And yes, she did feel a brush of magic about them, a sense of ancient secrets, and was struck suddenly by how right Dageus looked standing in the middle of them. Like a primitive sorcerer, wild and forbidding, a keeper of secrets, arcane and profane. She rolled her eyes at her absurd fancy.
“What is he doing, Gwen?” she asked, squinting.
Gwen shrugged but didn’t reply.
It looked as if he was writing something on the inner face of each stone. There were thirteen, towering around a center slab that was fashioned of two stone supports, and one large flat stone placed atop it in the shape of a squat dolmen.
As Chloe watched, Dageus moved to the next stone, his hand moving with brisk surety across its inner face. He was writing on it, she realized. How odd. She narrowed her eyes. God, the man was beautiful. He’d changed after breakfast. Soft, faded jeans hugged his powerful thighs and muscled butt. A thick wool sweater and hiking boots completed his rugged outdoorsman look. His hair fell in a single braid to his waist.
I’m going to keep you forever, her dream Dageus had said.
You’ve got it bad, Zanders, she reluctantly acknowledged with a little sigh.
“You have feelings for him,” Gwen murmured, jarring her.
Chloe paled. “Is it that obvious?”
“To someone who knows what to look for. I’ve never seen him look at a woman the way he looks at you, Chloe.”
“If he looks at me any differently than others, it’s only because most women fall into bed with him the minute they meet him,” Chloe said, puffing a curly strand of hair from her face. “I’m just the one who got away.” So far, was the dry thought accompanying that.
“Yes, and that’s all they ever do.”
That got her attention. “Isn’t that all he wants?”
“No. But most women never get past that beautiful face and body, his strength and his reserve. They never, never trust him with their hearts.”
Chloe pulled her long hair back, twisting it into a loose knot, and held her silence, hoping Gwen might continue to volunteer information. She was in no hurry to admit to her pathetic romanticizing, which had only worsened throughout the day. All day long she’d been treated to glimpses of the incredible relationship between Gwen and her husband. She’d watched, with shameless longing, the way Drustan treated his wife. They were so unabashedly in love with each other.
Because he looked so much like Dageus, comparisons had been inevitable. Drustan had popped up oodles of times, toting a light jacket for Gwen, or a cup of tea, or an inquiry if her back ached, if she needed a rub, if she needed to rest, if she’d like him to leap into the sky and pull down the blasted sun.
Making Chloe think ridiculous thoughts about his brother.
Oh, yes, she had feelings. Treacherous, deceitful little feelings.
“Chloe, Dageus doesn’t look for love from a woman, because he’s never been given any reason to.”
Chloe’s eyes widened and she shook her head disbelievingly. “That’s impossible, Gwen. A man like him—”
“Terrifies most women. So they take what he offers, but they find some other man to love. A safer man. A man they feel more in control with. Is he doing the same thing to you? I thought you were smarter than that.”
Chloe jerked, wondering how the conversation had gotten so personal so fast.
But Gwen wasn’t done yet. “Sometimes—and trust me, I know this from personal experience—a girl has to take a leap of faith. If you don’t try, you’ll never know what might have been. Is that how you want to live?”
Chloe fumbled for a reply, but came up empty-handed, because deep inside her that nagging voice that had so persistently begun asking recently “is this all there is?” was nodding sagely, agreeing with Gwen’s words.
Naught risked, naught gained, Grandda had always said.
When had she forgotten that? Chloe wondered, staring at the ancient stones. When she was nineteen, and Grandda died, leaving her alone in the world?
As she stood there, atop the MacKeltar’s mountain in the falling twilight, Chloe was suddenly back in Kansas again, in the silent cemetery, after all their friends had gone, weeping at the foot of his grave. Uncertain, poised on the brink of adulthood, with no one to help her make decisions and choose her way. She’d suffered the comforting delusion that he would live forever, not die at a mere seventy-three from a stroke. She’d gone away to college, never imagining that he wouldn’t always be there, at home, puttering around his garden, waiting for her.
The phone call came during finals week her sophomore year. She’d just talked to him on the phone a few days before. One day he was there, the next day he was gone. She hadn’t even gotten to say good-bye. Same as her parents. Couldn’t anyone die a slow death from some disease, she’d felt like wailing (painlessly, of course, she’d not wish a painful death on anyone), and give her a damned sense of closure? Did they have to just go away? One moment, smiling and alive, the next, still and silent and forever lost. There were so many things she hadn’t gotten to say to him before he left. He’d seemed so fragile in his coffin; her robust, temperamental Scot, who’d always seemed invincible to her.