“I’m afraid we’ve worn out our welcome.” Liam stepped in, the shadow of a smile on his lips as he took my father’s elbow to guide him to the door. “Not to worry, Angus. There’s still time.”
My mind raced again as that now-familiar disconcerting feeling settled into my bones. Time for what?
Jack ushered my dad and his apprentice out the same way they’d come in then spun on his heels, his face an unreadable mask. “Well, that was enlightening.”
“By enlightening, you really mean horrible and embarrassing, right?” I plastered a fake smile on my lips, but under my calm façade, a wave of panic threatened to take over.
Jack shook his head and turned to walk away. “Something like that.”
“Wait. Jack, please.” I held my breath and waited for him to turn around, but he didn’t. He kept walking until I heard the hollow click of the bedroom door closing.
Chapter 4
Morning dawned, as cold and lonely as the night before. After tossing and turning restlessly on his own side of the bed, Jack slipped out before I woke. No kiss goodbye—not even a note to let me know he still cared. Hardly our first disagreement, but unquestionably our worst.
And what’s a girl to do when her fiancé gives her the cold shoulder? Reach out to her best friend, that’s what. But as I pulled into the school parking lot—almost thirty minutes late for class—the twenty-odd text messages I’d sent Chloe were, as of yet, unanswered.
Damned time difference.
With my hair flying behind me like a cape, I darted down the hall to my classroom and froze at the sound of brisk footsteps behind me.
“Late again, Miss McKie?” Dr. Alistair Clark, the new principal—and my new boss—whined in his upper-crust British accent. I suspected he faked it. He was probably from Hoboken.
I sucked in a breath and spun around to face him. “Al—uh, Dr. Clark. Hi. I know I’m a little late.”
He tapped the dial of his gold-tone watch in time with my pounding heart.
“Okay, a lot late. But I had—”
His pinched nose wrinkled above a seemingly drawn-on mustache, forming what I liked to call his “stinky cheese” face. “Let me guess. Car troubles?”
My mouth, already open and prepared to formulate my latest excuse, snapped shut. For all of a nanosecond, I debated transforming him into a weasel so his appearance would better match his disposition, but I dashed the thought right out of my mind. Weasels were far too good for him. Instead, I conjured up a story on the fly, punctuating my lie with what I hoped was a convincing grimace. “Actually, no. Female issues.”
“Ah, I see.” As I’d anticipated, the mere suggestion of anything PMS–related had him backing up several steps as if I had the black plague. “Well, I do hope you feel—that is to say—I hope you’re quite well.”
Jackpot.
“I’m sure I’ll survive. But thank you for your concern. I should really go before the, uh”—I hooked my thumb down the hall—“natives get restless.”
“Yes. You do that.” He spun on his fancy Italian loafers and power-walked in the opposite direction as if he couldn’t get away fast enough.
Sort of like Jack this morning.
I ran the rest of the way to my classroom, where I found Sandy, one of the part-time aides, minding the store in my absence. I panted out a “thank you” and flashed her a grateful smile.
“No problem, Ivie.” She winked, collecting her things from my desk. “I’m used to it.”
After getting over her thinly veiled insult, I passed out some busywork for the miniature debutants and future CEOs and fell into my chair to check my text messages. Nothing from Chloe or Jack, but I did have several perplexing messages from a number I didn’t recognize.
Unknown: Thoughts of you drive the melancholy from my day.
Unknown: Our time together was all too brief but undoubtedly memorable.
Unknown: My deepest apologies if I’m to blame for any difficulties you may be experiencing.
Liam.
I conjured his image, and a delicious ripple raced through me. I needed to unearth the reasons this virtual stranger had me so unhinged and why I felt so drawn to him. Try as I might, I couldn’t shake him from my thoughts.
“Miss Key?” Robby Patterson, the adorable towheaded troublemaker in the front row, butchered my name. As usual.
“Yes, Robby?” I replied without looking up from my phone.
“A stranger.”
My head snapped up to see Robby pointing at an all-too-familiar dark-haired figure in the doorway. “Liam! What are you doing here?” I jumped up, tipping my chair over in the process, and bolted to where he stood, leaning against the frame like a damn Calvin Klein model.
A crooked smile perched on his all-too-kissable lips. “I came to apologize for yesterday.” His lilting brogue thrilled me to my core.
Tamping down my uninvited reaction, I cleared my throat, wiping the traitorous smile from my lips to scowl at him. “I’m at work. I really can’t have visitors.”
“Oh, of course. Sorry.” He lowered his eyes, a faint blush stealing over his cheeks as he took in my appearance. “I thought it better to come here rather than to your home.”
“Well, yes. Jack wouldn’t—let’s just say you’re correct. But nevertheless…” I glanced behind me at my class. We had twenty pairs of eyes glued to us in rapt fascination. “I’m still at work.”
Liam reached out to stroke the blue silk of my sleeve, leaving me mesmerized. “Perhaps I could wait for you—after.”
“Wait for me?” I squeaked.
“I would very much like to take you”—his sapphire eyes met mine, and his lips curled up at the corners—“to dinner.”
My heart broke into a sprint, and I clenched my thighs together. “I-I can’t. I have a fiancé, you know. I love Jack.” As much as I wanted to scream the words, I kept my volume low enough to hear the whispers and giggles from my class.
Liam frowned and gave me a curt nod. “So you say.”
“I do—say, that is. It’s true.” A rush of heat crept up my neck. Why did he have to put me so completely on edge every single time I saw him? He might as well have been a teenage vampire. “I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice guy, but I’m engaged. To be married.”
A crooked smile reappeared on his handsome face, and he inched close enough for me to smell the pheromones he was giving off. “Ivie,” he purred, trailing a finger from my wrist to my shoulder. He slid his hand into the hair at the base of my neck, holding my head in place as he skimmed the calloused pad of his thumb across my hot cheek. “Your skin is so lovely when you blush.”
The words formed on my lips before I could stop them. “I get off at three-thirty.”
“Chloe, I really need your advice. I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into. I love Jack. I do. But for reasons I can’t even begin to understand, I agreed to go to dinner with my father’s apprentice. There’s something about him. I can’t explain it. And I can’t seem to resist it, either. And it isn’t helping that Jack hasn’t returned my—”
An electronic beep sounded in my ear as Chloe’s voicemail cut me off.
“Damn it!” I threw my phone into my purse and sank into the faux black leather seat.
My anxiety level had reached DEFCON 1: meltdown imminent.
When I’d skipped out on the planning meeting, leaving the building the minute the last of the parents had reclaimed their young, I’d intended to go straight home. Instead, I ended up in the front seat of my Beetle with the motor running for nearly half an hour, dialing my way through my cell phone contacts. Every call I’d made had gone straight to voicemail. Jack, my mother, Chloe, all too busy—or unwilling—to take my call.
A quick glance at the clock set my heart on a collision course with my throat.
Liam was due to arrive in less than ten minutes. I had a sudden urge for a cigarette, and I didn’t even smoke.
Why am I still here? “Because I’m an idiot,” I said out loud. “And apparently, I’ve also lost my mind since I’m now talking to myself.” You need to leave. You can’t be trusted with the Scottish hottie. Even my subconscious knew a bad idea when it heard one. With one last look around the parking lot, I threw the car into reverse and backed out. The vibrating phone on the seat beside me startled me. I snatched it up so fast I swerved into the on-coming lane for a moment. “Hello?”
“Ivie? This is your mother,” she said, as if I wouldn’t recognize her voice.
“Hi, Mom.” Relief coursed through me. “I’m so glad you got my messages.”
“What messages? I didn’t get any messages. I’m calling about your father.”
“Oh.” Relief became irritation, and I gunned the engine. “I’m not speaking to Dad right now. He’s trying to sabotage my relationship. Did he tell you what he did?”
“Yes.” She exhaled into the phone. “But that’s not why I’m calling. I need you to come over. It’s urgent.”
My hand jerked on the steering wheel. My parents’ house was the last place I needed to be. “No way! Jack’s already pissed off about yesterday.”
For the first time since I had no idea when, my mother raised her voice. “Ivie Marie McKie! Your family needs you.”
“Mom, my father got me arrested.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Well, if you don’t get over here in a hurry, you may be bailing your mother out of jail.”
“What?!” I drifted into the opposite lane again, making a quick course correction to right myself, but not before earning an impolite hand gesture from somebody’s grandmother. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The insurance investigators showed up. They’re asking about your father’s return from the dead. They have a file, Ivie. A file!”
“Tell them to talk to Dad.”
“He—I have no idea where he is.”
“Fine.” Apparently, resistance was futile. “I’m on my way.”
The instant my mother hung up, I dialed Jack’s number. Voicemail… again. “Jack, I don’t know if you’re ignoring me or if you just haven’t gotten my messages”—I took a deep breath then let it out—“but there’s an emergency at my mom’s house. I’m on my way over there. Jack, I’m—” I contemplated apologizing again but changed my mind. His jealousy had gotten ridiculous. He had no reason to distrust me. It’s not as if he could read my mind. “Just, please call me.”
I flung the phone into the passenger seat, ignoring the low-battery warning since nobody seemed to want to talk to me anyway, and made the first U-turn to head toward my parents’ house.
A shiny black Chevy Suburban with dark-tinted windows sat in my mother’s driveway, taking up both spaces and leaving me to park in the street. With a look that could terrify woodland creatures the world over, I scowled at the monstrosity and took the steps two at a time to let myself in the front door without knocking.
Two black-suited men made a synchronized turn in my direction and gave me the once-over, lingering on my cleavage. Insurance adjusters, my ass.
I stepped into the living room, where my mother held a plate of cookies out to the men. She baked? “Mom?”
Mom’s head shot up at the sound of my voice. “Oh, thank goodness.” Her shoulders sagged with obvious relief. “I’m so glad you made it.”
“What’s going on? I thought you said the insurance guys were here?”
Suit number one, a tall middle-aged man, who’d clearly avoided the sun for longer than even I had, took a half step toward me. He was a dead ringer for Agent Smith in the Matrix movies, right down to the sandy hair—parted to the side and slicked back away from his face—and the frosty demeanor. “We’re with the FBI, ma’am. White-collar crime division.” He enunciated each word in a smooth baritone.
Holy crap! He even sounds like Agent Smith.
“The FBI?” I shifted my eyes between the agents and my mother.
Mom stepped around Smith and his younger partner, who I’d dubbed Wesson in my head. “It’s really a funny story.” She chuckled, but I recognized the tremble in her voice. “Did you know the FBI investigates insurance fraud?”
“Insurance fraud?” It had never occurred to me that with Dad’s sudden return from the dead, the insurance company would assume the worst.
“It would appear the FBI suspects we may have faked his death for the money.” Mom cringed, and I could almost hear her heart fluttering.
“So? You just give back the money. It can’t be that much.”
Smith and Wesson snickered, and my mother flushed a deep red.
“It’s not that easy, dear. I’ve spent some of it.”
“It’s okay. I can lend you some. How much did you spend? A few hundred? A thousand?”
“Five hundred.”
“No problem.” I reached into my purse and fumbled for my rarely used checkbook. “I’ve got at least twice that in my checking account.”
“Thousand.” Mom cleared her throat. “Five hundred thousand.”
My stomach plunged into my shoes. “What?”
She nodded, staring at the worn, avocado-green carpet. “Give or take a few thousand.”
“What could you have possibly spent that much money on? The house and the car together aren’t worth that much. And for Chrissakes, if you had that much money, why are you still driving the piece-of-crap Wagoneer?”
She looked up with a thoughtful expression. “Well, I didn’t want to spend money needlessly.”
“Of course.” Because dropping five hundred grand with nothing to show for it isn’t needless.
Agent Smith coughed into his fist.
Mom spun around as if she’d forgotten the two strangers standing in her living room. “Oh, my goodness, Agent Hunter. How rude of me.” She turned back to me. “Dear, this is Agent Hunter and Agent Corrigan. Gentlemen, this is my daughter, Ivie McKie.”
“Yes…” Agent Smith—err, Hunter, smirked. “We know all about Miss McKie. From her file.”
“I have a file?” My pulse quickened, and the surface of my skin tingled.
“A quite-extensive file, actually.” The strawberry blond, Agent Corrigan, spoke for the first time. His fresh-faced youthfulness belonged in a boy band, not the FBI. “I thoroughly enjoyed the interesting comments left by your former neighbor.”
His mention of crazy old Mrs. Camp made me cringe. Hard to believe it was only six months ago that she’d made calls to the police accusing me of being a devil worshipper—or worse. She lived next door to my former fiancé: the chiropractor turned woodland creature. The entire situation with Matt had first helped me realize I was a witch.
Sorceress. I corrected myself then choked out a laugh. “Mrs. Camp is half senile.”
“It’s the other half we’re interested in.” Agent Smith turned to me with a raised eyebrow. “The police wrote her off as confused, but her recollection of the events intrigues me. You were, in fact, a fugitive from justice for nearly two weeks.”
“Six days, and I didn’t actually do anything. It was all a huge misunderstanding.”
“Ninety percent of all convicted felons say the same thing,” Agent Corrigan piped up, effectively changing my mind about liking him better.
“Well, I wasn’t convicted or even arrested, for that matter. Matt explained the entire situation to the police, and the charges were dropped.”
“What about the most recent charges?” Agent Smith sifted through several bright-colored folders before fishing out a printed document from a green one. “Trespassing, destruction of private property, and illegal use of pyrotechnics.”
I blinked like a deer in head
lights. No matter how often I heard the charges recited, they never failed to shock me.
He held up the page. “Was this just a simple misunderstanding?”
“Yes?” I whispered. “I-I ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“So it would appear.” Agent Smith tucked the paper back into the folder.
I inched backward and gulped. “Am I in trouble here?”
“You tell me? Are you?” He took a step in my direction like a lion stalking a gazelle.
A chill cut through me. “Maybe I should speak with an attorney before I answer that.”
Before either of the agents could respond, the door burst open, and Liam strode into the room like a white knight on a horse. “What’s going on?” His icy blue eyes locked on mine.
“I-I don’t know. I think I’m being investigated by the FBI.”
A twinkle of light flashed in Liam’s eyes, and he reached out to clasp my hand. A surge of energy coursed up my arm and snaked its way through my core.
“Nonsense.” Liam winked at me before turning his attention to Smith and Wesson. “Surely you can’t think Ivie is a danger to society.”
Agent Smith held his ground. “Miss McKie definitely has some explaining to do.”
The tiny hairs on my arms stood on end, and the familiar sugary metallic taste settled on the tip of my tongue. I had no idea if I—or maybe Liam—had put the words into my head, but a spell had formed. My fingertips tingled with faint electric shocks, and I raised my hand toward Smith, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible while the barely visible blue flash arced between the two FBI agents and me.
Liam leaned in, his lips brushing my ear. “Ask them again,” he whispered.
I pulled myself up to my full height before addressing the men in black. “Am I under investigation?”
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