By Magic Alone

by Tracy Madison

  “I don’t need her blessing,” I said, suddenly exhausted. “Scot is cute, yes. Sexy, yes. But honey, he and I are very different types of people. He’s not my winning lottery ticket.”

  But man, he was a jackpot for some lucky woman.

  Kara’s eyes clouded, grew darker, as if she were lost in thought. It was odd. Not to be rude, but Kara isn’t exactly a heavy thinker. Not that she isn’t smart, because she is. She’s just the lighthearted, bubbly, live-in-the-moment type. Fuzzy tingles swept down the back of my neck. Was this it? Magic?

  “Kara? Are you okay?”

  “Maybe I was too hasty,” she murmured. “You’re sure you can handle this—Scot and Leslie and whatever’s going on for you?” Her voice sounded hollow and faraway.

  “Yes! I promise that I’ll deal with this.” And then I took a leap of faith of the magical variety. “But . . . um . . . if you could just keep this quiet until I’m ready to talk to Leslie myself, even if it takes a few weeks, I would so appreciate it.”

  Kara smiled. “Yeah, Julia. That’s fine. I won’t say a word.” Whoa. Just freaking whoa.

  Magic. A freaking magical journal. My rational brain continued to scream Coincidence! Only a coincidence! as I—trying to expend my jumpy energy—cleaned my entire apartment, did a week’s worth of laundry, and reorganized my kitchen cupboards. Well, only one of the cupboards. Jangled nerves and my preoccupation with Scot, Leslie, Kara, and wishes wouldn’t allow me to move on to the next.

  So I chickened out and decided to cancel my date with Scot. I pretended to myself that my decision was the smart choice, that I needed more time to consider how to proceed before seeing him again. But the down and dirty truth was that being in his presence so soon after locking lips turned my knees into—as Kara suggested earlier—Jell-O.

  But I didn’t have his phone number, and he either wasn’t listed or he wasn’t listed in a way that I could find him. Of course, Elizabeth’s bakery was listed, so I called there, hoping she’d be around on a late Saturday afternoon. She was, and while she found my request odd, she gave me both of Scot’s numbers. Now I just had to work up the courage to call him.

  I checked the time. Three hours to go before he arrived. I was already pushing the boundaries of proper protocol. Canceling this late was rude. But, come on, if dialing the phone brought about a sweat of cold fear, what would the evening be like? I’d try his home number first.

  It rang once, twice. “Scot Raymond,” he said. “Oh, hey Julia.”

  “How’d you know it was me?” I asked, taken aback.

  “Caller ID. It’s been around for a while now.” His words were teasing, but his tone was strained.

  “Yeah. Right.” I aimed a cough into the earpiece. “Elizabeth gave me your number. I can’t go tonight. I have a . . . cold. Came on all of a sudden. Better if I stay home and rest.”

  “How about I bring you a bowl of chicken soup and a DVD?” he fired back. “I’m cool with staying in.”

  Aw. No guy had ever offered to bring me chicken soup before. But having Scot here with my queen-size bed a mere wall away was a bad idea. Of epic proportions. I quashed the yes quivering on my tongue and went with, “No! You don’t want to catch this. Sore throat,” I croaked. “Runny nose. Phlegm!”

  Had I actually said the word phlegm to a hot, sexy guy? Yeah, I had. Brilliant. Just friggin’ brilliant. I smothered a groan.

  “Julia,” he said in a husky, deep-throated way that forced a shiver. “We kissed. Chances are if I’m going to catch your cold, the damage has already been done. Might as well suffer together.”

  Desire rumbled deep in my belly. “You might not! Catch it, that is . . . and I won’t be good company.” I tried to fake a sneeze. It came out sounding like a snort-whistle. As if I’d gurgled water up my nose and spurted it back out. “I’m going to swill some NyQuil and sleep. So thanks. Really. But I’ll be comatose within the hour.”

  “‘The nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, sore-throat, coughing, aching, stuffy-head, fever, so-you-can-rest medicine’?” he recited without missing a beat.

  “Um. Yeah. That one.” I felt myself grinning. “Is there a reason why you know the NyQuil slogan by heart?”

  “Nope. I hear a jingle or a slogan and it’s implanted in my memory forever.” I knew he was smiling. It made me tingle, a warm, toasty sensation. “Used to drive my mom nuts.”

  That made me grin wider. “What’s the Jell-O jingle?”

  “‘Watch it wiggle, see it jiggle. Jell-O brand gelatin.’ Why?”

  I imagined saying Because that’s what my knees turn into when I think about you, but instead said, “Curious. What about AT&T, smarty pants?”

  “‘Reach out and touch someone.’ Gotta give me a harder one than that.”

  “Hm.” I racked my brain. Everything I thought of were major brands with well-known slogans. “Timex?”

  “‘Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.’”

  I thought of and tossed away Maxwell House’s “Good to the last drop,” Nike’s “Just do it,” and Alka-Seltzer’s “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is!” before coming up with “Motel 6!”

  “‘We’ll leave the light on for you,’” Scot said. “I’m telling you, you can’t get me on this game. If I’ve heard it, I know it.”

  My tingles increased. This . . . talking to him was nice. “Oh! I got it. L’Oreal?”

  “‘Because I’m worth it,’” he said in a feminine soprano.

  “Bush’s beans?”

  “‘Roll that beautiful bean footage.’”

  I plopped down on a kitchen chair and laughed. “Okay, you win. I’ll have to give this a lot more thought.”

  “I’ll tell you what. If you find a business that I don’t know the slogan or jingle to, I’ll answer any one question.”

  Oooh. “Anything? Doesn’t matter what I ask?”

  “Anything, Julia.” I heard a dog whine in the background.

  “What kind of a dog do you have?”

  “Heinz 57. No clue what she is. Your cold suddenly seems much better. Sure you want to swill that NyQuil?”

  Oh, shit. I’d forgotten I was supposed to be sick. And no. I wasn’t sure. Now I wanted to see Scot. But my earlier reasons for canceling remained valid. “I’m sure. But I’ve enjoyed talking with you.”

  Silence descended. I filled the empty space with a round of hacking coughs.

  “What’s his name?” Scot asked, suddenly all serious. “The guy you’re dating.”

  “Jameson. He’s an attorney. And . . . ah . . . I’ve known for him for years.” Not one lie there, thank you very much. “Our dads work together.”

  “And where is Jameson tonight?” Scot asked quietly. “While you’re home sick?”

  “He . . . um . . . ah . . .” The abrupt change in his voice threw me. “Not sure. We didn’t have plans for this evening. But you know that. Since I was supposed to be—”

  “Jameson and Julia, eh? Has a nice ring to it.” I heard the distinctive tapping of a finger—or more likely, a thumb—come through the line. “Get some rest, Julia. I’ll call you in a few days.”

  Victory! Whew, right? Except, I didn’t feel victorious. I felt lonely, kind of sad, and incredibly out of sorts. “Thanks, Scot. You have my number now?”

  “I’ve had your number for a while. ’Night.” He hung up before I could respond.

  I scowled at the phone. Somehow, I didn’t think that last statement referred to my phone number. Argh! And how had we’d gone from slogans to Jameson so fast? And why did Scot even care? The silly, girlish side of me—a side I’d never been properly introduced to, by the way—wanted jealousy to be the inspiration for Scot’s curiosity. But that was doubtful. In general, people are pretty much glued to their initial opinions of someone else. It takes a lot to change a mind once it’s been set. So while Scot and I shared a few minutes of niceness—okay, and a scorching-hot kiss—the odds were low those had altered his base opinion of me. Which was basically that of a bot
tom-feeder.

  Whatever. I very purposely shoved Scot, Jell-O, and my soppy state of emotions into another hemisphere of my brain. With a free evening stretching out in front of me, I decided to learn more about the journal. Okay, it was less of a decision than a compulsion that refused to be ignored.

  In Verda’s assessment, I had a slow-to-adapt personality. It was an assessment I agreed with, and before I could 100 percent delve into a belief system opposing what I’d followed for most of my thirty-three years, I had a few more tests to run. Thickheaded? Yep. Stubborn? Maybe. Yet beneath all of that was a little girl who remembered her daddy reading her fairy tales about princes and princesses, pumpkins turning into carriages, and worlds filled with enchantments—worlds where anything was possible. That little girl had believed. I found I wanted to believe again.

  I settled myself in the kitchen with the journal, a notebook, my trusty pen, and a large glass of water. Wine, beer, and other assorted alcoholic beverages were off the menu for the time being. In the notebook, I wrote, “Possible Wishes,” and began to think of possibilities that would be near impossible for me to pass off as flukes. I needed to determine, as scientifically as something so unscientific would allow, if what I thought was happening really was.

  Not any wish would do. Verda’s message clearly stated that whatever I wrote had to be “truest of heart, purest of soul.” What that meant, exactly, escaped me. But I didn’t think the size of the wish mattered. Only that I truly wanted it and that no harm would come from it.

  Off the top of my head, I listed ten maybe-wishes in the notebook. I narrowed that list down to five, and then again to three. I studied them a bit longer, trying to decide if these were the right three to start my experiment. But heck, how was I supposed to know until I tried?

  I’d purposely chosen three wishes that varied in levels of importance and had zilch to do with Scot or Leslie. Deciding to begin with the easiest, most trivial of the three, I scrawled, “I wish for pizza for dinner tonight, but not pizza that I’ve ordered, purchased, or asked anyone else to bring me.”

  Yes. Lame as far as wishes go, but I had my reasons. Simple. Somewhat immediate. Something I’d know before I went to bed that evening. Plus I was hungry, so I figured the wish would be true of heart, and how would a pizza showing up hurt anyone?

  Ignoring the zip in my bloodstream and the suddenly glowing words, I wrote the next wish. “I wish for my parents, Gregory and Susanna Collins, to be able to relax and worry less about their social standing.” My reasoning for this wish was twofold: one, I’d love it if my parents chilled out a bit, and two, if they did, maybe we’d become closer and our family gatherings would stop resembling a board meeting. Yeah. I’d like that a lot.

  Energy vibrated through my muscles, sending a spasm through my fingers, but I wrote the last wish before giving in to the buzz. “I wish for an influx of new clients at my business, so that Introductions becomes stable again.”

  The power swelled and bobbed, turning the air into a thick, heavy blanket. I closed my eyes, breathed in and out, and thought about each of the wishes I’d just written, one at a time. Probably unnecessary, but doing so gave me a measure of control, a feeling that I was in charge. Ha.

  Slowly, almost too slowly, the sensations flooding my body faded until everything returned to normal. I downed half of my glass of water in one, long, satisfying gulp. I picked up the notebook and used it as a fan to cool my heated skin.

  It startled me to realize how much I wanted this wish-granting situation to be true. It scared me a little, too. Because I’d always known who I was, what I believed in, and truthfully, existing in a logical world was fairly easy. One plus one equals two. A square has four sides. One mile is precisely 5,280 feet long. A year is 365 days. Magic is not real.

  But . . . what if magic was? My entire modus operandi for life would change.

  “Julia? I’m calling out this time so you know I’m here!” Kara hollered. “I have some awesome news!”

  Soul mates. If Verda was right about magic, then who’s to say she wasn’t also correct about Scot? About us?

  “Julia?” Kara’s voice now came from the living room. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. Verda just called me! She says she’s found my perfect match!”

  I grabbed the journal and slid it under my leg. “In here,” I said.

  Kara entered the kitchen and plopped a box on the table. A four-sided, white cardboard, medium-size pizza box. “Want some dinner? Leslie isn’t home yet and I’m so excited! Verda said his name is Brett, and he’s . . .”

  The rest of my friend’s words melted away. Pizza. For dinner. I said a silent good-bye to my nice, orderly, logical world and accepted that I, Julia Collins, knew jack about . . . well, basically everything.

  Chapter Ten

  I wasn’t able to eat the pizza, and it seemed lunch the next day with Jameson was going to turn out just as bad, at least as far as my appetite was concerned. I pushed the piece of balsamic-glazed chicken I’d just speared into my mouth and chewed. Jameson ate his lobster and scallop risotto with a gusto I envied.

  This restaurant was one of my favorites, and I loved this chicken. But not today. Today, I could’ve been chewing on an eraser. I sighed and set my fork down.

  Jameson’s eyes narrowed quizzically. “Is that not to your liking?”

  I attempted a smile. “Oh, no. It’s fine.”

  “You aren’t one of those girls who doesn’t like to eat in front of a man, are you?”

  Ha. Not hardly. “I guess I’m not all that hungry.” Probably, I should’ve canceled this date, too. But getting out of my apartment and away from the journal seemed a good plan. “I had a big breakfast,” I lied. “Because I skipped dinner last night.” Not a lie.

  He considered my statement for a second. Then, with a quick flash in his green eyes, he gestured for the waiter.

  “What are you doing? Please, finish your lunch.” Wow. A little over an hour in Jameson’s company, and I’d struck out. Not that I was aiming for a home run, but still, a girl has her pride, you know?

  The waiter stopped at the table. Jameson nodded toward our plates. “We’d like these to go, and you can bring the bill as well.”

  Once we were alone again, I said, “You could’ve finished. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  Jameson wiped his mouth with his napkin before saying “You’re not enjoying yourself, Julia. Why force you to sit here while I eat, when you’re miserable?”

  “I’m not miserable! I swear. I’m just going through a few . . . peculiar . . . changes.”

  One eyebrow wiggled. “Aren’t you a bit young for menopause?”

  I blinked. “Not those kinds of changes.”

  “Hm. Well, you see, I have this rule when I’m on a date. No one is allowed to be disappointed.” Both of his eyebrows bobbed up and down, belying the serious edge to his tone. “And I am very disappointed. If you weren’t such an important woman for me to impress, I’d take you home right this instant.”

  “Is that so?” I played along, curious and oddly charmed. Quite a coup for Jameson, considering the circumstances.

  “Indeed. So you’ve left me with no choice but to go to drastic measures to correct this sad state of affairs.”

  “And what do you have in mind?”

  “An outing.” Jameson winked. “Are you up for it?”

  Was I up for a little distraction and some distance? Hell yeah. “Sure. An outing sounds fun.”

  I didn’t bother asking where we were going, and he didn’t offer the information. The waiter returned with our boxed meals and handed Jameson the bill. A scant few minutes later, we were headed out of the city in Jameson’s car.

  Okay, calling his panther of an automobile a “car” was a sacrilege. Jameson drove a shiny black BMW Z4 with leather seats, every gadget known to man, and a get-up-and-go engine that went from purring to growling in no time flat. I’d never been a girl who went gaga over anything on four tires, but I had to
admit that Jameson’s ride was smooth, sweet, and sexy. Well, if a car can be sexy, that is.

  Jameson, reading my thoughts, vroomed the engine, proving that yes, his car hit the sexy mark. My gaze settled on his profile. He wore narrow, black-framed sunglasses to combat the glare of the midday November sun. His clothes were Ralph Lauren: khaki chinos teamed with a pale-yellow-and-blue-striped slim-fitting oxford that fit his lean body well. He smiled easily and often, with a hint of quirkiness that I appreciated. Somehow, he reminded me more of a little boy dressed up in his daddy’s clothes, driving his daddy’s car, than he did a grown man. But Jameson worked a serious job, and from what my father said, was good at it. An interesting mix of characteristics.

  Verda’s paperwork and the many questions I’d answered came to mind. “Tell me about the type of women you’re interested in dating, Jameson. Maybe we can get a head start on Monday.”

  He gave me a sidelong glance and chuckled. “You are so much like your father.”

  “Why? Does he also ask you about the women you’d like to date?”

  “You’re both business-minded individuals,” he explained. “Always considering what move to make next on the company chessboard. What needs to be done at work. How you can take whatever situation you’re in and apply it to the job.”

  “It’s a hard habit to break. But really, I just thought it would be something we could talk about. It can wait until tomorrow, though.” I shivered a little. Not from a chill, but from Jameson’s description. Was I that much like my father?

  “Nah, it’s fine. What am I looking for in a woman?” Jameson mused as he merged his car into the most left-hand lane. “I suppose someone who is independent. I don’t like clingy. Smart. Has her own career.” He glanced my way again. “And not to come off as a jerk, but a real career. I’m not interested in dating a cashier or a waitress or a beautician.”

  I coughed to hide my surprise. Not at his statement, but at my gut reaction. His words turned me off—but why? I’d always subscribed to the same philosophy, though I’d never expressed it so baldly. Similar backgrounds and similar goals made it easier for a couple to forge a future, right? I’d always thought so.