An urgent chortle and a scratching noise interrupted the scene.

Drake turned away from the bed long enough to open the door. Houdini disappeared out into the illuminated hallway.

“Damn,” Drake said. There was irritation and pain in the single word. He closed the door very quickly and locked it.

“Your eyes.” Alice sat up. “Are you okay?”

“I will be in a minute.” He remained where he was near the door, gripping the knob. “Forgot the lights were back on out there in the hallway.”

“Can I get you anything? A cold washcloth to put over your eyes?”

“No. I said I’ll be okay. Takes a few seconds for my senses to calm down, that’s all.”

“I’m just trying to help,” Alice said.

“I know. Stop.”

“Okay.”

“Do me a favor,” Drake said.

“What?”

“Don’t use that word again until tomorrow at the earliest, preferably never.”

“What word? Oh. Okay. Oops. Sorry.”

Drake just looked at her with silvery heat in his eyes.

She started to giggle. She rolled onto her stomach and tried to smother the laughter with a pillow, but it was hopeless.

“You know,” Drake said in ominous tones, “this isn’t going quite the way I had planned.”

“Sorry about that,” she mumbled into the pillow.

“But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few days, it’s that things rarely do go according to plan—not when you’re involved.”

She never heard him cross the room, but the bed suddenly gave beneath his weight. He put her on her back and came down on top of her, his eyes fierce with energy. She realized he had stripped off his briefs.

“Turns out I like that in a woman,” he said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

He anchored her wrists to the bed and kissed her until she stopped laughing; until she was hot and wet and excited; until all of her senses were thrilled; until a deep, demanding, aching need built inside her. When she started to struggle and twist beneath him, he freed her wrists and pulled her nightgown off over her head.

She put her hands around him and pulled him back down to her, sinking her nails into his shoulders.

He groaned and rolled onto his back, taking her with him. She kissed his mouth, his throat, and then his bare chest. She could feel the rigid length of him pressing against her inner thigh. She sat up slowly until she was resting on her knees astride him. She wrapped one hand around his erection and guided him into her heat. The pressure at first was almost unbearable, but then he was inside her and the intense fullness was exactly what she needed.

She climaxed on the third thrust.

He gripped her hips with both hands and watched her with his molten eyes.

“Alice,” he said. “Alice.”

Her name was a plea, a command, a claim.

He thrust again and again and then found his own release. Once again she experienced the sense of a deep intimacy for which there were no words.

Such magic could not last forever, she thought. But Alice knew she would remember and cherish the sensation for the rest of her life.

DRAKE AWOKE TO THE NEW DAY. AUTOMATICALLY, HE groped for his glasses and put them on before he opened his eyes. He saw that Alice had left the shades down to protect him against the daylight. She was gone, however. So was the diary.

He got to his feet and headed toward the bath.

Fifteen minutes later he made the trek downstairs. Alice was in a booth at the rear of the tavern. Burt looked out through the kitchen pass-through and called out a greeting.

“Help yourself to the coffee, Drake.”

“Thanks.”

Drake poured a mug full of coffee and carried it to Alice’s table. She looked up. He saw that she had the diary open in front of her. Houdini was perched on the table, finishing the last of a peanut butter cracker. He chortled a cheery greeting.

Drake gave him a pat and sat down. He looked at the diary.

“Are the answers all there?” he asked.

“Most of them.” Alice gave him a misty smile. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have this diary.”

Drake thought about the hours he had spent in the Sebastian family archives over the years. “I understand how it feels to be able to touch your own past.”

“I owe it all to you. You really are a magician.”

“No,” he said. “We needed each other to get through this thing. If it hadn’t been for you, Tucker would have destroyed Rainshadow.”

Alice shook her head. “I’m the one who put the crystals in her hands.”

“That wasn’t your fault. You were trying to retrieve some pieces of your past. In my family, we don’t consider that a crime.”

She sighed. “Thanks. I appreciate that. Still, if I hadn’t fallen for Fulton’s line—”

“If I hadn’t fallen for Zara Tucker’s line three years ago, none of this would have happened. There’s plenty of blame to go around.”

“She really is a sneaky, conniving, sociopathic twit, you know. Also a total psycho. Any woman could immediately see through her.”

“Maybe that was my problem, I’m not any woman.”

Alice stared at him for a heartbeat. Then she laughed.

“Point taken,” she said. “Think you’ll have a problem seeing through women like that in the future?”

“No,” Drake said. He watched her through his glasses, savoring the light and energy that danced in the atmosphere around her. “I see everything a lot more clearly these days.”

Chapter 43

“ALICE THINKS SHE OWNS HALF OF RAINSHADOW?” Harry asked.

It was rare to see his brother looking dumbfounded, Drake thought. But this was one of those moments and he relished it.

“Half of anything of value that might be found inside the Preserve, to be more precise,” Drake said. “And she’s right. There’s a signed copy of the agreement in her great-grandfather’s diary and, according to it, there’s another copy in the Sebastian family archives.”

Harry whistled softly. “Son of a ghost. Wait until the old man hears about this.”

“Should be interesting.”

Harry raised his brows. “Another person, someone who didn’t know you well, might wonder if that’s why you got involved in an MC with Alice. Maybe trying to use a fake marriage to get her to cooperate with you?”

“No,” Drake said. His sense of amusement evaporated in an instant. He was suddenly angry and a little worried. Was that what Alice believed? he wondered. “That’s not why we’re married.”

Harry nodded. “Figured it wasn’t.”

“I’ve got a strategy.”

“You always have a strategy. That’s why they call you the Magician back home.”

“For the record, I had a hell of a time convincing Alice to go for an MC.”

“Yeah?”

“Her last MC husband tried to kill her.”

“That would be Fulton Whitcomb?”

“Yes.” Drake looked at him. “And before you ask, I believe Alice’s version of events.”

Harry nodded, still thoughtful. “Okay, in that case I believe it, too. Doesn’t explain why you’re in an MC.”

“Ethel Whitcomb has been spending a lot of money this past year trying to make Alice’s life hell. The effort has been successful for the most part. The night I found Alice, I had to deal with a private investigator searching her apartment, looking for anything that could be used against her. Ethel wants Alice in jail.”

“You figured Ethel Whitcomb would back off once she found out that you were in the picture.”

“I thought it would send a message,” Drake said evenly. “At the time I was concerned that Whitcomb might try to have Alice followed to Rainshadow. We didn’t need the complications. That was before I found out that the island had been shut down by the fog.”

“Uh-huh.”

Drake looked at him. “What?”

“You’re sleeping with Alice North.”

“So?”

“I’m thinking you didn’t need to get involved in an MC to protect her from Ethel Whitcomb. You have other resources available to you for handling situations like that.”