Totally Spellbound (5 page)

He wanted to feel his mortality, not
her mortality.

“Was she pretty?” John
asked.

“Of course she was pretty,” Rob said.
“You knew her. She was the most beautiful woman on
earth.”

“No.” John’s voice was soft. “The
woman who burst your bubble.”

Rob hit the sleep button,
and stared at the darkening screen, not seeing it but the woman.
She lacked a modern beauty. She had curves where modern women had
angles. Her face was full, not bony, and her eyes were the most
spectacular green he had ever seen. She had perfect auburn hair—the
color of a Sherwood sunset in the fall—and a generous, kissable
mouth.

Her face was too lush for
Da Vinci, too pleasant for Rembrandt. There was nothing classic
about her. Nothing expected — not even that deep, rich
voice.

“Pretty?” Rob repeated. It seemed like
a small word for that woman. She wasn’t beautiful, not like Marian,
who had been a true English rose, with pale skin and dark hair and
even darker eyes. “She was too amazing to be pretty.”

“Amazing.” John smiled
approvingly. “So you chatted her up, used the old Hood charisma,
and wrapped her around your little finger, right?”

“Of course not,” Rob said.

“But you at least got her number,
right?”

“Number?”

“As in telephone number?” John said.
“You know, the way people in the new millennium do it?”

“I liked the old millennium,” Rob
said.

“Then I take it you didn’t get her
number,” John said.

“Why would I?”

“Because she’s the first woman that
interested you in eight hundred years.”

“That’s not true. There was
Charise.”

“Two dinners, a goodnight, and a thank
you? Four hundred years ago?”

“Her parents scared me
away.”

“They just wanted to meet
you.”

“They wanted me to marry
her.”

“Dating wasn’t a common
thing in the early sixteenth century.”

“I know.” Rob wanted out of this
conversation. “I lived through it, remember?”

“That’s what we were discussing,” John
said. “You didn’t live through it. You floated through
it.”

“Says the man who has
never made a commitment in his entire life.”

“I’m committed to causes, not
women.”

“Well, so am I,” Rob snapped, hoping
his tone would close the door on the conversation.

“What happened to the man who said you
couldn’t have a cause without a woman to support it?”

Rob glared at him. Even after all
these years, he hated discussing Marian. And John was wrong. Rob
had been involved with other women, and not just Charise (whom he
always brought up to irritate John). He’d known several widows who
wanted nothing more than he had—some companionship, some shared
times, and a warm bed.

Then there was that dancer
in Paris in the 1920s—the only woman he’d lived with since Marian.
She’d been interesting, and the entire fling had felt
daring.

But he wasn’t a fling sort of man. He
was monogamous. In fact, he was a one-woman kind of man.

The only problem was that
his one woman had shown up—and died—at the beginning of his very
very very long life.

The conversation had to end. It was
making his sour mood even darker. He was going to change the
subject.

But John got there first. “Were you
afraid of her?”

“Go to work, John,” Rob said. “Get out
of my office.”

“Because it seems like you
were if you didn’t get her number. Tell me you at least got her
name.”

“Out. Now.”

Judging by John’s
expression, it was good he no longer carried a staff, or he would
have thwacked Rob on the head with it. “You should’ve at least
gotten her name.”

“I could fire you.”

“It hasn’t worked before.”

“I can still whup you,” Rob
said.

“Right,” John said. “With the help of
security.”

Rob smiled for the first time that
morning. “Whatever it takes.”

John smiled back and eased out the
door, closing it gently behind him. Rob stared at it.

John knew him well. Rob was afraid. He
wasn’t afraid of dating or seeing a new woman or even spending time
with a companion.

He didn’t mind meeting someone
new.

He was afraid of something
old.

He wasn’t going to give his heart to a
mortal again.

He wasn’t going to go through that
kind of grief ever again.

Someone stood beside her. She could
hear him breathing. And he smelled of waffles and scrambled eggs.
Bacon, too. And coffee. Oh, how she wanted coffee.

Megan opened her eyes. A man in
uniform stared down at her. He had lovely blue eyes, fringed with
long black lashes, a zit on his right cheek, and stubble beside it.
His cap was a little too big, settling on the back of his head as
if it were glued there.

He held a tray in one hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said as if he’d
repeated it more than once. “But the kid has
disappeared.”

Kid? What was a man,
wearing a uniform and holding a tray, doing in her bedroom? And
what did he mean by kid?

Megan blinked again, started to roll
over, and realized she wasn’t in her room at all. She was in a
hotel room, in a suite to be exact, a suite Travers had voluntarily
and shockingly paid for to be even more exact, and she was sleeping
on the couch.

Her neck ached, her shirt
had bunched up over her stomach (which the kid with the tray was
trying hard not to look at), and the waistband of her jeans dug
into her left side.

Travers should have come back by now.
He should have awakened her much earlier.

And who was this man with the patience
of Job?

“Ma’am, I’m really sorry. But the
tray? And I need you to sign for this.”

Sign for. Tray. Bacon, eggs, waffles,
coffee. Room service. Boy, her mind was working slowly.

“Um.” Her mouth tasted like it was
full of wet cotton. “On the table?”

The man nodded, gave her a polite
smile, and executed a military turn. He walked into the dining area
and set the tray on the table. Then he took the dishes off as if he
were a real waiter.

Megan stood, pulled down her shirt,
ran her fingers through her hair (not that it would do any good),
and then stuck a thumb between her waistband and her side, trying
to get the fabric out of her skin. It sort of worked, enough so
that she was no longer in pain.

The man finished removing the dishes,
then he brought a computer slip to her, along with a
pen.

“How did you get in here, exactly?”
Megan asked, feeling as if he had seen her naked.

She never let anyone watch her sleep,
and this guy could’ve been standing there for days.

“The kid let me in,” he
said.

“Kyle?”

“I dunno. He opened the door, pointed
to the living room, and said you’d handle it.”

Because he couldn’t sign for the food.
Megan scrawled her name, checked to see if there was a tip, then
added one anyway, and handed the paper back to the room service
guy.

“Thanks,” he said with a little too
much sarcasm. How long had he been trying to wake her
up?

He grabbed his tray and left, slamming
the door behind him.

Apparently he had wanted out of the
room badly.

Megan sighed and scouted the area for
Kyle. She didn’t see him, but she heard a shower running somewhere
nearby. She headed toward his room.

No boy, no dog.

No kid in the shower.

A shiver ran through her. How could
she have lost Kyle?

At that moment the front door
opened.

“Hey, you’re awake!” Kyle said. He had
the dog on a leash. The dog lifted its long snout and sniffed the
air, then pointed directly at the food.

Megan had no idea that dachshunds were
pointers.

“They’re not,” Kyle said. “They just
really like sausage.”

She also had no idea she had spoken
out loud.

“You’re not,” Kyle said, “but you’re
broadcasting.”

This time, she did speak out loud.
“Broadcasting?”

“Thinking really loud. Some people do
that when they just wake up. It only happens to people who wake up
really slow.”

Like she did. Staring at a
man in uniform—every woman’s dream, Conchita would say. A
good-looking (albeit much too young) man, bearing food.

“Can you think about something else?”
Kyle’s cheeks were red.

Megan blushed. If he could hear that,
what else had he heard over the years? Was that why he was so
precocious? Because he knew about—

“Aunt Megan, please. Stop.”

Apparently he did.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Kyle, why
didn’t you tell me before last night?”

“I did,” he said miserably. “I told
you and Dad and Gramma and none of you believed me.”

But he had never told
Vivian, who had always claimed she had visions. Vivian would have
at least understood. Or pretended she did.

“I tried to tell Aunt Viv too. She
just thought I was making stuff up.”

Megan looked at her nephew with a
combination of horror and sympathy. Sympathy because she hated
being misunderstood, and horror because he had heard things no
child should hear.

“Kyle, baby, how long has this been
going on?”

He shrugged.

“How long, really?”

He shrugged again. The dog tugged on
the leash so hard that it nearly pulled him forward. He crouched
and released it. The dog made a beeline for the table, looking like
a heat-seeking missile with a tail.

“Crap,” Megan said, and launched
herself after the heat-seeking missile, hoping she’d arrive before
all the sausages were gone.

She wrapped an arm around the dog’s
stomach—which, despite its size, was surprisingly solid—and held
the creature against her as she turned toward Kyle.

“What do we do with it now?” she
asked.

He was watching with an expression of
bemusement on his face. And then she realized that he had probably
let the dog loose on purpose, just so that he could avoid her
question.

“Kyle,” she said as softly as she
could. “How long have you been able to hear other people’s
thoughts?”

He shrugged for a third
time.

The dog kicked her in the
back, its sharp claws digging through her shirt. Still, she hung on
to the creature, not willing to sacrifice her breakfast to
something that resembled a sausage itself.

“Tell me what to do with the dog,” she
said.

“Put him down,” Kyle said. “He knows
better.”

She bent over, set the dog down, and
the creature took off again, only this time it ran to Kyle. Kyle
crouched, hands out, and let the dog lick his face.

Kyle looked like he needed the
comfort.

Had the dog known that?

Kyle nodded, just a little, and Megan
wondered if he was answering her thoughts or if he was just
enjoying the dog.

“Kyle,” she said, not believing she
was asking the question. “How do I stop broadcasting?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Stop
concentrating, I guess. I dunno.”

She took a deep
breath, followed by another, focusing on her breathing. She had
been trained to do this as a therapist.
Calm your thoughts. Calm your mind. Relax
.

And her thoughts did quiet.

Except for one, really tiny, niggly
idea.

Kyle had been hearing other people’s
thoughts since he was born. That’s why he couldn’t tell her how
long he’d been psychic. He always had been.

Kyle had his face buried in the dog’s
fur. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he looked really
sad.

Megan walked toward him and put a hand
on his arm, helping him up. He stared at her—clearly expecting
rejection, because she had done it so many times before (how could
she believe in mind-reading? She’d been taught it didn’t exist.
Even though it had been so damn obvious. He always knew what people
were going to say a half second before they said it, and she always
said he was the most intuitive kid [maybe the most intuitive
person] she had ever known).

“C’mere,” she said, and enveloped him
in a hug.

For a moment he didn’t
respond, then he wrapped his arms around her as if she were a
lifeline. She wrapped her arms around him, too. God, she loved this
kid, and she hoped she was broadcasting that.

“You were,” he whispered into her
side.