by M. L. Briers
“Yeah, bounce him on his head when you put him down again,” Lottie chuckled and turned back to Sandy. “Okay, Toots, you and I are going to have a long chitty-chat about – stuff,” she said gently. “I’ll put the kettle on, and we’ll leave the closed sign on the door.”
Sandy wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, let alone what was happening now. Who was that guy? She’d seen him a couple of times, in the store, and at the bar. But why would he help her, and what was an attitude adjustment?
A witch?
Lottie?
Her?
Sandy let that thought bounced around her brain a few times before she snorted with disbelief.
A witch?
Really?
Was Lottie insane or did the fact that the thought of being a witch seemed to settle inside of her like a familiar welcome home just make no sense at all, which made them both insane.
Being a witch sure would explain a lot of things that had happened in her life, but – no. Witches weren’t real, not real witches with real magic – were they?
Sandy followed Lottie into the back room and stopped in her tracks when Lottie drew her attention to the two cups on the side. Nothing wrong with tea even if it wasn’t her preferred brew, but what the hey, right then she’d take a blueberry slush, but the fact that both cups had spoons that were stirring themselves – well, that caused her heart to grow fists and pound against her ribcage like it wanted to save itself.
The sound of a low whine filled the air, and when Sandy realised that it was her, she snapped it off and swallowed hard. “Witch?” she asked, gulping down the lump in her throat.
Lottie couldn’t help but offer her a wicked little smile. There was a mischievous twinkle in the older woman’s eyes as she hooked her finger and called her towards her. “Takes one to know one,” Lottie said with a knowing, but reassuring smile.
Sandy felt a sudden wave of calm wash through her. “Witch,” she muttered to herself trying it on for size to see how it felt. Then she remembered Neal. “Was he a witch too?”
“Oh, we’ll get to that – baby steps,” Lottie assured her.
The one thing Lottie didn’t want to do was freak the kid out before she’d got the chance to explain, life, the witchy-dom, and everything magical that awaited her.
It was going to be one hell of a ride, but when a small smile appeared on Sandy’s lips as she stood mesmerized by those silly spoons, Lottie knew she was going to be just fine.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
~
“So, who is this shifter?” Marilyn asked, and tried to keep her voice neutral and her enquiry casual so as not to arouse suspicion in her daughter and antagonise her into shutting down.
Amber mentally gritted her teeth – and so it begins – she thought. Her mother was so obvious, even when she was playing the innocent card. “I have no idea,” she answered truthfully, and why not? Past experience told her the interrogation wasn’t going to end there even if she begged the Triple Goddess for salvation.
This was her mother, and the woman never let anything slide, drop, or gave up a juicy bone. At times she did share the torture with Scott; he was always a willing participant in meddling in her life and affairs. Not that she had affairs, at least, not of the heart because most men sucked.
Marilyn refolded a sweater and added it to a pile on the bed as she eyed Amber from beneath her lashes. “Does he have a name?”
“Probably, or maybe you could just grunt,” Amber said, and left that hanging in the air between them, knowing it would drive her mother mad.
“What is it?” Marilyn asked. She felt like headbutting a wall; it was like getting blood from a stone with both of her children, but Amber was especially annoying because she couldn’t hit her with the mother guilt trip that she could use with Scott.
The ‘I spent hours in labour – had swollen feet and ankles for four months – looked like a bowling ball waddling down the street’ – lines were always a good pressure point with a male child, but Amber shrugged those off. If those lines didn’t get Scott’s attention, the scars of her labour and how they cut into her because his head was so big, well, that usually did the trick, as well as made him run for the hills. But only after he spilt his guts. With Amber – it was water off a duck’s back.
“If I knew I would tell you, but I didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell, although, he looks like a Drake of maybe a Felix…”
“Felix is for a cat – nobody is going to call a wolf shifter Felix – not unless his mother didn’t like him,” Marilyn muttered the last bit, but it did make Amber chuckle.
“True, but what’s not to like?” Amber said, stirring the cauldron of her mother’s insecurities and worries, just a little – just enough.
Out of the corner of her eye, Amber saw her mother’s head snap up, and she rounded on her. “Huh?”
“Huh?” Amber tossed back with all the innocence she could muster.
Marilyn gave her daughter a long, hard look. She had the sneaky suspicion that Amber was pulling her chain, but she could have been wrong, and she didn’t want to jump the gun. “Well, they might look good…”
“He certainly does,” Amber cut her off and snuck a look at her mother, who looked as if life had just handed her a lemon and she’d been silly enough to suck on it.
“Amber!” Marilyn pleaded.
“Mother!” Amber said with a big dollop of exaggerated frustration.
Marilyn fisted the sweater she’d been folding and clutched it to her chest. “And what if you were his mate?” she said, trying to wake Amber up to just one of the dangers of messing where witches didn’t belong.
Amber took a long moment to consider it. On the outside, she looked calm, on the inside, she was a duck underwater, paddling to stay afloat. She hadn’t thought of that – a mate – how did they know?
How would she know?
“Then I guess I never have to worry about him cheating on me,” Amber tossed back without thinking, but when her mother stayed silent, she looked to see why and found her mother looking hurt.
“I’m sorry your father did that to you,” Marilyn rushed out before she could make amends, and punched Amber’s guilt button without even trying – score – point to her mother.
“That’s his fault, not yours, and he didn’t do it to me, he did it to you…”
“And now you think all men suck,” Marilyn said, tossing the sweater on the bed.
Amber reached out, grabbed the sweater and threw it back at her mother, who caught it before it hit her in the face. “Hey!”
“Please don’t tell me I have daddy issues, I’ve heard that one before,” Amber said. “Dad cheated on you and split up our family – but, we got the good part of the family, and he got dumped by the woman he was cheating with.”
“The grass is always greener,” Marilyn said and snorted a chuckle.
“But what they don’t see is the cow dung littering the meadow,” Amber grinned.
“Until they are up to their ankles in it,” Marilyn added, feeling slightly better.
It was fair to say that she’d had a guilt complex about throwing her ex out for years, but who could trust a cheater? But still, she’d second and third guessed herself over what had been better for the children every time something went wrong, and she still did.
Even now, she wondered if Scott would be working for a vampire if his father had been around. That led to wondering if she’d screwed up their lives and been selfish, and perhaps she should have hung on in there for the kids.
Ugh! Catholic guilt inside a witch wasn’t pretty and made for strange bedfellows, but sometimes being a mother was all about guilt.
“I say; let them wallow,” Amber said, and hoped that was the end of it.
“So, the shifter…”
“Ugh!” Amber groaned. “Can we not, because I really don’t know a thing about him.”
“Accept, he’s a good looking guy?” Marilyn teased her.
Amber stopped folding and
snorted a chuckle. “He has muscles like Popeye and is as sexy as hell, and the growl? Oh-whoa!”
“Just be careful, it’s the sexy ones that are usually the dangerous ones,” Marilyn warned her.
Amber rolled her eyes. “He’s a shifter, I think the whole ‘turns into a wolf, has claws and fangs thing’ is an obvious red flag to danger,” she replied.
“I’m talking about your heart, not your life,” Marilyn said, and held up her hands, sweater and all, as she surrendered. “Just saying.”
Amber nodded. “Fine, I accept you're just saying and raise you a get folding. I do want to get to the store today before we close early.”
“You can go,” Marilyn said. “Scott and I have this covered.”
“Really?” Amber liked the idea of that. Yes, her mother was going to put everything back in the wrong place because it looked better like that, or something along those lines, but she could move it back later.
She just had a feeling that something was going on in town and it was clawing within her to see if she was right.
“Sure,” Marilyn said, only too happy for Amber to leave so she could grill Scott and see what he knew about the shifter.
“Ok,” Amber said, kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the innocent little smile her mother offered as she made her way out the room told her she just might get away clean.
Happy days!
~
Neal wasn’t playing by Lottie’s rules. He might have been doing her a favour, and he was going to enjoy collecting his reward, but she wasn’t standing over his shoulder and watching him now, so he had no reason to play nice.
By the time his cargo started to wake from his slumber, he was far enough into the woods that he shouldn’t be disturbed by anyone but the scurrying wildlife, and when they scented him coming, even they were smart enough to give him a wide berth. He had some questions for the guy, and he didn’t want to be disturbed while asking them.
It all depended on the answers that he received in return as to whether he was going to do what Lottie asked and adjust the guy’s attitude with a little vampire persuasion, or if he was going to end him and bury him where nobody would think to look.
Not that Neal thought anyone was going to come looking for this guy, he didn’t get the vibe from him that anyone would care enough to spend the time or energy on him, and he didn’t think he was in Amber’s store for some witchy candles. So, could he be the missing piece in the puzzle as to the strange goings-on around town?
Did he work for Roland?
He wasn’t supernatural, but then not everyone who worked for Roland was. Vampires like Roland always had the humans that they liked to call fodder do some of their dirty work – and when they were of no use anymore, well, they became lunch. Was this guy one of them?
Neal had to admit if only to himself, he was probably going to enjoy finding out.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
~
Amber hit the brakes the moment the madman jumped out into the road in front of her. The sound of perfectly good rubber left on the road annoyed her so much that for one long moment she almost took her foot off the brakes – almost – dang, she hated that guilty gene that popped up at the most inopportune moments and smacked her around the back of the head.
If only she didn’t have a conscience, what wickedly wonderful things she could do.
With a dark curse or three, the car finally stopped without too much swerving, and she been just inches away from making the idiot staring back at her through the glass a hood ornament. She reasoned that if they could have Jaguars on a car, they could have wolves, but he wasn’t his wolf now, he was his big, muscled, sexy self, and she was mesmerised by him – like Thumper caught in the headlights.
That was until he growled; a low, deep rumble that seemed to drift into the small space of the car as though the glass between them wasn’t even there. Amber snapped out of whatever spell that man had her under, and she felt the rush of annoyance replace the big shot of adrenalin inside of her.
Who the hell did he think he was?
“Oh no, you did not just growl at me!” She pulled on her magic and let him have a taste of it with a zap that made his hair stand on end, or at least a little spikier than it already was.
Josh felt the hard sting of her magic, and it only wound the beast within him up further. “You almost ran me over,” Josh growled.
That second growl didn’t bother her half as much as the first one had. But the accusation in his tone – well, that was another thing entirely. How did he have the brass neck to accuse her like it was her fault – the audacity of the man!
“Are you kidding me?” she snapped back in disbelief.
“You couldn’t see me?” he spat out with a big dollop of disbelief.
“Before or after you jumped out in front of me like an idiot?” she demanded. Oh, the heck was she backing down!
Josh thought she had him there. He had walked into the road, but it was obvious that she hadn’t been paying attention, or her reaction time was so slow that she shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car in the first place – otherwise, she would have stopped sooner.
Unless, of course, she’d deliberately aimed for him, and where witches were concerned he couldn’t rule it out.
“Driving means being alert to danger at all times,” Josh informed her and noted the way her hands fisted the steering wheel as if she was trying to wring its neck.
“You are not lecturing me on driving when you don’t even know how to walk across a damn road.” Amber felt the rush of righteous indignation at his actions, past and present, and she wasn’t backing down from this one, not one inch.
The man was a menace, and she’d let him have both barrels of her anger, verbal and magical if he pushed her any further.
Josh understood her point. He had walked out in front of her, but he’d expected her to see him and slow down from further out, not wait until the last minute to hit her brakes.
Maybe she had aimed for him and had a change of heart? Either way, she was a danger to herself and others.
Josh held up his hands to show her he meant her no harm and started around to the driver’s door. He noted the way she was watching him, suspicion in her eyes, and a nervous wiggle in her seat. He could even see the cogs in her mind turning over as to what she should do next.
“We need to talk,” Josh said, in an attempt to calm any fears she might have about him.
“You need to go back to walking school,” she muttered, snapping the locks on with her magic and a click of her fingers, just in case.
Josh heard the locks engage and sighed inwardly. “You don’t trust me?” he asked as his beast rallied inside of him.
Having the kind of protection gene that ran through both man and wolf, the fact that the woman was so obviously fearful that he was dangerous didn’t sit well with him or his beast, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about that. It would take time to prove himself to her.
“I don’t know you,” Amber tossed back with a little dollop of sarcasm and a look that called into question his sanity. When he walked close enough to the point where she couldn’t see him anymore, she locked up her muscles and refused to angle her head to look up at him.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed the view that she had from the waist down, and he looked like he was packing something in his jeans. She risked shooting him a sideways glance and felt her cheeks heat up as her eyes noted the bulge in his pants.
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, that couldn’t be unseen, and it was going to play on a loop in her mind. She just hoped she wasn’t going to picture him naked – too late – that already happened.
“True,” Josh said as he stopped a few feet away from the window and bent at the waist to look in. “But, you have to know that as your mate I would never hurt you.”
Amber heard the rush of the wind through her ears as her brain went silent, and her mind was vacant of all thought – strange, considering it as a still day. T
hen, as she slowly turned her head to stare back at him, unseeing, a thousand thoughts and questions hit her mind all at once, and she felt as if her brain was going to implode.
On the upside, she wasn’t picturing him naked anymore. “W-ha-tttt?” she heard the word, and it sounded like her voice, but she couldn’t be sure she’d said it.
“A shifter finds one true mate in his life, and I wasn’t sure…”
“Check again!” she snapped out.
Her mother was going to kill her!
Amber shook her head in a vain attempt to clear her mind, her ears, and keep her sanity. Her mother was going to kill her? Was that the best she could do under the circumstances, she wondered. How ironic.
Josh offered her a slow to boil smile that she couldn’t seem to drag her gaze from, and it was a good one. It had just the right amount of roguish intent with an element of teasing, and a big dollop of sex-god.
How the heck could she look away from that? From him?
Oh, she tried to drag her gaze to the road ahead, a tree, the sky, a bird, the radio, the steering wheel – anything – but nothing seemed as appealing to her eyes or her mind as that damn smile. That shifter was sex-on-a-stick, the kind of guy your mother warned you about – literally in her case.
Ugh! She was stuck like gum on her favourite skirt, annoying and impossible to shake. It wasn’t gum but a sex-god who was telling her that they were meant for each other, and unlike gum, he was too big to throw in the trash without another thought.
What had she said to her mother? At least he’d never cheat on her – true – but he was also hers for eternity. She didn’t even plan ahead for dinner, let alone the rest of her life.
Amber had a life plan, and it didn’t say anywhere in that plan that she’d get a mate for life and a family pet in the shape of a wolf to boot. She was more a cat person, and she didn’t think her cat Magic would want to curl up on her lap with the big, bad wolf inches away.
“I already did, several times, and when I took your scent…”