We lay in each other’s arms for a long time, savoring the warmth of one another’s flesh. Finally, though, I stirred and said, “Did that work up an appetite for some cranberry tarts?”
I saw his teeth flash in the darkness as he grinned. “For those…among other things. But I suppose we can go for tarts and then come back here for round two later.”
My body flared with heat at the thought. “That sounds perfect to me. But let me run over to the other room so I can get my jammies.”
“I like you better the way you are now.”
“It’s cold, Connor.” And it was; despite the building’s heat, I could practically feel the night’s chill seeping in around the window frame. “Besides, if I put my pajamas on now, that means you get to take them off later.”
“Point taken. Okay, I’m down with that.” He pushed himself off the bed and walked across the room to the dresser. Fine by me, as I got to see his well-muscled thighs and backside that way. All that hiking and skiing obviously had worked their own magic on his physique.
I could feel the damp heat stirring between my legs as I stared at him, but somehow I managed to force myself up and across to the guest room, where I pulled some clean underwear out of the duffle and then got into my flannel pajama bottoms and thermal top. After this I had a feeling I wouldn’t be sleeping in here ever again. And what would that be like, to close my eyes with Connor beside me, to know that I could reach out in the darkness and feel his warmth, his strength, just where I needed it?
When I came back to the master bedroom, he was wearing a pair of godawful plaid pajama pants and a Northern Pines University sweatshirt. He looked so adorable like that, with his hair mussed and his bare ankles showing under the too-short pajama bottoms, that I almost wanted to laugh.
I didn’t, though. “Ready for that tart?”
“You bet.” He flashed a smile at me. “And I have a surprise.”
“Haven’t we had enough surprises for tonight?”
“You’ll see.”
He reached out and wrapped his fingers around mine, and a tingling heat moved up my arm. Would it always be like this? Would every touch from him make me want to throw myself against him so he could fill me yet again?
In a way, I hoped not. It would be awfully hard to get anything done.
But for now I was all right with that unnerving warmth moving through me, the throbbing between my legs that told me I wasn’t done with him, not by a long shot.
We went downstairs hand in hand. Only when we reached the kitchen did he let go and reach for the refrigerator door. Opening it, he peered inside, then pulled out the tray of tarts I’d put in there to chill earlier. He wasn’t done there, though; he bent down and got something out of the door.
“Champagne?” I asked.
“Can you think of a better excuse to drink it?”
“Not really.”
He retrieved some rather dusty flutes from one of the higher shelves in a cupboard, then pulled out some plates for the tarts. I handed him a dish towel so he could wipe down the glasses, which clearly didn’t see much use.
The dirty dishes from dinner were still stacked next to the sink, but otherwise I hadn’t done too bad a job of tidying up. Although in the past it had sometimes irritated, now I was glad of the way my aunt had trained me to clean up as I went along so I wouldn’t be faced with a huge mess in the kitchen at the end of the evening.
Or in the morning, I thought, eyeing the bottle of champagne. I had a feeling neither of us was going to be in the mood for dish washing tonight.
I transferred the tarts to the dishes and got out some forks, and then we both headed into the living room. The fire had banked down, smoldering into coals, but after setting the champagne and the glasses down on the coffee table, Connor placed some fresh wood in the hearth. The flames, newly energized, licked up against the logs, bringing some welcome warmth to the room.
Outside, the snow still fell. I wondered if it would do that all night.
“Want to make a wish?” he asked as he retrieved the champagne and began working the cork free with his thumbs.
“Is that what you’re supposed to do? Make a wish? The only times I’ve had champagne were at weddings and things like that.”
“You’ve never had anyone open a bottle of champagne, just for you?”
I shook my head.
“Well, I’m glad I’m the one to correct that oversight.” For a second his gaze met mine, and I shivered, remembering what it had felt like to have that beautifully sculpted mouth kissing my lips, making love to every inch of my body. “You don’t have to make a wish…it just feels like something we should do now.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking it over. I’d already had such an amazing wish granted, just being here with him like this, I wasn’t sure what else I could possibly ask for.
“Almost there,” he muttered, still working the cork with his thumbs. He angled the bottle slightly so the cork would shoot off toward the high ceiling, and not at a window or something else breakable.
Better think of something fast. Just as the cork popped out of the bottle with a sharp crack!, I said, “I hope that you and I can always be as happy as we are right now.”
“That’s a good one. Now give me your glass fast, because this thing is about to spill over.”
Hurriedly I reached for one of the champagne flutes and handed it to him, and watched as he poured it about halfway full, pausing so the bubbles could flutter almost up to the rim of the glass before they subsided. He did the same with the second flute, then held it out toward me. We clinked them together, and he added, “May your wish come true.”
“It already has.”
He leaned down and pressed his lips against mine. Oh, how I wanted to sink down to the rug with him right then and there. But we’d have time for that soon enough. Besides, from what I recalled, that Navajo rug was fairly scratchy.
So I kissed him back, tasting him once again, and then we pulled apart and each took a sip of champagne. It was good, light and fizzy, practically dancing off my tongue.
“So do you have a habit of keeping champagne in your fridge, just in case?”
A quick, flashing grin. “No. I bought it because a friend of mine — a civilian friend — had just gotten engaged, and I was going to give it to him and his fiancée. But then they had a blow-out fight over something and called the whole thing off. I didn’t think a bottle of champagne was particularly appropriate, given the situation, so it’s just been sitting in there for the last six months.”
“Ouch,” I said, and hoped that didn’t mean the champagne was cursed or something.
“I thought that, too, but then it turned out she was cheating on him with one of her exes, so I supposed he dodged a bullet.” He waved a hand. “But enough of their drama. I don’t keep champagne around just so I can seduce women when I bring them up here to show them my etchings.”
“Oh, is that what you call it?”
“Very funny.” He swallowed some more champagne and then put down his glass, reaching for one of the plates with a tart on it. “Dessert?”
“Thank you.” I took the plate from him and settled myself down on the couch.
A second or two later, he sat next to me with his own helping of tart. He picked up his fork and took a bite, and his eyes shut, heavy black lashes startling against his cheeks. “Wow…that does taste like Christmas.”
“Since when are warlocks experts on Christmas?”
“When they grow up with it, I suppose.” His eyes opened, and his expression sobered. “It’s probably different for you there in Jerome. You McAllisters have your own little enclave — ”
“It’s not only witches in Jerome,” I pointed out.
“No, but about half the town is, and that makes a big difference. There are a lot of us Wilcoxes here in Flagstaff and all the way out to Winslow and so on, but you mix five hundred people into a pot with more than sixty thousand in it, and you get kind of lost. We do what we have to in order to blend in. Yes, we’re clannish, but so are a lot of tight-knit families. Most people don’t look all that closely.”
I took a bite of tart. It was good, the tartness of the cranberry topping contrasting and then mixing with the creamy sweetness of the cheesecake underneath. “I never would have thought of Wilcoxes blending in. I mean, you guys were always the boogeyman to me.”
He cracked a smile at that. “Do I look like the boogeyman?”
No, but your brother sometimes does. Of course I didn’t voice that thought, instead remarking, “Connor, if I’d thought the boogeyman looked like you, I wouldn’t have done such a good job of making sure he was locked up tight in my closet when I went to bed.”
Before he said anything else, he ate some more of his own tart and washed it down with a swallow of champagne. “Believe it or not, we Wilcoxes don’t spend our days boiling babies and kicking puppies.”
His comment was so off-the-wall I just had to grin. “I didn’t really think you did.”
“Well, I just wanted to clear that up.”
All right, maybe there was no puppy-kicking or baby-boiling involved, but that didn’t mean the Wilcox clan didn’t engage in some bad juju if the situation warranted it. It was more like…we McAllisters set limits on our magic, both to be safe and to avoid inviting unwanted attention. Delving into the darker side of things had consequences we really didn’t want to face. The Wilcoxes didn’t seem to have the same concerns, although it did sound as if they didn’t want people scrutinizing their doings all too closely.
“I can’t excuse some of what we do,” he went on, appearing to correctly interpret my silence. “But we don’t all behave that way. In fact, most of us don’t.”
“So what do you do?” I asked. “I mean, if you’re not casting hexes or whatever.”
“We live our lives, same as you do. You’ll see, when you come with me tomorrow.”
“Come…with you?”
“To the party. There’s no reason you have to stay trapped in here any longer. That is, we’re….”
Well and truly bonded. I hadn’t even stopped to think about it, but it was true. Now that Connor and I had been together, his clan would see it as me throwing my lot in with theirs. I no longer needed to be a prisoner in this apartment. The strange thing was, I didn’t feel any different. Oh, I felt different in the way that most young women must feel after they’ve lost their virginity. I’d stepped over a threshold. I wasn’t a girl anymore.
Even with that, though, I still felt like me…which meant I was severely disinclined to do anything that would make life easier for the Wilcoxes, no matter how much I cared for Connor. And I had to admit it puzzled me, because according to what I’d heard from my aunt, the prima must bond with her consort on her home territory, so her powers might remain connected to her own clan.
Figure it out later, I told myself. At least for the moment, you haven’t turned into the Wilcox equivalent of a Stepford wife.
Anyway, I had more pressing things on my mind. “You want me to come to the potluck? That just feels…weird.”
“You’ll have to meet them sometime,” he said, his voice coaxing. “Really, they don’t bite.”
I recalled the avaricious gleam in Damon’s eyes when he’d looked down at me when I was helpless on that makeshift altar a few days ago and thought, Well, some of them, maybe. “Okay,” I replied, then asked, tone wary, “Will your brother be there?”
“Yes. It’s always held at his house. The primus and all that.”
Who knows what look of terror must have flashed in my eyes. Something that must have been fairly obvious, because at once Connor set down his plate and took my free hand in one of his. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “He knows you’re with me now. He’s not going to try anything.”
“But to go to his house — ”
“Where there’ll be tons of people. I swear it will be fine. Don’t you trust me?”
Maybe I shouldn’t. After all, I didn’t know Connor all that well…we’d been around each other for only four days. But it was the frightened part of me thinking that, the McAllister girl who’d been taught that all the Wilcoxes were pure evil. It sounded as if it might be a bit more complicated than what I’d been told. And somewhere deep inside I knew I could trust Connor. The bond between was too strong, golden and glowing and pure. I could tell he had no agenda here. He only wanted me to meet his family.
I stared into his face, taking in the deep green eyes with their heavy fringe of lashes, the longish nose and high cheekbones, the beautiful mouth and strong chin. It was a face I loved very much, and the spirit and soul behind it even more.
“Yes, Connor,” I said. “I trust you.”
We finished our champagne and dessert after that, growing drowsy and satisfied before the fire, with the Christmas tree glowing in the background. Sometime around one we deposited our empty plates and glasses in the kitchen and went back upstairs. Moving quietly and smoothly, in contrast to our frenzied coupling of earlier, we fell into bed together, pajamas falling in a heap on the floor as we pressed bare flesh against bare flesh, joining in a way that once again made me feel as if I no longer knew where he started and I began. And afterward we slept, twined in one another’s arms, breaths coming as one.
Pale morning light peeking through the blinds woke me. I blinked up at the ceiling, thinking of how I had awoken in this apartment just a few short days ago, and how much had changed in the intervening time. For there was Connor sprawled next to me, the white wintry daylight casting his perfect profile into sharp relief. I’d no longer have to sleep alone. He’d always be there next to me.
I saw his eyelids flutter, and he shifted, letting out a little groan as he stretched. “What time is it?” he asked.
There was a clock identical to the one in the guest bedroom on his nightstand. “Seven-fifteen. I’m sorry I woke you.”
He pushed himself to a sitting position and ran a hand through his hair, making various locks stand on end, and in the process making him look even more adorable. “No, it’s fine. I’m not a late riser. Besides, there’s something I want to show you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I inquired in suggestive tones. “I thought you showed me that last night.”
“Very funny. Seriously, get into some clothes. We can shower later.”
I didn’t miss the “we” in that sentence and wondered if I was finally going to find out whether that big shower really did work well for two. But I figured I could leave that for now, so I retrieved my clothes from where I’d tossed them over a chair last night, right before collapsing into bed, and climbed back into them. Connor did the same, putting on his underwear and jeans, then a T-shirt and sweater. He pulled on his socks and shoes, heavy quasi-hiking boots similar to what I’d seen Damon wearing a few days earlier, while I slid into my riding boots.
“Come on,” Connor said, and I followed him downstairs, running my fingers through my hair and wishing I had an elastic band to pull it back. It felt like a snarled mess.
We paused at the coat closet. He reached in and handed me a beautiful knee-length wool coat in a deep shade of green. Stuffed into the pockets were a pair of flannel-lined black leather gloves. I gave him a questioning look.
“Well, we kind of hoped you wouldn’t be stuck in here indefinitely. Marie picked that out when she was buying some other things for you. Does it fit okay?”
“It’s perfect,” I said, slipping it on and buttoning it up.
At the same time he was getting into his charcoal-gray peacoat. “Good. Let’s go.”
He opened the front door, and I followed him into the hallway, eyeing my surroundings with interest. After all, when I was brought here, I’d been blindfolded and hadn’t seen anything of the place except the interior of Connor’s apartment. The hallway was a short one, with a door directly opposite the one we exited now, and then a staircase leading down. The floor was wood, the walls brick. And it was cold in here, much colder than inside the apartment, which led me to believe that no one bothered to heat the interior corridor.
“What’s over there?” I asked, pointing at the door across the landing. “Another apartment?”
“Well, it was, but I bought the whole building, with the gallery and both apartments. I use that one for my studio now.”
As I pondered that, we went down the stairs to the ground floor of the building, and through another short hallway that opened directly outside. As soon as Connor opened the door, a gust of freezing air hit my face, and I blinked, then quickly pulled the gloves out of my coat pockets and pulled them on.
Connor didn’t miss much. He saw what I was doing, and remarked, “A little colder than Jerome?”
“Just a little,” I replied, trying to keep my teeth from chattering and only partially succeeding. Actually, I was sort of shocked by how much colder it was here, considering that Jerome in December wasn’t exactly sunny Palm Beach, either. But this was the kind of cold that actually made your teeth hurt. I wondered what the temperature was.
“I’ll get the heater going once we’re in the car. It’s just over here.”
I noticed that an alley backed up to the brick building, and behind the building were a few spots with little “reserved” signs in front of them. In one of those parking spaces was a shiny dark green Toyota FJ Cruiser, the kind of vehicle I’d secretly coveted for a few years, even though I’d known it was silly to want a second vehicle when my Aunt Rachel and I did perfectly well sharing the Jeep.
Connor pulled out his keys and used the remote to unlock it, while I trailed after him and then went over to the passenger side. I couldn’t help wondering how much money the Wilcoxes really had. Sure, we McAllisters were definitely comfortable, but we didn’t flaunt our wealth. After seeing Damon’s Range Rover, and noting the way Connor didn’t seem to particularly care how much things cost, I had to think that they were doing okay. More than okay, actually.
I waited until we were both inside and he’d gotten the engine going and the heater running before I asked, “Just how rich are you?”
He let out a sound that almost sounded like a snort. “Whoa. Are you after me for my money, Angela?”
I shot him a pained look.
“We do all right,” he replied as he backed the SUV out of its parking spot and then headed down the alley. Just after that we turned onto a one-way street, and then another, until we were out on the main road.
The side streets hadn’t been plowed yet, and I noticed Connor had engaged the four-wheel drive and then kept it slow.
We cut through an area of mixed residences and small businesses, then turned onto Highway 180. Well, it called itself a highway, but as with 89A back in Jerome, it was really a two-lane road. Here there were heaps of snow piled up along the sidewalks, and I couldn’t help pitying the poor snow plow drivers who had to get up at o’dark-thirty on Christmas morning to make sure the streets were clear. At that point we were heading out of the town, toward the snowy peaks to the north and west of Flagstaff proper. I wondered where we were going, and hoped Connor wasn’t planning to take me cross-country skiing or something.
“Just all right?” I pressed.
Although the highway was plowed, it was still slick and treacherous. He didn’t take his eyes off the road as he replied, “What does it matter?”
“I’m just curious. I mean, the McAllisters are certainly comfortable, but we’re not riding around in brand-new Range Rovers, either. Just part of the whole flying-under-the-radar thing.”
“Let’s just say we have a different attitude about that.” He paused at a stop sign, then turned right. Here, the road wasn’t plowed, and we were back in four-wheel drive as we headed up the steep, narrow lane. “If people in our clan have the power of seeing, then we don’t have a problem with using that power to…help things out a little.”
Which I supposed was his way of saying that there were people in his clan who could see the future and use that knowledge to play the stock market or bet on horses or whatever it took to generate some extra income. One could say it was a victimless crime — I mean, I sure wasn’t going to shed any tears over someone taking advantage of a few Wall Street types — but that just wasn’t how we McAllisters did things.
Oh, well, Dorothy, you’re not in Jerome anymore. I shrugged and said only, “Well, it seems to be working for you.”
He grinned. “What, no lecture on the immorality of us Wilcoxes using our powers for selfish gain? You must be tired.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and turned to look out the window. Dark pine forest surrounded us now, the branches of the trees only lightly dusted with snow, but the ground beneath them was obscured by what looked like at least two feet of drifts.
The badly paved lane gave way to…nothing. Well, I supposed in the summer it was probably gravel, or maybe even dirt, but right now we were just plowing our way across virgin snow. I gripped what Sydney liked to call the “Jesus handle” on the roof of the SUV and hoped that Connor knew what he was doing.
To my relief, he stopped the Cruiser a minute or so later. “I’ll come around and open the door for you,” he said. “The footing can be a little tricky.”
I didn’t protest. The last thing I wanted was to climb out of the SUV and slip and slide down the mountain. Or hill, I corrected myself; off to my left I could see the top of Humphreys Peak, probably several thousand feet above where we were, wisps of cloud sitting on it like a halo, and so I knew we weren’t on a mountaintop. Not technically, anyway.
Snow crunched as Connor came around the back of the vehicle, then paused on my side and opened the door. “Here you go,” he told me, reaching up to take my hand and help me down to the ground.
Those rubber-soled boots had been more a prescient purchase than I’d imagined. Even with his strong fingers holding mine so I wouldn’t lose my footing, I could still feel my feet begin to slide and then catch as the treads on my boots finally gained a purchase. I clung to him as we walked a few paces away from the Cruiser, then asked, “So what are we doing here, exactly?”
“Look,” he said, and used his free arm to make an expansive gesture toward the pine woods around us, the looming San Francisco Peaks, the glistening snow banks. Here, you would never think you were close to a city of sixty thousand. We might have been the only two people in the world.
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured. Funny — I never thought I’d use that word to describe the home of the Wilcox clan, but it was true. This didn’t look like Mordor at all.
“I like to come up here to get away from things. Walking in the woods helps to clear my head. Down there” — he jerked a thumb somewhere to the south and east — “things can intrude too much. But up here I don’t have to think about being a Wilcox or the primus’s brother or any of that. I guess that’s why I wanted you to come up here with me. Because whatever comes next, remember that it’s only a small part of the picture.”
Following his gaze, I looked at the ponderosa pines looming around us, the purple-indigo of the mountains, the aching blue of the sky. There were the faintest, thinnest streaks of clouds painted against that sky, like the traceries in a stained-glass window, and somehow I felt as if I stood in a cathedral, hushed and quiet and holy.
Movement caught my eye, and I held my breath. From within a stand of pine a large mule deer buck stepped forth, then paused. His antlers were sharp and dark against the snow-covered branches around him. For the longest moment he stood there, black eyes fixed on Connor and me. Then he dipped his head, as if acknowledging us, before turning and heading back into the forest.
Connor’s gloved fingers tightened around mine. He was silent for a few seconds, watching the spot in the trees where the buck had disappeared. At last he expelled a breath, which wisped up into the frigid air, then said,“Well, it appears as if the lord of the forest has given us his blessing.”
“I - I guess so.”
He bent and kissed me, his mouth warm even though the air was bitterly cold. “I don’t think there’s any way to top that. Besides, your lips are starting to look a little blue. I’d better get you back and get some breakfast inside you.”
Breakfast sounded wonderful. Christmas dinner had been a very long time ago. “Are you cooking for me?”
“Since I don’t want to poison you, no. I’ll take you someplace that makes the best omelettes you’ve ever had.”
“And they’re open on Christmas?” I asked. Somehow I found that hard to believe.
“Three hundred and sixty-five days a year,” he replied as he opened the car door for me, then helped me in.
My stomach growled, and in that moment I didn’t really care that I had snarled hair and no makeup on and was wearing the same clothes I’d worn the day before. “Sounds fabulous.”
Well, it wasn’t exactly fabulous, just a little diner off Highway 180 on the way back to town, but they were open, and the food was good — although I wasn’t quite ready to admit that their omelettes might be just as good as Aunt Rachel’s — and nobody seemed to give a damn what I looked like. The waitress gave Connor a hearty hello and took our orders promptly, and returned even more quickly with some much-needed coffee.
I waited until she was gone, then asked quietly, “Does she know?”
He seemed to guess right away what I was really asking. “No. This place isn’t a Wilcox hangout. My friend Darren brought a group of us here once when we were going out to do some cross-country skiing, and I’ve been coming back ever since. Sometimes it’s nice to be in a place where no one knows much about you.”
That made a lot of sense. Being the brother of the primus — especially when that primus was Damon Wilcox — couldn’t have been too easy. Anonymity had its attractions.
“Okay,” I said. “Then it looks like it’s back to the weather for a convenient topic of conversation.”
He shook his head, then replied in resigned tones, “If you must.”
I laughed. He’d been right — it did feel good to be away and out, someplace where no one knew who you were or what crazy circumstances had brought you there.
Too bad I knew that sensation of ease couldn’t possibly last.