She ran and threw herself into his arms, grabbing his wet hair and kissing his wet face, laughing with the joy of knowing she was about to begin a dream life with this man. He wrapped his powerful arms around her and gently lowered them both to the ground, growling into her ear as he rained kisses through her hair.

With lusty words and whispered promises, Morgan told Sadie as much as he showed her just what he thought of her body. His hands roamed over her skin with feather-light touches, his lips following the trail of his fingers.

Sadie mimicked his actions and his words and made a few lusty promises of her own.

She arched her back when his lips grazed her nipples, pushing her breasts into his mouth, yearning to be touched everywhere.

Nothing was off limits any longer. Nothing stood between them, nothing obstructed the pleasure of loving each other. Passion took precedence over shyness, and Sadie was able to give herself freely to the wonder of love.

They played and loved as they had that afternoon in the beautiful, mystical pool filled with thedrùidh’s magic. And Morgan hadn’t been lying a moment ago when he’d said the magic was more powerful than ever.

The magic was stronger, their love a brilliant rainbow wrapped around the pure white light of their passion.

Driving definitely would have been easierif Libby could have kept her eyes on the road.

And the trip wouldn’t have taken nearly as long if she hadn’t had to stop every half hour and get out and stare at the landscape.

But the country was beautiful. Rugged. Over-whelming.

The trees went on forever; fluorescent red and yellow and orange blanketed the mountains, broken only by the deep green of pine and spruce and hemlock. Cliffs of solid granite pushed up through the vivid colors occasionally, hinting at the massive foundation that lay beneath the forest.

Since renting the small compact car at the airport in Bangor, Maine, and heading northwest on Rte 15, Libby had felt herself climbing, rising into the mountains until they wrapped completely around her. The tension of the last two weeks slowly seeped from her body, andhome became a whispered mantra that repeated itself with every beat of her heart.

After taking nearly three hours to travel the eighty miles from Bangor, Libby crested yet another hill and just barely caught herself from slamming on the brakes. The sight of Pine Lake, with its vast waters contained only by the sheer strength of the mountains, stole her breath. Libby guided her car to the shoulder of the two-lane road, shut off the engine, and stared through the windshield.

Islands, some the size of houses and some several acres in size, dotted the large cove that fingered in from the lake toward the small town nestled on the shore. Mountains rose from the water’s edge like watchful guardians, several of their peaks shrouded by low clouds as they marched into the distance.

Her life up until this moment seemed no more than a dream as she stared at the great reality in front of her. Miracles lived here. This was the realm of possibilities, whispering the promise of sanctuary to her fragmented soul.

Her flight from California had ended. She’d been driven—or pulled—to this magical place by a guiding presence that needed no reason other than rightness. The how and why and what would happen next did not matter. Libby simply knew this was where she belonged.

She had never given much thought to mystical powers—not until two weeks ago, when she’d found herself holding that very power in her hands. She was a surgeon who could suddenly heal people without a scalpel. She had touched a critically injured woman and willed her to get well. By the time the woman reached Libby’s operating room, less than ten minutes later, she was completely healed.

Libby had run from the hospital that day two weeks ago, confused and very much afraid that the gift of her birthright was very, very real.

Libby finally tore her gaze away from the lake and picked up her collection of printouts from Robbie MacBain. She shuffled the papers until she found the digital photos that had accompanied Robbie’s Internet ad to rent his mother’s home. She stared at the young boy of eleven or twelve, sitting on his pony in front of a field of Christmas trees, and tried to decide what it was about him that had made her choose to come here.

His mother’s home was certainly enticing enough—a staid white New England farmhouse overlooking Pine Lake. And the mountains held their own allure, if only for their illusion of security.

But Robbie MacBain had been the final deciding factor. There was something about him, something almost otherworldly. He was a child with the eyes of an ancient soul. There was a presence about him, as he sat so proudly on his pony and looked directly at the camera with a subtle, I-know-a-secret smile lifting his lips and the promise of magic shining in his young, pewter-gray eyes.

Libby shuffled the papers again and found Robbie’s last e-mail to her. “Head northeast out of Pine Creek,” he’d written, “and drive until you see a large field of Christmas trees on your right. I think it’s about five miles from town. I know it’s not a very long ride on the school bus, so it shouldn’t take you too long to find my home.”

Libby adjusted the rearview mirror so she could see herself, brushed a stray curl from her face, and gave a quick fluff to her short, wavy hair. She blinked her huge brown eyes as she examined her reflection, hoping that her light touch of makeup wasn’t too much, and smiled to make sure a stray piece of lettuce from the sandwich she’d gotten in Bangor wasn’t stuck in her teeth. She wanted to look at least presentable when she met her new young landlord, so he wouldn’t realize that he’d rented his mother’s home to a desperate woman with secrets of her own.

Satisfied that she looked like a sane, sensible, thirty-one-year-old jewelry maker, Libby started the car, waited for a pickup truck to drive past, and pulled back onto the road.

She idled her way through the tiny town of Pine Creek, noticing with interest the few stores and three dozen or so people going about their business. She also noticed that her little car was dwarfed by the many pickups and huge logging trucks. She saw only one other car, squeezed between dust-covered pickups in front of Dolan’s Outfitter Store.

She stopped at the intersection in the center of town and tried to decide which way to turn. She didn’t have a compass, but there were only three ways out of Pine Creek, and Libby picked the graveled but obviously much-used road that put the sun to her left, figuring it pointed her northeast.

She traveled for six miles and still didn’t see a Christmas tree. Libby picked up theMaine Atlas and Gazetteer she’d bought at the airport in Bangor, but her attention was quickly drawn back to the road when a streak of white swooped past the nose of her car. She slammed on the brakes and jerked the steering wheel to the left to avoid hitting the large bird.

She was traveling too fast, and her car skidded towards the ditch. Libby jerked the wheel back to the right, and again she slid on the frozen gravel, fish-tailing into the sharp curve that suddenly loomed before her.

She might have been able to maintain control if that damn suicidal bird had not flown past her windshield again. She cut the wheel to the left this time, only to skid on a puddle of ice at the edge of the road. Her car hit the ditch, shot up the embankment, and suddenly became air-born.

Libby shielded her face with her arms as she plowed through a stand of evergreens, her scream of surprise cut short when the small car slammed into the frozen farm pond on the other side of the trees. Both airbags exploded, punching Libby in the chest and face with the force of a cannon ball.