Unveil My Heart (Wiccan Haus Book Seven) Read online

  “No, now, you listen to me, honey,” Nora said, petting her on the arm. “Bad luck is exactly what you make it. Listen to what I’m saying and not what you wanna hear.”

  “I don’t understand, Mrs. Nora. I’ve had some really bad things happen to me and I can’t make anything out of them except that it had to be my bad luck.”

  “If I had accepted bad luck for what it was, I wouldn’t have had fifty-two amazingly wonderful years with my Roy. And we wouldn’t have had three daughters, who all turned out to be highly educated doctors, who gave us fourteen grands.” She laughed. “’Cause everything that could go wrong on my wedding day went wrong. I had my maw in my ear telling me it’s storming outside, this marriage will never work. The angels were weeping because I was making a mistake. Child, the church was leaking, the reverend arrived drunk and stinking of moonshine, my dress was sized wrong, and Roy found out too late that the shoes he’d bought were two left ones. And I think on the way to the church, the car I was in hit a family of black cats.”

  “You’re joking, Mrs. Nora.”

  “I wish I was. I found out after the wedding that Roy had broken the mirror in his bedroom at his maw’s house and you know that old rule about not seeing the bride before the wedding?” She pulled Blaine down so she could whisper in her ear. “Well, let’s say the honeymoon started the night before the wedding.”

  Blaine couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “Mrs. Nora!”

  “Child, please. Roy and I invented some of those positions they got in that there Tumasutra.”

  “Kama Sutra,” Blaine corrected and could feel her cheeks heat up. She was not going to have this conversation with someone who could be her grandmother. She quickly tried to steer the conversation back to the topic at hand. “Whoa, you really did have some bad things happen on your wedding day, but most of what you said had to do with superstitions.”

  “Isn’t that what you were talking about?”

  Blaine sighed, her entire being deflating. Hope was a bitch. “It’s okay. How much further to the pasture?”

  “Not much,” Mrs. Nora said. She was quiet for a moment. “The first time I was diagnosed with cancer, it couldn’t have come at a worse time—is what I thought at first. Roy and I weren’t speaking at all. Honey, we could barely stand to look at one another. I was ready to go to that divorce court or put him down, whichever came first. But when the doctor sat me down and told me about the ‘C’ and I went home and told Roy, something changed between us. In a matter of hours we found what we thought we had lost years earlier. Now, I know most people wouldn’t look at cancer this way, but that first bout was a blessing, because it saved my marriage. Now, the other times I got the ‘C’ just plain old pissed me off.” Nora said the last part in such a matter-of-fact way, she could have been talking about the flu.

  “Mrs. Nora?”

  “Bad luck is what you make it. When bad things happen to you, and you have to try to find the good in it. Everything happens for a reason.”

  “Really, then why after surviving cancer three times and losing your husband would you get stricken with it again? What’s the good in that?” The minute the words passed her lips, Blaine felt like the definition of a jack-ass. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Nora. I didn’t—”

  “No, honey, you have nothing to be sorry for. You asked a very valid question.” Nora pondered it in silence before she spoke again. “The only reason I can see is because perhaps you needed me.”

  “What are you like my bad-luck fairy godmother or something?”

  Nora shrugged her shoulders. “Or maybe I’m your good-luck fairy godmother,” she answered through a laugh, before she turned serious. “We are all in each other’s lives for a reason and a season, honey. If I hadn’t gotten the ‘C’ again, I would’ve never come to Wiccan Haus. Therefore, you and I wouldn’t have shared that wonderful meal, or enjoyed this lovely stroll, or had this eye-opening conversation.” She winked at Blaine. “So, where you see my fourth bout with cancer as bad luck, I see it as a blessing. Because I have another chance to change someone’s life.” She stared ahead, her shoulders back, her head high. “And, it makes my time away from Roy that much shorter. That, in itself, is a blessing.”

  Blaine didn’t know what to say. Surely the woman wasn’t saying that there was some kind of blessing in her losing her parents and little brother in a fiery car crash. Or that there was a silver lining in watching as a monster too horrendous for a Rob Zombie movie rip her only friend and adopted mother apart? She couldn’t be saying there was anything good in any of that, but then it wasn’t like she’d shared any of her past with Nora either.

  “I know I must sound like an optimistic old fool to you.” Nora stopped and turned Blaine to face her. “But this optimistic fool has lived a full happy life. With each death I have survived, I have mourned and continued to live on. With each set back—and there have been many—I have persevered because anything else wasn’t…isn’t an option. If I had ever, even for a second stopped living and enjoying my life because of ‘bad luck’—” she quoted with her fingers “—what kind of ‘life’ would I really have had? One filled with regrets, wants, and missed opportunities?” Nora lifted Blaine’s chin. “Your soul is too beautiful and vibrant to live but half a life, child.”

  “Mrs. Nora?”

  “Well, it looks like we’ve arrived.”

  Blaine turned to find a sprawling field filled as far as the eyes could see with flowers of every color. There were tulips, orchids, African violets, calla lilies—her favorites—and other flowers she’d never seen before. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Yes, but what you can’t see is the weeds, the barbs, the snails, and the garden snakes. It’s like life, honey.” She squeezed Blaine’s arm and released her. “You’ve got to choose to see the good instead of the bad and enjoy it for what it is,” she said stepping into the pasture.

  Blaine wasn’t sure how long she’d stood there watching Nora pick flowers, but in that moment there was no other place she wanted to be. How could a woman who was dying and had suffered so much still hold such a glowing outlook on life? How could she not be waiting for the other shoe to drop? How the hell could she not want to kick Fate’s ass?

  She stared at Nora taking her time to touch and sniff each flower before she chose the ones she wanted. You have to accept your blessings for what they are, child, or you’re going to miss them. You gotta stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was Na-Na’s voice in her head again. “Live.” For the first time in over ten years, Blaine understood what Na-Na was telling her. “You want me to live.”

  “So are you going to stand on the sideline and watch or are you going to pick some flowers?” Nora called, cutting into her thoughts.

  Blaine smiled and wiped at her cheeks before a tear could fall. “I’m going to pick flowers, Mrs. Nora,” she said out loud. And to herself she said, At least while I’m here, I’m going to pick some damn flowers.

  Chapter Four

  OVER THE PAST DAY AND A HALF, Blaine had appeared to busy herself with her sessions with the Haus staff. When she wasn’t with them, chatting with Mrs. Nora Jamison, or locked away in her room, she was spying around corners, lurking in hallways, and making damned sure that if he was anywhere in the vicinity, she wasn’t.

  If it wasn’t so sad, Hayze would’ve found it funny, in an endearing sort of way.

  Dinner had long since been over. The moon crept up over the line of trees at his back as he stood watching her.

  If asked, he would have vehemently denied stalking her. He was simply making sure that no harm came to her, regardless of her preference. There may not be any yazaron on the island lusting after her blood as on the night he saved her, but there were slippery rocks, jutting roots, and wild boars. Not to mention, the other Paras roaming about. Any of those could attack her at any moment.

  Well, that was what he wanted to believe, anyway.

  Thirty days ago, he had been an Anubi who all yazaron and most other Anubi feared.
He was a relentless deliverer of justice to those deserving of it. If there was something he wanted, he took it. If someone stood dumbly in his path, he was removed without a shadow of regret or remorse. But now he stood there, a mere shell of the man he once was.

  Like all Anubi, Hayze was born a telepath. He could not only talk mind-to-mind with the other members of his pack, but he could read the minds of all humans and most animals. Anubis had also blessed him with a power no other in his pack possessed. His happened to be the ability to put a person or animal to sleep with a mere inflection of his voice. And then there was his elemental power, of which all Anubi possessed at least one. His was the ability to control rain, fog, and the humidity in the atmosphere. At any second he could make it rain, blanket a city in a block of ice, or destroy a hurricane with a flip of his wrist. But now he could barely flick a raindrop off his sleeve and his telepathic ability was totally one-sided. He could no longer hold the link open for the other party to respond. His ability to shift into the shape of his father, Anubis, the jackal, was more painful than it was worthwhile. As for reading minds, he was lucky now if he caught more than a word or two.

  Soon all his powers would be gone completely, leaving him as nothing more than a rapidly aging human. He knew this as certainly as the sun rose in the east.

  “When did you start hiding out in trees?” a male voice asked.

  “About the same time you started lurking in them.” Hayze didn’t have to turn around to know it was Rekkus.

  Hayze hadn’t heard his approach at all, which was to be expected. Dulled senses were one of the stages of his descent back to the serum of blood and bones from which Anubis created him. However, the knowledge that anyone could now sneak up on him stung. Two days ago, he could have heard a pin drop in a room full of screaming babies.

  “Is it true, Hayze?”

  Hayze glanced at Rekkus but did not answer. He didn’t want to think of what was to come. He wanted to enjoy the time he had left. He wanted to enjoy Blaine. Even if it meant enjoying her from a distance.

  “Is what Sage and Cemil told me correct? Are you dying?”

  “Dying…is a relative term, old friend.”

  “Answer the goddamn question,” Rekkus growled. “Are you dying because of her rejection?”

  “No.” Hayze turned to face him. “I don’t even know if dying is the right word to use for what’s happening to me, since I was not born, but created. Whatever it is, Blaine is not the cause of it.”

  “Death is death any way you look at it. And since I see that your head is still connected to your neck, there is only one other way you can die.”

  Rekkus was right. There were only two ways to kill an Anubi. One was to decapitate him at the exact moment the sun sets in the west. Then burn the body separately and scatter the ashes in the east at the exact moment the sun rose on the seventh day after the decapitation. The second was by mate—either the death of the mate or by the mate’s rejection of the binding.

  “It’s not her fault.” Hayze leaned his shoulder against the tree trunk to his left. “She needs time to heal and to deal with her losses. Unfortunately, for the first time in my life, time is something I don’t have. From the moment of the binding, Anubis only gave me three days to make her accept me. How could I accomplish such a thing when she was in the ICU fighting for her life the entire time? This, what’s happening to me, is fate. It’s what I deserve for not seeing to her safety before it was too late. I’m just happy to have met her and to know that Anubis’s promise was fulfilled.”

  “Bullshit,” Rekkus hissed. “You have now, damn it! You have this week! You have the Wiccan Haus. Use it to your benefit! Don’t you dare stand here and feed me this self-sacrifice crap! What do you think is going to happen when she heals and needs you? Do you really think she’ll get another mate? Do you think she’ll ever be whole without you?”

  Hayze opened his mouth to respond but closed it tight as a light breeze blew in across the lake Blaine was sitting by. It tossed up strands of her reddish-blond hair, and crystallized the sun’s rays, causing him to squint at the sight. She pushed the strands back behind her ear and settled atop one of the large rocks surrounding the lake. She was stunning. Everything about her mesmerized him. The way she moved, spoke, and laughed. The sensuous curve of her lips, the elegant line of her neck, everything. She was the definition of seductive.

  “She’s strong in ways you could never imagine. She’ll be fine, Rekkus. Besides, I’ve made provisions that once I’m gone, she’ll have the money to rebuild her veterinary clinic. When she’s done with that, she’ll have enough left to live off for the rest of her life and then some. I’ve also assured her safety. She’ll be fine.”

  “Get your head out of your ass, Hayze. Do you really think she’s going to give a shit about money when you’re dead?”

  “If I keep my distance, it won’t matter to her one way or another.”

  “But if you didn’t, there’s a chance she could save your life, right?”

  “And what if she can’t, what happens to her when I’m gone? Who will be there for her when her heart breaks all over again?” Hayze turned his attention back to Blaine. “I don’t expect you to understand, but know this. I will not be the cause of that pain.”

  “I had never pegged you as a stupid man, and now I’m almost sorry to have ever called you my friend. You will NOT die here, do you understand me? No one has ever died at Wiccan Haus and I’ll be damned if you’ll be the first. Wrap up whatever business you have left and leave this island.” Rekkus turned with a disgusted snort and stomped away, disappearing back through the trees and, Hayze was sure, to his perfect mate, who accepted and loved him unconditionally.

  Hayze could appreciate his friend’s anger, but what he couldn’t understand was why Rekkus couldn’t appreciate his need to not force Blaine into accepting him. Surely, after what had occurred between his own mother and father, Rekkus of all people should understand. After all, it was their forced joining that had led to the decimation of almost an entire race of beings. Even still, other Anubi had kidnapped their mates, damned near holding them hostage until they were accepted, or had used every trick Anubis had blessed them with to get what they had wanted.

  Their situation, his and Blaine’s situation, was different. Blaine—his mate—had had a hard life. After being thrown from the car wreck that had killed both her parents and her younger brother, she had been forced to sit and watch their bodies’ burn. She was three. Then she was juggled from foster home to foster home before finally finding a real home at the age of fifteen with Na-Na. And ten years later, she had to watch as Na-Na and her friend were gutted by a damn yazaron.

  No, no one understood, or would probably ever understand, why he would rather die than to force her to accept him. After all, what was the point when his time left was borrowed at best?

  Her scream tore through his thoughts, sent birds sitting high in the trees flying into the sky, and sent his heart racing.

  “Son of a bitch,” Blaine cursed and slapped at the water. She was submerged up to her waist in it. Her jeans were saturated, her mule-styled Uggs probably ruined, and her ego thoroughly bruised. Her only saving grace was that no one was there to watch her topple off the damn rock like some clumsy little kid.

  “Are you okay?”

  Her heart skipped a beat at the gentle tone and then corrected itself. So much for that. She tried to ignore Hayze as she rose onto her knees and reached for her cane, which was bobbing on the surface, threatening to sink. It bobbed out of reach when she grasped at it. “Damn it,” she cursed, nearly falling forward as she tried to grab for the cane again.

  “Be still.” Strong hands on her shoulders steadied her as Hayze stepped into the water and around her to retrieve her cane.

  Of all the people who could have come to her rescue, why did it have to be him?

  “Are you okay?” he asked again, turning back to her.

  “I’m fine,” Blaine snapped. She pushed her han
ds into the soft, soaked ground beneath her in an attempt to gain some footing. Her actions only served to force her deeper into the sucking mud.

  “You don’t seem fine.” He bent, put his hands under each of her arms and lifted her easily, placing her back on the rock again.

  “Really, I’m fine. I don’t need your help.”

  Hayze looked up, his ungodly-green eyes piercing into hers. “I’m aware of that, but I’m going to help you anyway.” There was sadness in his eyes and vulnerability in his tone and manner. She’d never witnessed either before in all the time that she had been acquainted with him. It was a side of him she didn’t like, and if she never saw it again, it would be too soon.

  Blaine looked away, her hands fisted in her wet lap as Hayze lifted her lost mule from the lake, poured the water out of it and placed it back on her foot. If she had had the use of both of her feet, she would’ve been hauling ass back to the Haus to hide in her room for the remainder of her time at the resort.

  “Seriously, you don’t need to—”

  Hayze shimmied out of his jacket and slipped the garment around her shoulders. “Oh stop. My helping you doesn’t mean anything, I get it. Oh and let’s not forget that having me near you makes you want to vomit.” He was probably going for disgust when he spoke, but he fell short miserably. All that came across was that her previous actions had hurt him.

  Why did hearing him say it out loud make her feel that much worse for her treatment of him? He had saved her when she’d believed there was no way out except jumping to her death. He had visited her in the hospital, sat with her—the nurses had said—all day and all night while she was in a coma. And then she had screamed like a frightened child the moment she regained consciousness and saw him. She had been pushing him away ever since, but not for the reasons he thought.