“Who are you, truly?” he asked her. He had to know if she was a part of this all along. How much did she know?
Had she cast some spell on him to make him look at her differently? To see her as what she was. A woman. Had her fiery temper and sweet smiles softened his heart and breathed a fog over his mind, blinding him to her feigned interest in him?
I can’t stay with him. I must go no matter how much of my heart is already lost.
He remembered her words, spoken to no one but heard by a tiny mouse. What she felt for him was real. She was too spirited and honest to pretend.
“I’m just me, Gray,” she said in her dulcet voice. “I’m a dance teacher, a sister, and a daughter. I was ripped from my life and brought here—into the snow. I know less about all this than you.”
He nodded, relief showing clearly on his face. He wanted to take her hand and leave Harper’s presence. They were trying to make Aria a part of the Ashmore/Blagden destiny by taking her from her family. He wouldn’t let them. But he kept his hand at his side. Touching her, even the slightest touch of her hand, would make him think about touching her all the time—and it might cause him to be less careful with her under the watchful eye of his enemy.
“When is she coming?” He asked Harper about his grandmother. He veered off topic when something occurred to him. “Grandmother is your mother.”
“She’s not my mother,” she told him with a slight shake of her head. “She’s older than that. And I don’t know when she’ll be at Dartmouth. But it won’t be long.”
He didn’t answer her but turned inward to Tabby the head mouse instead.I have a favor to ask of you.
Ask anything, came the quick reply.
I would like to know everything Harper says for the next forty-eight hours. Can you do that?
Of course, Grayson! I will have a thousand ears on it.
He was tempted to smile at the gift of having ears everywhere. But Harper was watching. She would realize that he was communicating with something and would be more cautious about things she said out loud.
“Grayson,” Harper began. She looked miserably repentant yet again. “It was more important to try to help you heal. You would have mistrusted me immediately if you knew I was your aunt—another family member who could leave you anytime. That’s what you would have thought. You would have been obsessed with finding your mother if you knew I had anything to do with her.”
Perhaps she was correct, but he would never know. There was no point telling her how betrayed he felt by her. She told herself she had done the right thing. It was an argument he didn’t want to have.
“Grayson, I know you don’t trust me anymore, but…”
Gray waited, giving her a chance to defend herself if that was what she wanted to do.
“But everything I did, every decision I made was made with love in my heart for you. I was thirteen years old when I pulled you from your mother’s body and held you in my arms before she did. I’ve loved you from that moment on. But this is all bigger than you, Grayson. One or all your sons will break a curse that has plagued families for centuries—and will save your life.”
“I have no destiny,” he whispered in a low voice.
“You do have a destiny,” she corrected. “We don’t know which of the three women you will choose, if any—or what that choice will mean. Your destiny is to father sons in love.”
His eyes turned involuntarily to Aria. He could father sons in love with her. He could feel his blood rising to his face and then to his head until he felt feverish. Was it a spell?
He fought to regain control of himself by concentrating on Harper’s voice and words.
“…to keep the Ashmore line alive.”
He shook his head. “No. I’ll decide what my destiny is. But I can tell you that if she goes home—” He paused to look at Aria—“no child born to me after that, if I have any, will be conceived in love.”
Harper set her gaze on Aria. She understood what he meant, if not Aria, then no one.
“Harper,” he said, dragging her gaze to him. “Aria’s wish is to return home, and I’m going to help her do that. Don’t get involved.”
“What are you trying to say, Grayson? You won’t have any sons? In that case, I must warn you Tessa will see it done herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’ll manipulate time. She’ll bring you a few years back, a few forward, over and over until you do it her way.”
“That’s not destiny.”