Free Fairytale by MAGGIE SHAYNE Page B

and startling and unexpected. Though it shouldn’t have been.
He’d reacted much the same yesterday, hadn’t he? It was as if he
fell under some kind of spell every time he looked into her eyes.
And yet he couldn’t seem to resist looking into them anyway.
    The way her eyes widened, the way she sucked
in a sharp gasp and pulled away from his touch, he was well on the
way to convincing himself she’d felt it too, whatever the hell it
was.
    His hand hovered in the air for a moment
longer. Then he lowered it, feeling like a fool. And he searched
for something to say. What did you say to a beautiful, weeping
stranger?
    “Is there anything I can do to help?” She
held his gaze with those moist, mesmerizing, soul-searching eyes of
hers...and very slowly, she nodded.

Chapter Four
     
    She tried not to look into his eyes. She
couldn’t afford to feel his pain, or to see the other things coming
to life in those deep blue gemstones. Other things. Like the way he
looked at her. As if he were seeing the epitome of his fondest
dream. As if she were something precious, rare, something he’d
never thought he’d see.
    She was nothing. Less than nothing. A
criminal unworthy of even a passing glance from this man.
    Brigit strained, for once, to find the girl
she’d been years ago. The one who had been willing to do whatever
was necessary to survive. The one who’d felt—as lousy as the world
had treated her—that it had no right to expect anything better in
return. The one who’d lived in a condemned building, and who’d sold
her soul without batting an eye, to save the life of the old man
who’d once saved hers. Right now, instead of denying the existence
of that wild thing inside her, she longed to hide behind it. To be
ruthless and clever and devious, the way she’d been then, when
she’d done whatever was necessary to survive.
    She had no choice but to do it again. And it
was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done. She told herself
it shouldn’t be. That she need only think of Raze in the hands of
that monster Zaslow, think of the things Zaslow might do to him if
she failed. It would give her the strength to go through with this.
She’d do whatever she had to. She’d forge the damned painting.
    How, though? How the hell was she going to
lie her way into Adam Reid’s house? Into his life?
    She dared a glance at him. He stood there,
waiting for her to speak. Okay, then. There was no more putting
this off. She knuckled her eyes dry again, and replaced her glasses
with careful deliberation. She straightened her spine.
    “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t usually greet my
customers with tears.”
    He tried for a smile, but it was
unconvincing. He wore the baffled, confused expression he’d always
worn in her dreams of him. “Maybe I should come back another
time.”
    “No. I’m fine now, really.”
    He looked at her, one golden brow arched in
disbelief.
    “Really,” she told him. And he nodded, though
she didn’t think he believed her. “So what are you doing here? Is
it about the class?”
    “Yes.” His lips thinned, and he tipped his
head back, looked at the deep blue sky beyond the glass ceiling,
then lowered it again, shoving one hand backward through his
luminous, honey-coated hair. “No.”
    Brigit tilted her head. “Which is it?”
    “I...” He licked his lips, then shook his
head. “It doesn’t matter. You didn’t want to take the class anyway.
Did you?”
    She lowered her head to hide the jolt those
words caused her. He was too perceptive. How could she ever hope to
deceive him? She wondered what had brought him here, and wished she
had the powers Sister Mary Agnes had woven into the fairytale.
She’d simply wave her hands and whisper a mystical chant, and she’d
be given instant access to his mind, his home. To his life. To his
painting.
    He was a frightening man. Such conflicting
emotions passing through those eyes of his. From near reverence to
wariness and suspicion when he looked