Charmed Read Online Free PDF Page B

was answered instantly. Tail wagging furiously, the pup scrambled over to lick at her face and arms. Refusing to be charmed, Ana cupped the dog’s face in her hands. “Sit,” she ordered, and the puppy plopped her rump down obligingly. “Now behave yourself.” With a little whine of repentance, Daisy settled down with her head on her paws.
    Almost as impressed as he was baffled, Boone shook his head. “How’d you do that?”
    “Magic,” she said shortly, then relented with a faint smile. “You could say I’ve always had a way with animals. She’s just happy and excited and roaring to play. You have to make her understand that some activities are inappropriate.” Ana patted Daisy’s head and earned an adoring canine glance.
    “I’ve been trying bribery.”
    “That’s good, too.” She stretched out under a trellis of scarlet clematis, looking for more broken crockery. It was then that Boone noticed the long scratch on her arm.
    “You’re bleeding.”
    She glanced down. There were nicks on her thighs, too. “Hard to avoid, with pots raining down on me.”
    He was on his feet in a blink and hauling Ana to hers. “Damn it, I asked you if you were all right.”
    “Well, really, I—”
    “We’ll have to clean it up.” He saw there was more blood trickling down her legs, and he reacted exactly as he would if it were Jessie. He panicked. “Oh, Lord.” He scooped an amazed Ana into his arms and hurried toward the closest door.
    “Honestly, there’s absolutely no need—”
    “It’s going to be fine, baby. We’ll take care of it.”
    Half amused, half annoyed, Ana huffed out a breath as he pushed his way into the kitchen. “In that case, I’ll cancel the ambulance. If you’d just put me—” He dropped her into one of the padded ice-cream chairs at her kitchen table. “—down.”
    Nerves jittering, Boone raced to the sink for a cloth. Efficiency, speed and cheer were the watchwords in such cases, he knew. As he dampened the cloth and squirted it with soap, he took several long breaths to calm himself.
    “It won’t look so bad when we get it cleaned up. You’ll see.” After pasting a smile on his face, he walked back to kneel in front of her. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Gently he began to dab at the thin line of blood that had dripped down her calf. “We’re going to fix it right up. Just close your eyes and relax.” He took another long breath. “I knew this man once,” he began, improvising a story as he always did for his daughter. “He lived in a place called Briarwood, where there was an enchanted castle behind a high stone wall.”
    Ana, who had been on the point of firmly telling him she could tend to herself, stopped and did indeed relax.
    “Growing over the wall were thick vines with big, razor-sharp thorns. No one had been to the castle in more than a hundred years, because no one was brave enough to climb that wall and risk being scraped and pricked. But the man, who was very poor and lived alone, was curious, and day after day he would walk from his house to the wall and stand on the tips of his toes to see the sun gleam on the topmost towers and turrets of the castle.”
    Boone turned the cloth over and dabbed at the cuts. “He couldn’t explain to anyone what he felt inside his heart whenever he stood there. He wanted desperately to climb over. Sometimes at night in his bed he would imagine it. Fear of those thick, sharp thorns stopped him, until one day in high summer, when the scent of flowers was so strong you couldn’t take a breath without drinking it in, that glimpse of the topmost towers wasn’t enough. Something in his heart told him that what he wanted most in the world lay just beyond that thorn-covered wall. So he began to climb it. Again and again he fell to the ground, with his hands and arms pricked and bleeding. And again and again he pushed himself up.”
    His voice was soothing, and his touch—his touch was anything but. As gentle as he was with