He kissed the crystalline matrix and tucked it back into his shirt. “What do you know? Nothing.”
“I know you’re cursed, because you can never be with your true love,” Clare said, making a last-ditch pitch. “I can help breakthat curse.”
“You’re a writer of fiction. How can you help?”
“How many lifetimes have you wasted not spending it with her, and then forgetting her only to have to find her all over again?”
His gaze faltered for only a moment. Then he reset his jaw and glared at her. “This Heart hasn’t failed me yet.”
“Must be frustrating.” Clare waved her hands with a flourishing movement,wishing she could snag the heart and whisk it away from him. “I’m a woman, a fiery female like Brigid. I even have a Brigid costume, complete with a skirt of flames, plastic flame halo, and a tunic of burning autumn-colored leaves—simulated, of course. Let me wear this heart and make your Brigid so jealous she will reclaim you and never let you go.”
“It would never work. You are nothinglikemyBrigid. She would laugh at your feeble attempt at emulating her.” He uncapped the second airline-sized bottle of whiskey and emptied it, then looped a sleeping mask over his eyes and leaned back. “Now, leave me alone so I can dream about my lover of all ages.”
Grrr… Clare let her upper lip curl and leaned back in her seat. With that kind of attitude, it served him right to losehis lover over and over, lifetime after lifetime.
He was a liar anyway. An idle rich man with nothing to do with his money but to jet around the world in first class and insult women.
He was probably the villain, a crooked treasure hunter who’d raided the ancient druid temple devoted to Brigid and stole her heart. Wait, he was the sorcerer who turned her heart into a rock and buriedit in the slime pit of an underground river. He then brought her back to life and forced her heartless body to wander through the Otherworld, calling for her true love, a man most opposite of Griffin Gallagher.
Fast forward many centuries. Brigid still walks, now a modern woman. She’s missing her heart, but she’s smart, educated, and has accumulated the knowledge of the centuries. She’swell able to pass through society without being noticed. Still heartless, she, nevertheless, has learned to feign the emotions people associate with having a heart.
She’s never fallen in love, but being so beautiful, she doesn’t need to. Men fall at her feet to worship her, but without a heart, Brigid can’t respond. Instead, she uses her gift of poetry to spin love stories. She weaves magicinto the strands of her multi-faceted plots and binds the very emotion she cannot feel—love—into the warp and weft of her soul.
Even though she’s created countless love stories, the hole in her chest makes her empty. The cavity where her heart would have been rages against the evil sorcerer who stole the very core of her being.
Unable to feel love, although talented at imaginingit, Brigid renews herself and keeps herself young by being born every thirty years—in the body of an orphan. She grows up a normal girl, not showing her guardians any of her special gifts, while she searches for the evil being who left her without the ability to receive or give affection.
One day, she meets a man—a proud, gorgeous ass of a man who claims he is her true love. He brags thathe has her heart, except he’s turned it into a worthless bauble—a purplish-red glob of crystalline minerals.
He makes a fatal mistake. He underestimates her and falls asleep on an airplane after taunting her with the rock he claims is her heart.
Clare’s fingers itched as an idea rang like a doorbell in her mind. What an awesome screenplay she’d dreamt up. She could be Brigid, theheartless goddess, wandering throughout the worlds until by sheer good luck, she happened to sit next to the evil sorcerer—lying fully exposed with her heart inches away from her.
She’d write the play and invite him to invest in it. It would be a vanity project, no doubt, but he would fund it. Maybe she could be the actress and pretend to fall in love with him.
The curse would bebroken. He’d get his happily ever after—only until he “died” and forgot.
She’d be a runaway success with her book turned into a movie, and he wouldn’t remember her—not one whiff.
Win-win.
Clare thanked her stars for turning negatives into positives. What was better than a forgetful hero or villain?
She eyed the lump underneath Griffin’s shirt. He’d left it partiallyunbuttoned with his tie loosened, and after his double whiskey, he was snoring gently.
What would Brigid do if she were present?
Clare let her mind wander as she rummaged in her bag for a lump of coal she kept for warding off naughty children. It was roughly the same size and shape as Griffin’s sparkly lump.
Using a crochet hook and a ball of yarn, she created a net to containthe coal. It wouldn’t pass the look test, but then, Griffin wouldn’t be staring at the amulet until it was too late.
The clip on the lanyard was no problem. Clare could see it right under his tie. What she needed was turbulence and a distraction.
She got her chance when the flight crossed the North Atlantic on its approach to Dublin. The flight attendants braced themselves to pickup the trash, despite the captain turning on the seatbelt sign.
Griffin was still out cold as the attendant picked up his empties. When she reached for Clare’s can of club soda, Clare lurched toward the aisle with her hand over her mouth.
“I’m about to throw up. I can’t hold it any longer. I have to go to the bathroom.” She bent over Griffin’s lap, waking him.
