“I have no idea.” She spun back. “I don’t get angry, by the way. And I never shout, but I’m shouting at you. I don’t fall naked into bed with men or have arguments wearing nothing but a blanket, so if I ask if you’ve done something to make me behave this way, I think it’s a perfectly logical question.”

“Perhaps it is. Insulting, but logical. The answer is no.” He said it almost wearily as he went back to sit on the bed and sip his tea. “I cast no spell, wove no magic. I’m wiccan, Rowan. There is one law we live by, one rule that cannot be broken. ‘An it harm none.’ I will do nothing to harm you. And my pride alone would prevent me from influencing your response to me. What you feel, you feel.”

When she said nothing, he moved his shoulder in a careless jerk, as if there weren’t a sharp-clawed fist around his heart. “You’ll want your clothes.” With no more than those words, her jeans and shirt appeared on the chair.

She let out a short laugh, shook her head. “And you don’t think I should be dazzled by something like that. You expect a great deal, Liam.”

He looked at her again, thought of what ran in her blood. Not nearly ready to know, he decided, annoyed with his own impatience. “Aye, I suppose I do. You have a great deal, Rowan, if you’d only trust yourself.”

“No one’s ever really believed in me.” Steady now, she walked to him. “That’s a kind of magic you offer me that means more than all the flash and wonder. I’ll start with trusting this much—I’ll believe that what I feel for you is real. Is that enough for now?”

He lifted a hand to lay it over the one that held the ends of the throw. The tenderness that filled him was new, unexplained and too sweet to question. “It’s enough. Sit, have some tea.”

“I don’t want tea.” It thrilled her to be so bold, to loosen her grip and let the throw fall away. “And I don’t want my clothes. But I do want you.”

Chapter 9

She was under a spell. Not one that required incantations, Rowan thought dreamily. Not one that called on mystical powers and forces. She was in love, and that, she supposed, was the oldest and the most natural of magics.

She’d never been as comfortable nor as uneasy with any other man. Never been quite so shy, nor ever so bold as she was with Liam. Looking back, gauging her actions, her reactions, her words and her wishes, she realized she’d fallen under that spell the moment she’d turned and seen him behind her on the cliffs.