Beguiled Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  “One of the stars in the ascendant . . . poised for the

  next big step.”—Publishers Weekly

  Praise for the Novels of Maureen Child

  Bedeviled

  “Child once again excels. . . . Winning combinations of offbeat humor and scary scenarios.”—Romantic Times

  “[A] heartwarming, hilarious adventure.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  A Fiend in Need

  “Amusing chick lit romantic fantasy . . . an entertaining tale.”—The Best Reviews

  “Readers who enjoy a hot paranormal comedy are sure to like this well-written tale.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  More Than Fiends

  “Maureen Child . . . has a sharp, witty voice that will leave readers begging for more.”

  —Katie MacAlister, USA Today bestselling author of Up in Smoke

  “Fun, sexy, and incredibly entertaining . . . guaranteed to delight. Readers will love this fast-paced winner. . . . It’s simply exceptional.”

  —Allie Mackay, author of Tall, Dark, and Kilted

  “A sizzling story . . . fun and fresh reading.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “Fresh, witty, sexy, and sure to please fans.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “The dialogue is smart and sassy.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  Praise for Maureen Child’s Other Novels

  “Sassy repartee . . . humor and warmth . . . a frothy delight.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Maureen Child infuses her writing with the perfect blend of laughter, tears, and romance . . . well-crafted characters. . . . Her novels [are] a treat to be savored.”

  —Jill Marie Landis, New York Times bestselling author of Homecoming

  “Absolutely wonderful . . . a delightful blend of humor and emotion. . . . This sexy love story will definitely keep readers turning the pages.”

  —Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of Firefly Lane

  “Maureen Child always writes a guaranteed winner . . . sexy and impossible to put down.”

  —Susan Mallery, New York Times bestselling author of Sweet Trouble

  SIGNET ECLIPSE

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  First published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, August 2009

  Copyright © Maureen Child, 2009

  eISBN : 978-1-101-10862-8

  All rights reserved

  SIGNET ECLIPSE and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  For my mother-in-law, Mary Child

  She’s never been a big fan of paranormals, but

  she’s always been a big fan of my writing!

  Thanks, Mom, for too many things to list here.

  I love you.

  Chapter One

  Being a queen wasn’t the thrill ride Maggie had expected.

  Where were the jewels? The crown, for God’s sake? Where were the adoring crowds, simpering minions and life o’ luxury?

  Where was the fun? Shouldn’t she at least have had a mall named after her?

  So far, being the newly crowned Queen of the Fae had been a royal pain in the ass.

  Sure, it had been only a couple of weeks since Maggie had tossed Mab, the former queen, out a window. But come on. No way was Maggie going to spend every freaking day of—oh, let’s see—eternity listening to a bunch of whiny Faeries.

  Which was why she was back in her own world doing something important.

  “I need more snow, Maggie. It has to look really Christmassy, you know? And don’t forget the wrapped presents under the tree. Oh, and the rocking horse—remember the rocking horse.”

  “I know, Barb,” Maggie said, forcing a smile at the older woman, who owned Barb’s House of Beauty. Every year, she paid Maggie to paint Christmas scenes on the front window of her beauty shop. And every year, Barb wanted to outdo Sam’s Hardware. Which was no small feat.

  Sam’s windows had been painted for two weeks already, so Barb had had plenty of time to study what Maggie had given him and think up ideas for one-upmanship. Always a good time in Castle Bay, California.

  A tourist stop on Pacific Coast Highway, Maggie’s hometown was small, familiar and just the antidote she needed for the bizarreness that had become her life. The town was slow, except in the summer when tourists clogged the streets and made cash registers ring. During the winter, it was no more than a rest stop on the road, as tourists hit the bigger towns farther north, such as Monterey and Carmel. And that was fine with Maggie.

  She liked Castle Bay just the way it was. Here, she was just Maggie Donovan, artist and glass painter. Here, Maggie was Nora’s sister and Eileen’
s aunt. She was a tiny part of the community, not some mythic queen expected to ride herd on the weird inhabitants of Otherworld.

  Barb went back inside. Maggie picked up a white paint-laden brush, leaned out from her ladder, touched the glass and shrieked like an idiot when Culhane, Fae Warrior, would-be lover and current pain in her ass, popped into existence beside her.

  “Damn it,” Maggie shouted, glancing through the window into the shop to make sure Barb hadn’t noticed the tall, dark, gorgeous hunk-of-hormone-happiness appearing out of nowhere. She hadn’t.

  Leaning against her ladder, Maggie looked down at him and instantly knew she shouldn’t have. Seriously, the man was just eye candy. Six feet five inches of completely amazing male. He had sharp features, a strong jaw and green eyes so pale they looked like windows into another world. His shoulder-length black hair gave him the look of a pirate, and the white shirt, dark green pants and knee-high brown leather boots he wore completed the picture nicely.

  Also he had a great mouth, a nasty disposition and the ability to make Maggie nuts in a heartbeat.

  “I cannot believe you have come back here to paint pictures on glass.” He set both fists on his hips, widened his stance and gave her a look that said he was ready to do battle. “You are expected at the castle. Maggie, you must return to Otherworld,” he said, as if issuing a damn command.

  That’s what being the head Fae Warrior for two hundred years will do to you. Make you an immortal arrogant bastard.

  Culhane had been ordering her around since he’d pushed his way into her life nearly a month ago. Claiming that Maggie’s destiny was to defeat Mab and take over Otherworld in her place, he’d pretty much orchestrated everything to make sure his “prophecy” came true.

  Plus, the whole time, he’d been making Maggie crazed with lip-sizzling kisses, and the promise of a Fae-driven orgasm had her strung so tight, the wrong word might snap her in two. He was probably doing it on purpose, too, she thought. Keeping her all stirred up and achy just so she’d go along with whatever the hell he wanted her to do. So far, it had been working. If this was her eternity, there was just no way she was going to make it.

  She’d be damned if she was going to be done in by her own horniness. So she was going to cling with both hands to however much “ordinary” she could get. An ocean breeze slid past her, ruffling her shoulder-length auburn hair and carrying the scent of the sea, which was just two blocks away. At the skate park across the street, kids were riding the cement slopes on their boards and shoppers were competing for parking spaces.

  All blissfully normal. All quiet. All ordinary. Except for the fact that she had a damn Faery practically snarling at her.

  “I can’t go to Otherworld right now,” she told him. “Busy here. See? Actual work.”

  He snorted. “You are a queen, Maggie. You do not have to work.”

  “Hah!” She turned to the window and laid a brush full of white paint down into the first of several snow-drifts. “Seriously? Being Queen is a boatload of work. Listening to all of you guys whine about what needs changing and what shouldn’t be changed and how I should do it and how I’d better not do it. How’m I supposed to know who to listen to?”

  She paused for breath, added more snow to the window and then kept talking.“I’ve been Queen for like two weeks, okay? I don’t know anything about Otherworld—”

  “I can teach you.”

  “And I don’t want to know,” she added, giving him a quick glare over her shoulder. “I didn’t ask to be Queen, you know. You guys came to me.”

  “You were the one who killed the demon and claimed the Fae power.”

  True. She had accidentally killed what had turned out to be a demon, and then for her trouble Maggie had been imbued with the Faery dust of the five slain Fae the demon had been carrying around. All of that power was still sizzling inside Maggie, causing changes she hadn’t even begun to deal with yet. Not to mention, when she had thrown Queen Mab out a window, Maggie had also been given Mab’s power. Maggie was now a raging tornado of Faery strength with not the slightest clue what that might mean for her in the future.

  “That demon was eating my ex-boyfriend, remember? And then tried to chow down on me.” Just the memory of that day gave her chills. “And I didn’t mean to kill her, anyway, and believe me, if I knew then what I know now . . .”

  “What?” He laughed shortly. “You would do something different? You would allow the demon to kill you instead?”

  Well, he had her there. Damn it.

  “Okay, no. I still would have done what I did, but then I would have given the power to Mab. She was such a bitch, she deserved to have to be Queen.” Remembering how she’d tossed Mab out the window, Maggie sort of regretted it now. Of course, if Mab were still around, then she’d be trying to kill Maggie, which would just be a whole different sort of problem, so what the hell? Guess it was better to be Queen than dead.

  But that didn’t mean she didn’t have to paint windows, pay bills, buy groceries and you know . . . be a person.

  Culhane blew out a frustrated breath. This, Maggie was used to. She got it a lot from Culhane and the nasty-ass pixie Bezel, who was still living in the oak tree in her backyard.

  When did her life turn into a paranormal soap opera?

  “It is your destiny.”

  “Right. Well, destiny can get in line,” Maggie snapped, stepping down off the ladder and walking to the array of paints she had lined up neatly against the building. Culhane was always pulling out the destiny card. “I’ve got sixteen more windows to do before Christmas, and in case you didn’t know, Thanksgiving was last week.” Maggie sighed in fond memory of the gluttonous feast she’d enjoyed, Faery guests and all. Well, Bezel hadn’t been much fun, but then he was a two-thousand-year-old pixie and lived in a tree, so what could you expect? “I’m barely over that. Plus, Christmas is getting closer all the time and I’m gonna have to do most of that, too, because Nora’s got some kind of weird flu, which I think your stupid Fae Warrior Quinn gave her.”

  One more thing to think about, she told herself as she mixed red and blue tempera together to get a rich violet color. She added just enough water to thin the mixture and idly stirred while she considered how her family had been dragged into Maggie’s new adventures. Of course, Nora hadn’t been dragged so much as she had leaped into this strange new world. But then, Nora had always been drawn to the supernatural. Unlike Maggie, who preferred more “natural” and less “super.”

  “The Fae do not get sick,” Culhane said, breaking her concentration.

  “They’re just carriers?” Maggie frowned, picked up another brush, swirled it into the violet paint and stood up again, still frowning as purple tempera slid off the brush and down to her hand.

  Her sister, Nora, had been sick for days and refused to go to a doctor—which was probably just as well, because she was having so much Faery sex lately that Quinn’s powers had started to affect her, and Nora kept floating at odd moments. How would they explain that to the doctor?

  Add that to the list of worries, she thought. With Nora sick, her daughter, Eileen, had been spending more time with Maggie at the main house, because if Nora had some weird Faery plague, they didn’t want Eileen to get it. Which meant that Maggie was getting to listen to play-by-play descriptions of life in middle school and which boy was the cutest and which girl had it in for Eileen.

  God, even thinking about what was going on in her life made her tired. “I sooo don’t have time to be Queen.”

  “Time or not, you are the Queen, Maggie, and nothing can change that. You must come with me.”

  Culhane grabbed her arm. The minute his hand touched her, Maggie felt a blast of heat that shot straight through her system and down to her core. Energized with expectation, her hormones did the little clog dance of happiness and started to make her ache with a need that she knew wasn’t going to get answered anytime soon.

  Fabulous. Because what she really needed to make this day complete was
to be so horny it hurt.

  Carefully, she used her paint-smeared hand to pry his fingers off her arm. “God, Culhane, please do me a huge favor and go bug somebody else. I’m busy here.”

  He ignored that. Big surprise. Glancing down at the violet paint on his fingers, he frowned, waved his other hand over them and the paint disappeared. Instantly. Maggie frowned and looked at her own hands. She’d be scrubbing for hours to get all the dried paint off her skin. She wasn’t completely Fae yet, though the change was definitely happening. Culhane had told her it was going to take some time for her to come into her full range of powers. But maybe she should take some time now to have him teach her a few more things.

  The moment she considered it, she dismissed it. Normal. That’s what she wanted. A scrub brush and a hot shower were good enough for her. Scowling, she laid her brush against the glass and quickly painted a Christmas present into the snow scene; then, moving farther down the window, she painted another just beneath the Christmas tree she’d already sketched in.

  “You must listen,” Culhane told her. “The banshee contingent is insisting on speaking with you.”

  She sighed, set the violet paint down and dumped the brush into a can of rinse water; then she picked up the jar of red paint she’d already mixed and reached for a clean brush. Quickly, she layered in ribbons winding through the branches of the Christmas tree. Glancing at him, she asked, “Banshee have contingents? I thought they just went around screaming when people died.”