Magic Gone Wild (34 page)

God, she was beautiful. It didn’t seem possible that he would have forgotten how beautiful in twelve hours, but he had.

“Zane, you’re home!”

And just like that, with those three words, it all fell into place.

His life.

This house.

Vana.

He looked around. His great-great-great-grandmother’s lantern on the side table. His parents’ wedding picture hanging above the fireplace. His baby picture beside it. Peter’s portrait in the foyer. His mother’s thimble collection, his grandfather’s pipe. The salt shaker he’d given Vana on the mantel next to his Little League trophy.

This
was home.

Somehow, in a short period of time, Vana had turned this place from a dusty, dingy, sheet-covered bad memory into a place filled with life and warmth and memories.

She’d made it a home.

“Zane? Are you okay?”

He nodded. Because he couldn’t speak.

He was
home
. For the first time, he had a sense of what that meant.

And he had her to thank for it.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” She took the plate from him and tugged him toward the living room, her smile taking his breath away.

That was something a man could get used to.

He cleared his throat. “What happened, Vana?”

She stumbled but quickly recovered. “Happened?”

“Yeah, while I was gone. Merlin said something about you needing me.” Those words had a nice ring to them. Yeah, he could see the whole picture.

“Some friend he is,” she muttered, setting the plate down before tucking some hair behind her ear, then fiddling with her fingers—very telling signs with her.

Zane glanced around. No cows, no bears, and the stairs were still in one piece.

“What happened, Vana?”

“Nothing really.”

Oh, it was something.

“Tell me.” He picked up her hands. “Please.”

She nibbled her bottom lip and glanced at the table before giving him a too-quick smile. “I took care of it. You don’t have to worry.”

Apparently he did. But he didn’t pressure her, just sat there holding her hands and looking at her. She’d tell him when she was ready.

“It’s Gary.”

Shit. “What about him?”

“He knows about me.”

Double shit. “How?”

“I’m not sure, but he knows. He… he took Colin.”

“One of the children?” Zane stormed to his feet. “Where is he? What’d he do with him? Is Colin okay?”

Vana grabbed his hand and stopped him from running out the door after that motherfucking prick. “Colin’s fine. He’s here. Unharmed. It’s okay, Zane.”

No, it freaking was not. On so many levels: Gary, the kids, how he was coming to feel for them, for Vana… and in one blinding instant he’d thought it’d all gone up in swirling pink smoke.

He needed to sit down because his knees were threatening to give out in a way that had nothing to do with his ACL. “What… what happened?”

Vana took a deep breath and pulled her hands back into her lap, her fingers twiddling madly. Zane covered them with his. “Vana, tell me. I’m imagining all sorts of horrifying scenarios right now.”

“Okay, but remember, it all worked out in the end.”

He tried to quell the desire to murder Gary as Vana relayed the story she’d pieced together from Henry, Eirik, Fatima, Lucia, and the children, as well as the parts only Colin had known.

“So while Lorelei was talking about using the yard for a community picnic, and LeeAnn was suggesting donating the property to the Future Farmers’ Club, and Laura was thinking we should open a series of summer camps, I was trying to figure out where Colin had gone. It wasn’t until the ladies left that Henry and the rest could tell me what happened.”

“But how did Gary know in the first place?” And who else knew…

“I didn’t find out. I was more concerned about getting Colin back.”

“And he’s back? He’s okay?”

Vana’s laugh relieved some of his tension. Well, his worry, but the desire to commit murder was still pretty strong. “Oh, he loves telling the story now. Quite the adventure.”

“And you? How are you?”

Her tough façade wavered just as he knew it would. She’d been as terrified as he’d been when she’d first told him. He shouldn’t have left her here alone. “You should have called me, Vana. Or magicked me back here.”

“Which would have done exactly what I was trying to prevent Gary from doing. The whole world would have known about me if I showed up out of nowhere and whisked you away.” She took another deep breath, and this time, her shoulders rolled back and her chin tilted.

“Besides, I handled it.
I
did it, Zane. And I could do it because Gary took something from me that was more important than my problematic magic. I had to get Colin out of there, and I had to keep Gary from going public with what he knew. I didn’t have time to worry about what my magic would or wouldn’t do. And it was actually better than I could’ve hoped. Gary won’t be spreading tales about what he knows for a long time. Ever, if I have anything to say about it, and the beauty of it is that Gary thinks I do. So our secret is safe.”

“I still think you should turn him into a toad.”

“That’s always a possibility if he tells someone something he shouldn’t.”

“But… that would mean you’d have to be around to monitor him. Here.”

The idea no longer bothered him. Matter of fact, he liked it. It answered everything. The children and the furniture could stay here while Vana tried turning them back, and if they wanted to stay once they were changed, well, the house certainly was big enough—

No. The
home
was big enough.

She tugged her hands away and tucked hair behind both her ears. “I… I actually wouldn’t have to stay here, Zane. Gary’s leaving town. On threat of being turned into a donkey.”

“I like that better than the toad idea. He’s already an ass.”

She smiled and Zane felt another piece of his life fall into place. He wouldn’t leave her to face Gary or anything like that situation again. “But what if I wanted you to stay here? What if I…” He took two seconds to think it over and realized that he had to say it. Had to do it. “What if I don’t sell the house?”

He counted to three before her mouth closed. Counted five more before any words came out.

And even then, they were breathless. “Are you… Really?”

He cupped her cheek. “Really. You’ve made this place a home, Vana. For all of us. Even the gargoyles and Henry and Eirik. When I walked in the door tonight, I felt it. That sense of homecoming I’ve never had.”

“You did?” There was something in her eye. A tear, perhaps.

No, she shouldn’t cry. Ever.

He brushed it away with his thumb. “Vana.”

Shimmering silver eyes met his. “Yes?”

He caught another tear. “I want to kiss you.”

She inhaled sharply and her fingers flexed against his chest. They grasped his shirt and hung on. “Oh,” was all she said.

That was all she needed to say.

He slipped his hands, so slowly, beneath that fall of hair, letting the strands glide between his fingers, igniting every nerve ending he had.

He tilted her chin up just slightly with his thumbs, feeling the steady thud of her pulse against them.

He watched the silver sheen in her eyes darken, the pupils dilate, saw her lips part to take in more breath.

“Vana,” he whispered, her lips just out of touching range of his.

She swallowed. “Yes?”

“I’m going to kiss you.”

This time she said nothing. Not a gasp, not an “oh,” not an “okay.”

This time, she moaned.

It was Zane’s undoing.

He pulled her into him and kissed her, her lips trembling beneath his as she sighed into his mouth.

It wasn’t enough.

He shifted on the sofa to get closer, but his leg was in the way. So he leaned forward, urging her back. He lifted his knee to the cushion and raised himself above her, never once breaking the kiss.

Her fingers slid up his chest and around his neck as he slipped her legs beneath him on the sofa, every inch touching, and framed her face with his hands, tugging on her bottom lip with his teeth until she opened her eyes. Starlight shone in them.

“You are so beautiful.” He stroked a strand of hair from her cheek. God, he could swear he’d been imagining her like this since the day they’d met. He wanted to tell her that, but the words wouldn’t come. He stroked her cheek again in a caress that felt so right it was as if he’d done it just that way before.

She lay there in the moonlight with the sweetest welcome in her expression, as if she were a gift from the gods. As a genie,
his
genie, she just might be.

But he didn’t want the genie. He wanted the woman. Because, for all her magic, nothing had made this house a home more than Vana had.

“I want you, Vana.”

There it was. No preamble. No dissembling. No games. Stark, honest, raw desire.

The same thing he saw reflected in her eyes.

Something
thwumped
, and for a moment, Zane thought it was his heart.

But then it
thwumped
again behind them.

Zane looked up. Eirik’s limb was pressed against Henry’s door, and both of them were staring at him and Vana. Not that Zane knew how they could stare, since they didn’t have eyes, but he could feel their looks like a physical touch—or make that a physical “do not touch.”

What were they—her guardians? “Don’t you two have something better to do?”

Eirik made a big production—as big as a coat rack could—of lifting his limb from Henry and stomping back to his post by the door. Henry straightened his shoulders, er, frame, so he was two inches taller. The two of them radiated displeasure through every grain of the wood they were made of.

God, there were people—
beings
, whatever—in his living room. Gargoyles running amok in his yard.

And Vana in his arms.

That made everything right.

Everything except…

He wanted her.

In his bed.

No, hers. The one on the third floor that he’d forever think of as theirs.

“Say ‘yes,’ Vana. God, please say you want this.”

He waited half a heartbeat. A desire-filled, anxious half of a heartbeat. With his blood throbbing in his ears, dread and hope warring in his gut.

No, not his gut. A little higher.

And then she looked at him beneath her long lashes and said the magic word—and it wasn’t “Abracadabra” or “Open, sesame” or even the dreaded “holy smokes.”

It was the one three-letter word that opened the door to every possibility.

“Yes.”

34

Vana didn’t have to think about it. Of course she’d say “yes.”

Aside from the fact that she’d wanted him desperately since she’d first set eyes on him,
he
wanted
her
. Despite everything, Zane wanted her.

And he wanted the house, too. Finally, they were on the same page, and Vana was so utterly happy she could cry. Was about to, actually, but then Zane jumped off the sofa, swept her up in his arms, and strode toward the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Rhett Butler couldn’t hold a candle to Zane.

Candles covered every dresser, nightstand, and windowsill when he kicked open the door to her bedroom.

“Thank God,” said Zane, kicking it closed behind him.

She was about to agree, but then he let go of her legs, and inch by maddeningly slow inch, she slid down his body.

“Zane, I—”

He kissed her then, and it was as if lightning arced between them with hot, intense, unmitigated desire. She forgot what she was going to say as her fingers fumbled with the buttons on his shirt.

Zane muttered something against her lips, then covered her hands with his and yanked, sending the buttons flying.

Oh gods, he was all planes and angles that her fingers wanted to trace; ridges and valleys her lips wanted to explore; sinew and muscles and the sexy line of hair heading down to his belt line and below that she remembered all too well. How it’d felt beneath her fingers, against her cheek, along the tips of her breasts.

His fingers fumbled with his belt, and it was her turn to cover his hands with hers. “Allow me.”

He nipped her bottom lip and removed his hands—which he then rested on her waist. “Your wish is my command.”

That was her line—

No, she wasn’t going to think about the differences between them or her magic or the last time they’d done this… This was a whole new start for them, as if that other night had never happened.