Stars of Fortune(8)
His eyes, so dark, flicked away from Riley, met hers. Held them. And holding them, crossed to their table.
“Ladies. Spectacular view, isn’t it?”
His voice, Irish and easy, brought a shiver to Sasha’s skin. She felt trapped, as if a shining silver cage had dropped around her.
And when he smiled, she yearned.
“Where you from, Irish?” Riley asked.
“Sligo, a little village you wouldn’t have heard of.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Cloonacool.”
“I know it. Sits at the foot of the Ox Mountains.”
“So it does, yes. Well then.” He waved his hand, and offered Riley the little clutch of shamrocks that appeared in it. “A token from home, faraway.”
“Nice.”
“Americans?” He looked back at Sasha. “Both of you?”
“Looks that way.” Riley watched his gaze shift, land on the sketches. She said nothing when he reached down, lifted the one of six people.
Not shocked, she thought. Intrigued.
“Isn’t this a fascination. You’d be the artist?” he said to Sasha. “You’ve a clever hand, and eye. I’ve been told I have the same.” He smiled. “Mind if I join you?”
Without waiting for assent, he got a chair from a neighboring table, pulled it up. Sat.
“I’d say we’ve a lot to talk about. I’d be Bran. Bran Killian. Why don’t I buy you ladies a drink, and we’ll talk about the moon and the stars?”
CHAPTER TWO
Sasha struggled to find her balance as he made himself comfortable, ordered a glass of the local red.
He’d walked out of her dreams, as if she’d wished him into being. She knew his face, his body, his voice, his scent. She’d been intimate with him.
But he didn’t know her.
He didn’t know her heart beat fast fists at the base of her throat, or that she had her hands clutched together under the table to keep them from shaking.
She needed a moment alone to gather herself, thought to scoop up the sketches and get away, but he turned those dark eyes on her.
“Do you mind?” he asked, and before she understood, without waiting for an answer, he picked up one of the sketches of Riley.
“She’s captured you very well.”
“Seems like.”
“Have you known each other long?”
“About a half hour.”
His only reaction was a single quirked eyebrow—the one with the lightning bolt scar. “Fascinating.”
He picked up, studied sketch after sketch, ordering them as he went. “And the other three people?”
“She doesn’t know. You don’t seem too weirded out about it.”
“The world’s full of mysteries, isn’t it?”
“What are you doing in Corfu?” Riley asked him.
He sat back with his wine, smiled. “I’m on holiday.”
“Come on, Bran.” Riley gestured with her own drink. “After all we’ve been through together.”
“I felt this was the place I needed to be,” he said simply, and picked up the sketch of the moon with its three bright stars. “And apparently it is.”
“You know what they are.”
Bran shifted his gaze to Sasha. “She speaks. I know what they are, yes. Where is altogether another matter. I have one of your paintings.”
“What?”
“The one you called Silence. A forest in soft morning light, with a narrow path winding through trees green with summer, some coated with moss that shimmers in light quiet as a whisper. Beyond the path, that light glows, brighter, bolder, in a kind of beckoning. It would make the observer wonder what lies at the end of the path.”
He picked up another sketch, one of himself, feet planted, head back, with bold blue lightning flashing from the tips of his upstretched fingers. “It’s all very interesting, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what any of this means. I don’t understand any of it.”
“But you came nonetheless. From America?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re from America, Riley.”
“Originally. I move around a lot. And you came from Ireland.”
“Originally. But to here, from New York. I have a place there.”
“Doing what?” Sasha demanded.
If he noticed her sharp tone, he didn’t show it. “Magic,” he said, and offered her a passionflower, richly purple. “The hand’s quicker than the eye,” he said easily, “especially since the eye’s so easily misdirected.”
“You’re a magician.”
“I am. Stage magic—street magic when the mood strikes.”
A magician, Sasha considered. The lightning could symbolize his line of work. But it didn’t explain all the rest. Nothing did.