Monday morning, Aden stood across the road from the gallery and watched the three sisters as they prepared to open the gallery. He was stunned and aggravated by his response to seeing Rosa Greenwood for the first time. He recognized her instantly. There was no missing the small flares of red in her rose-gold aura. She was definitely heading toward flaming out, and he also saw she was aware of it and was attempting to dampen the glow so her sisters didn’t suspect anything.
If they were at all observant, it wouldn’t take them long to notice the changes in Rosa’s aura. But right now they were too busy staring out at him while he stared in at them. He huffed his irritation, and a puff of cold air misted before him. He’d cast a weak shielding spell to hide himself while he observed them, but it had worn off. Intent on not tripping any suspicion as to what and who he was, he could not risk casting another spell while they watched. Instead, he stood, stunned by an overwhelming sense of … what? Recognition? But he’d never been to Raven’s Creek. He’d never met any members of the Greenwood family in the past. He refused to believe that the feeling he felt was desire. Desire for a woman he had no business wanting. Heat seared and constricted his breath and burned his lungs. His stomach retaliated by clenching into a mess of knots, and he swallowed convulsively.
Dragons’ Oath!
Attraction sliced a wicked, rebellious path through to his core, shredding his earlier resolve to remain impartial. He sharpened his vision, and at this distance he saw and heard more than any human could as he focused his attention solely on Rosa, delving deep, all the while wondering why he was reacting so out of character. No woman had interested him in hundreds of years.
His heart was closed, cold, buried, and dead.
Blue-black hair streamed down her back, past her waist and hips like a bolt of heavy satin. A simple, ruby-beaded butterfly clip held a few stray hairs out of eyes as green as the clearest and rarest emeralds.
“Warlocks’ Oath.” He muttered the ancient curse under his breath, and his hands bunched into fists in his pockets. “She’s not yours. Don’t go there.”
Aden noted her translucent, porcelain skin. Too pale, too fragile. The only traces of color on her face were the dark smudges under her eyes. He found himself concerned at the fragility he saw hidden beneath the shield she had cast to prevent her sisters from discovering her secret.
His breath rushed out — he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding it — and vapor hung in the crisp morning air as he fought to control this alarming and all too unwelcome response to Rosa.
Aden forced his eyes closed and focused on regaining his equilibrium. He didn’t need complications, and attraction to someone he could not have was a definite complication. As his heart rate slowed and his mind returned to its normal, icy state, he allowed his eyelids to drift open, and once more he concentrated on his charge.
Rosa was the circle’s leader, the one who held the family together. A more inexperienced eye would have said Alanna, the feisty one, took the lead; however Rosa’s aura told him otherwise. Rosa only allowed Alanna to think she deferred to her, just as Beth, the soft and gentle one, deferred to them both.
Rosa was the leveler, the one both sisters came to for advice — the one who, over the years, had soothed their fears and pieced back together their shattered lives after their parents had been tragically killed in an auto accident. Rosa was their rock, and the two sisters would be lost without her.
Their circle would break if he failed. He would give his all to succeed.
• • •
Rosa peered through the steam from her coffee and out the window to the stranger across the road. A number of expressions had crossed his far-too-handsome-for-his-own-good features. Shock, irritation, even a flash of awareness was quickly doused with an equal portion of anger. She immediately thought of the bells. Here was a man with huge potential. It swirled about him in a rainbow of color. A prickle of something she couldn’t define — warning, perhaps — skittered across the back of her neck, so she took a harder look, using her ability to read auras to divine what it was about him that made him so … different. She studied him as intently as he studied them but couldn’t find anything except an uncommonly large dose of impressive energy swirling about his auric field. As far as she could tell he wasn’t a warlock.
Beth came up to stand beside her. “Oh, my. He’s gorgeous!”
“‘Oh, my,’ is an understatement,” Alanna concurred as she too stared outwards before turning and narrowing an assessing gaze at Rosa. “You want him?”
Rosa spluttered into her coffee. “I certainly do not!”
Alanna shrugged. “Liar! Your aura’s gone ruby red. You fancy him like crazy.”
Ruby red! There was red in her aura? “Well, I can’t deny he’s attractive.”
“The master of understatement, as usual.” Alanna rolled her eyes. “If you don’t want him, I’ll take him!”
Rosa almost snorted. “You would!”
“Are you blind? Look at him! He’s juicy delicious.”
Rosa almost laughed. “An apt description. Very juicy. Drop-dead gorgeous. Every witches’ dream.”
Alanna’s head rocked back and she laughed. “Damn right!”
Rosa gulped back a mouthful of coffee, scalding the roof of her mouth. She immediately cooled it with a simple spell before the sensitive skin blistered. She was hearing the bells again. She looked to Alanna and Beth. Had they heard them too? But no, they both laughed and studied the stranger, jostling each other’s arms as they debated the best description for him.
But Rosa was too intent as she felt a whisper of warning: He brings change … Beware!
Then Beth clanged her mug down on the counter, slopping liquid on the display glass and Rosa jumped, startled by the noise. “What? What happened?”
“Nothing. It’s me. I’m a dolt for not remembering. I bet it’s Aden Dragunis.” Beth whipped out a tissue to mop up the spillage, and with a single word the sopping article disappeared.
“You could have used a spell to mop the liquid up as well,” Alanna criticized. Beth shrugged. “I like to clean. You do things your way, and I’ll do them mine.”
She looked out the window again. “I bet it’s him.”
Suddenly ill with an anticipation she couldn’t explain, Rosa questioned Beth. “Are you sure? He’s not due to arrive for another couple of weeks.”
“Who else would have that much potential flowing through him?” Beth noted. “Plus I spoke to Super Sleuth Ruth early this morning when she happened to be out walking her dog, and she said she’d heard he checked into the inn last night.”
Alanna snorted and shot Beth a look of sheer annoyance. “How is it you know this delectable tidbit and yet forget until just now?”
Beth shrugged and grinned. “I was overcome by his magnificence. All sanity evaporated with one look.”
Rosa was momentarily amused. Alanna hated being the last to know anything. The ends of her wild red locks curled in a fiery display of temper. “Cut the theatrics, Alanna,” Rosa reprimanded. “And tone down the magic. You’re not impressing anyone with that hair thing.”
Alanna huffed, pushed her hand under her hair and flung it upwards in defiance. Ignoring her, Rosa keyed the cash register open. Aden’s presence outside was adding to her anxiousness. It was nearly ten. Time to open the gallery to the public. Time to concentrate on work.
“If it is him, why hasn’t he come in to introduce himself?”
“Maybe he’s shy,” Beth offered, provoking the intended derisive laughter from Alanna.
In an instant, her temper was gone. “Shy? Look at him. There isn’t a shy bone in his aura!”
All three sisters returned to staring out the window. Rosa absently straightened a display tray beneath a glass counter. “Surely he realizes we’ve seen him staring at us.”
It was a crisp morning. People scuttled up and down the street making their way to work, but Aden Dragunis stood motionless on the edge of the curb, inches from the bustling foot traffic. Did he think he was invisible or something?
“He’s assessing us!” At a loss to explain how she knew or felt about this, Rosa masked her concern by checking the electronic cash link to ensure it was working. And still Aden’s attention remained focused on them. It was altogether too unnerving.
She picked up a pen and clicked it repeatedly. Go away, she mentally intoned. Go away! She wasn’t ready to face her future today. Today she wanted it to be quiet and ordinary. She needed a few hours to mull over the available options and choices to be made in the next month. She wanted to be alone. Yet, here she was, scheduled to work while Beth and Alanna used the time to create pieces for the gallery.
“I suppose we’re small fish to someone like him,” Alanna declared heatedly. “Didn’t his mother ever teach him it’s rude to stare?”
It was widely reported that Aden Dragunis shunned photographers and refused to play their game at every turn. No one could recall seeing an image of him in a magazine or on the Internet. How could someone so famous escape the lens of today’s paparazzi? Perhaps if Rosa had so much as glimpsed even a single image of him before now, she might have been more prepared for the impact of his physical presence. Nah. He was knock-your-socks-off material. No normal woman would remain unaffected by someone so dynamic.
“All I care is, he said yes! And now that I’ve seen him in person — ” Alanna was practically drooling, “ — I’m ecstatic he’s here even if he’s a few weeks early!”
“Invite him over.” Beth snagged Alanna’s elbow and steered her toward the entrance. “It’s freezing outside. He’s going to turn into Mr. Frosty if he stays out there much longer!”
“And we wouldn’t want any of his precious appendages to snap off.” Alanna winked conspiratorially.
Beth hooted with laughter but Rosa, too perturbed by last night’s untimely tolling of the bells and Aden’s way too early arrival, failed to see the humor. She was certain these two events were connected. Nerves frazzled, she felt edgy and out of sorts. She wanted to stop them and say, No! Don’t invite him in! But she knew such a reaction would only result in questions she wasn’t ready to answer.
So she held her tongue and said nothing.
Alanna unhooked her arm from Beth’s eager grasp and, with an indifference Rosa recognized as feigned, reached to unlock the door. In that instant, their guest spun on the heels of his highly polished black leather boots and strode down the hill to the corner café, his coat flapping behind him, leaving all three women gasping in surprise. Whether it was a deliberate snub or not, all three were silenced for several long seconds.
“Friendly creature,” Rosa muttered, breaking the unnatural silence.
“A missed opportunity,” Beth nodded in agreement.
“Who for?” Rosa retorted. “Him or us?”
“I think we should showcase him instead of the articles he’s bringing with him.” Alanna licked her lips and rubbed her palms together.
“You and me both,” Beth responded just as quickly.
“He’ll be back,” Alanna stated unequivocally.
“Of course he will.” Rosa only hoped, as he was early, he would take his time introducing himself to them.
Alanna cupped her hands and made a suggestive squeezing action with her fingers. “I have a sudden hankering to sculpt his butt in granite for posterity.”