"Very. The sooner you sign, the sooner we can get started on the groundwork. But you have to take the step, Darcy, make the decision."

"The step." She touched a hand to her temple as if dizzy, then turned away. How could she take any step when she had no balance, she thought. She had no balance at all. Who would, after being struck by such a blow?

It was the contract he spoke of, not love, not marriage, but business. Sweet God, what a fool she was, what romantic fantasies she'd woven and how completely she'd stripped herself of defenses.

And the worst of it was, he didn't even know.

"We've come here, is it, to talk of contracts?"

Step one, he thought. Get her signed, sturdily connected to him. He'd show her the world, and all the things she wanted. Once she had a taste of them, he'd offer her a feast. Anything and everything she'd ever wanted.

"I want you to have what you're looking for. I want to be a part of getting it for you. Celtic Records will nurture you, and build your career. I intend to see to it personally. See to you."

"The package." She tried to swallow the bitterness, but it stuck in her throat when she looked back at him. All she'd ever wanted was standing right here, with his hair blowing in the breeze and his eyes too cool for her to reach out and touch him.

"That's how Nigel put it. So you'll see, personally, to the package?"

"And keep you happy. I can promise that."

Cold now, she angled her head. "How much do you judge it takes to keep me happy?"

"To start, on signing?" He named a figure that would have taken her breath away if she hadn't felt so cold, so bloody cold. Instead, she met the offer with a cynical lift of her brow.

"And how much of that, may I ask, is for the talent, and how much is because I'm sleeping with you?"

His eyes fired quickly, and went hard as stone. "I don't pay women to sleep with me. That's insulting to both of us."

"You're right." Finally, the pain ate through the ice and made her weak. "I'm sorry for that, it was badly put. Others will say it, though. Nigel warned me of that."

He hadn't thought of it. It only showed how tangled up he was in her that he hadn't thought of it. "You'll know better. What else matters?"

She walked away from him, back to Maude's grave, but found no comfort in the flowers or the magic or the dead. "It's easier for you, Trevor. You have the armor of your position, and your power and your name. I'll come into this without any of that."

"Is that what's stopping you?" He went to her, turned her back. "Are you afraid of words spoken by jealous idiots? You're stronger than that, Darcy."

"Not afraid, no, but aware."

"The business is separate from our private life." But he was merging them, knew it. "You have a gift, and I can help you use it. What's between us otherwise is no one's concern but our own."

"And if what's between us begins to fade, if one or the other of us should decide it's time to move on there, or away, what then?"

It would kill him. Even the thought of it stabbed his heart. "It won't affect the business side."

"Maybe we should have a separate contract saying so." She meant it sarcastically, even cruelly, and was stunned when he only nodded.

"All right."

"Well, then. Well." She let out a shaky breath, and walked over to look down at Ardmore once again. So that was how things were done in his world. Contracts and agreements and sensible negotiations. Fine. She could handle that, would handle that.

But just let him try to walk away from her down the road. Let him try, and he'd find his legs across the room from the rest of him. He knew nothing of wrath.

"All right, Magee. Draw up your papers, ring your solicitors, strike up the band, whatever needs doing." She didn't turn back, but whirled. And her smile glittered, hard and gorgeous. "I'll sign my name. You'll get your voice, you'll get the whole flaming package. God help you."

God help us both, she added silently.

Relief came to him in a wave. He had her, and was on his way to keeping her. "You won't regret it."

"I don't intend to." Her eyes were sharp enough to cut glass when he took her hands again, leaned toward her. "No, you don't. I don't seal business arrangements with kisses."

"Point taken." Solemnly he shook her hand. "Business concluded?"

"For the moment." So now he wanted a woman, a lover. Fine, then, she'd give him his money's worth there as well.

Deliberately, she ran her hands up, from hips to ribs, over chest, onto shoulders, sliding her body into his. Provocative, taunting, she nipped, retreated, nipped until she tasted frustrated desire, until she saw the flash of it heat his eyes to smoke.

Then, only then, she tipped her head back and let him take.

They feasted on each other, with none of the tender patience of the night. This was passion and passion only, with its greed and fire and demands. While her soul wept from the loss, she rejoiced.

He wanted her, would want her, again and again. This she would see to. As long as she held this power, she held him. And with it, witchlike, she would bind him.

"Touch me." She tore her mouth from his to use her teeth in little cat bites on his neck. "Put your hands on me."

He hadn't meant to. The time and the place were all wrong. But heat was pumping out of her, into him, burning off control, scorching sense. His hands, rough and possessive, filled themselves with her.

But when he was on the point of losing all reason, of dragging her down to the wild grass, she pulled back. The wind caught her hair and swirled it as if in water, the sun shot into her eyes and sparkled there. For an instant, her beauty was cruel.

"Later," she said, and lifted a hand, lover-like, to stroke his cheek. "You can have me. As later I'll have you."

Fury spurted into his throat, but he didn't know if it was for himself or for her. "That's a dangerous game, Darcy."

"And what fun are they if they're not? You'll have what you want from me, on both counts. Be content that here you've had my word on the first, and a fine taste of the second."

He was just raw enough to risk asking, "What do you want from me?"

Her lashes lowered, a shield against grief. "Didn't you bring me up here because you'd figured that out for yourself already?"

"I guess I did," he murmured.

"Well, then." She was smiling again when she held out a hand. "We'd best go back, as the morning's wasting. And I never did finish my tea." Cheerfully, she gave his hand a little squeeze as they walked. Let's just see if you can keep up with me, you blind, thickheaded bastard. "And will you be willing to share your bagels with me?"

He ordered himself to match her mood. "I could probably be persuaded to share."

Neither of them looked back as they walked away, or saw the air ripple and shred.

"Fools," Carrick muttered, scowling from his perch atop the stone well. "Stubborn, bone-brained fools. And just my luck to be stuck with them. One step away from happiness, and they spring back as if it were bared fangs."

He leaped off his seat, landing an inch above the ground. In the next instant he was sitting, cross-legged, by Maude's grave. "I'm telling you, old friend, I've just no clear understanding of mortals. Maybe they are just in heat, and I'm wrong about them."

Brooding now, he stuck his chin on his fist. "The hell I am," he decided, but it didn't lighten his mood. "They're stupid in love with each other, and there, I think, lies the problem. Neither of them knows how to handle stupidity. Afraid of it is what they are. Afraid to give in to senselessness and let love rule."

He sighed a little, then waved his wrist and took a bite of the golden apple that appeared. "You'd say I was the same. And you'd be right enough. Magee's set on the same path I took. Promise her this, offer her that, vow to give her the world, as the world's safe when you've plenty of it to spare. But you've only one heart, after all, and giving that is a more difficult deal. I didn't look inside my Gwen, and he doesn't look inside his Darcy. He thinks it's sense, but it's nothing but fear."

He gestured toward the headstone with the apple, as if the old woman sat there, listening. Perhaps she did. "And she's no better when it comes to it. As different from my quiet, modest Gwen as sun from moon, but the same in this aspect. She wants him to offer his heart, but will she just bloody say so, for Finn's sake? No, she won't. Females-who can figure them?"

He sighed then, munched his bright apple, contemplated. He'd nearly lost patience, had been on the edge of springing out of the air to order them both to get on with it. They were in love, admit it and be done.

But that was beyond what was permitted. The choices, the timing, the steps of their dance together had to be theirs. His- contribution, Carrick decided-he didn't care for the word "interference"-could be only minor.

He had done what he could do. Now he had to wait as he had waited three centuries already. His fate, his happiness, at times he thought his very life, depended on the hearts of these two mortals.

He'd dealt with the other pairs of them. You'd have thought he'd have learned enough to know how to hurry these last two along. But all he'd learned was that love was a jewel with too many facets to count. Strength and weakness running side by side through it. And that no one could give or take it with any less than an open hand.

He lay back on the grass, and with his mind sketched Gwen's beloved face in the clouds. "I ache for you. Heart, body, mind. I would give all that's in my power to give to touch you again, to breathe your scent, to hear your voice. I swear to you, when you come back to me at last, it's love I'll pour at your feet. The grandeur and humility of it. And the flowers that bloom from that will never die."