LITMIR.BIZ

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just really smart. Does there have to be a difference?

      I peeked over my shoulder at Lex. He’d decided to make himself useful and was shelving some of my scattered books, scowling at the destruction.

      “I think it is.”

      “I’ll call you,” she said, and hung up. Quickly. I wondered if she’d gotten off the line before a trace could be run…assuming anybody was running a trace.

      She would call back from a different phone, likely using someone else’s three-way dialing to confuse matters further. Just in case. We’re amateurs at the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but we learn fast. And as much as I hated bowing to that kind of paranoia…well, someone had broken in.

      Lex turned back to me, solemn, as I set down the phone. His rich hazel eyes didn’t flinch. “You used to trust me.”

      Did he purposefully choose the best way to wound me, or was he just expressing his own pain? I didn’t want to do this again. It had hurt both of us too much the last few times. Still, I couldn’t not answer. “You didn’t used to work for your cousin.”

      He tried a wry smile. “I never said Phil isn’t an ass, Mag.”

      “And yet you cover for him, despite last year’s trial.”

      “In which the charges were dropped.” And they had been. Espionage. Perjury. Insider trading. Unfair monopoly.

      Like magic.

      “After an undisclosed settlement,” I reminded him. “That you won’t even talk about.”

      He took a deep breath. “Because I signed a contract of nondisclosure.”

      “Damned convenient, that. The ends don’t always justify the means, Lex. Sometimes the means are everything.”

      “The stockholders seem happy enough.”

      I said, “So marry one of the stockholders.”

      His eyes narrowed. “I was just worried about an old friend, Magdalene. Don’t flatter yourself that there’s more. Marriage hasn’t been on the table for some time.”

      I forced myself to say, “Good.”

      That brought him up short. It hadn’t been my intention, whether he deserved it or not. And I still didn’t know, couldn’t possibly guess if he really deserved it.

      That’s the part that really sucked. Not knowing. And he’d fixed things so I would never know.

      “Oh, Lex, I didn’t mean it that way.” I crossed to his side, torn. An enemy I could fight. An ally I could love. But what could I do with him? “What I meant was, you deserve to be happy, and it clearly isn’t happening with me. I just wish—”

      But he shut me up by kissing me.

      I should probably have fought him off. Slapped his face, kneed him where it hurt, bit his searching tongue. I had my ways. That would teach him to be so damned proprietary.

      But I’d missed him, and tonight I needed that kiss far, far too badly to risk any of it.

      Lex….

      We fit, somehow. Always have. He was my first date, my first kiss, my first time, my first love. He was also my first heartbreak, and second, and third, with a truckload of regret thrown in… And yet his arms gathering me to him felt right on a deeper level than good sense could counter. Such incredible power. Such unfathomable depths.

      Such a really great body. The boy was ripped.

      When I dug my fingers into his thick, ginger-brown hair and chewed playfully at his lip, he turned to wedge me against the door, never breaking the kiss. His body felt hard and necessary against mine. Alive. Real. Lex. My soul knew the taste of him, the feel of him, the scent of his breath. Our heartbeats, pressed chest to breast, seemed to fall into almost instant unison. I opened my mouth to him, slid one knee up over his hip, arched into the brace of his arms, my blood singing.

      The telephone rang again, startling me back. “Crap.”

      Lex steadied himself with the heel of his hand, a solid thunk against the door, but otherwise regained quick control. “Don’t worry,” he said thickly, licking his lips and swallowing heavily. “I’m well aware this was just a momentary lapse.”

      That didn’t make the reality of it any easier to bear.

      “You don’t have to work for your family,” I pleaded. But I took a step toward the ringing phone as I said it. Talk about your divided loyalties! “No matter what they expect. The money can’t be that good….”

      He stared at me. Then, surprisingly, he laughed—if a little harshly—and ducked forward to kiss my cheek. “Someday you’ll realize just how painfully naive you are, Mag. I hope to God I’m there when it happens.”

      Oh? “So that you can come to my rescue?” I asked. “Or so that you can say you told me so?”

      His eyes crinkled, just a bit—and he let himself out. “Lock up,” he called over his shoulder.

      The phone screamed yet again as the door shut behind him, then rolled over to the machine. I snatched the handset up, interrupting my own recorded voice. “Yes!”

      “So sorry,” said Lil, her British accent adding to her sarcastic edge. “Is the need to save the world for womankind getting in the way of your date with Satan?”

      “Don’t call him that.” Maybe I should be beyond defending him. I’m not. “We don’t know anything for sure.”

      Lil’s voice gentled. “We know enough, Maggi.”

      And she was right. In the end, it no longer mattered what I felt for Lex Stuart or what he felt for me.

      I was still one of an ancient line of women charged with the protection of sacred, secret chalices. Chalices that could, if legend was to be believed, heal the world—male and female. Holy Grails, every one of them.

      And Lex came from a family rumored to be bent on destroying them.

      It’s my first week in kindergarten. I already hate Alex Stuart. He thinks he’s better than all the other kids.

      When he won’t let Freddy Morgan use the yellow paint, Freddy cries. Freddy’s a wimp, but it makes me mad anyway.

      “You’re suppose to share,” I tell Alex.

      He looks surprised. “Only losers share.”

      At five, I’m pretty simple. “Give Freddy your paint. He needs to make his sun yellow.”

      Alex says, “You can’t tell me what to do. You’re just a girl.”

      So I hit him, right across the face. After a moment of clear surprise, he hits me back. The class gasps—hasn’t he heard that boys aren’t supposed to hit girls?

      My cheek hurts, but I’m glad. I want to win fair. I shove him to the ground, and then we’re rolling across butcher paper and through fingerpaints, pummeling uselessly at each other—and laughing. It’s fun! We’re purple and green and very, very yellow. But we’re still hitting each other between grins.

      Then our teacher pulls us apart. Alex’s dad uses the incident as an excuse to send Alex to private school.

      I don’t see him again for seven years.

      Chapter 2

      “L isten,” Lil said. “This is bigger than your twisted love/hate thing with Lex Stuart. Aunt Bridge is in the hospital.”

      “What?” Our great-aunt Brigitte was a historical sociologist in Paris. Even more than our mothers and our late grandmother, Aunt Bridge had convinced Lil and me of the truth in the Grail Keeper legends. “Is it her heart?”

      “No, she was attacked in her office. Someone beat her pretty badly.”

      My

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