Once Upon a Star Read online

  She left the question hanging, walked back into the kitchen. She took a sip of her tea, felt the hot flow of whiskey slide into her, then began to select her other arrangements and put them where she liked. “It would be hard for you, being told this story since you were a child, being expected to accept it.”

  “Can you accept it?” he demanded. “Can you just shrug off education and reason and accept that you’re to belong to me because a legend says so?”

  “I would’ve said no.” Pleasing herself, she set bottles of heather on the narrow stone mantel over the simmering fire. “I would have been intrigued, amused, maybe a little thrilled at the idea of it all. Then I would have laughed it off. I would have,” she said as she turned to face him. “Until I kissed you and felt what I felt inside me, and inside you.”

  “Desire’s an easy thing.”

  “That’s right, and if that had been it, if that had been all, we’d both have acted on it. If that had been all, you wouldn’t be angry now, with yourself and with me.”

  “You’re awfully bloody calm about it.”

  “I know.” She smiled then, couldn’t help herself. “Isn’t that odd? But then, I’m odd. Everyone says so. Lena, the duck out of water, the square peg, the fumbler always just off center. But I don’t feel odd or out of place here. So it’s easier for me to be calm.”

  Nor did she look out of place, he thought, wandering through the cottage placing her flowers. “I don’t believe in magic.”

  “And I’ve looked for it all my life.” She took a sprig of heather, held it out to him. “So, I’ll make you a promise.”

  “You don’t owe me promises. You don’t owe me anything.”

  “It’s free. I won’t hold you with legends or magic. When I can leave, if that’s what you want, I’ll go.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m in love with you, and love doesn’t cling.”

  Humbled, he took the heather, slipped it into her hair. “Allena, it takes clear eyes to recognize what’s in the heart so easily. I don’t have them. I’ll hurt you.” He skimmed his fingers down her cheek. “And I find I’d rather not.”

  “I’m fairly sturdy. I’ve never been in love before, Conal, and I might be terrible at it. But right now it suits me, and that’s enough.”

  He refused to believe anything could be so simple. “I’m drawn to you. I want my hands on you. I want you under me. If that’s all, it might not be enough for you, or for me in the end. So it’s best to stand back.”

  He walked to the peg, tugged down his slicker. “I need to work,” he said, and went out into the rain.

  It would be more than she’d had, she realized, and knew that if necessary, she could make it enough.

  The storm was only a grumble when he came back. Evening was falling, soft and misty. The first thing he noticed when he stepped inside, was the scent. Something hot and rich that reminded his stomach it was empty.

  Then he noticed the little changes in the living room. Just a few subtle touches: a table shifted, cushions smoothed. He wouldn’t have noticed the dust, but he noticed the absence of it, and the faint tang of polish.

  She’d kept the fire going, and the light, mixed with that of the candles she’d found and set about, was welcoming. She’d put music on as well and was humming along to it as she worked in the kitchen.

  Even as he hung up his slicker, the tension he’d carried through his work simply slid off his shoulders.

  “I made some soup,” she called out. “I hunted up some herbs from the kitchen bed, foraged around in here. You didn’t have a lot to work with, so it’s pretty basic.”

  “It smells fine. I’m grateful.”

  “Well, we have to eat, don’t we?”

  “You wouldn’t say that so easy if I’d been the one doing the cooking.” She’d already set the table, making the mismatched plates and bowls look cheerful and clever instead of careless. There were candles there, too, and one of the bottles of wine he’d brought from Dublin stood breathing on the counter.

  She was making biscuits.

  “Allena, you needn’t have gone to such trouble.”

  “Oh, I like puttering around. Cooking’s kind of a hobby.” She poured him wine. “Actually, I took lessons. I took a lot of lessons. This time I thought maybe I’d be a chef or open my own restaurant.”

  “And?”

  “There’s a lot more to running a restaurant than cooking. I’m horrible at business. As for the chef idea, I realized you had to cook pretty much the same things night after night, and on demand, to suit the menu, you know? So, it turned into one of my many hobbies.” She slipped the biscuits into the oven. “But at least this one has a practical purpose. So.” She dusted her hands on the dishcloth she’d tucked into her waistband. “I hope you’re hungry.”

  He flashed a grin that made her heart leap. “I’m next to starving.”

  “Good.” She set out the dish of cheese and olives she’d put together. “Then you won’t be critical.”

  Where he would have ladled the soup straight from the kettle, she poured it into a thick white bowl. Already she’d hunted out the glass dish his mother had used for butter and that he hadn’t seen for years. The biscuits went in a basket lined with a cloth of blue and white checks. When she started to serve the soup, he laid a hand over hers.

  “I’ll do it. Sit.”

  The scents alone were enough to make him weep in gratitude. The first taste of herbed broth thick with hunks of vegetables made him close his eyes in pleasure.

  When he opened them again, she was watching him with amused delight. “I like your hobby,” he told her. “I hope you’ll feel free to indulge yourself with it as long as you’re here.”

  She selected a biscuit, studied it. It was so gratifying to see him smile. “That’s very generous of you.”

  “I’ve been living on my own poor skills for some months now.” His eyes met hers, held. “You make me realize what I’ve missed. I’m a moody man, Allena.”

  “Really?” Her voice was so mild the insult nearly slipped by him. But he was quick.

  He laughed, shook his head, and spooned up more soup. “It won’t be a quiet couple of days, I’m thinking.”

  5

  HE SLEPT IN his studio. It seemed the wisest course.

  He wanted her, and that was a problem. He had no doubt she would have shared the bed with him, shared herself with him. As much as he would have preferred that to the chilly and narrow cot crammed into his work space, it didn’t seem fair to take advantage of her romantic notions.

  She fancied herself in love with him.

  It was baffling, really, to think that a woman could make such a decision, state it right out, in a fingersnap of time. But then, Allena Kennedy wasn’t like any of the other women who’d passed in and out of his life. A complicated package, she was, he thought. It would have been easy to dismiss her as a simple, almost foolish sort. At a first and casual glance.

  But Conal wasn’t one for casual glances. There were layers to her—thoughtful, bubbling, passionate, and compassionate layers. Odd, wasn’t it? he mused, that she didn’t seem to recognize them in herself.

  That lack of awareness added one more layer, and that was sweetness.

  Absently, with his eyes still gritty from a restless night, he began to sketch. Allena Kennedy from New York City, the square peg in what appeared to be a family of conformists. The woman who had yet to find herself, yet seemed perfectly content to deal with where she’d landed. A modern woman, certainly, but one who still accepted tales of magic.

  No, more than accepted, he thought now. She embraced them. As if she’d just been waiting to be told where it was she’d been going all along.

  That he wouldn’t do, refused to do. All his life he’d been told this day would come. He wouldn’t passively fall in, give up his own will. He had come back to this place at this time to prove it.

  And he could almost hear the fates giggling.

  Scowling, he studied what he’
d drawn. It was Allena with her long eyes and sharp bones, the short and shaggy hair that suited that angular face and slender neck. And at her back, he’d sketched in the hint of faerie wings.

  They suited her as well.

  It annoyed the hell out of him.

  Conal tossed the pad aside. He had work to do, and he’d get to it as soon as he’d had some tea.

  The wind was still up. The morning sun was slipping through the stacked clouds to dance over the water. The only thunder now was the crash and boom of waves on the shore. He loved the look of it, that changing and capricious sea. His years in Dublin hadn’t been able to feed this single need in him, for the water and the sky and the rough and simple land that was his.

  However often he left, wherever he went, he would always be drawn back. For here was heart and soul.

  Turning away from the sea, he saw her.

  She knelt in the garden, flowers rioting around her and the quiet morning sun shimmering over her hair. Her face was turned away from him, but he could see it in his mind. She would have that half-dreaming, contented look in her eyes as she tugged away the weeds he’d ignored.

  Already the flowers looked cheerful, as if pleased with the attention after weeks of neglect.

  There was smoke pluming from the chimney, a broom propped against the front wall. She’d dug a basket out of God knew where, and in this she tossed the weeds. Her feet were bare.

  Warmth slid into him before he could stop it and murmured welcome in his ear.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  She looked up at his voice, and she was indeed happy. “They needed it. Besides, I love flowers. I have pots of them all over my apartment, but this is so much better. I’ve never seen snapdragons so big.” She traced a finger on a spike of butter-yellow blooms. “They always make me think of Alice.”

  “Alice?”

  “In Wonderland. I’ve already made tea.” She got to her feet, then winced at the dirt on the knees of her trousers. “I guess I should’ve been more careful. It’s not like I have a vast wardrobe to choose from at the moment. So. How do you like your eggs?”

  He started to tell her she wasn’t obliged to cook his breakfast. But he remembered just how fine the soup had been the night before. “Scrambled would be nice, if it’s no trouble.”

  “None, and it’s the least I can do for kicking you out of your own bed.” She stepped up to the door, then turned. Her eyes were eloquent, and patient. “You could have stayed.”

  “I know it.”

  She held his gaze another moment, then nodded. “You had some bacon in your freezer. I took it out last night to thaw. Oh, and your shower dripped. It just needed a new washer.”

  He paused at the doorway, remembered, as he hadn’t in years, to wipe his feet. “You fixed the shower?”

  “Well, it dripped.” She was already walking into the kitchen. “You probably want to clean up. I’ll get breakfast started.”

  He scratched the back of his neck. “I’m grateful.”

  She slanted him a look. “So am I.”

  When he went into the bedroom, she did a quick dance, hugged herself. Oh, she loved this place. It was a storybook, and she was right in the middle of it. She’d awakened that morning half believing it had all been a dream. But then she’d opened her eyes to that misty early light, had smelled the faint drift of smoke from the dying fire, the tang of heather she’d put beside the bed.

  It was a dream. The most wonderful, the most real dream she’d ever had. And she was going to keep it.

  He didn’t want it, didn’t want her. But that could change. There were two days yet to open his heart. How could his stay closed when hers was so full? Love was nothing like she’d expected it to be.

  It was so much more brilliant.

  She needed the hope, the faith, that on one of the days left to her he would wake up and feel what she did.

  Love, she discovered, was so huge it filled every space inside with brightness. There was no room for shadows, for doubts.

  She was in love, with the man, with the place, with the promise. It wasn’t just in the rush of an instant, though there was that thrill as well. But twined with it was a lovely, settled comfort, an ease of being, of knowing. And that was something she wanted for him.

  For once in her life, she vowed, she wouldn’t fail. She would not lose.

  Closing her eyes, she touched the star that hung between her breasts. “I’ll make it happen,” she whispered, then with a happy sigh, she started breakfast.

  He didn’t know what to make of it. He couldn’t have said just what state the bathroom had been in before, but he was dead certain it hadn’t sparkled. There may or may not have been fresh towels out the last time he’d seen it. But he thought not. There hadn’t been a bottle of flowers on the windowsill.

  The shower had dripped, that he remembered. He’d meant to get to that.

  He could be certain that it was a great deal more pleasant to shower and shave in a room where the porcelain gleamed and the air smelled faintly of lemon and flowers.

  Because of it, he guiltily wiped up after himself and hung the towel to dry instead of tossing it on the floor.

  The bedroom showed her touch as well. The bed was tidily made, the pillows fluffed up. She’d opened the windows wide to bring in the sun and the breeze. It made him realize he’d lived entirely too long with dust and dark.

  Then he stepped out. She was singing in the kitchen. A pretty voice. And the scents that wafted to him were those of childhood. Bread toasting, bacon frying.

  There was a rumble he recognized as the washer spinning a load. He could only shake his head.

  “How long have you been up and about?” he asked her.

  “I woke up at dawn.” She turned to pass him a mug of tea over the counter. “It was so gorgeous I couldn’t get back to sleep. I’ve been piddling.”

  “You’ve a rare knack for piddling.”

  “My father calls it nervous energy. Oh, I let Hugh out. He bolted to the door the minute my feet hit the floor, so I figured that was the routine.”

  “He likes to run around in the mornings. Dog piddling, I suppose.”

  It made her laugh as she scooped his eggs from skillet to plate. “He’s terrific company. I felt very safe and snug with him curled up at the foot of the bed last night.”

  “He’s deserted me for a pretty face.” He sat, then caught her hand. “Where’s yours?”

  “I had something earlier. I’ll let you eat in peace. My father hates to be chattered at over breakfast. I’ll just hang out the wash.”

  “I’m not your father. Would you sit? Please.” He waited until she took a seat and for the first time noticed nerves in the way she linked her fingers together. Now what was that about? “Allena, do you think I expect you to cater to me this way? Cook and serve and tidy?”

  “No, of course not.” The lift had gone out of her voice, out of her eyes. “I’ve overstepped. I’m always doing that. I didn’t think.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Not at all.” His eyes were keen, part of his gift, and they saw how her shoulders had braced, her body tensed. “What are you doing? Waiting for the lecture?” With a shake of his head, he began to eat. “They’ve done what they could, haven’t they, to stifle you? Why is it people are always so desperate to mold another into their vision, their way? I’m saying only that you’re not obliged to cook my meals and scrub my bath. While you’re here you should do what pleases you.”

  “I guess I have been.”

  “Fine. You won’t hear any complaints from me. I don’t know what you’ve done with these humble eggs unless it’s magic.”

  She relaxed again. “Thyme and dill, from your very neglected herb bed. If I had a house, I’d plant herbs, and gardens.” Imagining it, she propped her chin on her fist. “I’d have stepping-stones wandering through it, with a little bench so you could just stop and sit and look. It would be best if it was near the water so I could hear the beat of it the way
I did last night. Pounding, like a quickened heart.”

  She blinked out of the image, found him staring at her. “What? Oh, I was running on again.” She started to get up, but he took her hand a second time.

  “Come with me.”

  He got to his feet, pulled her to hers. “The dishes—”

  “Can wait. This can’t.”

  He’d already started it that morning with the sketch. In his head, it was all but finished, and the energy of it was driving him, so he strode quickly out of the house, toward his studio. She had to run to keep up.

  “Conal, slow down. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Ignoring her, he shoved open the door, pulled her in after him. “Stand by the window.”

  But she was already moving in, eyes wide and delighted. “You’re an artist. This is wonderful. You sculpt.”

  The single room was nearly as big as the main area of the cottage. And much more cramped. A worktable stood in the center, crowded with tools and hunks of stone, pots of clay. A half dozen sketch pads were tossed around. Shelves and smaller tables were jammed with examples of his work. Mystical, magical creatures that danced and flew.

  A blue mermaid combed her hair on a rock. A white dragon breathed fire. Faeries no bigger than her thumb ringed in a circle with faces sly. A sorcerer nearly as tall as she, held his arms high and wept.

  “They’re all so alive, so vivid.” She couldn’t help herself, she had to touch, and so she ran her finger down the rippling hair of the mermaid. “I’ve seen this before,” she murmured. “Not quite this, but the same feeling of it, but in bronze. At a gallery in New York.”

  She looked over then where he was impatiently flipping through a sketch pad. “I’ve seen your work in New York. You must be famous.”

  His answer was a grunt.

  “I wanted to buy it—the mermaid. I was with my mother, and I couldn’t because she’d have reminded me I couldn’t afford the price. I went back the next day, because I couldn’t stop thinking about it, but it was already sold.”

  “In front of the window, turn to me.”