Haunting Embrace (10 page)

“Me? Heavens, no. They keep to themselves, more or less. And well, it’s said that they’re quite a bit on the odd side of things. Most people here just stay out of their way.”

Meaghan mulled that for a moment, trying to draw the correlation between the foreigners and Mr. MacGrath’s rash of good luck. Obviously, the Book of Fennore formed some type of connection between them, but she couldn’t see how.

“Did the lucky turn of events begin for Mr. MacGrath around the same time the strangers came?”

“That’s right. About a year ago it started.”

Meaghan frowned. A year ago? Her thoughts had been creeping to a conclusion that somehow she or Áedán had brought the Book with them when they’d traveled through time. But this new revelation blasted the weak theory.

“Where are they now? Those men? The strangers?”

Colleen looked up from her chopping, confused by the jump from MacGrath back to the foreigners. “Why would you want to know that?”

“Well, I think I’ll go talk to them.”

“Are you crazy, missy? You can’t just go off talking to strange men.”

“Sure I can.”

“But it’s just not done. Not here anyway.”

The scandalized look on Colleen’s face masked the last of the mysterious regret, which had pulled her features into a frown when she spoke of Mr. MacGrath. In Meaghan’s time, Colleen was fearless. She thought nothing of convention and cared less about what
was done
than she did about what
she wanted to do
. To see her so outraged by Meaghan’s suggested visit was almost funny.

“Nana—I mean, Colleen, I’ve got to get back home. I don’t belong here. You know that.”

“Aye, I suppose I do.” She looked down, a sad little smile on her lips. “Is that what you call me? Nana?”

“We all do.”

At the questioning look in Colleen’s eyes, Meaghan explained. “My sister and brother, Danni and Rory, they call you that, too. Danni has babies now, and her daughter, she calls you Ninnie. She’s very cute.”

Colleen’s eyes looked like black pits in her pale face. “And are all my grandchildren like you, missy?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s something off about you, isn’t there now? Something I can’t quite put my finger on, but it’s there. I feel it. You’re different, aren’t you?”

Meaghan felt whipped by the casual observation. Swallowing hard, she looked away. “Yes. I guess I am.”

“Sure and wouldn’t you have to be, time traveler that you are? Well, I’ve been called strange myself, so I’m not one to point fingers. What would be the sense of it? For all I know, people will think I’m crazy by the time I’m an old woman.”

Meaghan forced herself to smile to hide how much Nana’s words had hurt her.

You’re different, aren’t you?

“Perhaps a few people think you have a screw loose or two, but only because you want them to think it. Life is never boring where you’re concerned, Nana. You are loved more than anyone in the world.”

That ghost of a smile tilted Colleen’s lips more, and her eyes took on a misty gleam that she quickly hid. She cleared her throat. “Loved by all, am I? Well, then, I suppose I must do a lot of changing.”

Because Colleen wasn’t loved so very much now.

The words didn’t need to be spoken for Meaghan to hear them. She gave her grandmother a fierce hug, finding the woman was more solid, less frail, taller even than she remembered—but her scent had not altered. She still smelled of baked bread, summer mornings, and faintly of something Meaghan thought now might be grief. She’d always known there was sadness in her grandmother; she’d just never realized it had been there for so long.

“You don’t change that much, Colleen Ballagh. And it’s glad I am of it.”

Colleen gave Meaghan a bemused glance, and then said, “The lighthouse is to the north of the island. It’s where the men who talked of the Book live, or so I’ve heard. They keep to themselves. Might have moved on, for all I know. If you take the road out, it curves along the cliffs—”

“I know where to find it,” Meaghan said. In the future, the lighthouse still stood and was still inhabited, not by foreigners but an old man missing one eye and nearly blind in the other. He claimed he didn’t need to see the sea to know her, and no one had ever challenged him on it. So far, no ships had crashed into the island, so she supposed he knew what he was about.

Meaghan gave Colleen a reassuring smile. “I won’t be long.”

“It’s a good walk, missy. You won’t have much time before you’ll need to return. Mickey will be . . . unpleasant if you’re not back before we sit for supper.”

Meaghan heard the fear in her grandmother’s voice, and it made her want to smack Mickey Ballagh across his sour puss.

“Don’t worry,” she said with a small smile. “I’ll be quick about it.”

Colleen nodded, but her expression remained anxious. “There’s a jacket on the hook by the front door. You best take it. And be careful. No one knows much about those men. They’ve never given us a reason to worry over them, but you never know. You’re a looker and men tend to lose what little sense God has given them around a pretty girl.”

Chapter Seven

Á
EDÁN leaned nonchalantly against the side of the house, watching the back door. The stove kept the kitchen overheated, and Colleen always left the door cracked. He’d heard Meaghan and her
grandmother
talking, and he knew Meaghan would be coming through that door soon, heading for the lighthouse. Seeking the Book of Fennore.

His stomach tightened at the thought of it, and a dark emotion washed over him.
Fear
. He knew it by scent, by taste. Every human that had ever begged him for salvation had smelled of the intoxicating emotion, had been infused with its flavor. But coiled within him, it felt rank and unsavory. Áedán had not feared for millennia. He did not like it that he did now.

The door opened and Meaghan stepped out. She wore a coat of Colleen’s and the sleeves came up short, leaving her wrists bare, her pale hands exposed to the raw wind. The chilled air put a flush on her cheeks and added a sparkle to her blue eyes. She was not a small woman, and yet there was something fragile about her, a vulnerability that she tried so hard to hide behind her tough talk and belligerence.

More than that, he found a femininity about her that roused forgotten instincts in him. Gazing at her awoke an ancient need to protect and possess her. An unfamiliar hunger that consumed him as he studied the curves that her ill-fitting coat pronounced, her breasts pressed against the heavy wool, her hips offsetting the line of its drop.

Fear of a different kind twisted inside him. This woman drew him, like
he
had drawn so many humans before. She offered temptation, relief, escape. But as with the many promises Áedán had pledged over the eons of his reign, he knew the offering would come with a very high price.

“Where are you off to, beauty?” he asked, pushing away from the wall.

She startled, spinning to face him with a small gasp. He glimpsed relief when she saw him and then another emotion that turned the bright blue of her gaze into a swirling mix of lavender and cobalt, a color so unique that it stole his breath. Once in his ancient past, he’d seen eyes that color and they’d made him feel what Meaghan’s did now. Hot. Hungry. In those eyes, he saw
desire.
He recognized it. Felt it to his bones. That primitive male inside him howled with satisfaction at the knowledge that she yearned as he did.

But, why? Why did
this
woman make him feel as if his blood burned in his veins?

She lowered her lashes, hiding the heat of her gaze from him. He wanted to growl, to take her by the shoulders and force her to give him that look again. He wanted . . .

“What are you doing lurking around in the shadows?” she demanded.

“Waiting for you,” he answered calmly.

“What do you want?”

Áedán paused, giving her straightforward question an air of innuendo he knew she hadn’t intended. Slowly, he smiled, taunting her, letting her see his thoughts in the hot gaze he ran over her features, down the curve of her throat, to linger on the buttons that threatened to spring from the pressure of her breasts.

Eyes narrowed, she lifted her chin with defiance. She did not fear him. He could not fathom why.

When she did not rise to the bait he dangled, he said curtly, “You will tell me everything Colleen told you.”

Meaghan’s brows shot up and the corners of her mouth tightened with displeasure. Curiously, he watched her, noting that her eyes changed colors yet again, now more gray than blue.

“Listen, Áedán,” she said, seeming to choose her words with great care. Her tone was steady, and yet he sensed the clang and churn of her temper just beneath it. She stepped off the porch and moved toward him. He found her anger amusing, but with each step closer, she brought a jolt of disquiet that shocked him.

Something was different. He felt it in the air around her. Something had changed.

She
had changed.

“You and I need to get a few things clear,” she said, fearlessly pointing a finger at his chest, stopping just short of jabbing him with it.

Her head did not reach his chin, her weight was a fraction of the full nets he hauled each day. Before the Book of Fennore, he’d been a stone worker and had carved the pillars of his tribe’s temple with anvil and chisel. Without even exerting himself, he could crush her. Yet suddenly it was Áedán who felt the chill of dread tripping down his spine, as he had that morning when he’d been drawn to the cavern. Drawn to this woman who’d ensnared him with the sweet taste of her mouth and the yielding curves of her body.

He’d thought her bespelled when she’d wrapped her arms around him, but now he wondered if it was
he
who’d fallen prey to sorcery.

Something had changed in Meaghan.

He felt it, a vibration that seeped beneath his skin, though he couldn’t identify it. But he’d borne the curse of the Book of Fennore for too long not to recognize its signature in the air around her. Had she found it already? Had Cathán, ensconced in his new throne as the power of the Book, corrupted her?

She went on, unaware of his turmoil. Unaware of the emotions building in him.
Human
emotions. A tangle of feelings he no longer knew how to unravel.

“I don’t like orders,” she said in clipped tones. “I don’t
take orders.
So if you want something from me, you had better learn how to ask and how to say please.”

He might have laughed had he not been so shaken.

Meaghan paused to take a breath, and he sensed that she drew her defenses close, fortifying them in preparation of his retaliation. Through the translucence of her skin, he saw that a vein at her throat pulsed quickly, revealing nerves she didn’t show. As if aware of what he saw and what it revealed, she lifted her hand and settled it at her collarbone, fingers nervously plucking at the woolen coat. That small, telling gesture gave Áedán some much-needed strength.

She’d not been despoiled by Cathán, not yet anyway. If she had come in contact with the power of the Book, it had not touched her.

The skin between her brows puckered as she studied him, and he stared back placidly, hoping that he hadn’t shown her any signs of weakness.

“What’s going on with you, Áedán?” she said. “First no one can see you, now everyone can. What’s up with that?”

He felt certain that the cavern had caused him to be unseeable. He remembered the weakness that had made his legs wobble when he’d first crossed the threshold, as if his very essence had been sapped from him. He’d thought his fear had fabricated the sensation until the moment Colleen had looked through him and he’d realized . . . But he didn’t want to give Meaghan the power of that knowledge.

Instead, he said, “From the moment I came to this island, I have been a man like any other. Until you lured me to the cavern.”

Could she tell that speaking those words made him want to choke?
A man like any other
. Even before the Book of Fennore, he’d never been like other men.

“I didn’t lure you,” she said, surprised. “I wasn’t even conscious when you got there.”

“And yet I felt compelled to come, though I knew the dangers.”

“Did it occur to you that it was the Book of Fennore compelling you and not me? I felt its power there.”

Yes, of course he had felt it, too. And yet, he was still convinced that Meaghan had been the draw.

Between them, a silence filled the air, grainy and hot. It pushed them apart while pulling them closer with its barely perceptible tremor. Did it come from Meaghan? It must. And yet he hadn’t noticed it when he’d held her, kissed her.

What had changed?

“Tell me what you and Colleen talked about when you walked from the ruins to the house. I looked back, and you seemed engrossed in whatever she was telling you. I want to know what she said.” He remembered belatedly to curve the command into a question with his tone. At her sharp glance, he tacked on a harsh, “Please.”

It seemed she knew just how much that cost him, and she grudgingly nodded. “Come with me, then,” she said.

“To the lighthouse?”

“You were listening?”

“It seemed prudent to find out what you and your
grandmother
are about.”

“And?”

“Only a fool would escape the Book of Fennore and then turn around and seek it out again.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been called worse than that.”

He fell into step beside her, painfully aware of the soft scent of her skin. Colleen made soaps to supplement their meager income. Her most coveted creation blended honeysuckle and oatmeal, ground fine. The soft aroma clung to Meaghan’s skin and mixed with her own seductive scent to cloud his brain, making him want to press closer, to breathe her in.

“Why were you angry when you found out Colleen was my grandmother?”

Her question snapped him from his thoughts and cleared the haze from his mind. “I wasn’t angry. I was . . . disconcerted by the revelation. First you appear and render me invisible, and then she revealed who she was to you. It felt . . . conspired.”