The Trouble with Magic (Loveswept) (18 page)

It wasn’t until after he’d spent several hours tossing in bed, his muscles aching with tension, his mind weary with worry, that his fear and frustration took on the colors of anger and pain.

Past and present merged, festered, and poisoned his perspective on the future.

Effortlessly, he donned the old cloak of indifference that he called pride. He was not a man to make compromises in his life; he didn’t beg, and he wouldn’t be controlled. He didn’t feel pain, and he couldn’t be broken. Possessions were of little consequence to him—people even less.

By morning meaningful dialogue was no longer an option. Harriet suffered quietly, stoically, seemingly calm and resigned to her fate. Payton agonized safe inside his shell, coolly superior, indifferent, sarcastic. Conversation remained at a one word minimum—two maximum.

“Coffee?”

“Thanks.”

“Eggs?”

“No.”

“Stopped snowing.”

“Swell.”

“More toast?”

“No.”

“Finished?”

“Need help?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Boat’s here.”

“Swell.”

“Hi, Tony.”

“Tony Saone. Payton Dunsmore.”

“Hello.”

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

One of them turned lime-green on the way back to St. Peter’s Bay, but managed to retain his dignity—as well as his breakfast toast. The other, wisely, maintained a strict silence until they were soundly on shore.

“Your room is still available at the inn,” she said, standing beside him after Tony Saone, their rescuer, dropped them at the end of the dock and proceeded on to the marina. “The limousine will be back at one o’clock to take you wherever you want to go.”

“Fine.” Just to prove to himself that he could, he walked away from her—but he felt no satisfaction.

“Payton?” she called after him. He stopped but didn’t turn. “I’m ... sorry.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“Payton?” she called again, stopping him once more. “I won’t forget you. Ever.”

He turned to her then. Sad brown eyes met frozen emerald-green ones. His voice was equally cold but soft when he finally replied, “Ever is a long time, Harri.”

P
AYTON DUNSMORE HAD WASTED
no time foreclosing on Harriet’s island. The mortgage and back taxes owed on Jovette Island were paid in full before the end of November, and the title changed hands via the attorneys and realtors. She neither saw nor heard from Payton during the transaction, though she waited daily for the police to appear on her doorstep.

Christmas was a dismal affair. The campus was deserted, and the town of Massena burrowed itself in against the cold, for a holiday season of quiet
family
gatherings. Overnight, it became a new year. To celebrate, Harriet hung up a new calendar. Classes resumed, the winter term was well under way, and still there was no dulling of the ache she carried in her heart, no release from the longing in her spirit, no dwindling of the love she felt for the man she’d left in St. Peter’s Bay nearly three months earlier. The magic wasn’t wearing off as she had thought it would, as she had prayed it would with time.

She sincerely hoped that Payton wasn’t suffering in the same state of suspended animation; that the force that had linked them so closely on the island had dispelled itself, left him free to resume his life without her.

She hoped it, truly and with almost every fiber of her being—almost. For deep inside, so deep and so well buried in guilt that her conscious mind couldn’t acknowledge it; so deep that only her dreams could attest to the fact, she was watching for him, waiting for him, sure that he would come for her.

“Bundle up before you go out this morning,” the radio announcer warned her. “It’s biting cold—excellent hog-killin’ weather for those of you who’ve got ’em.”

Harriet turned off the radio; the daily farm report was her cue to leave the house within three minutes or be late for her first morning class. Why she knocked herself out getting to school on time, when most of her students didn’t wake up until
after
class anyway, was beyond her. She suspected it had something to do with responsibility and setting a good example and getting paid a regular salary, but an eight
A.M.
biology lab was too much, even for her. Next year she’d schedule differently.

If there was a next year, she thought, locking her front door on the way out. She was always a bit surprised to walk out of her house and not find it surrounded by police cars, lights flashing, the officers armed and alert. How long was it going to take for the magic to wear off? How long before Payton came to his senses and took his revenge? She wouldn’t consider the possibility that he’d exact his vengeance by doing nothing at all to her. He wasn’t a cruel man, just slow to recover.

The car keys slipped from her gloved hand. She fumbled blindly for them on the floorboard, her mind quickly reviewing the morning lesson plan.

The used compact car she’d acquired to replace the pride and joy she’d driven three years earlier, when she could afford frequent timing adjustments and tune-ups from expensive foreign car dealerships, was nothing if not dependable. The engine turned over with the first twist of the ignition, though she could tell from its sputtering that it wasn’t eager to be disturbed so early and on such a chilly morning.

Music filled the car.

She glanced at the radio. It wasn’t on.

It was a mellifluous tinkling, like a music box. The tune was familiar, but she couldn’t name it. She turned the engine off, and the car went silent. She turned the key in the ignition again, and the melody started once more. She opened the car door, then quickly closed it. The music was playing outside the car as well as inside. She turned the engine off and got out.

Harriet was no mechanic, still nothing under the hood appeared to have been tampered with.

With her hands on her hips, the only logical explanation she could come up with was that she was the victim of a practical joke. It hadn’t been so long ago that she couldn’t remember her own college days. Higher education hadn’t evolved much in those years, and its students were still half-adult, half-child creatures who needed an outlet, she thought, trying not to be too angry.

She looked at her watch. She was going to be late. The questions now were, was she going to miss class completely while she tore her car apart looking for the source of the music; was she going to miss half the class walking to school or was she going to be a little tardy by driving to the science building in what now sounded like an ice-cream truck?

Why me? she wondered, driving down Main Street, ignoring the curious glances, grateful that it was too early for the entire town of Massena to be out and about. Didn’t she have enough on her mind? Was she such an awful teacher? Was this retaliation for an eight
A.M.
biology lab? Or was she simply the easiest target, being the newest and the only unmarried female member of the staff?

Heads turned, fingers pointed, and students produced a riot of laughter as she drove down the lane toward her office. She pulled into her parking space and quickly put an end to the infernal noise that announced her arrival.

“Sorry. All sold out,” she said, responding to various requests for ice-cream bars and pops, trying to maintain the facade of a good sport while she felt red-cheeked and undignified. “No. I’m out of cherry Popsicles too. Better luck tomorrow.”

She was pleased that her class had taken the initiative to begin the lab without her, though they were all under suspicion until she discovered who the uncouth car culprit was. Biology could be a disgusting science if one put her mind to it, she decided vengefully.

This term, the lab was for junior embryologists, studying the development of animals from fertilized egg through the birth or hatching process.

“So, if heat is all a fertilized egg needs to develop and eventually hatch, why wouldn’t turning up the heat a little, say a degree or two or three—why wouldn’t that speed up the process?” she asked the class.

When no one answered, she looked up from the incubator she was adjusting—and that’s when she saw them.

Bubbles. Thousands of free-floating bubbles pouring into her classroom through an air vent above the door at the back of the room.

“Oh, this is too much,” she said, still half angry from the last prank she’d been on the receiving end of. “I want this to stop immediately.”

The bubbles ignored her. The students looked confused—and more than a little amused.

“I mean it. Whoever is responsible for this, please turn the bubbles off now.”

She looked from one blank face to the next, and when she could not perceive any guilt, she marched to the back of the room and opened the door to the hall. Stepping out and looking up, she saw that the vent was one-sided, opening only into her classroom.

“What is this?” she asked herself aloud.

“Bubbles,” one of her more astute pupils answered.

“I can see they’re bubbles,” she said, the strain on her temper quivering in her voice. “But where are the bubbles coming from?”

“That air vent,” the same student said. He grinned at her, and she made a mental note to give him a failing grade.

“Get me something to plug this up with, please,” she said to no one special, pulling a chair under the vent. “This isn’t Friday the thirteenth or April Fool’s Day. I must have missed the advent of the new world order and the institution of Get Miss Wheaton Day.”

A bloodcurdling scream scurried straight up her spine, throwing her off balance, nearly toppling her from the chair.

“What on earth ...” she said, righting herself and looking about.

The ceiling was covered with helium-filled balloons, and still they continued to rush out of the supply closet, two and three at a time. Big, bright red balloons.

The startled student who’d freed them had since recovered and was giggling in wonder and delight.

“They say ‘I love you,’ ” she said, looking at Harriet.

“What?”

“The balloons. They have ‘I love you’ written on them.” She grabbed one as it floated by and turned the worded side to Harriet. “See. ‘I love you.’ ”

She could feel all the blood draining from her face and her heart beginning to race as she looked to each of the girls in the class. None of them was inclined to accept the rather overzealous declaration of love and seemed bent on thinking that the balloons belonged to her.

“But I’m not seeing anyone right now,” she said, her hands held out in supplication.

She felt a draft from the door behind her as it opened, but before she could turn around, there was a flash of light and a thick cloaking puff of smoke.

She screamed and crouched low, covering her head with her arms.

“Maybe you’re not seeing anyone right now because you aren’t looking,” she heard a familiar voice say.

She didn’t move. She was going to wait until she woke up and call it all a bad dream.

“Harriet,” the voice said, cool and calm. “I’m making a fool of myself for you. The least you could do is pay attention.”

She groaned and relinquished her fate to destiny.

When she could bring herself to look at him, he flapped his black cloak at her, snapping it in the air.

“Payton. ...”

“See. I knew she’d remember me,” he said, addressing the class. He stepped around Harriet, grinned at a young woman with a particularly stupid look of awe on her face, and swooshed his wrap dramatically. “Is this cape great, or what?”

There was a general murmur that it was indeed a great cape, and he smiled at his audience with pleasure.

“Payton. Please,” she said, picturing herself jobless and destitute. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to tell you that I love you.”

Why wasn’t she thrilled? For one, they had a lot to talk about before they could discuss love. Two, she was sure he was still suffering from the effects of the island’s magic. And thirdly ...

“This isn’t the best time or place to get into this, Payton.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think my timing is as good as yours was when you kidnapped me.” To the chorus of gasps and grumbles from the students, he simply grinned and nodded. “It’s true. I’ll bet you didn’t know that your little teacher here is capable of almost anything, including kidnapping, for the sake of love.”

His gaze caught and held hers as he moved toward her. Passion stormed like an angry sea in the depths of his eyes. Her breath caught in her throat, and her tongue stuck to the dry roof of her mouth. She felt dizzy from the hammering of her heartbeat in her ears. He curled his arms around her waist and pulled her close—she couldn’t pull away.

“She lured me into a trap. She kidnapped me,” he said, his voice soft. “She seduced me and cast a magic spell over me. She made me fall in love with her.” And in quite a different voice he added, “Then she broke my heart.”

He moved away from her in a flaring flurry of black silk, leaving her dazed and helpless to stop him.

“Can you believe it?” he asked his fans—and no they couldn’t. “Look at her.” An arm and the cape pointed in her direction. “So beautiful. So sweet and innocent looking. So appealing ... and yet, so treacherous.”

That brought her back to reality.

“Treacherous? Me?” She was floored. And getting angry. “You were never in any danger. And the one time I thought you were, I was prepared to take you straight back to St. Peter’s Bay and turn myself in—but as it turned out,
you
were lying to me.”

“And you were always truthful with me?”

“After I sank the dinghy, yes.”

“So, you really loved me?”

“Yes.”

“And do you still?”

Her mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. She wanted to say no. It was the best answer. It would hurt them both, but the spell needed to be broken, he needed to go on with his life. However, no wasn’t a truthful answer. She did love him.

“Ah. She’s speechless. A rare and encouraging event,” he said. “Because, you see, she’s usually very opinionated, and she doesn’t hesitate to speak her mind.”

“I’m not opinionated. I have opinions, yes, but—”

“She also thinks she’s an authority on magic.”