“Get warm by the fire,” she said. “I’ll go find you some dry clothes.”
“Change first,” he said. “Here.” Something clicked and a light appeared. “Take my flashlight with you.”
“Thanks. There are some candles on the mantel. Matches, too.”
“Got it.”
Dori took the light and headed up the stairs to the loft bedroom, still shivering. She opened dresser drawers, pulled out items, happy to have the flashlight to help her find a warm pullover, plaid flannel pajama pants and, best of all, a pair of thick, cushy socks. She set the light on her dresser, than sat down on her bed to remove her frozen socks. The bottoms of her jeans were stiff and icy. She stripped everything off and put on the comfortable clothes. Then she went to the closet, where she’d packed away the clothing Uncle Gerald had left behind. Suits hung in a fat garment bag, but the more practical items were packed in boxes. She found sweatpants, a sweatshirt, put them on the bed and then found her way back down the stairs with help from the flashlight.
She’d only been gone a few minutes, but Jason was efficient. He’d lit every candle he could find. She heard him rattling around in the kitchen. “Jason?”
He appeared in the doorway, lit by the glow of the ancient hurricane lamp that had hung from a nail beside the front door for as long as she could remember. “Sit by the fire. I’ve got the water heating.”
She went to him and took the lamp from his hands, replacing it with the flashlight. “I’ll finish the cocoa. Go on upstairs and change. I left some clothes on the bed for you.”
He was about to argue, so she held up a finger. “Go on.”
Smiling, he obeyed. By the time he came back into the living room, she had two mugs of hot cocoa sitting on the coffee table, and she’d pushed a rocker and an overstuffed chair up closer to the heat. She was sitting in the rocker, a blanket from the back of the sofa draped around her shoulders.
“I smell chocolate.” He flicked off the flashlight and set a bundle of clothes on the floor near the fire before sitting down. “Getting warm yet?”
“My feet have thawed out. Now they hurt. You?”
He lifted his cup of cocoa from the table and stretched his feet out so they were closer to the fire. “Getting there.” He sipped his cocoa. “So.”
“So,” she said.
He drew a breath. “So you really thought I stopped asking you out because you’re a Witch?”
She shrugged. “Yeah. I really did. It wasn’t such an illogical conclusion, was it? You asked me several times and then you stopped.”
“I stopped right after you shot me down the first time. And then we had that talk the other day. The one where you told me you still planned to leave here as soon as you could.”
She tipped her head to one side. “I never made any secret about that. I always planned for my stay here to be a temporary one.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I was a little too dense to get that. Or maybe I was hoping you’d change your mind. But when you put it to me the way you did…well, I realized I was deluded.”
“Maybe I was the one who was deluded.”
He stared at her in the light of the fire. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, every résumé I’ve sent out has resulted in a response of ‘Thanks, but no, thanks.’” She shrugged. “Maybe I’m not supposed to go back to Manhattan.”
“But you still want to.”
She frowned at him. “I thought I did. All this time, I thought that was all I wanted. My old life back. Now I…now I don’t know what I want.”
He sipped his cocoa again, didn’t say anything for a long time. The fire painted his face in shadows and light. He seemed brooding, deep, and clearly, hours had gone by since his morning shave. She caught herself wanting to run her palms over his stubbly cheeks.
“I owe you an apology. A long overdue one.”
He looked up at her, met her eyes. “For what?”
“For leaving you the way I did. With just a letter.”
He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have mattered how you left me, Dori. It was the leaving that did me in.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hell, it’s water under the bridge. It’s not your fault. I felt something you didn’t. It happens.”
“If I had known—”
“You’d have what? Stayed? No, Dori. I don’t think that would have happened, and I’m not sure it even should have happened. You needed to get out of here, test your wings. It changed you.”
“Did it?”
He nodded. “You figured out who you were. You have something now that you didn’t have before. I’ve been trying to figure out what it was since the first day I saw you back in town, and now I think I’ve nailed it.”
“Really? What is it?”
“I don’t know if it has a name. It’s like you always had this wellspring of…something deep down. But going away gave you the chance to find it, to tap into it, to bring it all bubbling up to the surface. You glow now. An inner light. A core of power. Maybe…maybe it’s that you found your magic.”
“I thought I had,” she said. “And then I thought it was gone again, when I lost everything and had to come back here. Only—it wasn’t really. I turned my back on it, not the other way around. It came so clear to me out there on the lake tonight.”
“Did it?”
“Yeah. I’ve been lost. I’ve been floundering around in the darkness, wondering where the light went. But it’s here, it’s been here all along, just waiting for me to see it. It burns just the same, whether I’m here or in Manhattan. I’m the keeper of my own flame. No one has the power to put it out but me. Not a job, not prestige, not a huge income or a Mercedes or a penthouse apartment. Where I live or what I do for a living has nothing to do with who I am.”
He smiled at her. “That’s great, Dori. I’m glad for you.”
“But?” She waited, draining her cocoa, then putting her cup on the floor.
He shrugged. “But nothing.”
“Come on, Jason, don’t hold back. You’ve been pretty instrumental in my reaching a lot of the conclusions I have. Don’t stop now.”
He pursed his lips in thought, then finally nodded. “Okay. I’ll give it to you straight.” He set his cup down, got out of his chair and took her hands to pull her to her feet.
For a moment he simply looked at her, really looked, deeply into her eyes. Then he cupped her head in his hands, and he kissed her. Dori’s eyes fell closed as his lips covered hers. His fingers spread through her hair, and one hand slid lower, to the small of her back and eased her closer, and still closer, until her body was pressed to his. His hand stroked her hair, a sensual massage as his lips moved over hers. Gentle suction, constant motion. His body molded to hers a little harder, his hand at her back drawing her tighter. Fingers splayed at the back of her head as the kiss deepened. He played her the way a master played a violin. He made her body sing. He always had.
Dori gave in to the music, sliding her arms around his waist, parting her lips to let him in. She wasn’t cold anymore.
They kissed, standing near the fire, for a long time. And when he finally lifted his head, his eyes glittering as they stared into hers, he said, “I want you to stay.”
She blinked at him. “But…Jason, this is…”
“What? So sudden? So new? It’s not, you know. I’m just picking up where we left off ten years ago, Dori.” He let his arms fall to his sides from around her. She felt lonely without them. “I didn’t want to do this, not until I was sure you’d decided to stay. I didn’t want to lay my heart out there on the platter again, just waiting for a cleaver to whack it in two. But maybe…maybe you just need a reason to make that decision. Or maybe not. Maybe I’m dead wrong here. It could be that this incredible thing I feel between us is all in my head. God knows I thought it must have been when you walked away the last time. But then…you came back. And I know it wasn’t for me, but I can’t help wondering if…it was fate that brought you back here. Back to me.”<
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The lights flicked on, off, then on again. They stayed on this time. He smiled at her. “Guess that would be the return of the light you were talking about in the boat, huh?”
“Not even close,” she said, but she knew he was only joking, trying to lighten up what had become an intense and heavy moment. He wanted an answer from her, a decision. A commitment.
A repetitive beeping sound distracted her and she couldn’t stop the phrase saved by the bell from whispering through her thoughts. Frowning, she spotted the answering machine, its light flashing insistently.
“Talk about timing,” Jason muttered. Then he sighed again. “Maybe we needed a break anyway. Go ahead, get your messages. I’ll put out all these candles before we burn the place down.”
“Thanks, Jason.”
He wandered into the kitchen with their cocoa cups, blowing out candles on the way. Dori went to the machine and poked the Play button.
“Hi, Doreen. This is your old boss, Marie Brown, from Mason-Walcott. We’ve acquired another publishing company and we’d like to offer you a position—as publisher. You’d be making significantly more than you were the last time you worked for us, but we have to hear from you soon. Call me and we’ll discuss the details.”
Dori stood there staring at the machine as Marie’s voice recited her telephone number. “Wow,” Jason said.
She jumped, because she’d been so distracted she hadn’t heard him come up behind her, and turned to face him. He had two fresh mugs of cocoa in his hands, and a sad look in his eyes. “This is what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? The job offer of your dreams?”
She nodded slowly.
“So you’re going to take it?”
“I don’t—Jason, I don’t—”
He shook his head and bent to set the mugs down. “Don’t. It’s okay. I get it.” He walked past her to scoop up his pile of clothes from the floor.
“No, you don’t get it. Goddess, one minute you’re telling me all these things I never knew, and the next minute I get what I thought I always wanted handed to me. My mind is still spinning. Can’t you even give me time to sort this out?”
He looked at her, and the emotion in his eyes was so powerful it made her throat close up. He looked heartbroken. As if he already knew what her decision would be. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he gave her a sad smile, came to her, touched her face. “Sure I can, Dori.” Leaning closer, he kissed her cheek. “I’m gonna clear out of here, let you sleep on all of this. Okay?”
She swallowed hard. “Okay.”
Walking with him to the door, Dori found herself fighting the ridiculous impulse to throw her arms around him and beg him to stay. But she couldn’t do that to him. Not until she sorted things out.
He stomped into his boots, pulled on his coat, opened the door.
“Good night, Jason.”
“Goodbye, Dori.”
Then he was gone.
Chapter Ten
Dori didn’t go to sleep. She turned off the lights and sat in front of the fire, staring into the flames and searching them for help.
What had she lost by leaving the city? Money, yes, she’d lost a lot of that. Friends? Well, maybe not. Friends weren’t friends if they vanished so easily. She’d sold her precious crystal ball. But the Witches of old hadn’t needed four-hundred-dollar gazing balls to see into the future. They hadn’t needed much at all. A bowl of water. A dark mirror. A leaping flame.
She relaxed her mind, let her vision blur, her body go slack. One by one, she opened her chakra centers, felt them fill with energy. She focused her thoughts on her life, her future; saw herself picking up the phone and returning Marie’s call; heard herself accepting the offer; and let herself sink into the future.
The images came floating like bits of a dream, one following another. A beautiful apartment. A new Mercedes. Respect and admiration. The Wiccan community gathering around her once again. It all seemed lovely. Except that in each of those flashes, she saw herself alone. She saw the longing in her eyes, the loneliness. The same heartsick loneliness she’d been feeling since she’d come back here—no, for even longer than that. She felt herself wishing she were somewhere else. With someone else.
Drawing a breath, she closed her mind to the visions, cleared them away and began again. This time she started by clearly visualizing herself phoning Marie and refusing the offer. It was a difficult visualization to manage—saying no to something for which she had been waiting an entire year. But then she relaxed again, and again the images came to her. Stubbornly, slowly. But they came.
She saw herself on the boat in the summer, taking tourists around the lake, telling them all Uncle Gerald’s old Champ stories. Smiling. She saw herself expanding the business, adding an inn, maybe a restaurant, a bigger gift shop. And smiling. And in every picture that came, Jason was with her.
She saw him sitting across a candlelit table from her, at Sister Krissie’s Bar and Grill, the best restaurant in Crescent Cove, holding her hand. And she nearly gasped at the matching gold bands they wore. She saw him get up and come around the table, lowering his hand to rest it on her belly—a belly that was huge and round and filled with new life.
Dori gasped and her body went rigid. The visions faded.
She tried to ground and center, but couldn’t quite make it work. But she did know one thing. There had been no sense of loneliness in that second vision. No sadness in her eyes. There had been bliss, pure joyful bliss.
She reached for the phone, snatched it up and dialed Jason’s number.
His voice, when he answered, wasn’t sleepy. Maybe he’d been lying awake, too? He didn’t say, “Hello.” He said, “Dori?”
“Come back, Jason. Please, come back to me.”
There was the briefest pause. Then he said, “I’m on my way.”
Fifteen minutes later his headlights bounced into the driveway. She was waiting for him, outside, bundled, a hood pulled up around her head. She took his hand when he got out, ignored the questions in his eyes and tugged him toward the lake.
The storm had eased. The wind still blew, but the sky was clearing. Stars peeked from between the clouds now. Standing there on the shore, she faced him, clasping both his hands in hers. “I have something to say.”
He nodded, and she could see in his eyes that he was expecting her to break his heart again. “I’ll try not to interrupt.”
“All right. Here it is. All this time, I thought I was being punished for something. Or that I’d been laid so low in order to learn some kind of a lesson. I turned my back on my own beliefs.” She shook her head slowly. “But the whole time, all that was really happening was that the clutter was being cleared out of my life, so I could find my heart’s desire. Everything I had—those were just things—just obstacles standing between me and the life I was really meant to lead. Once they were gone, I could finally find my way through my own darkness, to a gift more precious than anything I ever had or ever will. I found my way back to where I belong. To the light. To Crescent Cove. And to you, Jason.”
His eyes filled with wonder and dampness. “You’re staying?”
“I’m staying.”
“But…the job offer…”
“I had a better offer. The one where you asked me to stay. And marry you. And bear your children.”
He stared so intensely at her she thought he must be able to see straight through her, and into her heart. “I didn’t ask you those things…not yet.”
“But you will, won’t you, Jason?”
He swallowed hard. “Is that what you want? Are you sure, Dori, that you won’t change your mind and want to go?”
“How could I go?” she asked with a smile. “It’s taken me a while to figure it out, Jason, but I’m in love with you. Madly, deeply, completely in love with you. I think I have been for a long, long time.”
He gathered her into his arms and kissed her as if there were no tomorrow. When he came up for air, he said, “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting
for you to say those words to me, Dori?”
“Too long. I’m sorry I made you wait.”
“I’d have waited forever.” He kissed her again, deeply, tenderly, and she knew down deep in her soul that she had made the right decision. She was home.
When Jason lifted his head, they both turned to see the sun rising slowly over Lake Champlain. “And this is what you meant by ‘the return of the light.’”
“This is what I meant,” she whispered. And looking at the sky, she added, “Thank you.”
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