Heart's Magic (47 page)

Although it was yet to be
proved to her satisfaction that she had indeed said such a thing,
Spencer acted as if it were settled. And usually, when he said a
thing was so, it was so. Better just to accept it and go on from
there.

She'd come out to the lake
to think immediately after he dropped her off, a precise thirty
minutes after the proposal. Shayna thought better with only the
birds as distraction, where her dirty dishes couldn't see her and
remind her they needed washing.

So what did she want to do
about this marriage thing Spencer had come up with? She had two
choices. Either go through with it and marry him, or break it
off.

She liked Spence well
enough, and she always had a nice time when she was with him. But
she wasn't sure she loved him.

Shayna sighed and picked up
her binoculars again, scanning the pines and aspens around the lake
for perching birds. She spotted a speck of blue and hoped for a
mountain bluebird but finally realized it was the sky beyond the
trees. Disgusted, she pulled the strap to her binoculars over her
head and laid them on the log where she sat. She was in bad shape,
looking at the sky and thinking it was birds. This business with
Spence had her all muddled.

Did she want to marry him,
or didn't she? If she did want to marry him, then why did she feel
so scared and unhappy and mixed-up? A bride was supposed to be
excited and thrilled and radiant, not miserable. So what was the
problem?

She didn't think it was
Spence's kids. They weren't angels, but what kids were? And it
wasn't that she was against marriage, per se. She had always
intended to get married. It wasn't the be-all and end-all goal of
her life, but it was something she wanted to do.

So what was the problem?
Maybe she felt this way because she really, truly did not want to
marry Spencer. But if she didn't want to marry him, why not? Spence
was a good man. He had a good job, he was good with his kids, he
was good to her. Okay, maybe he was a little controlling now and
then, but how controlling did a man have to be for it to be a bad
sign? How could she not want all that goodness?

Shayna shoved her notebook
onto the log with her binoculars and sprang to her feet. She
couldn't sit still. She paced along the water's edge, deaf and
blind to the birds chirping overhead and the flowers hiding beneath
the trees.

Maybe it was just the way
he proposed. Absolutely no romance to it at all. Not even a kiss,
much less a romantic dinner with music or a moonlight stroll. But
then Spencer did not have a romantic bone in his body. No spark of
romance lived anywhere in his soul.

But so what? What was the
big deal about romance anyway? It was a teenager's dream, something
for girls who had never faced the world head on.

Romance was not reality,
and almost-thirty-year-old never-married medical lab technicians
had to deal with reality. Spencer Hargood was reality. That knight
in shining armor she used to dream about did not exist, and she
might as well get used to the fact. It was time to quit
hoping.

Shayna kicked viciously at
a columbine that dared nod its head at her. "Stupid
flower!"

Then a resounding crash
echoed through the woods. The aspens quivered in answer and Shayna
quaked right along with them. She whirled in a full circle, trying
to see which tree had fallen. She turned again, more slowly, and
saw the bushes rustling in the direction of her car. Shayna
clutched the slender white trunk of a sapling in sudden alarm.
Bears? Or some of those North Idaho neo-Nazis moved
south?

Shayna's jaw hit her chest
as a man staggered out of the underbrush. Not just a man. A knight.
In armor. But the armor didn't shine. The helmet hiding his face
and the linked-chain tunic were black. Blood stained the metal of
the tunic and the black quilted shirt he wore beneath
it.

Tall, broad and ominous,
the knight terrified Shayna. Especially when she spotted the
sword.

Long and impossibly sharp,
the sword was held in a hand marked with runnels of scarlet. More
red droplets slid their way down the brilliant steel of the blade.
Bright red, like fresh-- No. She didn't want that word anywhere in
her head.

The knight advanced on her.
Shayna scrambled backwards, too scared to outright turn and run.
The only thought that floated through her brain was that this was
not the kind of knight she had in mind.