Matt set the sword’s tip back on the ground and folded his hands over the hilt. “It serves many purposes,” was all he said.
Winter tucked her hands behind her back, rubbing her fingers that had touched the blade, and looked up at him again. “Will you teach me to use my pinewood staff, and show me how to summon the energy?” She thought of the singed blankets and quickly added, “And control it?”
Matt stared at her in silence, his eyes unreadable.
She laughed. “Why is it men always seem threatened by women with power?” She tilted her head. “How many women executives do you have in your company?”
Matt stepped around her and walked over to where her staff was, reached up and set his sword on the high ledge, and took down her pinewood stick. “None,” he said, his face turning red again.
“But only because I don’t have any women working for me who are qualified to be engineering executives.”
“You don’t haveany,” she repeated, “or you haven’t noticed any of them working in your plant, quietly doing their jobs and not causing waves for fear of losing the position they do have?”
He just stared at her nonplussed, her stick forgotten.
Winter smiled. “You’re wasting a good portion of your intellectual resources, Matt.” She shook her head. “At least you have an excuse, coming from a time when women were considered good for only cooking and cleaning and birthing babies. The sad part is, yours isn’t the only business out there today that’s wasting half its potential.”
He lifted one brow. “So now you want to involve yourself in my company? Do you consider that part of your ‘wifely’ duties?”
Winter balled her hands into fists behind her back and widened her smile. Oh, she could see she had a long way to go before she got this ancient warrior to shift his thinking. “I want nothing to do with your company. I was just pointing something out, is all.” She shrugged. “If you don’t have any qualified women in your company, maybe you should take a look at your recruiting policies,” she said as she bent down and gathered up the sleeping bag, giving it a good shake before she folded it.
A feather suddenly floated into the air and landed on her socked feet. Winter picked up the black feather, straightening up with a frown. It was about eight or nine inches long, sleek and healthy looking. A tail feather.
It was from a crow, she realized. She hadn’t been dreaming! She was holding the proof that her dream had been as real as the feather in her hand—and that must mean the information the crow had given her was just as real. Winter clutched the precious gift to her chest.
She was pregnant.
She was in love with Matheson Gregor.
And she knew exactly how to save mankind!
“What’s that?” Matt asked, still standing by the far wall, still holding her staff.
She held it out for him to see. “It’s a crow’s feather. I dreamt about being in the woods last night, and there was a crow who talked to me.”
Matt frowned at the feather, then lifted his gaze to her. “Seeing spirits again?” he asked.
She waggled the feather. “If he wasn’t real, then explain this.”
Matt walked up beside her, again frowning at the feather in her hand. “I must have carried it in on my clothing last night. Toss it in the fire. It’s likely loaded with mites.”
Winter carefully tucked the feather in her back pocket.
Matt held the pinewood stick toward her with a scowl. “Don’t put your faith in dreams, Winter.
They’re nothing more than wishful thinking,” he said, finally answering her earlier question as he reached down, lifted her hand, and wrapped her fingers around one end of the staff. “And getting what we wish for is not all it’s cracked up to be, believe me.”
The next three months were certainly going to be interesting if not maddening, Winter decided.
It would definitely take all the magic she could summon to turn this stubborn man’s thinking around.
Chapter Twenty
F rom the copilot’s seatof Matt’s powerful jet, Winter looked out the side window, noting but not really seeing the weather observatory on top of Mount Washington as they flew northeast over the New Hampshire White Mountains. She lowered her gaze from the bright morning sun to her lap, replaying the last twenty-four hours in her mind as she studied the thick gold band on her left hand.
She had no idea where Matt had gotten the beautiful ring, only that he had pulled a pair of matching gold bands from his pocket when the minister (she was using that term lightly if not skeptically) asked them to exchange rings during their simple wedding in Las Vegas yesterday. Winter remembered how her hand had warmed the moment Matt had slipped the ring onto her finger, and how when she’d slipped Matt’s ring onto his finger and he’d clasped their hands together, she had thought they might both burst into flames from the charge of electricity that had suddenly shot between them.
It was a beautiful ring, she decided, despite looking old and obviously used. Winter suspected it was a family heirloom that had belonged to his grandmother, the guardian. She also suspected Matt’s ring had belonged to his grandfather, a man who had chosen love over his calling to be a drùidh.The rings were a good omen for her and Matt’s own future, Winter decided. She loved Matt so much that she was giving up her calling for him, and she had faith that in time, Matt would love her just as much.
Winter suddenly wrinkled her nose. Even though she’d taken a shower yesterday in the suite Matt had booked them in Las Vegas—that they’d used only long enough to get cleaned up—and was wearing a completely new wardrobe purchased in the hotel shop, she kept catching the occasional hint of burnt cloth. The odor was still lingering in the jet, from their quick trip west yesterday morning, when they
’d both smelled like smoke.
Before they’d left the cave, Matt had tried to show her how to use her pinewood staff to light a simple fire. But instead of directing the energy to the logs he’d set on the floor, she had caught the pile of blankets on fire again. Then she’d toasted his box of supplies, then singed her saddle. And bless his very alive heart, Matt’s patience hadn’t run out until his duffel bag had exploded. As soon as he’d finished stomping the smoldering clothes, he’d walked up and silently taken her staff away. He’d then made some fancy motion that turned her puny pinewood stick into an artist’s sketch pencil, and tucked it into his jacket pocket. Then he’d turned his sword back into a fountain pen and led her out of the smoky cave and up to his truck, parked on the road above the meadow.
They’d driven to Bangor, climbed into his jet, flown west at the speed of sound, and landed in Las Vegas not two hours later. They’d checked into a hotel after buying a change of clothes and taken turns showering. Then, holding her hand in a death grip as they walked the Las Vegas Strip—apparently worried she might come to her senses and turn tail and run—Matt had found a rather surreal chapel not very far from the hotel.
Winter still couldn’t decide if she’d spoken her vows to Matt in front of Elvis Presley or the Mad Hatter from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,but she was pretty sure the quick ceremony had been witnessed by three members of the Hell’s Angels. In fact, the fierce-looking trio of a woman and two men sitting in the back row had signed her and Matt’s marriage certificate, which Matt had quickly tucked in his suit pocket the moment Winter had finished signing her own name with his powerful fountain pen.
Winter did give her husband credit for remembering to feed her before they boarded the plane again and continued on to Utah. By four o’clock Utah time, Winter had found herself standing on the floor of a massive plant, surrounded by planes and powerful engines in various stages of completion.
When Matt had gotten involved in a serious discussion with several of his managers, Winter had quietly wandered off to give herself a tour of the factory.