Storm Warrior

old, for God’s sake!”

“I told you about the Tylwyth Teg—”

“Those are goddamn faery tales! Stories for kids! They’re not real!”

“They were real enough when they changed me into a grim.”

Morgan stared at him for a long, long moment. His expression didn’t change, his golden eyes remained steady. “Please tell me you don’t believe what you’re saying. You can’t. It’s not rational. Something’s wrong, something’s giving you these delusions, these hallucinations, and we need to find you some help, some treatment, medication, something.”

“It’s you who are needing a bit of help,” he said gently. “You’ll not allow yourself to believe; perhaps you’re afraid to believe that there is more to the world than what you see. There are many things all around us that are old and powerful, and they’re to be respected not feared.”

Morgan forgot to breathe for several seconds. Those were Nainie’s words—exactly what Nainie had once said to her. How could he know, what did it mean? She sucked in a lungful of air just in time to realize Rhys had ahold of her hand. Before she could pull it back, he had placed her fingertips on a scar just under his rib cage.

“You’re a healer, and a fine one. Do you not recognize your own handiwork?”

What? Morgan saw at once that this wound was different. It was pinkish and raised slightly, fresh knit. She could discern that it had once been sutured with tiny, even stitches. But it was the shape of it that electrified her—a long straight slash with a hook at the end, like the letter J. She’d had to make an incision to enlarge the stab wound on the black dog, so she could repair the damage to his heart and lungs. Her finger traced along the scar almost of its own volition. The scar was located in the same place, oriented the same way…

She yanked her hand away as if from a hot stove. “It’s just coincidence. It has to be!” Desperation edged her voice. “Just a crazy and bizarre coincidence, that’s all!” Sliding from the grain bin, she edged around Rhys and backed toward the stable door.

He didn’t move. “I don’t like that you fear me.”

That halted her in her tracks. She marched up to him until they were only inches apart and planted her index finger in the center of his chest. “I. Am not. Afraid. Of you,” she said, emphasizing every word. “But I’ll tell you what I am afraid of. I’m afraid that your fantasies are contagious. I’m afraid of buying into your make-believe world. I’m afraid of loving you so much that I tell myself it’s perfectly okay to know absolutely nothing about you. And it’s not okay, not at all.”

“You already know everything that’s important about me. I’ve worked every day to prove myself to you, but you refuse to give me your trust.”

“My trust? You’re living on my property. That’s a helluva lot of trust, mister. And so was last night, goddamn it. Now you’re messing with my mind again, and I don’t like it. I want the lies and the games to stop. I want them to stop right now.”

He reached for her as if to hold her, but she knocked his hand away and headed for the door once more. She could feel his eyes on her and paused at the threshold to face him. “I want you to leave. Take your fantasies and go play with somebody else’s life.” With somebody else’s heart…“Go back to Leo’s or go to hell, but don’t come back, do you hear me?”

Rhys’s face darkened, but he didn’t move from the spot, only folded his heavily muscled arms across his broad chest. “I hear you fine. And now you hear me, Morgan Edwards. I’m not daft or touched in the head. I’m not a liar. And I’m not playing any foolish games. Do you think what we shared here was just a lark to me? You have my heart, and if I’m not very mistaken, I have yours as well. I want to make a life with you, but there’ll be nothing between us without trust and truth. I’ve given you both. Where are yours?”

She opened her mouth and closed it again, unable to form a coherent response to such an outrageous question. Truth indeed. Romans and fairies and death dogs, oh my. Morgan turned on her heel and marched to the house with the blanket flapping around her, angrier than she’d ever been in her life and glad for it, because it kept the pain in her heart at bay.

SIXTEEN

After slamming the door and locking the dead bolt, Morgan peeked out the window and saw nothing. Rhys hadn’t followed her, and for some reason, that made her even madder. Good. Fine. Dandy. She stalked to her room, muttering and fuming. Balled up the blanket and threw it into a corner.

She showered in the hottest water she could stand, scrubbing herself furiously as if she could erase the memory of Rhys’s touch. Remained under the water until it was too cold to bear, but it failed to cool her anger. Morgan toweled off and pulled on clothes in a fury. What the hell had she been thinking? It had been foolish, absolutely stupid of her to let this man, this stranger, stay on her property in the first place. And downright crazy to have sex with him.

Sex. Her fury suddenly popped like an overfilled balloon, and Morgan sank to the edge of her bed with her head in her hands. It hadn’t been just sex, not by a long shot. Not for either of them. Whether she liked it or not, the connection was real and powerful. She felt as if she had known Rhys all her life, in spite of the fact that she’d only just met him. And she loved him—that was certain. She’d always been on the cerebral side, cautious and careful, inclined to consider all the pros and cons and analyze everything to the nth degree…

This one time—just one damn time—she’d followed her heart, her instincts, and now look at what had happened.

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. She was good at analyzing, and if ever a situation called for it, this one did. Okay, step one: lay out the facts. That turned out to be harder than she thought, because the fact was that Rhys hadn’t exactly committed a crime. He hadn’t beaten her, stolen from her, cheated on her, or done anything other than work around her neglected farm and care for a wounded horse. In fact, the entire dilemma lay in his outrageous ancient-warrior-becomes-death-dog story.

Well, so what? That made him a goddamn liar, didn’t it?

But was it still a lie if he believed it? Everything in his face, his eyes, his body language, said that he was telling the absolute truth. Morgan had never heard of anything like this, had certainly never seen the situation mentioned in the advice column of the newspaper. And as problems went, it seemed insurmountable. She couldn’t just ignore it—it would always be the elephant in the room. And who knew what other strange things Rhys believed or what odd behaviors could develop because of it?

It didn’t help a bit that her partner, Jay, believed that the intricate silver dog collar proved that Rhys’s strange tale was true. Surely Jay was letting his own wishful thinking cloud his judgment—yet his judgment had always proved sound before. She relied on him at the clinic without hesitation. Why should this case be any different?

Was there any chance, any totally wild, billion-to-one chance that Rhys’s story could be true?

Oh, for pity’s sake, now I’m buying into the fantasy. She snorted, but the derisive sound turned into a sniffle and her eyes filled with unwelcome tears. She sniffed again, loudly, and a mounting headache had her heading to the kitchen for the bottle of ibuprofen she knew was on the counter. Afterward, she wandered aimlessly to the living room with a box of Kleenex under one arm and stood staring at her many bookshelves. Sunlight penetrated the venetian blinds on the windows, and bright rays fingered the numberless issues of veterinary journals, enormous resource books on every species of animal, and texts on chemistry, pharmacology, and anatomy.

Nainie had laughingly called her a bookish child, and the evidence plainly showed she still was one. But the