Utterly Charming

by Kristine Grayson

  She stared at it for a moment. She had told him to leave, but she hadn’t wanted him to. She wasn’t ready for him to walk out of her life like that. But that was what she had asked. That was what she had demanded.

  She almost ran after him, but her own pride stopped her. What if that was what he wanted? What if this were still part of the game he had played with her from the beginning? Three wishes and sleeping beauties and evil stepmothers.

  And magic. Always magic.

  She sat back down at her desk. She would take care of Emma first. Then she would worry about Blackstone.

  The thought seemed rational, and it should have calmed her. But it didn’t. As she picked up her stack of messages, she found herself worrying, wondering, doubting she would ever see him again.

  ***

  Blackstone drove himself back to the restaurant, taking side streets and gunning the Porsche, daring a cop to pull him over. No cop did, and he was disappointed. He wanted to fight with someone, get arrested, and then reverse the whole thing as if nothing had happened.

  But no one seemed to notice his speed. No one except an elderly woman who had been walking her black poodle. She had shaken a finger at him as he passed.

  Sancho hadn’t been in Ruthie’s office when Blackstone left. The efficient Ruthie had blinked at him with a bit of confusion when he asked about Sancho and had said in what Blackstone knew was not Ruthie’s normal voice, “He disappeared.”

  In front of her, probably. To freak her out. Sancho was like that. Blackstone had never entirely gotten the point of unsettling the mortals.

  Except for Nora, of course.

  And she appeared utterly unflappable.

  He didn’t know where that bit about the three wishes had come from. He had actually reminded himself, as he got up that morning, not to mention them to her. The last time he had granted a woman three wishes, she had nearly torn his eyes out. That had been about 1750, and he had vowed never to do such a thing again.

  Apparently resolutions only lasted 250 years.

  He pulled the car into his private space behind the restaurant and got out. Three other cars were in the lot. He unlocked the kitchen door and entered to the smell of sautéed garlic and onions mixing with the fresh scent of cilantro. Two of his chefs, dressed in their regulation whites, were hovering over a large soup kettle, discussing the fine art of spices. His sous chef was working on a roux at the far stove.

  Blackstone had designed this kitchen himself. It had several stove tops, half a dozen grills, and three restaurant-size dishwashers. It also had seven small ovens and two large ovens, an emergency microwave, which he had banished to the back, and several refrigerators, including one large enough to stuff six men inside. The freezer, which stood to one side, filled a room all on its own.

  Sancho was standing beside the baker, pulling apart a just-completed loaf of sourdough. Blackstone’s baker, a woman who had won more contests than the rest of the staff combined, was glaring at Sancho, pastry scissors clutched in her left hand.

  “You know I don’t like anyone eating in the kitchen,” Blackstone said, taking the loaf from Sancho.

  “Well, your maître goon won’t let me in the dining room,” Sancho said.

  “Then maybe you should take that as a hint.”

  “Touchy, touchy.” Sancho snatched the bread back. “I take it the meeting didn’t go well.”

  “That woman is the most stubborn, difficult—” Blackstone stopped himself. His staff was staring at him. He never lost his temper—at least, not over a woman. Occasionally over a poorly created dish. But never over a woman. “Come into my office.”

  He led Sancho past the wire racks filled with pots, pans, and simple white dishes to the closet-size room he used as an office. On one corner of the desk sat a computer, its screen covered with tiny fish, and a phone sat on the other corner. In between were order forms, index cards filled with his scrawled recipes, and bills. Blackstone shoved them aside and leaned against the desk.

  “She won’t let me see Emma,” he said.

  “She won’t let me see her either,” Sancho said. “She has a good point.”

  “Does she?” Blackstone asked. “It seems to me that she’s just being stubborn.”

  Sancho grinned. “Then you’re well matched.”

  “I was talking about Nora.”

  “So was I.”

  They glared at each other for a moment. Then Blackstone broke the glance. “I didn’t expect her to be so much trouble.”

  “Nora or Emma?”

  “Both,” Blackstone said.

  Sancho shook his head. “I’ve been trying to warn you. You’ve been handling this all wrong. Right from the start.”

  Blackstone pushed off the desk and wished there was more space in the office. He didn’t want to be this close to Sancho. “I was a young magician. I didn’t know the right spells.”

  “We’ve been over this,” Sancho said. “I’m not talking about the first spell. I’m talking about the fight with Ealhswith.”

  “You think I should have left Emma with her?”

  “No,” Sancho said. “But you have to understand why Emma’s a bit peeved.”

  Blackstone ran a hand through his hair. “I do understand.” He sighed. “Nora got through to me on that.”

  Sancho’s smile widened. It was as if he had a secret he didn’t want to share with Blackstone. “Nora’s pretty special, isn’t she?”

  “I’m promised to Emma.”

  “You keep saying that.” Sancho crossed his arms. “It’s almost like you’re trying to convince yourself.”

  “The Fates said she was my soul mate.”

  “Did they?”

  Blackstone sighed. He wished they hadn’t, but they had. “Yes, that’s what they said.”

  “Sometimes I think your memory is faulty.”

  “And sometimes I think you want the impossible from me.” Blackstone had to work to keep his voice low. “I need your help getting Emma away from Nora.”

  “I don’t think it’ll work.”

  “But Ealhswith’ll go after them.”

  “Probably,” Sancho said.

  “And they’re undefended.”

  “I think if the illustrious Ms. Barr heard you say that, she’d show you just how defended she is.”

  Blackstone bowed his head. He had been admiring her courage just the day before. He knew she was strong. And she had gotten to him this morning. She had shown him how he hadn’t listened—to anyone. He had created a part of this mess, as surely as Ealhswith had.

  Maybe it was time to start listening, then.

  “What do you think I should do?” he asked softly.

  Sancho’s eyes widened, as if he hadn’t expected to be consulted for advice. “You’re asking me?”

  “I think you’re the only other person in the room.”

  “Well.” Sancho cleared his throat. “I think you should do what the ladies want.”

  “I should leave them alone?”

  Sancho nodded.

  “But Ealhswith—”

  “Will do something, and eventually it’ll be too much for Nora, and she’ll come to you for help. You can be her white knight.”

  “I don’t think she believes in white knights.”

  Sancho’s eyes twinkled. “Not now, maybe.”

  Blackstone shook his head. “I don’t want to manipulate her.”

  “Interesting,” Sancho said. “Why not?”

  Because he liked her too much for that. But he couldn’t admit it to Sancho. Some things had to remain personal. “I don’t think the Fates would approve.”

  “When has that stopped you?” Sancho asked.

  “If I leave Emma and Nora alone, they’ll be in so much danger.”

  “Then keep an eye on them. A discreet eye.”

  “And what happens if I get caught?”

  Sancho shrugged. “Nora’ll yell at you again.”

  “She doesn’t like me much, does she?”

&nbs
p; Sancho raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I think she likes you more than she wants to admit.”

  Blackstone sighed. “This hasn’t gone the way I planned, Sancho.”

  Sancho stared at him for a moment, then nodded sagely. “Love never does.”

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  Nora spent the next two days catching up on work—it was amazing how far behind she got when she skipped a single day—going to court, answering calls, taking care of cases. She bent her own rules because she couldn’t think of a way around them and used the identification that Sancho brought to create an identity for Emma. Her mother spent days with Emma and Nora spent evenings, and the questions were slowly getting less intense.

  Nora was even beginning to tolerate her mother’s presence at dinner.

  Darnell, on the other hand, didn’t even acknowledge Nora’s existence anymore. Squidgy liked this turn of events; she was acting as if she were the only cat in the house. Darnell was acting as if Emma were the only person; Nora felt it only fair.

  Emma was slowly beginning to accept some of the bits of daily life in this world: the noise, the plumbing, and the food. She didn’t like the way that everything seemed to be too difficult to be made at home. She wanted to make her own soap (even though she loved the lavender-scented specialty soaps that Nora had bought to soothe herself after her divorce), her own clothes (Amanda suggested buying fabric but Emma wanted to weave her own) and her own shoes (Nora drew the line at running a tanning operation out of her own home). They found a spinning wheel at an antique store and placed it in Emma’s room, and somewhere Nora’s mother managed to get unspun wool (which Nora thought looked like a pile of Squidgy’s hair balls). When Emma got too overwhelmed, she went and spun. She was asking for a loom next, and Nora’s mother promised to look for one on one of her evenings off.

  Nora didn’t know what she would have done without her mother. It was Amanda who realized that going to the nearest park, even armed with a cell phone, was a bad idea. There were too many strange people about. So Amanda decided to drive Emma to greenery, thinking it would get Emma used to the car, and reward her by letting her be in nature. Nora’s mother also made sure that they didn’t follow any set routine, and often she used different cars. She and Nora traded vehicles more than once, and Nora’s mother had taken to going to car dealerships and test-driving new models, taking Emma and the poor salesman to some park for a picnic as part of the ruse.

  In addition to all her catch-up, Nora spent the last two days interviewing professors. Most came in because they were curious—law firms rarely hired medieval history professors for deep research—and most were completely unsuited to what she needed. She didn’t know what she was looking for exactly, but she would know it when she saw it.

  The last interview on Friday proved to be the one she was waiting for. The man who walked into the room looked like he had been transplanted from a previous era. His salt-and-pepper hair (which was more pepper than salt) had been combed once, but on the way to the office it had obviously been tossed by the wind, and he hadn’t noticed. His salt-and-pepper beard (which was more salt than pepper) had been trimmed, but still looked as if it were waiting to explode into an unruly thicket. He wore a woolen suit coat despite the heat, and a wrinkled cotton shirt with matching cotton pants. Unlike all the other professors, he didn’t wear Birkenstocks. He wore normal sandals. His toes were long and hairy, and Nora found herself thinking of hobbits as she looked at his feet.

  “Ms. Barr?” he asked, extending a hand as compact as his feet. “I’m Jeffrey Chawsir.”

  She had seen the name written down, of course, but it wasn’t until he said it that she realized how it was pronounced—and what it sounded like.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said before she stopped herself.

  He shrugged. “It’s spelled different.”

  “But you’re a professor of medieval studies. Don’t you think that’s a bit of coincidence to be named after Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the most famous piece of fiction from that period?”

  “Actually,” he said, “Canterbury Tales postdates my period. I specialize in the twelfth century, not the fourteenth.” Then he grinned. It was the grin that sold her. It was crooked and warm and made his face like that of a Disney grandfather about to dispense wisdom. “Besides, a man has to start somewhere.”

  “Meaning?”

  “After a while, a boy gets tired of hearing ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ after he introduces himself to adults.”

  “I went to school with a Tom Sawyer,” Nora said. “No one said ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ to him.”

  He shrugged. “With him, they probably thought it was a mistake on his parents’ part. After all, Tom is a common name, and so is Sawyer. But Chawsir isn’t, and Jeffrey, well, men my age are usually named John or David or Michael. People think my parents did it on purpose.”

  “Did they?”

  “Yes and no,” he said. “My mother’s father was named Jeffrey. They thought it would work. I’m the first person in my family to finish college, let alone high school.”

  “So it wasn’t intentional.”

  “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

  She held out her hand and indicated the chair. “Please, have a seat.”

  He did, and as he sat, he adjusted the line of his trousers. She hadn’t seen a man do that in years. She leaned on the desk, something she often did when she was interviewing people. It didn’t seem to upset him.

  “I must say,” he said in a professorial tone, “I’ve been very curious about this. This is my first time in a law firm.”

  “Really?” she said. That was unusual in this litigious age. “Not divorced?”

  “Never married.”

  “And obviously never sued.”

  “Or accused of a crime.” He grinned that crooked grin again. “A boring life.”

  “Only if your requirements for an interesting one force you to go to a lawyer’s office.”

  He laughed.

  She leaned back. “I can’t tell you what this is for, at least not yet. So please, bear with me.”

  He nodded.

  “I need honest answers from you. I’ve already received assessments from your dean and from some students and colleagues. Now I need to find out how comfortable you are with certain things.”

  “All right,” he said that with a measure of caution, like he was humoring a difficult child.

  “Do you mind tutoring someone?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Would you be willing to spend eight hours a day tutoring someone?”

  “For the right fee. And if the job could be completed before the semester begins at the end of September.”

  She ignored that part. She would deal with that when it happened. She doubted Emma would be ready for anything by the end of September. That was a very short two and a half months away.

  “Do you feel strong in world history from the Dark Ages to the present?”

  “Strong? My specialty is the Middle Ages.”

  “For example,” she said. “If I were to ask you to name the presidents of the United States, could you?”

  “Of course. I’m a history buff.”

  “Could you outline the history of Japan for me?”

  “Now?”

  She waited.

  “Do you want me to start with the myth about the Emperor and his family descending from the sun, or with the formation of the Shogunate?”

  She smiled. “That’s plenty. Could you name the kings of England before William the Conqueror?”

  “Not if I want to be accurate. There’s some debate as to whether they were kings of England or simply strong leaders of particular regions.”

  Her smile grew. “Can you cook over a fire?”

  “This involves camping?”

  “No. A hearth fire.”

  “I’ve never done it. I know the principles.”

  “How about the principles of magic.”
r />   “What kind?” he asked. “I’m familiar with all the European varieties. I get the Persian ones confused.”

  She placed her hands on the side of her desk, holding onto its carved top. “If I told you I was a witch, you would say—?”

  “Are you a member of Wicca or do you follow some of the darker arts?” He spoke with no judgment at all.

  “And if I told you I knew actual magic, you would say—?”

  “I would love to see some sometime.”

  She let out a large sigh of relief, stood up, and extended her hand. “Wonderful. You’re hired.”

  “I don’t even know what the job is.”

  “Purposely.” She reached for the intercom and buzzed Ruthie. “Here’s what I can tell you. This job requires strict confidentiality. You can’t tell anyone—girlfriend, boyfriend, best friend, mother, father, anyone—what you’re doing or where you go to do it. You must have an open mind, and you must work eight hours a day, at least five days a week. For that you will be paid the starting salary of my associates, which is”—she picked up a piece of paper and glanced at it—“exactly double what you earn at the university for the same amount of time.”

  He blinked at her, looking a bit confused. “I’d like to know what the job is.”

  “In order for me to tell you any more—”

  Ruthie opened the door, brought papers in, and set them on the desk. As she did so, she glanced at the professor as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. And then she left, closing the door behind her.

  “—you’ll have to sign these confidentiality documents and not tell anyone what you have seen.”

  “Is this some sort of case?”

  “It’s a bit stranger than that,” Nora said. She handed him one of the documents. He scanned it.

  “Ah, hell,” he said. “I guess I can sign this. What’s a few hours out of my life?”

  “You might be surprised,” she said.

  ***

  Nora had had all of her interviewees checked out by her favorite private detective firm, but even so, she wasn’t one to trust easily. Instead of taking Jeffrey Chawsir to her home, she had Amanda rent a hotel room in one of Portland’s more exclusive hotels, not far from Nora’s office. She called her mother and asked her to bring Emma to the hotel. Nora would bring Chawsir.