Kristine Grayson - Thoroughly Kissed

Kristine Grayson

ZEBRA BOOKS

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

http://www.zebrabooks.com

ISBN 0-8217-6786-0

For my niece, Kathryn MacNally, with love.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to John Scognamiglio and Merrilee Heifetz for their help and enthusiasm on this project; to my sister, Sandy Hofsommer, who helped me understand the nature of fairy tales and for remembering; and to my husband, Dean, for discovering the romantic heart of a short story that led to "Charming" and now "Kissed".

Emma Lost cleared the last of the winter debris from her yard, put her dirt-covered hands on the small of her back, and stretched. The air had a sweet, fresh odor, and the sky was a warmer blue than it had been a month ago.

Spring had finally arrived and not a moment too soon. Sometimes she questioned her sanity, moving to Wisconsin from Oregon. Oregon, at least, had had winters like those she had grown up in wet, chilly, and rainy. Nothing like the hip-deep snow she had had to endure, the layers of ice beneath it, and temperatures so far below freezing that they barely registered on the thermometer the house's previous owner had glued to the outside of her kitchen window.

And even though she had been a member of the modern era for the last ten year s, there were still things she didn't completely understand. Like wind chill. The concept was clear enough it got colder when the wind blew. But she had no idea how anyone would be able to measure how much colder, or why they couldn't build a thermometer that incorporated it.

She'd asked one of her colleagues at the university, but he had looked at Emma as if she were crazy, a look Emma should have been used to by now. If she told most people her history, they all would think she was crazy, or at least delusional. They would have no idea that she was telling them the truth.

She didn't even try any more.

An angry yowl sounded from her front door. She turned, just as she was expected to. Her black cat, Darnell, sat behind the screen, his ears back, his yellow eyes slitted. When he realized she was looking at him, he put a paw on the screen door.

"No such luck, pal", she said. "You have never been an outdoor cat, and I'm not starting the habit now."

Darnell's ears went even flatter, if that were possible. His eyes flashed.

"You're twenty years old", she said. "And I don't care that the vet just gave you a clean bill of health, you wouldn't survive a day out here. Sometimes I wonder how I do it."

Darnell huffed at her, then butted his head against the screen.

"One more time", she said, "and I'll close the door. You won't even get the fresh air."

He moved his head away from the screen so fast he nearly fell over. Then he wrapped his tail around his paws as if he had no interest in leaving the house.

She grabbed her pruning shears off the pile of tools she had placed on her brick stairs, then headed for the tulip bed. The previous owner of this house had loved flowers especially spring flowers, especially bulbs. She had so many tulips on the south side of her house that it looked as if she had moved to Holland.

The daffodils were planted around back just as many if not more.

The tulips and daffodils were nearing the end of their season and needed to be dead-headed. Not that she minded. She would be working near the lilac bushes, which were just beginning to flower. The lilac scent was heavenly.

Before she started to change the flower garden, she would have to wait to see how many more surprises the warm weather would bring. She had rented the house last fall, when the University of Wisconsin hired her as an associate history professor. Her specialty was the Early Middle Ages in England, commonly known as the Dark Ages the years from 500 to 1100 A. D. but she'd been teaching everything from survey classes of the whole medieval period to graduate seminars ranging from the Roman Conquest to the Crusades.

But it was her lecture series England in the First Millennium that made her one of the most popular professors on campus. Her popularity, and her book "Light on the Darkness: England from 450 1100 A. D.", a pop culture bestseller which had inspired the university to ask her to teach in the first place, convinced Mort Collier, the chairman of the history department, to recommend her for a permanent position.

To celebrate, she had bought the house. She loved it. Her refuge in a world that was too modern for her. She had friends here a lot of them, actually but none of them knew who she was, or why she specialized in the Dark Ages.

And she would never tell them.

Imagine sitting with her girlfriends at Mother Fool's Coffee House, sharing lattes, and explaining that she taught about the Dark Ages because she had been born in them. That would go over well. Just about as well as telling them that when she was twenty years old, she kissed a young man named Aethelstan and went in to a magically induced coma for the next thousand years. Then, when she woke up, it was to find herself in a glass coffin in the back of a decrepit VW microbus, facing Aethelstan's lawyer the pretty, petite woman who later became his wife.

And she could have him. Emma shuddered as she always did when she thought of Aethelstan. He had lived those thousand years aging slightly, as all mages did and becoming a person she didn't know. She liked him now, but she couldn't imagine being attracted to him or wanting to kiss him.

Then again, she didn't want to kiss anyone again. Ever. For any reason. Too risky.

She knew the spell that had put her in the magical coma had supposedly ended ten years ago, but sometimes magic was tricky. It didn't always do what people expected. And sometimes it came back. So Emma protected herself, and her lips. She didn't need a real man with real problems and real needs. She had Darnell. He was cranky enough for one lifetime.

A UPS truck drove by and stopped in front of a house down the block. Emma set down her shears beside the tulips and hurried to her brick sidewalk. Sure enough, the UPS truck had stopped in front of the house at the corner. She slipped her dirty hands into the back pockets of her jeans. She hadn't expected that. The house had been empty ever since she had moved into the neighborhood last fall.

She kept an eye on that house because it was a companion house to hers. Both had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who had spent much of his life in the Madison area. Apparently, he had designed the houses for sisters who wanted to live in the same neighborhood. Emma's sister had died young, and the next owner had remodeled the house leaving the Wright exterior, which blended so beautifully with the lot, and meddling with the interior.

But the other Wright house was just as it had been when it was built furniture and all.

Emma had wanted to go inside it ever since she'd heard that, but the owner was out of the country. No one knew when he was coming back.

The UPS driver opened the back of the truck and grabbed a huge cardboard box.

He staggered with it over the curb and toward the front door of the sister house. Then he leaned on the doorbell.

The door opened, but Emma couldn't see who was inside. She walked to her lilac bushes and hoped that the branches would hide her just enough to prevent her neighbors from knowing how nosy she really was.

The box disappeared out of the UPS driver's hands, and then he went back to the truck, peering inside it as if he were facing a herculean task. After a moment, the door to the mystery house opened, and a man came out.

Emma caught her breath. He was gorgeous. Broad shouldered with a narrow waist that tapered into long muscular legs. He had hair so blond that it could rightly be called golden, and his features seemed, from this distance at least, to be perfect. Women these days would call him "movie star handsome", but an old term from her past rose in her mind. He was wulfstrang powerful enough to defend anything.