Connor stood in the middle of the living room, although there was no furniture except a large table littered with paints and brushes, and the large easel where he was standing. His gaze was abstracted as he stared at the half-finished painting on the easel. An absent hand ran through his hair, mussing it, although he turned around at once when the floorboards creaked beneath my feet.
“Did you talk to Sydney?”
“Yes,” I replied, stepping forward so I could pause next to him. It was colder in here, and I moved close so I could put my arms around him. At once he reached out to hold me, his body heat mingling with mine. “She wants to come up to Flagstaff to meet you.”
“She has met me.”
“I told her that. She said it wasn’t the same thing. But….”
He must have sensed the diffidence in my tone, because he loosened his embrace, drawing back slightly so he could look down into my face. “What are you thinking, Angela?”
“I — ” There wasn’t any easy way to make the suggestion, so I just plunged ahead before I lost my nerve. “I want you to come to Jerome with me.”
Eyes widening, he shot me an incredulous look. “Just like that. Do you know what you’re asking?”
I pulled out of his arms and planted my hands on my hips. “Of course I do. I don’t see much difference between you asking me to go to Damon’s house and me asking you to come to Jerome. I’ve braved your family, so why can’t you return the favor?”
“I — shit.” Again that nervous gesture, his hand running through his hair. “Because they’ll blast me with every spell in their arsenal the second I set foot there?”
“They didn’t when you came to the Halloween dance,” I retorted, then paused, my brows crinkling in a frown. “How did you manage that, anyway?”
“Damon,” he said briefly. “But I wouldn’t have that protection this time.”
“No, but you’d have me.” His expression was dubious, to say the least, so I went on, “I’m their prima — they have to do what I say, even if they don’t like it. Anyway, McAllister magic isn’t like that. We don’t go around blasting things.”
“Maybe not, but I saw that one warlock at the Halloween dance, the one in the Grim Reaper costume. He looked like he could break me over his knee.”
I smothered a smile. “Tobias? He’s a big teddy bear. He won’t hurt you, and neither will anyone else. But don’t you see, Connor? How can we make anything right, move forward from this and try to mend the rift between our clans, if we don’t start here and now?”
That made sense to him, I could tell. He reached up and rubbed his chin; he hadn’t bothered to shave that morning, and the stubble had him looking distractingly scruffy. Then he shook his head. “Damon will never allow it.”
“How’s he going to know? Does he have your apartment bugged? Did he plant a witchy tracking device on me so he’d know my whereabouts at all times?”
A grimace. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Well, then.” My gaze flickered to the painting on the easel; it was obviously somewhere just outside Flagstaff, since a snow-capped Humphreys Peak towered in the background behind an autumn hill of yellow grasses and blazing golden aspens. Not all the aspens had been filled in, or the deep blue sky, but it was still powerful, half-finished as it was. “And once they find out what an amazing artist you are, they’ll love you just as much as I do.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” he said wryly. “But okay. You’re right. It’s not exactly fair of me to subject you to Damon and the rest of the clan without me having to suffer your relatives in return.”
“My relatives are awesome,” I replied. “You’ll see.”
He paused. I wasn’t psychic, so I had no idea exactly what was going through his mind, but I could guess. It’s never easy, walking into the lion’s den. “How long?” he asked.
“I don’t know. A couple of days.” I thought of the gallery then and asked, “We can wait until the weekend, if you need to work.”
“No, that’s okay. The gallery isn’t going to reopen until Saturday anyway, so this is a good time. It’s slow after Christmas for us — Joelle can probably handle the place on her own if it turns out we’re going to be away longer than that.”
I reflected how much he had changed in just the past few days. When we first met, he’d said he didn’t trust Joelle to have the keys to the gallery. Now it seemed he didn’t have a problem handing everything over to her.