Belonging to Taylor

O! she's warm.

If this be magic, let it be an art

Lawful as eating.

—William Shakespeare,

The Winter's Tale

Chapter One

Trevor King had never thought of himself as a busybody,
but when a man came across a young lady crying her eyes out noisily in the middle of a very lovely and peaceful garden, he decided, there was surely some justification for trying to find out what was going on. Accordingly, he sat down on the stone bench beside the distressed damsel and asked a pointed question.

"Excuse me, but what in hell is wrong?"

Stunningly electric blue eyes, no less potent for being tear-drenched, gazed at his face for a moment and then were hidden once more behind slender fingers as the dam burst in earnest.

Conscious of innate male helplessness when confronted by irrational female tears, Trevor ran bewildered fingers through his thick black hair and stared at her warily. Those incredible eyes, he reflected in astonishment, had held a rueful gleam of amusement. Hysteria? he wondered, studying her long, lustrous chestnut hair—which was all he could really see.

No, not hysteria. He didn't know why he was so sure of that, but he was. Sighing, and wryly condemning his own curiosity, he dug in his pocket for a handkerchief and held it out to her. "Here," he offered brusquely.

She couldn't have seen it through her tears and fingers, but she reached out anyway to grasp the snowy cloth and press it to her eyes.

Trevor gazed off across the garden, waiting patiently for time or exhaustion to stem the tide. It took another five minutes before the sobs lessened to sniffles and finally faded into silence. He heard her blow her nose fiercely and turned his head to intercept another curiously amused look from those wet, vivid blue eyes.

"I—uh—I have this problem," she murmured.

"I guessed as much," he responded politely.

She squared her shoulders and met his bemused gaze defiantly. "I cry," she announced as though to a blind man with bad hearing. "I cry over sad movies, sad books, the national anthem, and commercials with cute kids and puppies. I cry over spring showers, rainbows, bad days,
good
days, and dead butterflies. I cry," she summed up, leaning forward to emphasize the point, "when my
laundry
comes back!"

Trevor blinked. He found himself gazing into a striking face, in which the electric blue eyes dominated all other features. He was vaguely conscious of a small nose, high cheekbones, straight winging brows, cupid-bow lips, and a stubborn chin. Viewed separately, the features didn't seem to fit together, and yet they made a more than pleasing whole. In fact, it was an endlessly fascinating face.

And there were absolutely no signs of the tears that had so recently halted. No red-rimmed eyes. No pink nose. No flushed splotches.

Resolutely, Trevor pulled himself together. "What were you crying about this time?" he asked.

"Oh, don't! You'll start me off again!" She caught her underlip firmly between white teeth to stop a slight quiver, then apparently controlled a last urge to sob again. "It wasn't important anyway. It never is," she added in the wry tone of someone resigned to a troublesome but irrepressible trait.

Trevor grappled with that for a moment in silence. "I see. Then you're all right?"

"Oh, yes. It was kind of you to be concerned, though."

Given an opportunity to accept her thanks and walk away,
he found himself unable to do any such thing. "My name's Trevor King," he said as if it was an afterthought.

She gravely held out the hand not clutching the handkerchief. "I'm Taylor Shannon."

As his fingers closed around her slender ones, Trevor felt a very curious sensation. Startled, he stared down at their hands, aware of what felt like a genuine electric shock and then a spreading warmth. A soothing blanket crept up his arm, over his shoulder, and down his body, lending a feeling of security that was as strong as it was surprising.

"Well!" She, too, was staring at their clasped hands. Then her vivid eyes lifted to his face, and there was something in them he almost flinched from because it was so nakedly honest. "I'll be damned," she added blankly.

He rather hastily reclaimed his hand, feeling it tingle as it left hers. And the "security blanket" left him as if it had been a visible quilt ripped away.

"I didn't expect to meet you so soon," she said thoughtfully.

"What?" he managed, but she was going on, unhearing.

"It's really not the best time. In another five years, I would have—Oh, well. It's no use fighting these things. But I don't know anything about you," she accused irritably, staring at him. "You might be an ax murderer or something!"

"I'm not," he offered somewhat weakly, unable to get even the slightest handle on what was going on.

She was abruptly cheerful. "Oh, I know that! You like kids and animals; your favorite color is blue; you love Italian food and old movies; you live alone—at the moment," she added sapiently. "You have a younger brother who adores you, and you're a criminal lawyer."

Trevor was unable to hide his astonishment. "How'd you know all that?" he demanded.

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "On target?"

"All the way across the board!"

"That clinches it," she said cryptically. "I've never gotten so much from one touch."

He flexed the fingers that had held her hand, looking down at them for a moment. Then he stared at her warily. "Who are you?"

"Don't you mean what am I?" she corrected, seemingly amused.

"All right, then—
what
are you?"

"I'm the woman you're going to marry," she told him solemnly.

"I beg your pardon?"

Taylor began laughing. "Don't look so horrified! It'll probably work out very well, you know. You have more than a spark yourself, and that'll make things even better."

"A spark of what?" he asked, choosing the lesser of two evils.

"Raw talent."

Trevor ran fingers through his hair and stared at her. He couldn't help wondering if this undeniably fascinating woman was spending the odd day away from the funny farm, but he couldn't seem to make himself get up and walk away from her. "I don't know what we're talking about," he confessed finally.

She laughed again. "I'm sorry—I seem to have overpowered you! It's a fault of mine, I'm afraid, because I've lived with psychics so long I sometimes forget others aren't so familiar with it. We're talking about 'esper'—that's shorthand for psychic or parapsychological—abilities; that's what you have a spark of raw talent in."

He shook his head instantly. "I don't believe in that stuff."

Taylor sighed. "Oh, dear. I can just see the rocks looming in my path. If you don't believe, I've got my work cut out for me."

Ignoring this, he said firmly, "Jason put you up to this; that's how you knew so much about me."

"I've never met your brother."

"Then how d'you know Jason's my brother?" he pounced.

"The same way I know so much about you." She sighed again, murmuring to herself, "Parlor tricks. I knew it'd come to parlor tricks. And I hate them. Why did fate do this to me?"

"If you can read my mind—" he began, challenging.

"I'm way ahead of you," she interrupted dryly. "You want proof. You want me to do something that will instantly convince you I'm psychic. All right then, dammit—if it's parlor tricks you want, parlor tricks you shall have! Think of something very obscure—something only you know. Something I couldn't
possibly
have learned from anyone else."

She held out her hand commandingly, and Trevor, with only an instant's hesitation, closed his fingers around hers. He felt the warm blanket creeping up his shoulder, closed his mind to that, and began to concentrate.

Taylor's face was serene, her vivid eyes fixed on his face. And when she spoke, it was not in some blurred, trancelike voice, but in a calm and matter-of-fact tone.

"You're very young. There's a man you know. A friend of your parents. No, more than that. He's your godfather. He did something—no. They
said
he did something. They said he killed a man. You know he couldn't have done it. You think his lawyer believes him guilty. You think that's why he's been convicted. And why he's—"

She broke off abruptly as Trevor jerked his hand away. Apparently undisturbed by his sudden retreat, she gazed into his shocked eyes and said quietly, "I see. That's why you decided to become a lawyer. And you never told anyone that, did you." It wasn't a question.

Trevor drew a deep, shaken breath. "My God," he said unsteadily.

After looking at him for a moment, she began to talk lightly. "I'm like a sponge—soaking up information. It doesn't tire me, which is a bit uncommon among psychics. It
does
tire me if I have to reach out farther than touch; for instance, if I'm trying to find someone and have only a bit of clothing or jewelry to go on. My mother's a touch-telepath, too. Daddy's the precognitive one; I inherited a bit of his talent, but I'm not too strong in that, thank God."

Stirring slightly, Trevor made an attempt to untangle the threads of disbelief, panic, and finally belief. He only partially succeeded, but he was grateful for her obvious intention to give him time to get hold of himself. "Why ... thank God?" he murmured.

"About not being strongly precognitive?" She shook her head slightly. "Looking into the future isn't usually comfortable. You tend to see disasters rather than triumphs. Thankfully, Daddy can't see his own future or that of anyone he really cares about. And I just see bits and pieces."

Recalling the troubling statement she'd made, Trevor challenged, "Then how d'you know we'll be married?"

"Oh, that's different," she told him cheerfully. "I knew that instantly, the moment I touched you. I always expected to know, but I really didn't think it'd be this soon."

"How old are you?" he demanded suddenly.

"Twenty-six. And you're thirty-two, right?"

"Right." He sighed, wondering if "esper" abilities became more believable simply by being casually discussed. He found his own disbelief fading—speeded along by her earlier demonstration—and a growing discomfort taking its place.

She was smiling just a little. "That's always the second reaction," she mused softly. "First comes disbelief—then comes discomfort. Then fear."

He looked at her for a moment, seeing no self-pity in her remarkable eyes, but aware, suddenly, that it couldn't be a good feeling to inspire fear in others. Instinctively trying to close down his own mind—and uneasily aware that fear drove him—he changed the subject. "Surely you weren't serious about marriage?"

Taylor seemed disturbed for the first time. She looked at him, the naked honesty in her eyes, her face hurt. "Is the idea so distasteful to you?" she asked diffidently.

Gazing at that fascinating, hurt face, Trevor was disarmed totally against his will. "It isn't that," he said with more firmness than he'd intended. "But we're strangers! I mean—well,
I
can't pick facts about you out of thin air. Besides, I don't like having my future planned for me. And, if you want brutal honesty, I don't much like the idea of having a wife who reads minds!"

Oddly, she seemed less disturbed now. "Well, if that's all it is," she said dismissively. "I was afraid the thought of seeing my face across the breakfast table was giving you the horrors."

He laughed in spite of himself. "Hardly that. You ... have a fascinating face, Taylor Shannon. I suspect there's a lot about you I'd find fascinating. However," he added hastily, "the timing isn't right for me either. I'm at the midway point of a vacation, after which I have a heavy load of court cases." He got to his feet.

What was intended to be a polite and final leave-taking turned out to be no such thing. Taylor rose to her feet also, looking up at him hopefully. "I don't want to impose," she said
guilelessly, "but could you possibly give me a ride home? It's getting dark, and—"