Key of Knowledge
Page 4

“That may be.” With obvious gratitude, Bradley accepted a drink. “But you’d have ended up with grease all over your dress. Then you’d have needed to go home and change and you’d’ve been even later. It’s hardly a slap in the face to accept a ride from someone you know who’s going to exactly the same place at the same time.”
“I said I was grateful,” Zoe shot back, then took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said to the room in general. “It’s been one of those days. And I’m nervous on top of it. I hope I haven’t held anything up.”
“Not at all.” Rowena brushed a hand over her shoulder as a servant came to the archway and announced dinner. “There, you see? Right on time.”
IT wasn’t every day you ate rack of lamb in a castle on a mountaintop in Pennsylvania. The fact that the dining room had twelve-foot ceilings, a trio of chandeliers sparkling with white and red crystal drops, and a ruby granite fireplace big enough to hold the population of Rhode Island certainly added to the perks.
The atmosphere should have been intimidating and formal, yet it was welcoming. Not the sort of place you’d chow down on pepperoni pizza, Dana reflected, but a nice ambience for sharing an exquisitely prepared meal with interesting people.
Conversation flowed—travel, books, business. It showed Dana the power of their hosts. It wasn’t the norm for a librarian from a small valley town to sit around and break bread with a couple of Celtic gods, but Rowena and Pitte made it seem normal.
And what was to come, the next step in the quest, was a subject no one broached.
Because she was seated between Brad and Jordan, Dana angled herself toward Brad and spent as much of the meal as possible ignoring her other dinner partner.
“What did you do to make Zoe mad?”
Brad flicked a glance across the table. “Apparently, I breathed.”
“Come on.” Dana gave him a little elbow poke. “Zoe’s not like that. What did you do? Did you hit on her?”
“I did not hit on her.” Years of training kept his voice low, but the acid in it was still evident. “Maybe it annoyed her that I refused to muck around in her engine, and wouldn’t let her muck around in it either, as we were both dressed for dinner and were already running late.”
Dana’s eyebrows rose. “Well, well. Seems she got your back up, too.”
“I don’t care to be called high-handed and bossy just because I point out the obvious.”
Now she smiled, leaned over and pinched his cheek. “But, honey, you are high-handed and bossy. That’s why I love you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” But his lips twitched. “Then how come we’ve never had wild and crazy sex?”
“I don’t know. Let me get back to you on that.” She speared another bite of lamb. “Guess you’ve been to a lot of snazzy dinners like this, in snazzy places like this.”
“There is no other place like this.”
It was easy for her to forget that her buddy Brad was Bradley Charles Vane IV, heir apparent to a lumber empire that had built one of the country’s largest and most accessible home improvement and supply chains, HomeMakers.
But seeing how smoothly he slid into this sort of sophisticated atmosphere reminded her that he was a great deal more than just the hometown boy.
“Didn’t your dad buy some big castle place in Scotland a few years back?”
“Manor house, Cornwall. And, yeah, it’s pretty incredible. She’s not eating much,” he murmured and gave a little nod toward Zoe.
“She’s just nervous. Me too,” Dana added, then cut another bite of lamb. “But nothing kills my appetite.” She heard Jordan laugh, and the deep male sound of it cruised along her skin. Deliberately, she ate the lamb. “Absolutely nothing.”
SHE was spending most of her time ignoring him, and taking swipes with whatever time she had left over. That, Jordan thought, was Dana’s usual pattern when it came to him.
He should be used to it.
So the fact that it bothered him so much was his problem. Just as finding a way to make them friends again was his mission.
They’d once been friends. And a great deal more. The fact that they weren’t now was his fault, and he would take the rap for it. But just how long was a man supposed to pay for ending a relationship? Wasn’t there a statute of limitations?
She looked incredible, he decided as they gathered back in the parlor for coffee and brandy. But then, he’d always liked her looks, even when she’d been a kid, too tall for her age and with that pudge of baby fat still in her cheeks.
There was no baby fat in evidence now. Anywhere. Just curves, a lot of gorgeous curves.
She’d done something to her hair, he realized, some girl thing that added mysterious light to that dense brown. It made her eyes seem darker, deeper. God, how many times had he felt himself drowning in those rich chocolate eyes?
Hadn’t he been entitled to come up for air?
In any case, he’d meant what he’d said to her before. He was back now, and she was just going to have to get used to it. Just as she would have to get used to the fact that he was part of this tangle she’d gotten herself into.
She was going to have to deal with him. And it would be his pleasure to make sure she had to deal with him as often as possible.
Rowena rose. There was something in the movement, in the look of her, that tickled something at the edge of Jordan’s memory. Then she stepped forward, smiled, and the moment passed.
“If you’re ready, we should begin. I think it’s more suitable if we continue this in the other parlor.”
“I’m ready.” Dana got to her feet, then looked at Zoe. “You?”
“Yeah.” Though she paled a bit, Zoe clasped hands with Dana. “The first time, all I could think was don’t let me be first. Now I just don’t know.”
“Me either.”
They moved down the great hall to the next parlor. It didn’t help to brace himself, Jordan knew. The portrait swamped him, as it had the first time he’d seen it.
The colors, the sheer brilliance of them, the joy and beauty of subject and execution. And the shock of seeing Dana’s body, Dana’s face—Dana’s eyes looking back at him from the canvas.
The Daughters of Glass.
They had names, and he knew them now. Niniane, Venora, Kyna. But when he looked at the portrait, he saw them, thought of them as Dana, Malory, and Zoe.