This Magic Moment (Just a Little Magic Series)

by Cross, Daryn

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re not going to bed together anymore.”

  “We aren’t?” The box he held in his hands almost fell to the floor.

  She shook her head. “I was sure you’d agree. We’re too undecided about what we have of anything outside of sexual, which I have to say is pretty hot.”

  His body burned at the thought. “Right, but we’re hot together so that’s a reason not to do it?”

  “Zack, Zack, Zack.” She exhaled sharply. “That’s what I’m talking about. Can’t you see?”

  Damn, he was going to lose this round of Jeopardy too. What she was saying now was like looking through a smoke-smudged window. “Can you be a little more specific?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s all about sex. Until it’s really more and we don’t incinerate at each other’s touch, we’ll just talk, but nothing more.”

  This woman had really lost it. She wanted to have sex when she wasn’t on fire? Now there was a concept. “Crandall, I think what we were doing made perfect sense, and believe me, it wasn’t all sex. It was more for me anyway. Besides, if you can turn it off like this, for you it must not have been that hot.”

  Her eyes flared. “We’re talking third degree burns here, Zack. I need time to heal.”

  He stared away, not trusting himself to respond to her words, because this conversation was setting his heart on fire. “For what it’s worth, I brought you something that would remind you of our times together to date. See you in Briny Bay.” He handed her the box, and as she stared at him, her mouth in one bit round “O,” he walked out the door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You did what?” Mike looked as surprised as Crandall had.

  “I handed her the box and walked out.”

  “Man!” Mike wiped his forehead with his hand. “Zack, you’ve been around a lot of women. What made you so obtuse? You still didn’t tell her you loved her to her face.”

  “I’m not sure what I feel right now,” he said. “She was so, so…sarcastic, that’s it. Like she was trying to explain something to a third grader.”

  “Well,” Mike cocked his head sideways. “You’re kind of acting like that way in femalish.”

  “What the heck is femalish?”

  “Their talk.” Mike chuckled. “After a while you just get used to it. What it boils down to is the woman is set on one thing, total acceptance and adoration. She doesn’t want to be a sex object but she wants to be treated like one after, and only after she has beaten the man into submission.”

  Zack blinked. “Okay, it was bad enough Crandall was losing me, but now so are you. She wants it both ways, am I right?”

  Mike nodded. “Got it buddy. You’ll catch on. They’re really not that difficult after you learn the things you need to avoid in what you do and say.”

  “Man, I don’t know.” Zack slumped back in his chair. “I feel like I’m getting ready to enroll as a comrade in a communist country.”

  Mike winked. “Believe me cuz, there are fringe benefits after you learn the system.”

  Zack groaned. “Whatever. Right now I’ve closed the door until we get to Briny Bay.”

  Mike shook his head. “Just think if you’d played it right, you could be deep into,” he grinned ear-to-ear, “a really great conversation with Crandall.”

  ****

  “I blew it.” Crandall laid her head down on her hands and groaned. “I have to be the dumbest woman alive.”

  Gretta laughed. “No, that would be me for waiting two years before Mike proposed and all because it had to be my way.” She rubbed Crandall’s shoulder. “Believe me, you haven’t ruined anything, just baffled the bull.”

  “Pardon me?” She looked at Gretta out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t understand.”

  Gretta smiled. “Men are like bulls. They face their targets head on and ram them until their women are on the ground beneath them. If the objects they just horned, in the metaphorical sense, gets up and challenges them, well, they don’t know what to do.” Gretta held up both hands and shrugged. “They’re just animals after all.”

  “Sexy animals that turn me on.” Crandall licked her lips at the thought of Zack kissing her. “What in God’s name am I supposed to do now?”

  “Take it easy and just be nice the next time you see him. Absence does make the heart grow fonder.”

  “And the genitals horny.”

  Gretta grinned. “That too. Let me take your mind off Mr. Sexpot and direct it back to your mission to win this contest. Ever since you fell head over heels in lust, you don’t seem interested in it anymore. This contract with AMV can be yours if you just stay focused. After all, you won in Sierra Landing and are now ahead.”

  Crandall nodded. “I know. I got the pity vote, that’s all. No doubt it’ll be tied after Briny Bay. What will Brooks do then?”

  “First of all, you can’t assume he’ll win in Briny Bay. You don’t know how chummy he is with folks back home. As for a tie, I can guarantee it won’t be settled in a coin toss. Brooks will cook up more publicity for AMV. You know he’ll milk this thing for all it’s worth.”

  “No doubt.” Crandall pushed her hair out of her eyes. “As for winning the contest, I’ve been distracted by more than Zack Graham. This whole thing with Xavier is eating my lunch. He was ruthless in Sierra Landing and now I’m looking over my shoulder at the company. I’m convinced Jenny’s deceiving me and now Zack has me wondering about Smith York. Surely two people that close to me aren’t selling me out to that shit? Jenny told me Smith sold the shares and inferred he might be a problem, so I don’t think they’re working together. How could Xavier work with two different people in my company and have them not know the other is a turncoat.”

  “Maybe they aren’t both deceiving you.” Gretta sighed. “It’s hard to say. All you can do is be careful. One thing’s for sure, I’d be checking my books at least weekly. Thankfully, you no longer think I was trying to do you in.”

  “I’m sorry.” Crandall looked up at her. “Just don’t keep important information from me anymore. I understand you thought your being involved with Mike would make me nervous, but I need to know the whole truth. Especially now.”

  “I promise.” Gretta, slapped both hands on her lap. “So I think it’s time to mix things up a bit for the next stop on the Brooks tour. This time, you’re going to play the part to the hilt.”

  “I don’t like that glint in your eye. What are you suggesting?”

  “Brooks loves the sexual context of what’s been happening between you and Zack. After all, sex sells as I’ve been telling you and Zack proved with his slogan at Scrumbles. Brooks has been playing with the idea of your mutual attraction. Now he’s using it in his print advertising. Have you seen this?” Gretta threw the magazine down turned to a full page spread.

  Crandall grabbed t it and stared. A picture of her kissing Zack in Oklahoma glared at her from the magazine with a heading, American Vending Company Turns up the Heat. “Who gave him permission to do this?”

  “That waiver you signed to be in the contest.”

  Crandall shook her head and watched as Gretta nodded. “You have to read the fine print. You do on contracts. He can use anything that’s linked to his contest locations. So now it’s time to use it to our advantage. This time, when we get to Briny Bay, you’re going to lay one on him right at the beginning of the actual sampling and then you’re giving interviews up the wazoo on how you found a lover, not in those words, through Brooks’ contest.”

  “I don’t want to exploit what we have. Or what we had. Not sure where it stands right now.”

  “It’s okay,” Gretta said. “Mike will handle telling Zack about the plan. You can both benefit from it. All it can do is move your stock up and away from Washington. And I have my bets you can out-act Mr. Graham any day when you want to.”

  “If Zack agrees to it, then so will I. My bet’s on his not allowing it.”

  “Is that your final answer?” Gr
etta beamed.

  ****

  “You want me to do what?” Zack stared at Mike.

  “Look at it as a get out of jail free card.”

  “And get sentenced to a life of loneliness. Crandall doesn’t want me to exploit our relationship.”

  “Well,” Mike sat down and threw one arm over the chair arm, “according to Gretta, Crandall said she’d do it if you said yes.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Nope.”

  Zack rubbed his neck. “Why would she do that?”

  “Maybe she needs to get out of jail too?”

  “There’s a thought.” He exhaled. “Okay, what’s to lose, then? I can make love to the woman I love in public, plus it’ll irritate the crap out of Washington. Sounds like a win-win to me.”

  “Great.” Mike rubbed his hands together. “Now back to the problem at large. Who is this Appleby lady and where is she?”

  “She had to be real or Washington’s great-aunt wouldn’t have known about her. How old is the Appleby woman, anyway?”

  “My guess is she has to be about Crandall’s father’s age if he were still alive, so around late sixties.”

  “Not that old, especially for a woman.”

  “But who had the means to purchase a company, which even failing, wasn’t cheap?”

  “Unless she was fronted.”

  “What did you say?” Zack fell back in his chair.

  “I said something worth repeating?” Mike laughed. “It’s got to be a first. I’m putting it on my calendar.”

  “It is worth repeating.” He turned his pen in his hand. “She didn’t necessarily have to have the means herself but do it for someone else. She couldn’t buy it for Tolbert. He already owned it. So maybe it was for Washington through one of his business ventures. His books are like a mystery maze.”

  “But what’s her connection to Washington if that’s so?”

  Zack tapped the pen on his chin. “Okay, maybe she got married, or married for the second time. I’ve got it!” He swirled in his chair.

  “Got what?”

  He laughed, a good hearty one from the belly. “The society pages of the Sierra Landing paper. We do a search and I betcha we can turn up this woman.”

  “Unless she moved.” Mike rolled his eyes.

  Zack shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, Crandall said even though she’d moved, this town keeps her on the radar. She said if you left your scent there for more than three days, those folks could follow the trail. My cards are on finding a scent. Start the trail.”

  “Why do I always get the dirty work?”

  Zack trained his eyes on Mike.

  “Okay, okay, I’m working on it.”

  ****

  How did it get to be May fifteenth? Not that he was complaining. Only a month and a half from completion of another set of crazy interventions. Tom took the elevator to the top floor of the Empire State Building. What would possess Magic to meet him here after all his normal resort locations? He was not to question why, but to follow the old coot to his appointed destination. As he emerged at the top, he saw Magic looking through the binoculars down into New York City. “See anything interesting?”

  Magic turned. “I always do. The city never sleeps. How did it go with the note, anyway?”

  “I think it was the right time to deliver it. You were right, as always. Afterwards the two lovers hooked up again, but this relationship seems to waiver between hot and heavy and on the rocks. Gretta keeps me informed and says she thinks things are okay.”

  “Don’t let what your friend says get in the way of your interventions.” Magic swayed his forefinger back in forth. “You listen to Magic. Just do what you’re told to do.”

  Tom felt like clicking his heels together. “I will. I promise.”

  “Fine.” Magic grinned. “Is everything set for Briny Bay?”

  “As far as I know.” Tom laughed. “But I don’t understand any of it, even the part about the terrorists.”

  “You don’t have to.” Magic cackled. “Oh what a tangled web we weave, as two meld into one, you see.”

  ****

  Smith York walked into the office and folded his hands, grinning broadly. “The bait is set.”

  “Are you sure?” Xavier asked. “She’s got to have heard about Grant Tolbert from Graham.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he told him. “I set the stage, told her how I’d vetted him. The whole thing. She’ll doubt Graham, not me. After all, she already knows Jenny is on to her.”

  Xavier leaned forward. “What makes you think that?”

  “She asked me about the signatures. Jenny brought it up. Either Jenny was at fault or I was. Who else?”

  “I think she’s watching her, but I also think she’s still watching you. Be careful.” Xavier laced his fingers together. “You take Crandall Drake for a fool. I’ve known her all my life, and she’s smarter than you give her credit for. Better watch your step or you could fall into the black widow’s web.”

  “Maybe you like the domineering female. I know you just have the hots for the woman.” He laughed. “How many women do you need? You already have the sizzling little secretary humping you. Most men would be happy.”

  Xavier frowned. “You’d better watch your mouth. You can be exposed. Want to climb the financial ladder, pay attention. Crandall will be ruined before I’m through. My mother deserves the homage. I may have wanted Crandall underneath me once upon a time. Now I want her nailed to the cross.”

  “What I can’t understand is how you got Grant Tolbert to play along. As far as what I’ve been able to find, there’s no trace on the Internet. How could anyone do that in this day and age? You have to go back a decade before you can ever find anything that’s public information.”

  “A lot of help, that’s all.”

  “Is Tolbert disabled, is that the reason for all the secrecy?”

  Xavier sighed. “As you’ve already discovered, poor man can’t do a thing for himself.”

  “Well, I think the whole thing’s genius.” Smith plopped down in a chair. “By the way, you haven’t told me. What do I do to help out in Briny Bay?”

  Xavier smiled. “You don’t do anything in Briny Bay. You just stay on the horn and pressure Crandall into agreeing to sign Tolbert onto the board. Won’t she be surprised at his first board meeting when I show up as his legal representative?”

  Smith laughed nervously. “You didn’t tell me you were going to do that. Crandall will swear I screwed her if that happens.”

  “Not to worry, York.” Xavier chuckled. “I’ll cover your ass. Hell, even if it doesn’t work, you’ll be in fat city, because once I’m on the board, it won’t take me more than year end to be paying you as an employee of my newly obtained pretzel empire.” He laughed again. “I just love taking candy-coated pretzels from a naïve child.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Zack drove into Briny Bay and stared at the quaint look of the small North Carolina town. Some things never change. The downtown section stepped out of the pages of an old novel. Okay, so the utilities were up-to-date and people were proud citizens who controlled peace in the town. But it was smalltown America. Not what he was used to anymore, but a fine place for his daughter to grow up.

  Looking at the neat and orderly streets of his community, he tried to remember what it was like growing up here, and only remembered all the time he spent with his dad before his old man had diversified out of the restaurant he’d owned. First, it was into a snack cake business, but some smart ass had convinced him to go further, bakery items wouldn’t make it. How about frozen entrees, and hey, it didn’t even have to do with food. After all, everyone liked a good smoke after the meal. Back then. In North Carolina. The last stronghold of the tobacco industry in America.

  He got out at the old Happy Daze Diner and walked in. Every time he came to town, he tried to make time to come by here and get a piece of Trixie’s homemade lemon icebox pie and a glass of her sweet tea. They were the b
est. Even his mother said she didn’t know what a woman could do to make iced tea taste better than everyone else’s. It was just indisputably so.

  “Hi, Trix, how’re things?”

  The woman glanced up and smiled a toothy grin, one pencil propped, as always, behind her ear, poking out of her silver gray chin length hair. “Well, lawdy if the world isn’t comin’ to an end as we know it. Folks ‘round here just about thought you’d gone and died. If it weren’t for the AP photos in the paper we’d planned for a memorial service.”

  He chuckled. “Okay, I’m sorry it’s been awhile since I’ve been by. I’ve been visiting at night and then leaving very early the next morning for Charlotte. What pictures were in the paper, anyway?”

  She leaned on the counter and chewed on her gum. “First there was the one of you in that frilly robe lookin’ a bit excited. Told the hubby I wished he’d show he was that excited over me once in awhile, and not because I just baked a cheesecake. Floyd just smirked and told me if I looked like that little black-haired vixen he would be, no cake needed.”

  Zack fidgeted with the change in his pocket. “There were other photos?”

  She nodded. “Lord yes. The one of that pretty little thing laying a lip lock on you in Oklahoma and even one of you two at a candlelit table in California.”

  His head popped up. “I didn’t know there was a photographer there then.”

  “Them paparazzi is sneaky. Now what can I get you for sweetie? Pie and tea? How about a blue plate special first?”

  “Pie and tea’s fine, Trix.” He slipped onto a bar stool at the counter. “How’s everything else around here?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Honey, if the world stood still, everything here would stay in one place. Sometimes I think even time here is set in concrete. But there is a guy sneaking around the town, an outsider I don’t trust. Better watch out, ‘cause I think he may be that man I saw with you in Oklahoma. He’s not that tall, black hair. Kind of looks like Napoleon except no hat and he doesn’t slip his hand inside a vest.”