Elite and made their National Team. From that moment on, I was an Olympian in training. But that summer, my mom and dad sat me down and told me they’d adopted me. That the aunt and uncle I’d been told had died in a car accident when I was a baby were actually my birth parents. I had questions. A lot of questions. But they didn’t have a lot of answers.
“At the time, they said it was because nothing had changed. I was their kid.” She glared out at the passing scenery. “Now I know they couldn’t give me answers without telling me the truth. Anyway, my whole life I’d felt different, but they tell you that everyone feels that way, right? I just focused on gymnastics to distract me from …” She trailed off, feeling weird about telling this stranger something she hadn’t told anyone.
“To distract you from?” When she didn’t reply, it was Fionn’s turn to sigh. “Who am I going to tell, Rose? I’m over two thousand years old and don’t exactly maintain friendships that involve gossiping on our coffee breaks.”
Rose chuckled. “A bit of a loner, huh?”
“Pot, meet kettle.”
“True. Maybe it’s what we are. Because we’re not supposed to be here in this world.”
He grunted.
“If I finish my sentence, will you tell me how it’s possible a man who was once human is now fae?”
Fionn seemed to hesitate but then nodded.
Satisfied, Rose continued, “I focused on gymnastics to distract me from the feeling I’d had my whole life. The feeling that some piece of me was missing. When I discovered I was adopted, I thought that was the reason. Confused, thrown off course, I quit gymnastics. But the feeling never went away. Not until last night.”
Fionn frowned. “When the spell broke?”
“Exactly.”
They were quiet a moment as they drove. Rose studied him surreptitiously but somehow knew even as she did it, he was aware of her study.
His head brushed the roof of the car. He’d pushed the driver’s seat back as far as it could go, and he’d dumped his coat in the back seat along with his garment bag. White shirtsleeves had been rolled up to his elbows revealing thick, muscular forearms with veins and a dusting of fair hair across them.
His waistcoat was buttoned down a strong, flat stomach, and his long, big-knuckled fingers flexed around the steering wheel now and then. He wore a chunky, Celtic-looking silver ring on the middle finger of his left hand.
Rose felt an unwelcome flip of attraction low in her belly, and not for the first time.
Every second she stared at him, she found something new to like.
Like the hard, angular edge of his jawline beneath his stubble and the contrasting softness of his lower lip. He had an exaggerated curve in the middle of his bottom lip that made a woman want to trace it with her tongue.
Fuck.
Rose looked away and immediately felt him studying her in return.
She could not develop an attraction to her would-be mentor.
“Was that your only question?”
She turned back to him, saw the coolness in his startlingly beautiful eyes before he looked back at the road, and sighed at her own nonsense.
It wasn’t arrogance when Rose said she was used to attention from guys. She’d never considered herself particularly stunning, but she’d always been comfortable with her body and with sex, and she’d often wondered if that was why she received so much attention. Now she wondered if it was her fae-ness giving off a “vibe.”
Anyway, Rose knew when a guy was into her.
Fionn Mór … was so not into her.
It was probably a good thing. Getting involved with a man who was over two thousand years old sounded complicated.
To say the least.
She bit back hysterical laughter at the thought and concentrated on finding out more about her mentor. “I want to know your story. If I’m to trust you, I need to know the background so I can work out why you’re helping me.”
He smirked. “You don’t think I’m helping you out of the goodness of my heart?”
She decided if she wanted honesty, she needed to give it in return. “No, I don’t. Your motives are as yet unclear.”
Fionn flicked her a quick look. “You’re astute, Rose.”
“Well …?”
His big hands flexed around the steering wheel. “How to condense such a tale into the length of a car ride …”
“Just start at the beginning.”
“At the beginning … Well, in the beginning I was just a warrior, raised in the time of clan warfare and