Chapter 5
Rhys wasn’t sure what he’d done to the universe to deserve this day.
First there’d been the flight. That had gone well enough, but it had been long, and getting a rental car in Atlanta had been frustrating, though no more so than navigating Atlanta traffic to make his way north had been. There had been one point, feeling profoundly discombobulated on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road, staring at the back of a semitruck in front of him, that Rhys had nearly broken and called his father to grudgingly ask for a Traveling Stone for his return journey.
He hadn’t ended up sacrificing his pride on that particular altar and had survived the drive to Graves Glen with his sanity intact, but once he’d gotten into the town, it had been one clusterfuck after another.
He’d gotten a speeding ticket roughly five seconds after he’d passed the sign welcoming him to Graves Glen. Annoying and expensive (and, to his mind, slightly unjust, given that he was only going ten miles over and the town wouldn’t bloody well exist without his family), but not enough to ruin his day.
No, that had come just half an hour ago when, halfway up the hillside leading to the Penhallow home, he’d blown a tire.
By that point, his patience had been too low to do something so perverse as change it himself, so he’d waved his hand at the thing to repair it only to have the tire blow up to twice its normal size before popping like a goddamn balloon.
And when he’d attempted to float the spare out of the boot of the car, it had gone madly spinning into a tree before rolling down the hill.
Which meant that he was stuck in the woods at night, a good half mile from the house, mud covering his best boots, and his magic apparently on the fritz.
Marvelous.
This, Rhys thought as he reached into the back seat to pull out his bag, was why he should’ve stayed in Wales. Hell, he could’ve run the pub while Llewellyn dealt with all of this. Wells probably wouldn’t have insisted on flying and driving. Wells would’ve been sensible and used the Traveling Stone, been in and out in a flash, and Rhys might have discovered some heretofore undiscovered talent for pulling pints. Might’ve changed his whole life.
But no, Wells was back at The Raven and Crown, and Rhys was here, on a hillside in Georgia with a completely useless car, and he would bet the entire contents of his wallet that his father hadn’t seen fit to stock the house with any kind of alcohol.
He had just started the trudge up the hill when he heard the sound of a car approaching.
Sending up a prayer to the goddess that his luck had actually turned for the better, Rhys shouldered his bag, waving his arms over his head as the headlights coming down the hill nearly blinded him.
Rhys made sure to stand near the edge of the road and look as affable as possible, smiling even as he squinted in the glare, and he was still smiling even as the car . . . didn’t stop.
And not only did it not stop, it seemed to be veering slightly to the right.
He was on the right.
Rhys had only a moment of dazed thought—this person is going to hit me, I am going to die on a hill in Georgia, what an utterly shite way to go—before he dove out of the way. Distantly, he heard the squeal of brakes, smelled burning rubber, but given that he had just thrown himself down the side of a steep hill, he had slightly more pressing concerns.
Like stopping this slide into darkness and, if possible, saving his leather jacket.
The jacket was clearly not going to make it—he heard a truly awful tearing sound as he threw one arm out and clutched at a stray root—but the rest of him was all in one piece as he came to a stop several yards down the hill from the road.
Above him, he could still see the glow of headlights, and he heard a car door open and slam shut, and then the crunching of leaves underfoot as someone rushed toward the hill he was currently at the bottom of.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” a very familiar voice breathed, and ah, yes, yes, of course.
The universe still clearly hated him.
“I am so sorry!” Vivienne cried as she made her way down the hill, and Rhys turned his head to see her making her way toward him, her arms out to one side. She was just a silhouette, a dark figure against even more darkness, but even if he hadn’t heard her voice, he would’ve recognized her, would’ve known that shape anywhere.
Even after nine years.
Even in the dark.
Fuck’s sake.
Rhys let his head drop back to the ground as he studied the sky above him and waited for the inevitable moment when she’d figure out who she’d almost hit and possibly get back in her car and finish the job.
“I didn’t even see you until you’d jumped,” he heard her say from very close now. “And it was the weirdest thing, it was like the brakes just locked up, and the steering wheel had a mind of its—oof!”
Rhys’s hands came up automatically as Vivienne tripped over his prone form, but it was too late to catch her, and now he got to add a seriously sharp elbow to the testicles to his list of grievances.
“I’m sorry!” she said again, scrambling to push herself up, her body half draped over his even as he attempted to curl in on himself.
“No worries,” he managed to wheeze, and then her hands were on his chest, her hair hanging down in his face, brushing his lips.
“Rhys?”
Some of the pressure on his chest eased as she lifted a hand, and with a flick of her fingers, a soft light hovered over the pair of them there on the ground.
Any hope he’d had that whatever he’d felt for her nine years ago had been a mad mix of summer and magic and hormones was immediately squashed as he looked into those hazel eyes, took in her flushed cheeks and her parted lips.
Likewise, any hope that she might have forgiven him in the intervening years died a groaning death as she narrowed her eyes and said, “I shouldn’t have tried to slow down.”
“Good to see you, too, Vivienne,” he said, still a little breathless from his slide down the hill and near emasculation.
Pushing herself off him, Vivienne rose to her feet and began brushing the leaves and various debris from her skirt.
Her polka dot skirt.
Her whole dress was polka dot, he saw now, little orange ones on a black background.
Had he always found polka dots so instantly, intensely erotic?
Wasn’t really a thing he’d considered before, and it was possible he’d hit his head somewhere in his fall, but there was nothing for it now. Polka dots had replaced black lace and red satin in any sexual fantasy he might have for the rest of his life.
The light she’d conjured up still floated by her head, and as she picked the last stray leaf off her black jacket, she looked back down at him.
“Why were you on the road?” she asked, and he nodded back up the hill.
“Flat tire.”
Vivienne snorted, pulling her jacket tighter around her as another gust of wind rustled the trees. “So you couldn’t change it magically or physically?”
“Having a bit of a night, to tell the truth.”
“Same.”
“And why were you on this road, Vivienne? Did you hear I was coming back?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. My aunt still lives on this road, and I was heading home from dinner with her and Gwyn.”
“Ah, Gwyn,” he said, remembering her cousin, a pink-haired witch who, he suspected, had hated him on sight.
Smart girl.
“How is she? And your aunt?”
Vivienne sighed, tipping her head back to look at the sky. “How about we not do this?” she said, and Rhys rolled onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow.
“What, talk to one another?”
“Make small talk,” Vivienne said, looking down her nose at him. “Neither of us is any good at it.”
For a long moment, they stared at each other, Rhys still on the ground, Vivienne standing above him, and he remembered they’d been in a similar position the last time he’d seen her, right after she’d leapt out of his bed when he’d told her that he had to go back to Wales to get out of his betrothal.
Looking back on it now, it was easy to see that he had perhaps not handled that conversation as well as he could have, but he’d thought she’d understand. She was a witch, too, after all; she knew all about betrothals.
As his jeans hitting him in the head had swiftly taught him, Vivienne did not in fact know all about betrothals, and that whole magical summer had come to a literally screaming halt.
Until now.
“I’m here for the ley lines,” he finally said, sitting up and shaking the twigs out of his hair.
“I know that,” she replied, crossing her arms over her chest. “Cutting it kind of close, aren’t you? Only showing up the night before Founder’s Day?”
“I didn’t want to spend much time here,” he said, then gave her a sardonic grin. “Can’t imagine why, given the warm welcome and all.”
Rolling her eyes, Vivienne turned to head back up the hill. “Okay, well, I’d say I was sorry about nearly killing you, but we both know that’s a lie, so I’ll leave you to find your own way home.”
“Or,” Rhys offered, coming to his feet, “you could be the absolute darling I know you are and give me a ride?”
She spun around, that light still bobbing like a demented firefly. “And why would I do that?”
“Well,” Rhys said, lifting a finger, “for one, I am in town for altruistic purposes that benefit you and your family. Two”—another finger—“when you were on top of me, I did not make a single pervy reference to other times we’d found ourselves in that position.”
“Except that you’re doing that now, but continue.”
“And three . . .” Rhys lifted the last finger, then looked down at his hand and frowned. “Actually, number three was going to be a pervy reference to our past, so probably best you leave me here to die.”
To his surprise, the corner of her mouth ticked up a little at that.
Not quite a smile, certainly nothing as robust as a laugh, but it was something. She had liked him once, after all. Quite a lot, really.
And he’d liked her, too. That had been the worst part of it all when it ended. Rhys had never met anyone he liked just as much as he lusted for, and it had made missing her ten times worse.
Even now, battered and bruised and possibly standing in squirrel shit, he was . . . happy. Glad to see her, brush with vehicular homicide aside.
Maybe coming back wouldn’t be so bad after all,
And then she turned away with a “Sounds good!”
The light above her blinked out and Rhys stood, dumbfounded, as she marched up the hill, never once looking back at him.
He was still standing there when he heard her car door open and close, the engine start, and the tires crunch down the dirt road.
In the aftermath, the only sounds were the wind picking up yet again and the faint skittering of some nocturnal animal.
“Fair play, I suppose,” Rhys said to the darkness. “Fair play.”
Sighing, he looked back up the hill and picked up his bag from where it had landed, and slinging it over his shoulder, lifted his free hand to summon up his own light.
His fingers sparked, and a bolt of flame suddenly shot out, hitting the nearest tree limb and sending it crashing to earth with a crack and a smell suspiciously like burned hair.
“Right,” Rhys said, stomping on the smoldering leaves and actually grateful that he could feel the first fat droplets of rain start to fall.
The sooner he was out of Graves Glen, the better.