10
The shower felt good, but Lucas wouldn’t allow himself to luxuriate in it. He was all too acutely aware of the woman waiting for him downstairs. He’d already lost an hour of her company dealing with that damn driveway — and if his lifetime here in Flagstaff told him anything, it was that the look of the skies indicated there would be more snow, and soon.
Oh, well.
He got out, scrubbed his hair dry, squinted at his reflection in the steamy mirror, and decided to blow off the shaving for today. In the past, he’d had women tell him they liked it when he looked a little scruffy, so he could only hope Margot had similar tastes.
The clothes he’d been wearing to clear the driveway certainly couldn’t be worn again, so he chucked them in the hamper and pulled on some clean jeans and a flannel shirt. If the weather held, maybe he’d worry about putting on a sweater or something, but this should be fine for now.
A glance at the clock told him he’d only taken about fifteen minutes to shower and get dressed. Not too bad. But it still felt like time wasted.
When he returned to the family room, Margot still had the TV tuned to the weather, but you really didn’t need the forecaster’s blather to tell you that the storm had decided to park itself over Flagstaff for a while. Outside the window, fat white flakes of snow had begun to fall again.
Margot must have noticed his pained glance outside, because she said, “I’m sorry about the driveway.”
“It’s all right. As they say, it’s better to blow six inches twice than twelve inches once.”
Her mouth twitched, and he grinned.
“Margot Emory, you have a dirty mind.”
“I do not,” she protested. “I think you have a dirty mind for thinking that I have a dirty mind.”
“Fair enough.” He came and sat down on the couch next to her, and he couldn’t help noticing that she made no effort to move away. “It looks like it’s TV and Parcheesi. Or something. I’ll admit I’m not much of a board game kind of guy.”
“Video games?”
“Not really. I bought a console, but shooting pretend people really isn’t my thing. I ended up giving it to my nephews.” Most people probably would have thought of the whole situation as a waste, but Lucas didn’t look at it that way. At least he’d learned that he really wasn’t into video games. “I like to read,” he went on.
“You do?” she asked, looking surprised.
“Should I be offended that you don’t think I’d be the literary type?”
A faint tinge of color flushed the fair skin along her cheekbones. “That’s not what I meant. But with the golf and everything — ”
“I like golf. It relaxes me.”
“You don’t seem like someone in much need of relaxation.”
Her voice had the faintest teasing note, so Lucas couldn’t take offense. Anyway, he knew he had a reputation for being laid-back and easygoing to a fault. Nothing ruffled Lucas Wilcox. Or that’s what his family and friends thought. It wasn’t necessarily true, though. He was just better at hiding it than some people.
“Depends on the day,” he told her. “Anyway, there are members of my clan who work pretty hard at their magic, practicing and so on, but that’s not how my talent works. The best thing is to just let it…be.”
“That sounds…relaxing.”
Beneath her light tone, he thought he heard a touch of envy. “Do you have to practice with yours much?”
She hesitated. “Well, if it’s an illusion I’ve never cast before, I want to try it in advance, just so I know it will be effective.” Again a pause, as if she was weighing how much she should tell him. “I have a lot of little illusions set up all over Jerome — harmless things, really, more there to keep the tourists safe and out of our business than anything else. But since they have to trick outsiders on a daily basis, they have to be perfect. So I do practice first, to be safe.”
“Can I see one?” Her gift fascinated him. Yes, Connor could change his appearance, but no one else in his clan seemed to have Margot’s gift of illusions. He wanted to see it in action.
At first she didn’t reply, and he wondered if he’d offended her somehow. Was it not considered kosher amongst the McAllisters to ask for displays of one another’s powers?
“Okay,” she said at last. “How about this?”
In the next instant, the wall where the TV was embedded above the fireplace turned blank and white, and heavy crimson velvet curtains hung on either side, framing what Lucas realized was a miniature movie screen, sized to fit the space perfectly. An image flickered on that screen, and he saw it was the same weather forecast they’d just been watching, only at a size that dwarfed the sixty-inch screen of his television.