Touch of Magic Read Online Free

seemed enough to her. She'd wanted to make the world better. Gramps couldn't understand. He'd never grasped how deeply their trip to Egypt the year she was sixteen had affected her. That terrible village. People starving because there was no way of growing food. Babies dying from dehydration. And out in the desert, the signs of water coming, but not fast enough for most of those people.
    Science had always been easy for her. She'd decided then, at sixteen. But Gramps hadn't taken her seriously, not even when she got her degree in hydro-geology. Not until she'd told him she'd been approved for a graduate program abroad and she was accepting.
    She'd tried to make him understand that she loved magic, but that she somehow had to give a better accounting of her life. After all, she'd sur vived the accident that killed her parents. Shouldn't one Stuart out of four generations do something besides entertain?
    He'd raged, yelled bitterly that she wasn't a Stuart. It felt like a curse. In the end she'd gone off, anyway, and two weeks later Gramps was dead.
    Yussuf had been en route to an engagement and had brought the news to her. It had been the start of the visits and the tricks they played on each other. In a way they'd never known each other well, yet there'd been a bond.
    Action.
    She outraced the emotions that wanted to claim her, drew on a white silk robe, and went downstairs.
    The living room still bore her grandmother's im print. Good quality seascapes hung on the walls. A sofa and chairs were upholstered in moss-green velvet. A writing desk and other pieces in the comfort able room were authentic Sheraton.
    It was a room that soothed Channing. She sat down in a wing chair. Picking up a quarter, she let it dance back and forth across the backs of her fingers. That act also steadied her.
    A footstep sounded. Rundell padded in at a majes tic totter.
    "This isn't some sheikhdom, madam," he began severely.
    He'd started calling her madam the day she'd signed his first paycheck. This opening was one of his favorites. It led to a lecture on rashness, and Channing realized if he'd omitted it, she'd have been disappointed. She grinned in spite of herself.
    "How's Serafin ?"
    "Splendid -- but you can't afford to feed him." Rundell's teeth clicked shut. Subject closed. He grunted as he bent to turn on a lamp. "Where did you find him?"
    "He was hanging around to see Yussuf . He didn't have a place -- "
    "I'll make a nightcap. You can start at the begin ning," he said, interrupting.
    Channing wondered briefly how they'd ever come to this ritual. She really wasn't fond of liquor late in the evening. Rundell was -- and she supposed he liked to feel that he was coddling her.
    "Make one for both of us," she said. That was part of the ritual, too, the urging. You had to make allowances if you wanted to keep an adversary as good as Rundell .
    As he splashed whiskey and soda into glasses she summarized her visit with Yussuf and all that had happened afterward. Feeling as though she'd been in a nightmare, Channing brushed a hand across her eyes.
    "God. I stole a gun, too ... Police evidence."
    "I suppose you want me to put it down the gar- bage disposal?" Rundell said sourly. He clunked her glass down beside her and lowered himself to a chair facing hers. "Madam, you're -- "
    "Impulsive, spoiled, hardheaded, and too old to behave like a tomboy. Did I forget anything?"
    Rundell hated it when she stole his thunder. She heard him sniff.
    "Sloppy. You drop your clothes everywhere." He knocked back half his drink. "I wish you'd find a man to tumble around with. You'd be a hell of a lot less trouble."

    *    *    *

    Her passport said Annette Lewis, but her real name was Khadija . Her hair was black. Her lips were full, alluring in their sultry discontent as she stood in the customs line. Inside the lining of the sable coat slung over her shoulders she carried two million dollars. Inside her belt she wore enough plastic explosive to destroy herself