by Amy Gregory
He’d never been one to look for signs from the Goddess above or believed too wholeheartedly in Fate. Oh, he knew of Fate—everyone did—yet he tried never to tempt her into jacking with his life. After all, she had powers no one’s magic could outrank. But clouds and gloom, then sunny with chirping birds? He didn’t have those kinds of black-and-white moments back in Vermont. Clearly, he needed about thirty-two more ounces of caffeine, stat.
He stepped up over the curb and began walking along the sidewalk as he peered into the storefronts, trying to remember exactly how Bill had described Holiday Magic. Through the front window of one of the buildings on an otherwise bare wood wall, a glass doorknob twinkled, catching his attention.
“Ah, this must be the place.” Joshua pushed open the front door to an empty, but not vandalized, store. As he walked toward the glass knob, a discreet wood panel opened for him before he could even reach for it. Once he was inside with the door shut behind him, everything seemed to burst with color and happy conversation. Decorations for every holiday filled all the shelves and hanging brackets along the walls.
“Holy shit, you’re here. Man, it’s been forever,” Bill said.
Joshua neared him as his friend placed a plain brown shipping box on the counter. The stuffiness required of his needy upper-class clients vanished, and he relaxed for the first time since his last camping trip with Bill well over a year prior.
The last few months, he’d not stopped to notice the stress weighing on him as he’d worked his way toward one promotion after another. Even traveling wasn’t enjoyable anymore, yet he hadn’t realized what he was missing until he was able to let his guard down upon seeing his college buddy.
A petite young blonde with a pixie-cut bob and a kind smile turned around and greeted him. In all his life, he’d avoided the “L” word with every fiber of his being. Yet, the way she stared up at his friend, her husband, with complete adoration in her eyes could have damn near knocked the wind out of Joshua.
“Less, honey, come here. I have to introduce you—this is Joshua Englewoodie. Goddess, it’s about time, man. I can’t believe you finally made it.” Bill clasped his shoulder.
“Joshua, it’s so nice to meet you in person,” Lessy replied with a grin. “Billy has been driving me batty with stories.”
He cleared his head and put his hand up. “Oh Goddess, no. Please, I have to stop you and beg you not to believe one word this fool has to say about me. Lies, all of them, lies, I tell you. Dude, bro code? Doesn’t it mean anything anymore?” Joshua chuckled, thinking of all the tales he could appear really awful in.
“No, I promise, he spoke very highly of you,” Lessy replied.
Bill’s wife looked identical to the picture his friend carried in his wallet and had shown him years prior. Joshua knew he had been the first person Bill called after her parents imploded her family, nearly killing Bill in the process. How she could still have such a kind demeanor was beyond him. If he’d been in her shoes, Joshua knew he would have turned into a gruff, hateful hermit. She was everything his best friend bragged about, and he was happy for Bill, yet Joshua still remained steadfast in his determination not to run off and get hitched like his friend had. She glanced back up at Bill, and their mutual attraction was enough to knock Joshua off his axis again.
Joshua had no clue what it was between the two of them. He knew his parents loved each other, traveled together, joked, drank, ate out together. But these two, if he’d seen them before he’d walked into that damn diner, he’d have been gagging because they were so sweet on each other.
The waitress. Fuck a duck.
He had to get back out of town. This little Assjacket lovefest was not going to infect him and his glorious plan never to change his ways.
“You’re sweet to lie to my face, Lessy. I appreciate it. I know Bill better than that.” He winked at her. “He loves dishing out dirt on us. At least I know I’m nowhere close to being as self-absorbed as our bud Vic.”
Her cheeks flushed, revealing the truth.
“I knew it. Bill, you old dog, you have been spilling secrets.” Joshua shook his head. “Eh, Lessy, stick with me, I’ll fill you in on what you need to know about your hubby.”
“Billy is perfect.”
Joshua coughed and hacked at her statement and the starry look in her eyes. “What the fuck kind of spell did you cast on this poor sweet little witch of yours?” He teasingly punched Bill’s upper arm.
Bill raised his hands, palms out. “I did no such thing. You’ll see over the next few days. I am extremely perfect.”
Joshua rolled his eyes and pretended to gag again. There was no way they could find out anything about the gal at the diner. Joshua didn’t even know her name. Yet, thinking about her was seriously screwing with his lower half. He moved to stand on the other side of their store’s antique counter.
His mother wanted him to settle down like Bill had, but Bill and Lessy were so sickly sweet and goo-goo lovey-dovey about each other that Joshua became even more sure of his decision to remain a bachelor. There was no way in hell’s blue blazes that he wanted to become whipped like Bill. Despite the sincere smile on his friend’s face, Joshua knew his own destiny, and it was not to end up dopey like Bill.
There is a difference between dopey and horny.
Joshua just needed to transport home as soon as possible. Then his joke about biting her came flooding back to his mind, and his pants became even more uncomfortable.
Chapter 6
Jenny walked through Lessy’s front door holding a pan of freshly baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. “I hope I’m not bothering you. I feel like I keep showing up here this week with one problem or another.”
“Girl, ain’t no thang. Besides, I couldn’t bake like you even if I did have time to try. Bill wishes you’d come by more.” Lessy winked. “Just kidding—he doesn’t need any more sugar. Combined with all the coffee that man drinks, it’s a wonder he sleeps at all.” Lessy laughed at her own joke.
Jenny was antsy and had been all day. She remembered back to this morning and the handsome stranger’s not so subtle hint about biting her. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d held any man’s hand or interest.
Lessy snapped her fingers. “Well, you’re back. I’ve been talking for at least a full minute, and you were lost in space, honey. What is going on?”
“You know it’s not normal for us to have strangers at the diner. Not very often, anyway. Well, there was this one today, and he just got under my skin. The way he looked at me…and talked.” Jenny sighed. “He was different.”
“Good different? Possibly a cute kind of hope-you’ll-run-into-him-again different? Or freak-you-out, we-need-to-talk-to-Mac kind of different?” Lessy’s brow rose, and her eyes narrowed. Jenny didn’t miss the protectiveness she was displaying. She’d expected her neighbor to be intrigued and wanting to hear mushy details about a possible dreamy romance. “Was this stranger rude? Did he say something—anything offensive to you?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly. I think he may have tried to flirt with me.”
“You think? Well then, the fool isn’t very good at it, now is he?” Lessy rolled her eyes and started muttering under her breath.
“It was probably me. Maybe I just took what he said about biting me the wrong way.”
“He said what?” Jenny gazed at her friend’s face. Lessy never raised her voice. She was a kind, sweet, shower-people-with-praise type of person. “What did this guy look like? Was he all ‘Mr. GQ’ perfect, designer labels and all?”
She was shocked a second time by her friend. Jenny tilted her head, studying Lessy. Lessy couldn’t mind-crawl. It wasn’t in her wheelhouse as a witch. She was all white magic, a creator witch, and, by profession, an artist—that was it. “How did you know that?”
“Come with me.”
Lessy held out her hand. The second Jenny reached for it, she was pulled across the kitchen floor toward the back door and their patio. The closer they got,
the more she was able to hear Bill’s voice mingled with another’s. Lessy put her muscle into opening the sliding glass door, to the point it bounced back shut a few inches.
She pointed. “Is that him? Is that the guy?”
Jenny followed the direction Lessy’s pointed finger until she was face-to-face with the same Kelly-green eyes she’d seen this morning. The stranger’s hair was disheveled, and a gorgeous smile graced his face for a mere second. When he saw her, it and the lines by his eyes and his dimples vanished, and his mouth opened.
Bill jumped up to Lessy’s side. “What’s going on?”
“He, your good buddy there, the one who has been all Mr. Nice Guy today, he…he…well, he said something off-handed to Jenny here about biting her. And you know that is just not the way you talk to a witch. I don’t care how much money he has.”
Lessy’s arm pointed and flailed and pointed again as she spoke, but the more Jenny stood there, staring at the man she’d assumed was only at the diner for coffee on his way to Goddess knows where, the less she heard what Bill and Lessy were saying. Instead, the air around her seem to still, and her cheeks started to feel hot.
“I… I’m… I’ve gotta go.”
She zipped back through the house and out the front door, not even stopping to decipher what her friends were saying. Instead of going down the sidewalk, she cut across the unkempt grass between her home and Lessy and Bill’s and jogged up the three steps of her own front porch. Jenny slowed only enough to make sure she avoided the broken step. The minute she was inside, she flipped the dead bolt into place and sank against the front door, then slowly slid to the floor.
“Oh my Goddess. He’s still in town.”
A knock on the door was hard enough for her to feel against her back. Jenny stayed still, her knees tucked tight to her chest, and tried to remain silent.
“Jenny, it’s me, Lessy. Open up, please? I want to make sure you’re all right.”
She moved forward onto her hands and knees, but before she could stand upright, she heard the mixture of two extra voices. Bill’s and that of the stranger’s—at least he was to her.
Eyeing the wood floor of her living room, she had only a short distance to cross until she’d be safely in the hallway. The only thing between her and her room were three very squeaky wooden planks, warped from years of use. The space was too far for her to step over them all at once with her short legs, and if she moved to avoid them, they’d see her through the picture window of her living room.
“You have no choice but to answer or run,” Gonzo said, joining her in the hallway.
“How astute. For being my familiar, you never seem to be looking out for me very well. You could figure out how to distract them so I could make a break for it.”
“I could.” Gonzo licked his paw. “Or I could quit whispering so they’d hear me talking to you.”
“You wouldn’t.” Jenny eyed her particularly smartass and very fat cat. “I guess I could also cut off all your extra snacks, couldn’t I?”
Gonzo stopped mid-lick, his sandpaper tongue still touching his long gray fur. He glared at her before turning and waltzing his way over to the couch. With a thud, he jumped from the floor to the cushion and gave another jump up to the back, perching himself comfortably in the middle of the window.
“She’s not here. Old Gonzo waits in her window like that until she’s home,” Bill said. “Damn it, Joshua, you can’t talk like that to witches down here. West Virginia is different, Assjacket is an entirely different realm. You’re a warlock used to living among mortals. I get that fitting in up on the East Coast and in New York City is hard, almost a full-time job to stay disguised, but, well…just be yourself here. Witches here, they’re not like those high-heeled arm-candy pieces you date from New York. Jenny especially.”
“I didn’t mean anything bad by it. It sort of slipped out. I admit it. Seriously, I didn’t mean to offend her, or, Goddess forbid, scare her. Please, I need to apologize. Do you think your friend went to the diner, Lessy? We could check there.”
His voice was different from this morning. Clearly, he was normally very sure of himself, but right now, he sounded distressed. It allowed Jenny to take a deep breath, for some unknown reason. If she could allow herself to pretend he was a decent warlock, maybe she could just put this whole craptastic day behind her. As she continued to listen to their conversation, it got harder to make out. The three were definitely not on the other side of her front door any longer. A few more seconds later, Jenny could tell they’d made their way to the sidewalk. She jumped up and skidded into her bedroom.
Pushing her hanging clothes aside, she yanked out two older suitcases that had been buried long ago behind jeans, T-shirts and her favorite sweatshirts. She placed them on her bed and opened both, their metal latches popping open as she pushed each button to the side. They were far from new, heavier than suitcases were made now. Inside the heavy plastic was cloth still thick with the fragrance her grandmother wore. The two pieces were part of a much larger set of luggage she’d been left along with a plea to come visit her grandmother in her new home bordering a white sand beach.
It’d been a decade since Grandma Von Zuzle had moved to Waikiki, and getting the suitcases out of the closet was the closest Jenny had been able to force herself to get to visiting her.
“What am I thinking?” She put her palm to her forehead and clenched her eyes closed, trying her best to keep the tears at bay. Jenny passed the end of her bed where the open cases sat and crawled up near the head of her bed. Clutching her favorite squishy pillow tight to her chest, she tried to breathe as the panic seeped in. “How can everyone else transport but me?”
Chapter 7
“I know you didn’t mean to upset her, Joshua. Less will talk to her. Jenny is just, well, she’s shy would be understating it,” Bill said.
That didn’t make Joshua feel any better. He’d been an asshole, and without intending to be. If he’d said something so mild to any of the women he worked with, dealt with for business, or even taken out on a dinner date, they would have run their perfectly manicured nails across his tailored dress shirt and flipped his words back on him, wanting exactly that, his bite and his money.
“I have to explain myself to her.” Joshua ran his hands through his hair as he sat across from Bill and Lessy in a booth tucked into the corner of the diner. “I looked at her, and something clicked instantly. Bill, you know me like a brother. You know I wouldn’t say that unless… I mean… It was in every fiber of my being.”
“Something clicked? Are you saying my self-proclaimed bachelor-forever bud just might have found the one?” Bill asked. “In one glance? One look? I’m starting to side with Jenny on this, and you truly are batshit, a honey badger gang member, looney-bin-headed cray cray, and she’s damn right to be hiding. Love at first sight. Boy oh boy.”
Bill might have had a slight sense of teasing in his words, and he’d failed to hide the hint of a snicker, but Joshua could tell his closest friend didn’t quite believe him. Lo… The “L” word. He couldn’t even form the word in his brain, yet it’d been something close to it, and at first sight.
“Fuck a duck.”
“What did you just say?” Lessy asked.
Though she was young and her witchy goodness kept her face flawless beyond her years, the deep indentions between her brows were alarming.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked.
“He’s always said…damn. I didn’t even think.” Bill started to chuckle. “Jenny has dropped that saying here and there since I’ve met her. Joshua, here, I’ve heard him say it for years.”
Lessy eased back in the booth, her arms crossed over her chest, the lines between her brow gone. She studied him so intently, the back of Joshua’s neck started to bead with sweat. She picked her cell phone up off the table.
“Call Vivian,” she said into the device.
“Why are you calling my mom?” Bill asked. At the same time her finger went up, pausi
ng him, Bill started to grin. “Oh, you are a genius. Have I told you how much I love you lately?”
Joshua could swear he felt his jaw hit the table. “Dude, no.” He covered his ears, though he knew it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good. “No. Please, Bill. Do not let your mom into my head. That is so way past the bro code, you could have your member card revoked and blasted into bits. It should be illegal. I call bullshit and a foul on the play.”
“Y’all really have member ID cards?” Lessy asked.
“He’s being dramatic because you have his balls in a vise grip. Go on, my dear. Do your thing.” Bill winked at his wife.
“Oh. Ha-ha.” She rolled her eyes. “I was soooo going to call you geek asses. Don’t worry, Joshua. Vivian won’t be walking around in only your head.” Lessy grinned.
Joshua sat very still while listening to Bill’s wife talk about him as if he weren’t right across the table from her. Everything in his bones told him to transport back home. Just leave, go back to the world and women he was used to. The money, the fake laughs, the pretentious snobs, the couture clothing, cars, homes—all of it. He knew how to deal with being used for a fancy meal in hopes of more. Joshua knew the women he’d dated only wanted a huge rock on their hand and his Centurion American Express card. But he had proceeded through life with his eyes wide open. He knew exactly when to cut bait and escape with no strings attached. His other golden rule? No one traveled with him on business.
Lessy put her phone facedown on the table, blocking him from seeing incoming information, Joshua assumed. Then she proceeded to edge closer, rested her elbows on the checkered tablecloth, and started tapping her steepled fingertips together, almost villainous-like. She was definitely up to something, and Joshua didn’t like being at a disadvantage.