This Magic Moment (Just a Little Magic Series)

by Cross, Daryn

  He laughed like the fool he was. “I didn’t know him before. You see, I just found out that…”

  “Don’t hand me that,” she said, slicing through his words with the precision of a Samurai.

  He ground his back teeth. “Look, stop jumping to conclusions. You do a lot of that, and you need to stop. Whatever you think you know may not be right.”

  “Do you deny you came to see Xavier just two weeks ago?”

  He sucked in his breath and blew it out like a blowfish. “No, I did, but I did it because I …”

  “That’s it, all I need to know.” She elbowed her way around him and practically ran down the hallway.

  “Wait, Crandall, you don’t understand.”

  “Don’t come near me again,” she screamed as she continued toward the elevator. “I’m through listening to all of your sweet lies.”

  ****

  Crandall dashed out of the building and got ready to enter a taxi the concierge had supplied. She was way too shaken to even consider driving.

  “Miss.” A man in an ill-fitting suit came running in her direction. “I need to give you a note. I was supposed to deliver it close to an hour ago. You need to have it.”

  She narrowed her eyes to slits and sneered at him. “Can it. I’ve listened to one too many men today.”

  “But …”

  She closed the door of the cab. “Step on it driver, Civic Center.”

  As she drove away at the speed of light, wondering if she’d ever get where she was going alive, Crandall realized she didn’t care anymore. In the few short hours that had transpired since she got back to the Regency, she’d discovered her best friend and her lover had betrayed her and the man who’d been the bane of existence was the only one who’d apparently told her the truth. At least she thought it could be after all that recently transpired. The lies were easier to accept than the truth. She sobbed. How could she ever accept anything Washington said?

  Silent tears streamed down her cheeks. As she wiped at them, Crandall realized they wouldn’t stop unless she concentrated on something, anything, but the obvious, how badly her heart and her confidence had been broken. Now she knew what it felt like for a person to lose everything he had, just like in a catastrophic event or a man-made one like an oil spill or a Wall Street crash. But, for her, it had been a matter of a few measly hours, no indications and no weather warnings. Life wasn’t fair and hers wasn’t comfortable or able to be tolerated any longer. It was time for a drastic change.

  When Crandall stepped out of the taxi and paid the driver, she’d emerged as a different woman. Perhaps it was the one she’d always been before this whole thing started. One who was ready to grind people beneath her heels, and, at any cost, bury Washington in his own sick grave, then drive Zack Graham out of her life. Whatever the case—not that she really cared—it was time to sell pretzels as she never had before.

  ****

  Zack stood at his station with his snack cakes and felt lower than the ameba he first learned about in high school science class. It didn’t help that Crandall continually shot him piercing arrows of anger and disappointment between every sugary-sweet contact with a consumer. Okay so she knew he had contacted Washington somehow, and he was willing to bet it was because the jerk somehow got to her before he did, though he couldn’t understand why she’d listen to him, even open a door to hear what the guy had to say. It hurt though, knowing he really hadn’t had a clue of any of this until Mike told him.

  Why had his father kept the wholesale deal from him, saying it was taken care of after Zack first joined the company, looked at the books, and insisting it was necessary? But as he thought back on it, he knew the reason. His dad knew Zack would blow a fuse if he had known the company was sold to a man who didn’t have the decency to keep it together, sell the plant in the good ole US of A and send the rest to a foreign country. His father bled red, white and blue and that wasn’t very patriotic.

  Now, here he was with egg on his face, and there wasn’t anything comfortable about that either, especially when the only woman who’d ever really lit his fire, sexually and emotionally, now hated his guts. The thing that really torqued him was that so far Washington had come out clean, and he was willing to bet the little shit hadn’t finished with his bag of tricks yet.

  “Are these nonfat?” a woman asked. Not more than five-feet tall, she was almost that wide and still stood there with a chubby smile on her face and lust in her eyes. For the snack cake, not him.

  “I’m sorry, they aren’t.” He winked. “But you can eat one. If no one sees you, it doesn’t have any calories, you know.”

  She giggled then let out a high-pitched snort before grabbing two and putting one in a napkin and stuffing it in her tote bag. “You are just too cute for words. Nothing like Crandall said you were.” As she walked away stuffing the whole snack cake in her mouth, Zack’s eyes darted over to Crandall. She stood there with a devilish grin on her face, her arms crossed as if to dare him to say anything or approach her. Okay, so it would be.

  “Sorry you got caught in the crossfire.” He looked over to see a slim woman in up-to-date chic clothing, black hair bobbed around her face. “I’m Gretta Fishman. Afraid I told Crandall accidentally that Mike knew I was her ad manager.”

  He nodded. “Nice to meet you, and I would say my days are pretty chilly at the moment. In case you didn’t know, she was bombarded earlier by what appears to have been a Washington sneak torpedo, informing her I knew he bought my company, the tobacco plant that’s now in France. I swear I didn’t know until Mike found out.”

  “Mike already discovered…” She chuckled. “He’s better at this bribery thing than I thought. But how could you not know?”

  He shrugged. “Dad didn’t tell me. I just know the name of the front man who bought it, and his last name was Tolbert, not Washington.”

  “Interesting.” Gretta tapped her chin. “Anybody check out this Tolbert guy?”

  Zack blinked. “No, but that’s a great idea.”

  She beamed. “I sometimes have them. Blabbing about Mike wasn’t one of them.”

  “You can’t beat yourself up over a slip. We all do them. I just don’t know how either one of us is going to convince her we care about what happens to her.”

  As the crowd began to mumble, Zack turned and saw a woman in a lab jacket and white tennis shoes roll another woman through the crowd in a wheelchair. The disabled woman had a strange, almost unfocused smile on her face. Her hair was perfectly done but there were marks on the front of her dress, like spilled food, and she was waving her hands back and forth in the air. “It’s the end of Vietnam,” she kept screaming. “Bring the troops home.”

  The woman propelling the wheelchair stopped it just in front of Crandall’s table and Xavier Washington suddenly strode up from the back of the room. He walked behind the table where Crandall stood and smiled out over the crowd. “Hello everyone. You know me, of course. Crandall, my childhood sweetheart returned, and her mother is here as a surprise to let Crandall know that she still wants us to succeed. Right Mrs. Drake?”

  At the woman’s blank stare, he laughed. “Help her here, Tammy,” he said to the aide.

  The aide bent down and whispered close to Mrs. Drake’s ear. The woman grinned. “A wedding. We’ll have a wedding. Where’s my dress?”

  Crandall jerked away from Washington and rounded the table. “Mother, come on, let’s get you out of here.”

  Zack was there faster than a speeding bullet. He bent down next to the woman and looked directly into her eyes. Rubbing her hand lightly, he smiled. “This is all about love ma’am. All about you and Crandall and love.”

  She grinned, her eyes suddenly focused. “You love my daughter? Young man, you two are still teenagers. You can come over, but just in the sitting room. Understood?” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I do.”

  “Get her out of here now,” Crandall said, her voice almost a growl.

  The aide’s smile vanis
hed as she nodded and slowly rolled the chair around toward the outside while Mrs. Drake jerked in her chair. “Where are we? What?”

  Seconds later, Crandall ran towards the doors as photos continued to pop off.

  As she reached the doors, she turned, taking one look at him, Gretta standing next to him, and started to cry, running out of the room.

  Gretta tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me and let me see if I can help her regain her dignity. As you can see, you and I aren’t the only ones who have secrets.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Didn’t you try and go get her, do anything?” Mike asked.

  “It didn’t seem like the time.” Zack threw his briefcase down on his desk. “Gretta went to save the day and I figured one make-up at a time was enough. Besides, she was in shreds. The shit pulled out a card she’s tried to keep hidden in the deck. She told me her mother was dead. I figure that’s what she’s been telling for years to anyone who doesn’t know better.”

  “Well, technically she’s right. To her, her mother is dead. If Mrs. Drake can’t remember and can’t communicate with Crandall ninety-eight percent of the time, that would be virtually no mother, right?”

  “I suppose.” Zack fell into his chair. “It just reminds me of how I felt right after Meredyth had been saved from the burning car. She didn’t talk for months afterwards. Even now, two years later, she has issues. I was devastated, first to find out I had a daughter, and then to see what utter terror and inexplicable loss can do to even a small girl. For me, the loss wasn’t really there, because her mother was not really there in my heart anymore. But the terror was something I could feel like it was a breathing being.”

  Zack whistled softly between his teeth. “I mourned Susan’s accident like any other human being I knew well. No more. We weren’t together that long, really. But with a little girl, I didn’t know what to do. It was different. She didn’t know who I was, but my feeling was, nonetheless, so totally hopeless. Here I was staring into eyes that looked like mine, from my genes, yet I couldn’t wipe out what she had blocking us from each other. I still don’t, actually, although now I can at least talk with her. The fear must have been horrendous, and the mind simply shut down, probably to save her from the horror. But anything keeping your mind from working right is horror, isn’t it? For Crandall, it has to be the same. I just wish I could wrap my arms around her.”

  Mike placed a hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you’re the same person who was here on Christmas Eve?”

  Zack shook his head. “No, I don’t think I am. Not at all.”

  ****

  Tom walked across the rocky crags of the jetty, seeing Magic perched at the far side, tugging on his fishing rod. The man appeared to be having the time of his life. Why not? Most people were down here. What wasn’t to love about low eighty-degree temperatures, sun and surf? He had to admit Fort Pierce was a nice place to visit in the early spring. Mid-April appeared perfect.

  As he trudged across the jetty, Tom didn’t feel as perky. Just like Magic had predicted, he’d failed his first mission, and as of yet, he knew no way to make it better.

  When Tom got within feet of him, Magic pulled in the gigantic flounder and laughed gleefully. “Well Felix, I told you I’d catch you one day, old boy.” He waved his finger at the fish. “Good thing it’s my buddy.”

  Tom quickly stared around to see if anyone was listening. If so, the men in white coats wouldn’t be that far away. “Uh, Magic,” Tom said, “I think you ought to pipe down.”

  “Hello, son,” Magic said, glancing up with a smile. “Everything under control.” He turned back around and looked at the thrashing catch. “Don’t wiggle, Felix. Let me get the hook out. You won’t even know it’s there afterwards.” Removing the barb from the fish’s lip, Magic grinned directly into the fish’s eyes. He stared downward. “You tell Vicki I said you needed to stay closer to home. This is a mite far on the migration.” He bent, returning the fish to the water. As the fish dove under, Magic turned and wiped his hands on a towel. “Tom, let’s sit a spell and talk. Pop your rump down on a rock, or my cooler if you’d rather. Feel free to get a soft drink out of it first, and yes it does have Diet Dr. Pepper.”

  Tom grinned. “Yep, Magic knows everything.”

  Magic snickered. “Not this time. Just got a mixture of drinks. Don’t always think ahead.” He fell down on a rock and spread his legs out straight in front of him.

  Tom wasn’t sure he could even still do that. Had to give the guy one thing, old coot was limber. But his fashion taste left a lot to be desired today, as always. This time, Magic was dressed in plaid Bermuda shorts with a black net shirt and as always, his classic lace up boots. To set it all off, he wore a cuffed back fisherman’s hat with a huge gold fishing hook holding the front back.

  “Tell me where you went wrong in California, Tom.”

  His gut suddenly lurched as Tom stared up into Magic bright blue twinkling eyes. He knew only the truth would work. “The car broke down. I guess my mistakes were not leaving on an earlier flight to give me extra time and not having the forethought to plug in my cell the night before. Damn, I was only a few minutes late, but it must have been the minutes needed for Washington to get to her and for Crandall to bolt for the civic center showroom. I had the note in my hand and tried my darndest to give it to her.”

  Magic’s facial expression didn’t change, and he remained silent.

  “Okay, I really bungled it.” Tom hung his head.

  “It’s all right.”

  Tom glanced back up. “It is? But, you said I could mess up and ruin everything for their lives.”

  “Nope, I said you could make the wrong one and it could cost these two a lifetime of bliss.” Magic leaned back on his elbows.

  “But I did make a mistake.”

  Chuckling, Magic scooted sideways to look at him. “I said the wrong one. That one was the right one, son.”

  Tom scratched behind his ear. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “Do you have the note with you?”

  Tom nodded as he fished it out of his pocket and handed it to his boss.

  “No, I don’t want it,” Magic said. “You need it. Besides, I wrote it. Have you read it, by the way?”

  Tom smirked. “Of course not. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

  “You have my permission to read it.”

  Tom pulled it out of the envelope. The note read, From an interested party: If you want to know the truth, you need to check out a man named Greg Tolbert… He stopped midway and glanced up at Magic. “I still don’t understand.”

  Magic clapped his hands. “Crandall wasn’t supposed to get that note in Sierra Landing. She was supposed to get it after she left Sierra Landing.”

  “But I’m supposed to give her a new note in San Francisco, and I’ll be dressed in disguise. That’s the next intervention. The reason I’m here today is to get the new note.” Tom frowned. The old geezer was off his rocker, just as he’d always thought.

  Magic shook his finger. “No, it’s only new in your eyes. The reason you’re here today is to learn something fundamental.”

  Tom got up and opened the cooler, grabbing a can of Diet Dr. Pepper and sitting back down after he closed it. Popping the top, he looked back at his curious, skinny boss and wondered how he could have ever thought he was Santa. How could anyone gain enough weight to look like the icon if they were only a hundred forty pounds at best in April? “Okay, I’ll bite. What was I supposed to learn?”

  “Glad you asked.” Magic grinned. “Several things. First, there’s a time for everything but only when it’s the right time. Second, love doesn’t run on a schedule and it will always meet adversity before you discover how real and valuable it is, and third, only by mistakes do you learn what’s important.”

  Nodding, Tom laughed. “Okay. If it’s a riddle I still don’t get it.”

  “Sock it away,” Magic said. “You’ll need it again. What it means for you right no
w is that you had to learn from a mistake. If I had told you what I just did and you didn’t go through the error, then you wouldn’t know it’s that important.”

  “You mean that whole thing was for me?” he asked.

  Magic shook his head. “No, pay attention. It was for them, too. Both of the lovers made mistakes. Now that they’ve botched things up, they’ll begin to realize how important what they had really is. Just think, Tom, you can save the day by delivering the note.”

  “But who is Tolbert?”

  Laughing, Magic popped up on his feet. “That’s what Crandall has to find out. Stick close by and maybe you’ll learn something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  Magic sighed. “In essence, the key to one mystery may also unlock the door to another one. We’ll have a pop quiz after you’re done with this, but don’t come see me for a month.”

  “Why?” Tom watched as his boss placed his finger to his temple. “Yeah, yeah. You know everything.”

  ****

  Crandall sat glued to the side of a desk at Pretzelicious headquarters, staring at the quarterly financial statement. “Jenny, I don’t understand how we lost this much money in three months.”

  Her executive assistant sat down across from her. “According to York, we lost a lot on the West Coast business from the entrance of that mall pretzel competition into ten of our biggest markets. Plus some of our stock investments tanked. We had to pull out of three large moneymakers and it seems we did so at the wrong time.”

  Crandall’s back straightened. “Who made the decision to pull out? I didn’t.”

  Jenny shrugged. “I guess Smith York did it. He does have signing power. You gave it to him.”

  Crandall exhaled sharply. “Let him know I need to see him this afternoon.”

  “He’s in Nevada today.”

  “Why?” Crandall’s eyes narrowed.

  “Conference. The American Bakery CFO summit.” Jenny smiled. “I know you approved that. I saw you sign off on it.”

  Crandall nodded and rubbed her forehead. “You’re right. Sorry. This whole thing with Washington’s getting to me. Do me a favor and get the paperwork on the stock sales. Smith had to justify it on there. It’s company policy.”