Free Beguiled by Maureen Child

at the stranger sitting at the table with Maggie’s family.
    The stranger looked about thirty-five. He had dark red hair, shining blue eyes and a wide, laughing mouth. He was waving his fingertips at the flowers, clearly orchestrating their magical dance, but he stopped short when he spotted Maggie. Grinning, he stood up, spread his arms wide as if expecting her to rush into an embrace, which so wasn’t happening, and announced, “There’s my granddaughter. The Queen. Don’t you have a kiss for your grandFae?”
    “Can you believe it, Mags?” Nora asked from her spot at the table. She was watching their grandfather with stars in her eyes and even Eileen looked completely taken with the man. “Our grandfather’s alive .”
    “And making flowers dance. BFD,” Bezel muttered.
    The stranger ignored that remark and winked at Maggie. “Of course I’m alive. Immortal, remember?”
    “He just showed up,” Bezel muttered. “Shifted in out of nowhere.”
    Maggie nodded, but couldn’t look away from the Fae in front of her. She hadn’t had a chance yet to tell Nora about their grandfather. Every time she’d tried to in the last couple of days, Nora had been sick to her stomach or had been arguing with Quinn over some damn thing or other, so she’d put it off. Thinking she had time. After all, it wasn’t as if good ol’ gramps had bothered to check in at all over the years. She hadn’t considered the possibility of him showing up now .
    Although clearly she should have.
    Silence stretched out in the kitchen until it was almost a live thing, pulsing out around them. As if everyone in the room were holding their breath, waiting to see Maggie’s reaction.
    Well, hell. She didn’t know what to think.
    There he stood. The guy who seduced Gran so long ago in Ireland. This was the Fae who’d started their line, then never once in all these years bothered to stop by to see if they were alive. This was the guy who’d made it possible for her to be the freaking Queen.
    Maggie was in no mood to thank him for that .
    “You knew.” Nora’s voice suddenly sliced through the quiet. The scrape of her chair legs against the wood floor sounded like a scream. “You knew we still had a grandfather and you didn’t tell me.”
    Maggie kept her gaze fixed on the newcomer, but said, “I meant to.”
    “Great,” Nora snapped. “You meant to tell me about Jasic—”
    “Jasic?”
    He bowed slightly.
    “And Quinn meant to tell me that he deliberately gave me a boy baby so he could raise him to be a warrior. But nobody actually tells me anything.”
    Finally, Maggie turned a quick look on her sister. “A warrior baby?” she asked, her mind instantly filling with the image of a sword-wielding baby sliding from the womb, then shook her head. Not the time. “I’m sorry, okay? I did mean to tell you. Culhane only told me a few days ago, but—”
    “Ah yes, Culhane the Mighty,” Jasic whispered.
    Maggie’s head whipped around and she pinned him with a hard look. “You know him?”
    “I know of him,” Jasic said, examining his fingernails as if trying to read a foreign language. “We don’t mix in the same circles.”
    Bezel snorted.
    Jasic’s lip curled at the sound.
    “You should have told me, Maggie,” Nora said, more quietly now. “He’s family .”
    More than temper, there was hurt in Nora’s voice and Maggie cringed to hear it.
    “I’m sorry, Nor. Really. But”—she looked at her grandFae again—“why are you here?”
    “To meet my family, of course,” he said, waving both arms expansively. “I would have come sooner, but I didn’t want to intrude.”
    “Sooner,” Maggie repeated, and thought to herself, You’ve had more than thirty years to drop by. Why now? And all of a sudden intruding was okay? What had changed? What had motivated this surprise visit? Why was she so suspicious of a Fae she’d never seen before?
    “Of course,” he told her, moving out from the table to walk across the room