01 Do You Believe in Magic - The Children of Merlin (21 page)

“That was so, so,
so
beautiful,” Tammy whispered, wiping her eyes. “I ... I didn’t
know.”

From somewhere, there was a
sound of distant clapping and a whistle. Maggie jerked her head up
to see most of the Tremaines standing on the side of the deck
overlooking the ring.

She bent to stroke Cally’s neck
and hide her own flush. “Well,” she said gruffly, “you’d better
walk him out.” She swung down to the ground.

“Will you teach me to do that?”
Tammy’s turquoise eyes pleaded as she opened the gate.

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”
That felt so wrong it made Maggie’s stomach turn. Which was stupid.
She had to get back to Elroy. And then it was on to Denver and the
next rodeo. She swallowed and handed Tammy the reins. “But I’m sure
you can find a teacher here.”

“Okay.” Tammy looked crestfallen
for a minute, then she brightened. “I’ll bet Kemble can help me. He
can find anything.”

Maggie couldn’t imagine the
serious-looking Kemble putting up with Tammy’s exuberance long
enough to help her do anything. But Tammy seemed to think he
would.

Maggie left Tammy hand-walking
Cally along a cliff path over the ocean and headed back up to the
house. The Tremaine sister named Kee now leaned over the deck
railing and called, “Come up the garden path.” She pointed. “Stairs
just behind that bougainvillea.”

Maggie trudged up the stairs as
though she was going to an execution. Tris was probably out for the
evening. She had all of dinner to get through without even Tris as
an ally.

“That was quite a performance,”
Drew said as Maggie reached the deck. “Wasn’t it, Kee?” Drew patted
the sofa next to her. Oh, great. Sitting that close to Drew made
Maggie look like a homeless person. Not that she regretted the
plaid shirt, the jeans and boots. But Drew looked like something
out of a magazine. She and Jane had slipped on sleeveless summer
dresses. Jane wore one in off white, but Drew’s was emerald green
with a full skirt. Her black hair was now dry. Full and lush, it
hung down her back. Still, Maggie couldn’t exactly refuse the
invitation, or command, whatever it was.

“I ... thought Tammy might like
to see what her horse could do.” She sat.

“That was very kind,” Jane said.
“You and Cally looked like you were dancing.”

“He’s got a lot of talent.”

“Seems he’s not the only one.”
Drew had that same look in her eyes that her mother had earlier
when she was studying Maggie in front of the house. It made Maggie
squirm.

“You know Tammy,” the gangly
Lanyon observed. “She probably cried.”

Maggie chuckled.

“Am I right?”

Maggie nodded. “A tear or
two.”

“It figures,” Lanyon said, his
voice drenched with disgust. He was holding a flute, which was a
really strange thing for a boy that age to be carrying around. Out
of the corner of her eye, she saw Mr. Tremaine pacing in the house,
rubbing his chin. He seemed really upset. Kemble followed her gaze,
looked to Drew, and rose. He went into the house quietly.

“So,” Kee began. “Just how did
you save Tris?”

“So direct,” Drew murmured.
“Look, Maggie, we’re sorry about thinking Tris might have caused
your bruise. He’s always just ... had a lot of anger in him. We
haven’t seen him for a year, so... we didn’t know. It was wrong to
assume.”

Maggie nodded her acceptance.
That was a nice apology.

“So part of getting to know him
again is understanding what happened to him.”

“It really wasn’t anything,”
Maggie said. “Just took him into the hospital.”

“Details,” Kee demanded. “Before
Mother comes out.”

“Really, it was nothing.” Maggie
glanced into the house. Kemble seemed to be trying to reassure Mr.
Tremaine.

“Don’t think you’ll get out of
answering.” Devin grinned.

“So you might as well give in
gracefully.” Lanyon shrugged with a laugh. “We’ll give you no peace
otherwise.”

Maggie pushed a breath out of
pursed lips. Well, what could she do? If she had a brother, she’d
sure want to know. “Okay. Well, it was about one in the morning out
on Highway 50, maybe forty miles west of Fallon.” And suddenly she
was back there—the tumbleweeds glaring white in the headlights,
Chris Young’s baritone sliding out of the radio. “A big rig started
passing me just as I saw Tris on his bike coming my way. He had
nowhere to go. I braked.” She could hear the brakes squeal. She
blinked, her breath coming faster. “He swerved but the semi still
clipped him.” She saw the flash of the cycle and Tris’s body flying
over her hood. She swallowed. “The semi just barreled straight on
through. No one around. I got a flashlight and hiked back along the
road. He was down a bank and his leg....” She shook her head. She
couldn’t tell them about that. “He vomited, from pain and the shock
I guess. I cleaned him up while I thought what to do. Cell phones
don’t work out there. I figured an hour and half at least to go get
an ambulance. Then more than an hour to an ER. And I’d have to
leave him alone out there. The only other choice was to take him in
myself. But I wasn’t sure he could get up the embankment. I made
him choose whether to try for the truck or wait for an ambulance.”
Her laugh was shaky as she ran her hand over her forehead and
pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ears. “He’s got guts. He
chose the truck. I pulled his good arm over my shoulder and got him
up. It must’ve hurt like crazy, but we made it up the bank, and he
hoisted himself into the cab with his good arm while I
pushed....”

The horrible night dimmed. She
blinked. Fading light showed rapt Tremaines sitting forward on
their seats. “That’s it,” she said, embarrassed. “I took him into
Washoe Med as fast as I could go.” She omitted using her horse
voice on him, of course, or how scared she’d been.

Silence greeted her words.
Finally Kee said, “Wow.”

“Stupid,” Maggie whispered,
shaking her head. “What if he’d had some kind of neck injury?” Just
thinking about what could have happened made her anxious.

Jane came from somewhere and
perched on the arm of the sofa and took her hand. “Shush, now. You
did what you had to do. Leaving him out there alone for more than
an hour would have been worse. And Tristram will be fine, thanks to
you.”

“He could have died out there in
the middle of nowhere,” Lanyon said, his face truly serious for
perhaps the first time since Maggie met him.

Maggie felt a shiver run down
her spine. She turned, knowing what she would see.

“But I didn’t, thanks to
Maggie,” Tris said. “I’m grateful for that.” He wasn’t looking at
his family. He was looking straight at Maggie. And in spite of the
cast and the sling, he was just ... just beaming with life and
vitality. It felt like she was seeing him for the first time. His
scabs must have washed off finally. He still had the old scars and
some pink skin marking the places where his face had been scraped.
But he still looked almost inhumanly handsome with his fair skin,
the dark comma of hair, and those green, green eyes. She should
look away, but she couldn’t. The energy that seemed to emanate from
him shot through her body and straight to her core. It was like
she’d never really been aware of her body before. Now, it filled
her senses. Or maybe
he
filled her senses. She dragged in a
breath. It sounded loud in the silence.

Behind Tris, Mr. Tremaine took
off at a run from the room that overlooked the deck.

“Then we are too,” Drew said,
and lifted one brow quizzically at Tristram.

Maggie couldn’t suppress her
blush. They must have seen her going gaga over their brother. Like
a million girls before her. Just pathetic.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Tris was in trouble. Big
trouble. He felt fine, of course. Better than he’d felt in a long
time. But he’d barely been able to resist Maggie when he was broken
and drugged. How would he resist her now?

“Mother?” Drew asked.

“Lying down.” Tris had forgotten
his guilt in the flush of seeing Maggie. He tore his gaze from
Maggie, his brows drawn together. What could he say to his family?
That he hadn’t come home to get healed? That he hadn’t meant to get
hit by a semi and he wasn’t drunk at the time? That he was sorry
his mother had to pay the cost to heal him? Not likely.

“Well, children,” Drew said,
rising. “Let’s see if we can’t get dinner on and save Mother some
effort, shall we?” Everyone rose at once, studiously not looking at
either Maggie or Tris. That was bad. Maggie was blushing
furiously.

“If I wash up, you think maybe I
could help?” she asked.

“Where are my manners?” Drew
asked no one in particular. “Kee, take Maggie upstairs to freshen
up. She’s had a long and no doubt annoying drive.” Here Drew shot a
disapproving look at Tris before she turned back to Maggie with a
smile. “Then you can supervise from a seat at the bar with a glass
of wine. Uh, or a beer if you like. The whole thing will probably
be chaos and we can use all the supervision we can get.”

Kee took charge of Maggie and
marched her off toward the staircase.

“You, to the kitchen,” Drew
ordered, waving at all of them. “Jane, see if Mother put the menu
she had planned on the fridge.”

Tris hung back to avoid the rest
of the group. No such luck. Drew descended on him. “So, a little
electricity between you and the cowgirl?”

“Not my type.” He was lying, of
course. Five days ago he would have been one hundred percent sure
she was not his type. But now he thought she was both absolutely
right for him and absolutely wrong.

“I don’t know,” Drew said with
mock airiness. “After I got over the plaid shirt and the hole in
the knee of her jeans, she rather grew on me. Certainly she’s got
courage.”

“Yeah. She’s got that.” He
absolutely did not want to talk about Maggie to his sister.

“And you never cared whether
they went to Harvard, unlike our esteemed older brother.”

Was she criticizing Maggie?
“Doesn’t need Harvard. She’s got street smarts. And you should see
what she can do with horses.” Uh-oh. Did that sound defensive?

“We saw. She rode Cally within
an inch of his life. Did you know he could dance?”

Tris swallowed and looked away.
“Uh, no, I didn’t.”

“Neither did Tammy. But
apparently Maggie did.”

Jane was assigning everyone work
in the adjacent kitchen. Drew turned when Tris hung back. “Look,
Drew, I ... I know I screwed up, leaving when I did.... Tammy was
upset. But I couldn’t stay with Tremaine Senior going on about....”
He trailed off.

Drew softened. “I know. We all
patched it up as best we could for her. Told her you’d been called
away.” She took his arm. “Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be
you, brother mine. You’re the only one who doesn’t believe in your
destiny. It drives Father nuts.”

“I’m not like you all. Or hadn’t
you noticed?”

Drew chuckled under her breath.
“Really? Stubborn? Check. Wicked smart? Check. And far too handsome
for the good of the opposite sex at large. A Tremaine registered
trademark.”

Tris snorted. “Smart? I didn’t
go to Harvard like Kemble, or Brown like you.”

“Neither did Father.” He started
to protest, but she interrupted. “I know. He’s an Adapter. But
you’re more like him than you think.” Tris made a face and looked
away. “You could have had MIT easily and don’t give me any of that
stuff about not knowing math. José says....”

“José says?”
Damn José.
“You been talking to José?”

She waved a hand airily. “Of
course I talk to José. And he says you do all the calculations for
grinding parts, and you have some process or something that
required all sorts of figuring. All this without even taking high
school math classes.” She quirked an eyebrow.

“I read a few books ... just
enough to get by.”

Drew pursed her lips. That
surprised Tris. He should have recognized that look on Maggie when
he first saw it. He’d been seeing it on his little sister for
years. “You undervalue yourself as a kind of protection, before
anyone else can do it,” she accused. “Father would be pleased if he
knew what you’d done.”

Tris snorted. “But he doesn’t
know. Because he’s never asked.”

“Maybe he can’t recognize it,
because you’re too much like him.”

“Stop.” Tris held up a hand.
Enough of this nonsense. “I’m not the son he wants. He’s made that
abundantly clear.” His voice was rawer than he wanted.

Drew smiled and patted his
cheek. “As long as you’re who
you
want to be. That’s what
counts. And when you realize who that is, that’s when it will
happen.”

Tris rolled his eyes. “True
love. Magical powers in our DNA. Drew, I don’t believe in that
fairy tale any more than I believe in virgin births.”

“I do.”

“I know. And I’m not getting
down on you for it. But don’t try to convert me.” He tried to
lighten it up. “Anyway, you can’t believe I’m a candidate for true
love with my track record.”

“You’re just looking harder for
true love than we are. Every night of the week, so I hear.”

“True love was the last thing I
wanted.”

“All I’m saying,” she said,
whirling toward the kitchen so that the full skirt of her sundress
fanned out around her, “is keep an open mind.”

He sighed. “At least Mother
didn’t have time to line up candidates with Celtic names.”

Drew turned back, laughing. “The
meat market. Remember those awful social climbers at her party last
year?”

“They fade into the long line of
potential brides she’s been parading through here since Kemble
turned twenty-one.”

“Nine years of parades,” Drew
drawled. “No wonder you left town.”

And then they were into the
chaos of the kitchen.