Fairytale by MAGGIE SHAYNE Page B

because he enjoyed looking at her so
much.
    And then he went still, and he felt his blood
slowly freeze over in his veins. Because he suddenly knew why she
seemed so familiar to him. She was the woman in the painting. The
woman he’d seen in his childhood delusion all those years ago. She
was...
    No! No, she couldn’t be. She was not the
woman he’d obsessed about for the past twenty-five years. The
resemblance was no more than coincidental. Because the thing that
had instigated the obsession had never really happened. It was just
a story he’d heard somewhere, and incorporated into his dreams. He
hadn’t really seen this woman bathing in a pond in an
enchanted forest. He hadn’t really been told that she was
his fate. That she’d come into his life so he could show her the
way home, and that if he fell in love with her, she’d break his
heart.
    But then again, he’d never really believed it had only been a dream, had he? Not deep down inside,
where it counted. And right now, there wasn’t a kernel of doubt in
his soul or body that this was her. It was only his practical mind
that rebelled.
    She turned to look at him from beyond the
plant’s twisting vines. Just the way she had before, in the dream
or vision or hallucination or whatever the hell it had been. His
knees threatened to buckle and he couldn’t seem to draw another
breath. In a second he’d be gasping. Chilled beads of sweat broke
out on his forehead, and his goddamned hands were shaking.
    And he suddenly remembered the question he’d
asked her just now. Whether she’d come with him, to his home.
Whether she’d stay for a while. And he was terrified she’d say yes,
and just as terrified she wouldn’t.
    His mind all but begged her to come with him.
Into his home. It scared him, the amount of tension that coiled in
his stomach as he awaited her answer. She’d lied to him, for God’s
sake. And he had a feeling she still was, despite her uncanny
resemblance to his lifelong fantasy. She wasn’t even a very good liar. Radon. Right.
    But he’d taken the bait. Not because he’d
believed her, but because he’d wanted to. And he supposed it was a
good thing he did. Because when she looked into his eyes, he didn’t
think there was a way in hell he could say no to her.
    Christ, she hit him on so many levels she
left his head spinning. She was his obsession. As if someone had
breathed life into his childhood dream. As if a magic wand had been
waved and she’d just walked right out of his head, and into his
life. He’d searched for her for so long...
    No. Not for her. For the source of that
fantasy...the myth that had to have inspired it. You never searched
for her!
    Was that true? Because it certainly felt as if he’d been searching for her. He’d thought the
painting was as close as he’d ever get to finding her. But now
she’d stepped off the canvas. And he wasn’t capable of letting her
just walk away. Not without knowing her, trying to find out what
all of this meant.
    On an entirely separate level, he resented
her. Because she had this incredible power over him, and because
she was lying. She was up to something. His need to know everything
there was to know about her was something he understood. Her desire
to entangle herself in his life, though, was baffling. Every
defense mechanism he’d developed through the betrayals he’d been
dealt had jumped to full alert. Alarm bells were going off in his
head, warning him that he was walking right into yet another
heartache.
    And yet he was powerless to resist. When he
wasn’t looking at her, he could convince himself that he was going
in with his eyes wide open this time. But when he looked into those
eyes he felt as if he’d tumbled headlong into a trance state, and
that he’d be her willing slave for the rest of his life if she so
much as asked it.
    The effect she had on him reminded Adam
sharply of the descriptions of fairies in that newly translated
Celtic text, and countless others. The