“I’ll see you on Monday, Sara,” Mrs. Mills said as she walked to the auditorium door on their left.
Sara murmured parting words while pushing her laptop into the sleeve inside her messenger bag. Carefully she gathered her papers in the correct order. Each was tapped into place then set into the file folder marked “Communications Honors.” Her pencil went into its sheath next. Only when everything had been put away did she face him.
From one year to the next, Brent bulked up more than the last. In the years since second grade, he’d gone from the skinny but intimidating boy to the imposing man she saw before her now. Though he wasn’t large, there was an illusion of bulk about him as if at any moment he’d go into a Hulk-like rage. It probably had to do with his eyes—glittering green lines that had never looked happy in all the years she’d known him.
A dusting of dark hair coated the cleft chin nearly digging into his chest—a chin she’d always thought was too long to balance out his rose lips. His anchor shaped nose still held a bump from where Jeremy Fisher had broken it during gym class in sixth grade. The bump gave him character he hadn’t needed.
Age hadn’t softened Brent’s menacing looks. Rather the bushy black eyebrows and carefully cut sideburns only emphasized them. And now he had the broad shoulders and thick neck to go along with his formidable swagger.
Sara adopted the sweet smile she used on wayward souls. “Just had the urge to hear a lecture on marketing?”
“No.” Brent’s voice was even in both its baritone pitch and steady intonation. It told her nothing of why he’d come.
She walked up the broad carpeted steps, stopping two below him. There she waited for him to explain his visit while working not to fidget her fingers on her linen slacks.
Rather than do so, he pushed off the wall and halved the distance between them in a stiff motion of clopping leather boots. His tone remained steady, still hiding his true purpose. “Do you have someplace private we can talk?”
Sara glanced around the room as if to say
this
was private.
“Someplace where you control the doors,” he responded to her unspoken statement.
If he wanted absolute privacy then he planned to discuss things vanilla humans couldn’t hear. The white-knuckled fists hanging beside his stiff legs might have been worrying if Brent had ever done more than hurl harmful words. However his pose worried her for a different reason. Those lips weren’t compressed into his usual irritated line. Instead, they formed a grim crescent moon. Brent was unhappy, that much was obvious. And the way his pupils darted to the left or right the moment she’d catch his gaze meant this was more than resentment for being sent on this errand.
Something was wrong.
Sara nodded twice. “My room is just across campus.”
She’d always loved the small campus with its lush grass, fragrant blooms, and canopy of trees amidst Georgian architecture, but today it held none of its usual charm. It was terribly uncomfortable to pass the familiar landmarks with Brent along for the stroll. Each person who smiled and waved seemed to tighten the coil surely hidden within his back. And when those individuals happened to be male, Brent cast his glimmering green gaze on them as though he’d like to incinerate them where they stood.
Sara wished it were a metaphor. But as a powerful Fire witch, Brent
could
incinerate any of these people with the mere flick of his wrist. Though he wouldn’t dare because it would mean outing them to the unsuspecting public, Sara focused a portion of her attention on the aether all the same. If he so much as stirred Fire magic, she’d sense it within the invisible swirl of energy that surrounded everything. And she’d be ready to stop him.
The sorority house was quiet as it always was during the dinner hour. She breezed through the living room to the stairs. Past the doors emblazoned with the names of her many sorority sisters, Sara led on until she reached her own.
Brent cast a measuring eye over the greeting cards, cartoons, flowers, and other notes that decorated her door. When she unlocked it, swinging it within, his attention remained focused on the card she’d received on Valentine’s Day.
Sara dropped her bag on the floor beside the door so she could snatch up her discarded nightgown. A moment too late, she spotted the pair of boxer shorts hung over her desk chair. Brent’s gaze immediately honed in on them.
Her cheeks warmed as if she’d been caught sneaking a boy into her room. Sara battled down the reaction. She was twenty-three. She’d been a legal adult for years. And she’d been dating since she was thirteen. It should have come as no surprise to Brent she had sex with males. He’d personally punched out the guy who had taken her virginity in the tenth grade.
Sara pulled the window shut for the distraction from her memories. “The house is empty. You can talk now and no one will hear.”
The thud of Brent closing the door meant she was in a bedroom, alone with him. She hadn’t considered worrying about it until now. But her worry for what he’d do with a bed nearby fled when he spoke.
“Your father is dead.”
Chapter Two
Brent hadn’t meant to be quite so blunt. He’d intended to ease her into the bad news. But when he’d seen the pair of boxers on her chair after having read the love note on the door, something inside him had snapped.
Sara’s pouty coral pink lips parted slightly. The delicate tongue visible between her whitened teeth shouldn’t have made him wonder what she tasted like. Not at a time like this.
Though her squinted, pale blue irises gazed in his direction, they were vacant. A strand of her honey hair fell against her upturned nose and across her blue silk blouse while she stood staring at nothing. He remained rigid in his spot by the door because doing anything else would unleash his urge to touch her hair.
Sara’s soft soprano voice cut through the silence. “What happened?”
“The priest from the Illiana coven challenged him.”
He didn’t need to explain that the lesser priest had won. She’d understand her father had died in a power play. It was the way of their race.
Nevertheless, her eyes cleared and sharpened on his face. Sara’s voice soon matched. “And where were
you
?”
Brent’s entire body went stiff at her unspoken accusation.
She went on in a lowered, derisive tone. “Where was my father’s faithful guard dog when he was finally needed?”
He wanted to grab her by the shoulders, and shake her until she cried like an ordinary young woman who had just learned her father was dead. Brent most certainly didn’t want her to blame the passing of the most honorable man he’d ever known on him.
“You know no one can interfere in a challenge once accepted.” He hadn’t meant his voice to sound as menacing as it had but there was no taking it back now.
“You could have barred the priest from my father’s house!” Her shout echoed across the small room. Sara’s eyes were two finely squinted lines. Her lips vibrated with fury. She’d never looked more beautiful to him. “You could have persuaded him to postpone the challenge! You could have done
something
!”
She was incensed with grief. There was no reasoning with her now. But it did his conscience little good to hear her rant things he’d wished he’d done. He had been Fintan McKenna’s faithful assistant during the five years since high school graduation. And he’d been unable to stop his mentor’s premature death.
He drew in a slow breath, meeting her now wide and enraged gaze. “I did do something.” After a beat he concluded, “I killed your father’s murderer.”
****
Sara sunk onto the bed when her legs gave out. The single phrase hammered the truth home. Her father was truly dead.
She didn’t need to ask if his death had been painless. It hadn’t. But she could ask one other thing.
“Was it quick?”
“Yes.” Brent’s response was instantaneous, as though it were a small salve for his guilt.
Sara squeezed her eyes shut. She supposed she could thank Brent for her father’s speedy passing. Brent wouldn’t have allowed Fintan to suffer long.
Her gaze slowly fixed on Brent in his spot blocking the door. His handsome features were drawn tight as he stared at his feet and clutched himself. Good. She hoped his conscience was killing him.
She spoke in a hollow voice. “So you’re the new high priest of the Ohio River Valley.”
“It would appear so.”
The upper half of her face crinkled. “Don’t play cute, Brenton. Someone challenged my father and won his position. Then you challenged them and won. Ergo you have the position.”
“Maybe I plan to give it to someone else.”
Sara tossed her hands out impatiently. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“It does for the Air witches.”
Sara had had enough of his pointless responses. Even if he did give the position to someone else, whoever was foolish enough to accept it would be seen as weak, and would be quickly challenged.
She tilted her head peevishly, a pose that was at odds with her feigned calm. “Thank you for traveling all this way to tell me the distressing news. I’m sure you have to be on your way now.”
“You’re coming back.”
Though it wasn’t a question, she treated it as one. “Send me the information for the funeral and I’ll be there.”
It was the least she could do. Her daddy had rescued her from a dying mother. He’d raised her himself when few males of their race got involved with their offspring. Then Fintan had financed her every whim. In return, she’d treated him like a king.
“The funeral is tomorrow at ten,” Brent reported.
“I’ll be there.”
In order to be in Indiana at ten in the morning she’d have to leave tonight. Given it was already past five, she had little time to get on the road.
Brent understood as well. “You have an hour to pack your stuff while I get us dinner.”
“I don’t need an hour to pack for a weekend.”
Even as the words left her mouth, she knew what he’d say. The response was visible in his hard-edged gaze and tightly drawn lips. Brent expected her to pack up her entire room, and return to Indiana five weeks early.
“It’s not for the weekend,” he replied predictably. “You are Fintan’s only living child. The priest who killed him has many offspring. They’re going to take vengeance. You need to be somewhere safe.”
“You didn’t keep my father safe. What makes you think you can keep me safe?”
Sara shouldn’t have said it. The situation had made her unreasonable. But she couldn’t muster the urge to care. Her father was dead, and his frustrating guard dog had come to collect her.
Brent’s jaw clicked shut with a noticeable sound. He eased it enough to speak a moment later. “I kept your father safe from everything I could, but you know I was helpless in the face of a challenge.”
She did know, but she needed someone to be angry with now that the priest responsible was dead. Brent was an easy target. “I’m not going back with you.”
“No. I’m going back with you. Pack. I’ll be back.” Brent twisted the doorknob then quickly escaped the room before she could argue.
She grabbed the closest thing at hand and thoughtlessly hurled it at the door. A sharp scream tore from her throat as she released the object.
Later she’d be upset she’d destroyed the candle her sorority sister had given her for homecoming, and that she’d given in to the famed Fire witch aggression. Right now, the only emotion she was capable of was seething.
But seething was better than falling apart. Especially in front of Brent.
****
Brent drove the rented sports car into the tiny town in search of a suitable meal. Sara disliked fast food. She preferred fresh vegetables, choice meat, and delicious real fruit smoothies. It had been nothing but the best for Fintan’s princess. His head throbbed with anger.
Why was he here?
He could have sent any of the witches subservient to the high priest. Sara would have preferred to hear the news from one of her friends. She certainly wouldn’t thank him for driving three hundred and fifty miles across the country to personally see to her safety.
This had seemed like a task for him—for the man who had become Fintan’s closest confidant. Brent knew what Fintan had wanted for his daughter. It wasn’t a fiery death. He owed it to his mentor to see to Sara’s safety even if it drove them both crazy.
But
six
hours in her Lexus were going to be nearly impossible to handle. She’d been unable to hold her tongue within seconds of hearing the horrible news. There’d be nothing keeping her quiet on the drive back to Indiana.
Maybe he ought to drug her dinner.
His mentor’s unsmiling visage flashed in his mind’s eye. No drugging the princess then.
Brent ran a hand roughly through his hair then bashed his head against the headrest as he sat at the red light in the middle of the tiny downtown. He didn’t want to think about why the love note on her door had infuriated him. In truth, he already knew.
Everything had always come easily to Sara McKenna. She’d stolen away his friends a half hour after she’d arrived from Chicago—friends he’d spent two years cultivating. All she’d had to do was bat her golden lashes and spare a few bright smiles. They’d been putty in her hands. And the pattern had continued through graduation.
Sara had held an honored place as daughter of the regional high priest when Brent’s own father had never set eyes on him. That was how it was supposed to be. The only support a male witch was meant to give his children was money.
Other mothers had died young. Their children had been sent to sisters, aunts, and cousins—never to the father. But Sara was charmed.
Luck was her lady and Brent would always resent her for it.
****
Sara could have been insubordinate. She could have failed to pack. She could have gotten in her crossover and started back to Indiana without him. But he would have tracked her down, and then she’d have been in a world of hurt. Instead, she’d play nice until Monday.