A faint answering smile appeared on Hannah"s face, the first real one since Jonas had been shot. "I like the way his muscles are rippling."
"You can"t see rippling muscles," Libby objected, straining to see.
"You just aren"t looking hard enough," Joley said. "And he"s wearing tight jeans. Ooh la la." She fanned herself with her hand. "Libby. You go girl."
"That"s it. Get into the kitchen." Libby pointed out the direction for them, trying to look stern. "Both of you."
Joley and Hannah went, laughing out loud, peeking through the archway to watch as Libby hurried to the front door.
Libby opened the door on the first knock. The moment she saw him up close her breath hitched in her throat. He did look hot in a pair of tight jeans and an open-throated shirt. His black hair spilled across his forehead and his blue eyes drifted over her face with a small hint of possession. Her heart quickened at his intent look. His smile broke out, a flash of white teeth, a hint of a dimple, his eyes lighting up. There was no way to stop her own answering smile. "You made it."
"Of course." He took her hand and pulled her to him, reaching past her to close the door behind her firmly. The action brought her body against his. "Are you feeling better?"
He was solid, his body muscular, and she could feel his heat. A small tremor went through her. Her womb contracted. Tyson even smelled good. Manly. She wanted to roll her eyes at her own thoughts. "Yes, much better. What about you, did you get any sleep?" Her voice was disgusting, all husky and silly and beyond her control.
"I got some work done and that"s what really counts."
Catching movement at the window, Libby stepped away from Tyson. "What are you working on?"
Ty retained possession of her hand, tugging to get her to follow him down the stairs. He wanted to get her away from the influence of her family home. There was an indefinable power he could feel in spite of his determination not to credit the Drakes with being truly different. "I have some concerns with the PDG-ibenregen drug. I believe there"s a problem with it, even though everyone else thinks it"s just fine. Well," he hedged, "they want to believe it"s just fine."
"The new drug is based on your original research on cell regeneration, isn"t it?" Libby asked. She was all too aware of his hand holding hers and the brush of his body against hers as they walked. "I was very interested in the new cancer drug when I heard it was based on your earlier work, but to be honest, I thought they went to trial too soon."
"Exactly," he agreed. "I can"t get anyone to listen to me. I"ve received several calls from Joe Fields telling me to back off."
"He"s the one you mentioned you noticed in the hospital," Libby said. She flashed him a smile. "See? I usually remember things."
"That"s the one. He"s been a bit unhappy because his old friend Harry, the biochemist on the project, has his nose out of joint."
"You really don"t like Harry, do you?"
"He does shoddy work," Tyson said. "I have no tolerance or respect for anyone who is in such a hurry they can"t finish the job right. He doesn"t research for love of science or to help people, he"s a glory hound. He wants everyone to know his name."
"He"s jealous of you," Libby guessed.
They walked along the trail leading up above the ocean where she could see the sea seemed to meet the horizon. The waves were calmer without the cool wind. "It feels good to be out of the house."
Tyson took a deep breath and stopped her, swinging around so his body was directly in front of hers. His fingers tightened around her hand, threatening to crush her bones. "Here"s the thing, Libby. I"ve thought a great deal about this. I don"t believe in magic. It doesn"t make sense to anyone with a logical brain. Whatever you and your sisters do isn"t real. I don"t know if your family originally used sleight of hand to con people, but whatever the origins, I"ve observed you enough to know you believe you"re able to heal people."
Libby opened her mouth to speak but he shook his head and pulled her hand to his chest. "Just hear me out. I think you"re experiencing psychosomatic symptoms, much like a false pregnancy, but we can work on that together. I know I can help you see that no one can really heal anyone with magic. You"re smart. You"ll see it in time."
She could only stare dumbly, torn between wanting to laugh and to cry. He was so earnest, his expression grave and his blue eyes holding her gaze captive. "I"ll see that I make myself ill pretending to heal people?" Obviously she could pick them. If only he would just keep his mouth closed she might get somewhere with him.
"Putting it that way sounds bad. It"s more like you"ve been brainwashed, programmed to believe it and your brain tricks your body into experiencing the symptoms. And that can be dangerous to your health."
He tightened his fingers around hers when she tried to move away from him. "Don"t, Libby, don"t pull away. I"ve thought this whole thing through. I want a relationship with you. You"re able to understand me, we"re interested in the same things and I think you"re an incredible woman. I"m willing to pay the price of accepting your family. It really is worth the sacrifice to be able to see you."
Her eyebrow shot up. "How courageous of you to take on my crackpot, con-artist family." She tilted her head to one side. "So I don"t really heal people, but I"ve convinced myself so strongly that I can that I manifest psychosomatic symptoms of the people I think I"ve healed. That"s what you think really happens, huh?"
"Yes. If you just open your mind to the possibility, I"m certain it would make more sense to you. You"re a scientist, Libby, a doctor. You want to heal people because you"re so compa.s.sionate, but no one can really do that. Haven"t you ever watched the faith healers in the tents and realized they"re bilking the public?"
"How do you know they are?" She started walking back toward her house, this time holding his hand so he wouldn"t let go.
"It"s been proven time and time again. The faith healers have been investigated and debunked. Seriously, Libby, I could show you many of the reports. I looked them up over this past week and prepared them in a file for you. It"s all there in black and white."
"You did that for me?" She smiled her sweetest smile, wandering slowly up the path to her house. "Tyson Derrick, how considerate of you. I had no idea you were such a thoughtful man."
He let his breath out. "I was afraid you"d be upset, Libby. I was prepared for you to take this in a negative way, but I should have realized you"d reason it out." He stopped on the path to their house. "You want to go home already? I"d like to spend more time with you."
She tugged until he followed her again. "I want you to come in and get to know my sisters. If we"re going to spend time together and you"re willing to pay that price, now would be a good time to start. Everyone is home with the exception of Kate and Abigail. They"re at the hospital with Jonas. Hannah needed to rest, so she"s here." She smiled up again, batting her lashes a bit. "She really doesn"t use a cauldron-much."
"I wasn"t thinking of actually spending time with them. Just more like nodding to them as I picked you up and dropped you off." Ty reluctantly followed her up the steps to the porch. "I"m not the easiest person in the world to be around." He stopped her before she could pull open the door, wrapping his arms around her, dreading going into the house.
"Who told you that?" Libby looked up at him, her voice edged with anger. She might think it, but she didn"t want anyone else telling him that.
"Sam." He bent his head toward hers, dropping his tone to a husky whisper. "I love that about you, Libby. I"ve seen you get that fierce, protective look on your face over your sisters. You don"t need to protect me, but you have no idea how much I appreciate the fact that you"d want to."
Libby"s heart turned over. She was leading him like a lamb to the slaughter, which he absolutely deserved, but now he had to go and say something so sweet and make her feel guilty. "Sam doesn"t always know what he"s talking about, Ty."
"I don"t know about that, Libby. He"s one of the few people in Sea Haven who shares my opinion of your family"s whole hocus-pocus thing. It seems to me that that makes him a lot more insightful than most people around here."
Libby narrowed her eyes. "Oh, really?"
Tyson nodded, his expression utterly sincere. "Yes. You see, I"ve been thinking about this a lot. You"re too close to your family to see the truth. You"re too emotionally involved to think logically about them."
"I see." Libby reached behind and pushed open the door. "Come on in, Ty, I think it"s time you face a little realism yourself."
Libby could see Elle kneeling by the fireplace as they entered. "Elle. Tyson says he doesn"t believe in our magic. He thinks you"ve all brainwashed me into believing things that don"t exist."
Elle sat back on her knees and shot Tyson a long speculative look. "Oh? Really?" What do you want to do? Elle asked immediately. She was such a strong telepath that her sisters could speak to her without much effort.
He doesn"t believe in magic. I think he needs to see the Drake family as we really are and not how he imagines us to be.
Yikes. Are you sure? Elle started laughing. He might have nightmares for the rest of his life.
Absolutely. If I don"t, I"ll never be able to live with myself. Is Hannah in bed?
Libby tugged Tyson into the entryway and shut the door so that he was trapped inside. "Come in and sit down."
"Hannah," Elle raised her voice. "We have company. Glad you stopped by, Tyson," she added and waved her hand toward him. "Take a seat."
A large comfortable arm chair slid across the floor to hit him hard in the back of the legs. His knees buckled and he landed in the chair. It went flying back to its normal spot, stopping so abruptly he was nearly pitched out of the seat.
"Ha. Ha. Very funny. I"ll bet that does wonders to convince the locals, doesn"t it." He felt along the sides of the chair for a runner. Libby wasn"t at all happy about the things he"d said. He should have known. She was loyal to a fault and loved her sisters. Ty shook his head. "I guess I deserved that. Are you going to tell me how you did it?"
"I thought I"d let you figure it out," Libby said and sank onto the floor opposite him. "Would you care for tea or coffee?"
"You always drink tea."
She waved a graceful hand toward the kitchen. "I think something soothing for me." At once the kettle whistled.
He sat back. If Libby wanted to put on a show for him, fine. It wouldn"t take him long to figure out her methods and prove his point. "Anything you"re having is fine."
Hannah walked into the living room and smiled at him. She looked tired and almost as pale as Libby. "Hi, Tyson. I"m glad you"ve decided to join us." She sat on the floor beside Elle. "Do you like cookies? I"m just baking them now so they"ll be fresh out of the oven."
Joley hurried in. "I heard we were having a party. I"m Joley."
Up close she looked even more beautiful than in the magazines or on the cover of her CDs. Tyson thought he might be a little overwhelmed when he met her as she was one of his favorite singers, but the first thing that really struck him about Joley was the way she looked at her sisters. They all looked at one another with tremendous affection and a secret kind of mischief. He was fairly certain he was going to take the brunt of whatever joke they might be concocting.
"Good to meet you. I"m Tyson Derrick."
"The scientist." Joley made it a statement.
"That would be me."
"Tyson doesn"t believe in magic," Libby announced. "He has a theory, which, by the way, is a very good one and makes perfect sense. I think it"s very sweet of him to worry about me."
"I don"t blame him for being worried about you," Sarah said as she entered the room. She sat on the floor with her sisters. "You still need to rest, Libby."
Tyson could see that they were comfortable on the floor, sitting in a loose semicircle, relaxed as they faced him.
Before he could reply, Sarah waved her hands toward the curtains at the windows and they danced across the gla.s.s. He shook his head. They were really determined to put on a show, but after he discovered how they did it, he might rig the house he shared with his cousin to do the same, just for the convenience of it. "A remote control on the drapes? I"ve heard about it, but haven"t seen one quite like that. I particularly like the moving chair. I could use one in my lab to follow me around."
"Do you take milk in your tea?" Libby asked.
"I"ve never tried it that way, but I"m certainly game." No matter what she was planning, he could take it. She wasn"t going to scare him off, not with a remote control device for the living room drapes and a moving chair. "Libby tells me you were at the hospital with Jonas, Hannah. How is he doing?"
Joley and Elle both reached over and put a hand on Hannah"s legs. She lifted her chin a little and managed a small, strained smile. "He"s breathing on his own, although he isn"t really fully awake. They"ve been keeping him unconscious." There was a small hitch in her voice.
Tyson looked quickly at Libby. "He will be all right, won"t he?"
Sarah answered, "Yes, of course. We wouldn"t allow anything to happen to Jonas. He"s family. We love him very much."
Tyson sighed and looked down at his hands. Maybe they all believed they were magic. They"d been tricking the public for so long, they had convinced themselves, just as he suspected. It wasn"t just Libby, it was all of them. "When will he be able to get out of ICU?"
"Maybe another week," Hannah said.
Tyson caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his head to see several steaming mugs floating through the air. His breath caught in his lungs. There didn"t seem a way to rig mugs of tea to glide through the air. He watched as each sister held out her hand to catch the handle of a cup floating past. The last mug came toward him, a slow lazy drift through the air. He narrowed his eyes, observing the air around the mug, studying it to see if it stayed on the same course or moved up and down.
He wasn"t going to be intimidated by mere tricks. Trying to look casual, Tyson caught the steaming mug of tea by the handle as if he"d been doing it every day of his life. He shifted forward so he could sweep around it with his right hand, testing for hidden wires. His hand went through the air with ease and when he pulled the mug to him, there was no slight tug that he could feel that might indicate it was being released from a hidden mechanism. He settled back and took a blase sip, his mind whirling with possibilities.
He eyed Libby. She seemed to be engrossed in her tea, nodding to something Sarah said that he missed. His mouth had gone dry and his heart beat that little bit too fast. He had watched more than one magician performing on a stage and never once had he thought it was real. He was aware of mirrors and illusions, but he had just plucked a floating mug right out of the air. He had tested for wires, for any kind of hidden device and there hadn"t been one.
"Would you care for a cookie to go with your tea?" Hannah asked politely.
Before he could say no, a plate drifted out of the kitchen. Piled high with cookies, it didn"t even take the same route as the teacups had. He shrunk back a little in his chair, choking on tea. It nearly went up his nose. There had to be a rational explanation. The plate hovered right in front of him, the cookies smelling like heaven and looking too good to be true.
He brought his hand under the plate and shoved, tipping the plate, spilling the cookies. He"d meant to examine the bottom of the plate, but he let go, staring in shock at the cookies spread out like a cascading waterfall in the air. They hovered there, unmoving, not hitting the floor. One by one they restacked themselves onto the plate. Before the last cookie could find its way to the plate, Joley snapped her fingers and held out her hand. Tyson watched with horrified eyes as the cookie zipped across the room straight to her.
Joley s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of the air and took a bite. "This is awesome, Hannah. You outdid yourself. Did you use the new sugar cookie recipe you were telling us about?"
"Holy c.r.a.p," Tyson burst out. "This isn"t funny anymore. You nearly gave me a heart attack. How the h.e.l.l did you all do that?"
Libby tilted her head to one side so that her hair slid over one eye leaving her looking mysterious and maybe that little bit like a witch. He"d never noticed that before.
"I don"t actually know. I"m hoping you can explain it to us since you know so much more than we do. We"ve always been able to do things, but maybe we just think we can. Maybe we"re deluding ourselves that the tea and cookies float in from the kitchen and that Sarah closed the drapes and Elle moved the chair."
"Or that I know exactly what you"re thinking right now," Elle said. "I wouldn"t mind if you managed to get rid of that for me. It"s very uncomfortable knowing too much about people and feeling their emotions all the time."
"So what am I thinking right now?" Tyson challenged.
"You want to think we"re all crazy, but the possibility that it"s true excites you. You"d like blood samples and even to hook a couple of us up to an EEG monitor so you can scan our brains to see if activity changes when we do whatever it is we do. You"re mostly excited about the possibilities to science. You"re having a difficult time reconciling the two as they seem complete opposites. They aren"t, you know. Magic is really energy which you"ve really known and have considered all along, but threw out the idea of as preposterous."
"You want to hook up our brains and study the activity?" Libby echoed.
Tyson leaned forward, his eyes glittering with sudden excitement. "Libby, she was dead on. She"s either the real thing or she really has superb insight into people. I do want a blood sample and maybe even tissue samples. I"d like to know if there"s anything different in your genetic makeup."
Libby put a hand to her heart. "You"re so romantic, Ty. Whenever you talk like that I want to just fling myself into your arms."
"You"re being sarcastic and whoever is controlling the cookie platter, send it my way. They smell good." He shook his head. "You of all people, Libby, should recognize the importance of this to science. If your family can really do such things as telekinesis and healing, which by the way, there is absolutely no proof of, it would be a remarkable discovery."
Sudden temper flashed through Libby. She"d been feeling somewhat amused and even a small bit guilty, but now she just wanted to throttle him. "I not only opened up my life to you, Tyson Derrick, I asked my family to do the same. Now you"re looking at us as if we"re a bunch of your little pet rats. Worse, you still doubt I can do what is so much a part of me. If you deny my ability to heal, you"re denying me, who I am."
Elle, I need a very sharp knife.
You can"t kill him.
Libby glared at her younger sister, jumped up and stalked into the kitchen. Ty frowned and leapt up to follow her.
"Do you have to be so emotional over everything, Libby? It"s only logical for me to be excited about a discovery of this magnitude."
"You think I"m emotional! Emotional!" She repeated. Maybe she was acting a little out of character, but he was driving her to it. "For the last several days you"ve made it clear you thought my family was conning people out of money, although we"ve never taken a penny using our gifts. You have to be shown the truth in order to believe we might actually be able to do what everyone else says we can and then you want to study us for the pure love of science." She turned away from the counter, knife in her hand.
Tyson"s expression hardened. "What the h.e.l.l do you think you"re doing?"
"Proving to you I can do what I say I can."
He took another step until he was within striking distance. "Give me the knife right now, Libby."
She scowled and lifted her left hand palm up, putting the tip of the blade against her skin. Tyson moved so fast she was shocked when his fingers settled around her wrist like a vice, jerking her arm up and away from her palm.
"I was only going to make a small cut so you could see for yourself."
"No, you aren"t." He tossed the knife into the sink and tugged on her wrist until she came up against his body. "You are not going to cut yourself to prove a point. If it"s that important, I believe you. Okay? I believe you, Libby. Your sisters can float cookies, read minds and you can heal." His voice trailed off as realization donned. Each time she brushed his ribs, there was less pain. His sternum hadn"t hurt for a while now. He hadn"t even noticed, but now that he was contemplating the possibility that her family was for real, he realized it was true. There had been bruises on his ribs and shoulder, ugly purple splotches, and they had faded away far too quickly. He swallowed, going pale. "You can... heal people. Me. Jonas."
Fear blossomed as he stared down at her face. The pale skin. The dark circles. Her fragile, ethereal appearance. Her ghostly appearance. She"d nearly died saving Jonas. That"s why he hadn"t been able to see her all those days. Her family had kept everyone away because Libby was dying. Had the same thing happened when she"d healed him of a brain injury?
He pulled out a kitchen chair and sank into it, his legs weak, as he remembered her staggering out of his room. "Oh, G.o.d, Libby." He covered his eyes with his hands, trying to wipe away the memory of the agony on her face that day at the hospital. "You almost died, didn"t you?"