That Voodoo That You Do

by Ann Yost

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  Even in the midst of the climax his face twisted.

  It was the wrong thing to say, but it was the truth.

  He didn’t allow himself to collapse on her. Instead, he held himself away, his arms trembling, his breath expelling in rough bursts, his kryptonite eyes harsh, unforgiving. As soon as he collected himself he got to his feet.

  “What a disaster.”

  Was he referring to the too-speedy execution? “I liked it,” she replied.

  He scrubbed his hands down his face then he glared at her. “Don’t you ever get tired of sacrificing yourself? Christ. You need some self-preservation skills.”

  “Teach me,” she said. She’d meant it as a joke, but he wasn’t laughing.

  “Ah, Jessie. Haven’t you figured it out yet?

  You’ll never get anything from me.”

  ****

  A faint scent of cedar mixed with vanilla filled the room as Great-Aunt Blanche stretched out her arms and hovered over the bed. Jessie strained to hear, but she couldn’t distinguish any words. Apparently spirits had as much trouble with enunciation as they did with spelling.

  Jessie’s eyes popped open. The room was empty. Had Blanche been a dream? An apparition? Had she been trying to tell Jessie something? Warn her?

  A quick, hot memory of twisting bodies—hers and Luke’s—slammed into her. Her body throbbed with a need that wouldn’t be satisfied. She knew Luke regretted what had happened downstairs, but she didn’t. He was wrong about her.

  Okay, the marriage to Kit was a dumb idea, but making love with Luke, well it was the high point of her life. He’d shown her possibilities.

  He’d shown her how good sex could be when love was involved, even if it was only on one side.

  She threw her legs over the side of the four poster and walked to the window. She should have been cold in her peach and green negligee, but she wasn’t. She reminded herself she’d come here to regroup, and she’d taken on the murder investigation. This stuff with Luke was a bonus. She grimaced as she remembered the wedding photo and the crystal angel. Luke was clearly still hung up on his ex-wife.

  Could Jessie help him get over Crystal?

  Maybe. If she had enough time.

  She crossed the room, sat on the chintz covered window seat, and gazed out at the snow-saturated, sleeping town. How quiet it was after a storm. In only two days she’d gotten attached to the town, its people, and Blanche’s house. For the first time in her life, she’d really opened her heart to those outside her family. It felt scary but good. The window seat shimmied under her weight. Curious, she ran her fingers under the edge and found a latch.

  A moment later she extracted a musty smelling, leather-bound book from the cupboard inside the seat. Jessie’s heart beat faster. There were no words on the cover and there was no name inside but it clearly belonged to Blanche. She recognized her great aunt’s neat handwriting in the words written on the flyleaf.

  My Book of Shadows.

  A witch’s diary! Would it contain spells? Recipes for magic potions? Would there be a clue about who killed the two old ladies?

  Would there be secrets about Luke’s marriage?

  She scowled. She probably shouldn’t be reading something as private as a diary at all, much less hoping to unearth secrets Luke obviously didn’t want her to know.

  On the other hand, maybe Blanche had left the book here. The ladies seemed to think Blanche expected her.

  A shiver wriggled down her spine. She’d better take a look at this in bed. As soon as she stood, something slipped out of the book and landed face down on the floor. It was a snapshot of a bride and groom. Jessie picked it up, slid back into bed, and turned on the bedside light.

  She examined the Polaroid. It had been taken under Blanche’s arbor out front but instead of dead vines, the lattice work was covered in rich green leaves. It was a perfect backdrop, but Jessie suspected no one ever appreciated it. The newlyweds commanded all eyes, especially the statuesque bride, with her flaxen hair sculpted into a smooth, elaborate up-do, her photogenic features, her swan-like neck, and model-sleek figure outlined in white satin. Her eyes, framed by thick, dark lashes, were a startling amethyst color as she smiled at the photographer. Next to her the dark-haired groom looked elegantly masculine in a black tuxedo, a sprig of lilies of the valley in his collar. It wasn’t possible to see his eyes, but Jessie knew they were a sparkling emerald green. His face was in profile as he gazed at the woman who had just become his wife.

  It was a perfect picture of a couple in love. Luke’s eyes glistened in a way they never had with Jessie. Jessie’s heart ached for his loss and for her own.

  She leafed through the book and found another photograph. This one was taken earlier but also in front of the witch hat house. Three teenaged boys stood together, their arms resting on each other’s shoulders. Luke stood on the left, his green eyes ancient in his young face. Zach Reeves was on the right. There was a serious expression in his sky blue eyes. In the center was a blond, young man whose eyes crinkled at the corners and whose grin lit the picture.

  Jessie glanced at the writing on the back and her heart clenched at time’s inevitable changes. The third boy was Mystic Hollow’s golden boy, the late Bobby Ray Russell. Just for a moment Jessie sympathized with Zach. Bobby Ray would have drawn any woman’s eye.

  Jessie looked at the heart wrenching pictures for a long time. Finally, she put them down and started to read. Jessie noted dates as far back as the 1950s. She knew Blanche had only taken up witchcraft in recent months. Had she changed the diary’s purpose as well as its name? Jessie scanned the entries. It might as well be called A Social History of Mystic Hollow.

  There was no way she could read it all. Not tonight. Jessie leafed through the book searching for the words, Prendergast, witch, and St. Michael’s.

  The church was listed in an entry dated more than thirty years earlier. Earl Russell had been engaged to Charlotte Stewart since high school, and the wedding at St. Michael’s was set for October. That summer, Blanche noted, Earl began to spend time at the toy shop where pretty Judy Chatham worked with her father. Blanche noted that the wedding of Earl and Lottie went ahead as scheduled and a month later Judy married Karl Reeves. Five months later Zachary arrived.

  “Some might blame me for recording this, but it is information that could be important someday. I hope not.”

  Jessie went very still. She glanced again at the photo of the boys. Was Zach Reeves really Earl Russell’s son? If so, did Earl know? Did Zach know? How had the families lived all these years side by side with such a secret? Because whether Earl knew or not, surely Judy did and probably her husband, too.

  Did the secret have anything to do with Zach’s refusal to believe Francine?

  “St. Michael’s” appeared again in a heartbreaking note of a funeral. “Marie Tanner, a seamstress,” Blanche wrote, “was killed in a hit and run accident. She leaves behind a seven-year-old son.”

  Jessie felt the little boy’s pain. A tear dropped onto the yellowed page before she could stop it. She wiped her eyes. Eager to find what she sought, Jessie skipped ahead until she found Blanche’s notation that she’d taken responsibility for Lucas Tanner. His behavior, she wrote, had been scandalous, but within a few months he’d settled down with her. Jessie smiled to herself. Blanche was proud of Luke. She wrote not of his football victories or his academic achievements, she wrote of his character.

  “He’s a good young man, only he doesn’t know it.”

  Luke’s marriage to Crystal was recorded with a date and the details of the wedding at St. Michael’s. There was no comment on Crystal Wetherington Tanner, at least none that Jessie could see. Had Blanche worried about the union? Had she known Crystal would break his heart? She paged ahead and found the divorce recorded three years later, again without comment.

  Jessie leaned back into the pillows exhausted after the emotional walk down memory lane. It was like reading a hear
t-tugging novel only it hurt more because she loved the main character.

  After a few minutes Jessie got back to work. She searched for some mention of the problems at the church, Reverend Prendergast, and the mortician, but she found nothing. The pastor’s wife, though, rated a paragraph.

  “I can’t help sympathizing with Eleanor Prendergast. I have met with her several times and find her a pleasant, unassuming woman, dedicated to the church and her husband, but heart heavy. Perhaps she wanted a child and was unable to have one. She has not confided in me.”

  Great-Aunt Blanche had a lot of insight. Eleanor Prendergast bore the burden of an unfaithful spouse, one whose infidelities, if they were discovered, would look larger than life to the residents of Mystic Hollow. Jessie felt sorry for the woman, too.

  She never did find anything about the secret at St. Michael’s, but the last entry grabbed her attention. She read it through several times.

  “I helped Lottie go through Bobby Ray’s things over at the Russell’s. I found an envelope that contained correspondence addressed to Bobby Ray in Iraq. They were typed and signed by Francine. Each appeared to be a love letter, and I did not understand as Francine has long been in love with Zachary Reeves. Perhaps I shouldn’t have pried, but I confess I did.”

  “In the final paragraph of each letter were penciled lines under every fifth word. It was a code. Something compelled me to decipher that code, and I discovered a sad truth.”

  “Bobby Ray was carrying on with Crystal.”

  Jessie felt the heaviness in Blanche’s words.

  “Lucas must never find out. It no longer matters as he is divorced from the woman, but the knowledge of the affaire de Coeur would break his heart all over again.”

  Jessie turned out the bedside light and stared into the dark while she tried to decide what to do. This information would be invaluable to Francie and Zach. It would set them free to have the future they’d planned. On the other hand, Jessie knew Blanche had been right. It would devastate Luke.

  Jessie weighed the matter for a long time, but in the end, there was no real choice. She turned the light back on, ripped the page out of the Book of Shadows, and ripped it into tiny shreds. She left them in a little pile on the bedside table to throw away in the morning. She turned out the light, but just as she was settling back into the bed, the door opened.

  He leaned against the frame, backlit by a faint light. His broad chest was bare, his arms folded over it. Long, muscular legs were encased in half-zipped jeans. The thick dark hair was rumpled. She couldn’t make out his features, but she knew they were set in a hard expression. She knew the emerald eyes were glittering.

  The poster boy from hell.

  There was no mistaking his purpose. Adrenalin shot through her system, and she felt her lips stretch into a grin.

  “Merry Christmas to me,” she murmured.

  Chapter Twelve

  It had been a mistake. A fatal mistake.

  He’d betrayed Jessie. He’d betrayed Blanche.

  And he’d betrayed himself.

  God dammit all.

  The minutes crawled as Luke shifted and tossed on sheets damp from his sweat. He didn’t know which was worse, knowing he’d hammered the last nail into his coffin or knowing he’d do it again.

  Finally, he got to his feet and paced the room. Despite the winter cool and his bare chest, he was suffocating. He thrust long fingers into his hair and rubbed the back of his neck. Every muscle was knotted, and blood poured into his lower body like a raging river. He stopped in front of a window and scowled at the snow.

  How had it come to this? He hadn’t felt this urgency, this desperation since he was a teenager and got his first look at the ice queen. He’d lost his head. And he’d lost his pride, too. Hell, the instant he’d slipped into her tight little passage he’d come like a bull. Damn.

  He wore out the carpet as he reviewed his options. There weren’t many. He might be able to walk away from the elf, but he couldn’t ignore his debt to Blanche. Basically he had two choices, and one of those was divine intervention.

  God dammit. There’d be no miracle. Hell, he didn’t deserve a miracle. Not this time. He faced his future with a grim determination.

  He’d have to marry Jessie Maynard.

  It wasn’t all bad. He liked Jessie. She’d have made a good friend. And she was a surprising lover. His body stirred as he realized his decision meant they could have all the sex they wanted. Luke felt his body harden.

  Goddam. Maybe they’d be okay as long as she understood. Luke could give her his name, his worldly goods and his body, but he couldn’t give her his heart.

  He pictured her sleepy-eyed, warm and welcoming in the four-poster bed, and his jeans tightened. It was uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t be for long.

  When he opened the door of her room the light from the hallway revealed the dark gold of her eyes. She was awake. She said nothing as he moved toward the bed but he could see the shock on her face and the response of her body under the filmy fabric of her nightgown.

  His voice came out in a husky growl. “Your nipples are hard.”

  ****

  Jessie couldn’t get enough oxygen. Fire exploded in her belly. Hot liquid pooled between her legs preparing her for entry. His entry. He wanted her, too. She couldn’t miss the excitement in his kryptonite eyes or in the impressive bulge between his legs.

  He sank onto the bed, and the warmth of his body engulfed her. He reeked of restlessness, his hair disheveled, a sheen of sweat on his muscled torso. She should probably ask why the change of heart, but she didn’t. It was enough that he was here.

  His palm grazed the underside of her chin, and her heart thundered. She leaned toward him like a daisy seeking the sun. Her hand moved to his lap.

  “Is this a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

  His hand pressed against hers, and she felt the thrusting masculine flesh imprisoned in denim.

  “You figure it out.”

  His breathing roughened, but the moan came from her.

  His other hand gently cupped her barely clad breast, and she arched, craving more. And she got more when he pushed the negligee out of the way and took one aching nipple into his mouth. His other hand shoved aside the covers, and his fingers stroked her, inside and out, over and over. She felt invaded, possessed. Desire turned to need, and she felt herself tightening and twisting moving toward a promise of paradise. She wanted him to come along with her. She reached for him, but he angled away. The rejection was harsh, brutal, and short-lived.

  “If you touch me now,” he breathed, “it’ll be all over before it begins.”

  Her lashes fluttered shut, and she focused on his touch. Soon she started the spiral. She clutched at dark curls on his chest, felt the slab of hard, hot muscle under her fingers, turned her face up to find his mouth.

  “Who knew,” Luke whispered as she rocked against his hand, moaned against his mouth, “elves were so sexy?”

  The pleasure ambushed her, and with a broken cry, she shot into the stratosphere. Afterward she couldn’t stop kissing him, his cheeks, his ear, his neck, the flat hard plain of his stomach, and then she came to the half-open zipper. His big body spasmed.

  “I want to kiss you,” she said.

  She took his strangled growl as a yes, and she shifted into a more comfortable position with her knees straddling his legs. She put her hand on the zipper, bumping against his erection, and she began very slowly to unzip. After each half-inch, she pressed her face against him. She felt him tremble with need.

  “You’re killin’ me, Elf.”

  She lifted her head. “I just want you to enjoy this gear for a while.”

  He dug his hands into her curls. “If I enjoy it much longer, I’ll have a stroke.”

  A sense of power flooded her. She, plain Jessie Maynard, was giving him pleasure, this man who’d probably made love with dozens of women, who’d been married to a virtual goddess. She opened his pants, stroked
the bulging vein in the thick shaft, caressed the testicles pulled up tight against his body, and took his fierce arousal into her mouth.

  Luke groaned heavily, arched up, and exploded. She yelped and gagged.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, when he could talk again. “I thought I’d suffocated you.”

  Chagrin swamped her. Way to spoil the moment. “I was just surprised.”

  He was silent a moment, and then he sat up and took her face in his hands. He searched it for a moment. “Not something you usually do?”

  “Not so much.” Make that, not ever.

  “Did it bring back bad memories?”

  Her eyes widened. Trust Luke to make the connection with her disastrous rehearsal dinner. Of course he was wrong. She’d been thinking of nothing, and no one besides the man who’d bewitched her. She touched his hard cheek.

  “I’m sorry I spoiled it. Could I have a do over?”

  His chuckle warmed her from the inside out. “Give me a few minutes. And for the record, Elf, it was the best I’ve ever had.”

  An exaggeration, she decided, but still nice to hear.

  He pulled her against him and flipped the quilt over them both. She curled against him, loving the way his heart pounded, rhythmic and hard, loving the way he stroked her back, loving him.

  “Christ,” he said, sleepily. “If we’re gonna keep this up, I better buy some condoms.”

  ****

  Jessie slid under the bubbles in the claw footed bathtub.

  Much as she hated to admit it, Kit had been right. She’d spent her life rescuing her family, guarding her heart. Making love with Luke had felt somehow transcendent. She was a new woman, a powerful, self-assured, desirable woman. She wasn’t, however, a woman who was loved. Nobody got everything they wanted. She accepted that. But that being the case, there was no way she could indulge in a do-over. Luke would just have to use his soon-to-be-bought condoms on somebody else.