to tell her this.

“You felt his emotion, dear,” Clotho
said. “Which is a danger of being an empath. You can be seduced by
someone whom you’re not attracted to.”

“But that’s not the case here,”
Lachesis said.

“After all,” Atropos added, “you are
soulmates.”

Megan’s cheeks had grown so pale that
Rob thought she was going to pass out. “Is this true?” she
asked—not him, but Zoe.

Zoe met his gaze, and he saw panic in
her eyes. Then she looked at Megan and shrugged. “I’m new to this.
You’re the first empath I’ve ever met.”

Which was no help at all. It felt like
a dodge, which, of course, it was.

“It’s true,” John said. “But Rob’s not
like that. You might’ve met some other guys who were, but not Rob.
And honestly, you can’t blame the other guys either, especially if
they were mortal. I mean, if they were mortal, then they couldn’t
manipulate like that because they had no idea what you
are.”

“What I am,” Megan repeated. She
nodded. “What I am.”

She set her spoon in her dish of
untouched chili.

“I’m going to leave the table,” she
said. “I need to think. Don’t talk about important things until I
come back.”

Then she grabbed a piece of bread and
stood up.

“Megan,” Rob said.

But she didn’t look at him. She didn’t
look at anyone. Instead, she put her head down and walked from the
room, very slowly, as if her entire body hurt.

The dog followed her, its tail at
half-mast, almost as if her need for comfort was more of a draw
than his own desire for food.

Travers stood, set his napkin beside
his plate, and started after her. Zoe caught his arm.

“Let her go,” Zoe said.

“But—”

“Let her go,” Zoe repeated.

“She needs space, Dad,” Kyle said.
“She always has. Remember?”

Because she was an empath. Because the
only way she knew her true emotions was to distance herself from
other people’s.

Somehow she had learned that much.
Despite her lack of training, she had learned a little.

“I’ll go,” Rob said.

“I think you’ve done enough,” Travers
said.

Rob felt the anger he’d been
suppressing rise. “What does that mean?”

“Using my sister’s abilities to seduce
her? That’s pretty low, even for a billionaire playboy.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Rob
said.

“Sure it was,” Travers said. “She was
easy, wasn’t she? I’ve read about you. You like to have women
dripping off you, and you took the first available one on this
little adventure. My sister.”

Rob clenched both fists. He was
leaning over the table, facing Travers, whose fists were also
clenched.

Rob wanted to leap across the table
and strangle that arrogant man.

“If you guys spill my chili, I’ll
never forgive you,” John said.

The break was just
enough to hold Rob back. He could almost hear John in his
head:
Words, Rob. We have to learn to work
with words.

All right. He would work with words,
then.

“Do you think so little of your sister
that you believe I’d take advantage of her, and she’d let me?” Rob
said.

“She’s been taken advantage of
before,” Travers said.

“Maybe because her family never took
care of her.” Rob was leaning on the table so hard that it moved
slightly.

“We always cared for her,” Travers
said.

“Yeah,” Rob said, “that’s why you
fight with her so much.”

“I fight with her because I love her,”
Travers said.

“And don’t respect her.”

Travers reached across the table and
stuck a finger in the center of Rob’s chest. “I wouldn’t talk about
respect if I were you, pal.”

“I can talk about respect if I want
to,” Rob said. “I’ve shown her nothing but respect.”

“Oh, yeah?” Travers poked his finger
into Rob’s chest once more. Travers hadn’t trimmed his fingernail,
and the movement sent a small, sharp pain through Rob. “That’s not
what I’m hearing.”

“Your sister is an amazing woman,” Rob
said.

“I know.” Travers kept his finger
against Rob’s shirt. Rob was doing his best to ignore the
provocation.

“I wouldn’t be standing here if it
weren’t for her.”

“Because you can manipulate her,”
Travers said.

“Dad,” Kyle said. The boy sounded
agitated.

“Because I respect her,” Rob
said.

“You have a funny way of showing it,”
Travers snapped.

That comment made Rob
catch his breath. Travers was right, but not for the reasons he
thought—Rob had not deliberately manipulated Megan, not once. No,
Rob wasn’t showing her respect now by standing here, arguing with
her brother when she was in distress.

Rob pivoted, a military movement, and
walked away from the table.

“Hey!” Travers yelled. “Where are you
going?”

Rob could hear chairs
move, and Kyle make a distressed noise, and Zoe say, “Trav, don’t!”
but Rob kept walking.

He heard footsteps behind him. Let
that man come near him. Let him, and see what would
happen.

“Leave her alone,” Travers said.
“You’ve caused enough trouble.”

Rob kept walking.

“Touch my sister again, and
I’ll—”

Rob turned. Travers was right behind
him. Travers stopped speaking the moment that Rob faced
him.

“You’ll what?” Rob asked softly. “Take
me on? You? An untrained mage?”

Travers stopped. He was holding his
ground rather admirably, considering.

John had stood up. Kyle was watching,
his eyes wide. Zoe was still sitting, shaking her head. And the
Fates, bless them, were eating as if this was all for their
entertainment.

That angered Rob even more.

“Or will you resort to the manly
defense?” Rob asked. “Are you just going to hit me? Because I’ve
been spoiling for a fight for weeks now. You want to accommodate
me?”

“Dad,” Kyle said. “He’s a good guy,
really.”

Travers met his gaze. The man was
rethinking his impulsiveness. “You know how many times she’s been
hurt?”

So that was it. Travers
was angry because he finally understood why his sister had gotten
into a variety of bad relationships—all impulsively, it probably
had seemed to him.

“Yeah,” Rob said softly. “I’m
beginning to realize that.”

“Then you understand why I don’t want
you near her.”

“No,” Rob said. “I don’t understand
that. Because if I don’t go to her now, I’m no better than those
other guys. I have to explain what’s going on and how I didn’t
manipulate her, at least not intentionally. If I don’t, then
everything falls apart.”

Travers bit his lower lip. His frown
deepened, but his anger seemed to be fading—or at least the impulse
to hit Rob was.

“She’s fragile,” Travers said. “You be
careful with her.”

Rob shook his head ever so slightly.
“She’s not fragile, Travers. If she were fragile, she’d have broken
long ago under the weight of everyone’s emotions.”

Travers raised his chin. Was that the
anger coming back? The urge to argue?

“But,” Rob said, to stave him off. “I
will be careful. I promise. I have more at stake here than you
do.”

Travers studied him for a long moment.
Rob wasn’t sure if the man was going to hit him or spit at him. But
Travers did neither. Instead, he nodded once.

“I’m not sure I like you,” Travers
said.

Robin smiled. “That’s okay,” he said.
“I’m finally beginning to like you.”

Megan let herself into her suite and
then leaned on the closed door. The place was a mess—the coffee
table moved, the chairs to the side, her other shoes still on the
floor.

But it was quiet here, and the
emotions that had her so agitated seemed muted.

An empath. That explained so very
much.

Her earliest memories were of drowning
in emotion. She always felt out of control. Her moods would swing
wildly—happy, sad, frightened, angry—and often without
reason.

She could remember
her mother saying,
I don’t know what to do
with you, Meg, honey. Your reactions never make any sense to
me
.

And her father picking her up—she was
maybe three and so happy to see him—and as she pressed against his
wool jacket, she burst into tears.

The sadness had been his that day, not
hers.

She might not have made it
through the day-to-day if it hadn’t been for Great-Aunt Eugenia.
That woman frightened her (or maybe she had frightened her
great-aunt? Wow. That was a concept), but just before Megan had
gone to school, she managed to have a quiet moment with her
great-aunt.

Megan, you’re a very
sensitive little girl.

And Megan had nodded.