That Voodoo That You Do

by Ann Yost

  Luke grinned. Wherever Crystal was, there was a man willing to take care of her. That man, however, would no longer be him.

  ****

  Kit and Gillian were waiting in the Jeep. They jumped apart as Jessie opened the door. Gilly’s mouth was as swollen as Jessie’s eyes, and Kit was breathing as though the Shenandoah Valley was the top of Mount Everest.

  In spite of her own heartache, Jessie was pleased.

  Her cell phone rang while she was driving home. She ignored it.

  “Want me to get that?” Gillian asked.

  “They can leave a message.”

  “I’m guessing by the strained look on your face you left your own message back there at the hospital.”

  Jessie didn’t reply.

  “You’re trying to run away, Jess,” Kit said. “Again.”

  “It’s different this time. The guy clearly wants someone else.” An ironic laugh erupted in her throat. “No, wait. It isn’t different.”

  “Except that this time you love the guy,” Kit said, quietly.

  She wasn’t going to deny it. She wasn’t going to talk about it either. “I’m tired of the whole thing,” she said. “Really. I just want to go home.”

  They rode for a mile in silence, and then Gillian spoke again. “I’m not a big fan of psychic phenomena, but I can’t help thinking you’re here for a specific purpose. Great-Aunt Blanche wanted to bring you and Luke together.”

  Jessie nodded. “I think I was meant to help him break through his denial and deal with the past.”

  “And what about you?”

  It was a fair question. “He helped me understand that I had to loosen the reins, stop trying to solve everybody else’s problems.”

  “And then there was the passion,” Gillian said, softly.

  Her heart twisted. Yeah. There was the passion.

  Jessie’s cell rang again during dinner. She felt it vibrate in her pocket but didn’t answer it. There just wasn’t anything more to say.

  She went upstairs after dinner and packed up her clothes. They wouldn’t all fit in the yellow suitcase Luke had so grudgingly hauled up the stairs only five days ago.

  Was Kit right? Was she running away again? Should she ignore the history between Luke and Crystal, ignore the way they looked at one another, the way they looked together? Should she take him up on his offer? How could she when she knew, all the way to her soul, what it felt like to really love someone. She knew she’d never feel like this about anyone else. How could she marry a man who felt that fierce, aching desire for someone else?

  She couldn’t.

  But she’d miss him. For the rest of her life.

  Dusk settled on the small town. The Maynard family and friends gathered once again around the fire in the parlor where they consumed wine and shared stories.

  “This has been the best Christmas ever,” Monica pronounced from her seat on the sofa next to her ex-husband. “So good, in fact, that Howard and I have decided to stay here for a few more days.”

  “We may even retire here,” Jessie’s dad said.

  “That’s wonderful,” Mabel Ruth said.

  “Excellent,” Millicent said.

  “Dear Blanche would have loved it,” Maude added.

  “You don’t have to worry about the business, either,” Kit put in. He spoke from the loveseat where he had his arm around Gillian. “Gilly and I will drive the Fusco’s truck back, and I’ll get back to the office.”

  That took care of everyone but Jessie. No one looked at her, but she knew they were waiting to hear her plans. Too bad she didn’t have any.

  “I’m going back home, too,” she said, with a cheeriness she didn’t feel. “I’ve loved spending Christmas down here in Aunt Blanche’s house, meeting all of you.” She smiled at the elderly ladies. “But I’m ready to go home. I took some library science classes in college. Maybe I’ll look for something along that line.”

  “Libraries? I never knew you were interested in libraries,” Kit said.

  “The reverend shut down our library,”

  Millicent pointed out.

  “Maybe Jessie could start it back up again,” Maude said.

  “Hush, Maudie,” Mabel Ruth intervened.

  Jessie knew her cheeks were red. Mabel Ruth knew she couldn’t stay in Mystic Hollow, and she knew why. The sense of loss slammed into her. She prayed no one would ask her about Luke and Crystal.

  “Maybe you should stay, dear,” Monica said. “You seem different down here in the country.

  How astute of her mother to notice.

  Jessie thought about the way she fit in the small town. She loved the quirky shopkeepers and the fact that you couldn’t cross the Green without meeting a friend or acquaintance. She loved the lame festivals and the faux witches and Aunt Blanche’s witch hat house. She didn’t know Luke’s immediate plans, but even if he and Crystal left Mystic Hollow, Jessie couldn’t come back because what she loved far and away the most about the town was Luke Tanner.

  Kit’s cell phone rang. He left the room and came back minutes later and gestured to Gillian. Jessie didn’t miss them until an hour later when Kit burst through the front door bringing with him the smells of the outdoors, the holiday and the night.

  “Special delivery for Miss Jessie Maynard,” he caroled. She’d been sitting by Pyewacket’s family, saying goodbye. She looked up to see her sister, blue eyes glistening, standing before her.

  “Guess Santa thought you deserved more than Fancy Feast,” Gillian said. “Put your coat on. We’re going outside.”

  It was easier not to argue. Besides, she could use the fresh air. Fusco’s truck was parked in front of the house. Kit went to the back of it and opened the big doors. “Come on, Jess,” he said. “I’ll give you a boost,” he said.

  He wanted her to get in the refrigerated truck? She moved closer. Gone were the ice sculpture, the cake, and the finger foods from her aborted wedding. The space had been turned into a hospital room, and at its center, lying on a gurney and still hooked up to an IV, was a narrow-eyed Luke Tanner.

  She thought he looked angry, and then she moved closer. Jessie watched his jaw clench and his knuckles turn white as his fingers curled around the metal sides of the gurney. Not angry. Hurting. She could only imagine what he’d done to his newly wounded body and his stitches.

  She snapped at him. “Are you out of your mind? You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I wouldn’t be here,” he said, evenly, “if you would answer your phone.”

  She heard a gasp as he tried to control the pain.

  “Dammit, Luke!” She glared at Kit. “How could the hospital release you in this condition? Where’s your morphine drip?”

  “They didn’t release him,” Gillian explained. “We conspired with one of the nurses, Mrs. Russell, to get him out. Oh, and the drip’s still attached. He just insisted on turning it off.”

  “What?” Jessie knew she sounded like the worst kind of shrew but she didn’t care.

  “I need a clear head to talk to you.”

  She could see the white tracings around his lips, and his face was pale. Her heart turned over.

  “I’ll talk to you as long as you want if you turn that thing on and head back to the hospital.”

  “You do it,” he told her. She had to get really close and examine the gizmo. She inhaled the scent of antiseptics and the odor of a man who hadn’t taken a shower in two days. But the overwhelming scent was that musk that was solely Luke’s. She wanted to lie down on the gurney and crawl inside his skin.

  Jessie realized there was something missing. “Where’s Crystal?”

  “At some intern’s Christmas party.” The green eyes suddenly looked unsure. It was an expression she’d never seen in that rugged face. “She and I are finished. I told her yesterday and again this afternoon.”

  Jessie felt her heart cracking all over again.

  He’d made this magnificent—insane—gesture, and it was all about his honor.

  H
e seemed to read her mind. “This has nothing to do with Blanche,” he said. “Why don’t you try listening? Really listening.”

  She stared at him. She was so worried he’d reopened the stitches.

  “Sit down,” he said. “Please.” She sat.

  “I don’t want to marry you because I have to. I’ll admit it started out that way, or I told myself it did. But somewhere along the line things changed. I want you, Elf. I want you to be my wife.”

  A tiny bud of hope blossomed deep in Jessie’s heart. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  She thought about that. “What was the turning point?”

  “I think it was when you shut me in the coffin.” He picked up her hand and smoothed his thumb over the delicate blue veins. “Maybe even before that. I don’t know. I’m not going to hold you to the engagement if you really want out, but I needed for you to understand.”

  She wanted to understand, but she had doubts. “I saw you with Crystal, Luke. I saw the easy familiarity of a couple that’s been together a long time. I saw the way you touched her hair when she went to you in the church.”

  “I’d just been shot.”

  Jessie said nothing. It was an excuse. Wasn’t it?

  “Don’t you understand? I’m free of Crystal because of you. I’ve never had anyone rescue me before. Knowing you taught me what I’d missed. It allowed me to unearth my feelings for Crystal and drag them out into the light. They were skimpy, puny little things. And when she turned up here, I acknowledged what I’d known for a long time: I was in love with the fantasy Crystal, not the real person.”

  “And you don’t love her anymore?”

  “I’m not sure I ever loved her.”

  Jessie remembered the worshipful look on his face in the wedding photo. “I don’t know if I can believe you.”

  A tremor ran through Luke’s prone body. This time it was anger.

  “You know you’ve called me a ‘hero’ more than once, but you think I’d lie about something this important or worse, that I don’t know my own mind?”

  He had a point. “I’m sorry, Luke. It’s just that I know you’re trying to do the right thing.”

  The anger seemed to go out of him. He went back to fondling her hand. “I am trying to do the right thing here, Elf. I’m trying like hell, but I need your help. The right thing for me is to spend the rest of my life with you. But, like I said, I won’t force the issue if that isn’t what you want.”

  “It is what I want.” She hoped she wasn’t making a mistake, but there were only so many times she could force herself to turn him down.

  “You’re my heart,” he whispered. Suddenly, she knew he meant it. Her own heart leapt.

  “I love you, Luke Tanner.” The words jumped right out of her mouth.

  “I love you more. Does this mean you’ll marry me?”

  She couldn’t prevent the tears from gathering behind her eyes, and she couldn’t keep them from falling. For a long minute she couldn’t find any words, so she just nodded. He used his thumbs to brush the tears away. Their eyes met and held. “What’re you thinking, sweet?”

  “I’m wondering whether our children will have those sorcerer’s eyes.” Taking care not to dislodge the tubes she slid her body against his and felt the hard muscles and the even harder flesh.

  He groaned. “Don’t get too excited. There’s nothing we can do now.”

  She placed her hand on his crotch and grinned at him. “If that’s what you think, you’ve completely underestimated me.”

  Fifteen minutes later Kit and Gillian returned to find Luke and Jessie intertwined among the tubes.

  “Look at them sleeping together,” Kit said, “like a couple of lazy cats.”

  Jessie buried her face in Luke’s chest. They hadn’t been lazy five minutes earlier.

  “I think we can leave the hospital,” Gillian said. “Looks like they’re both happy with their presents.”

  “I’m not looking for an exchange,” Jessie said.

  Luke’s arm tightened around her. “No exchanges, no returns, no refunds, Miss Jessie Maynard,” he said, his eyes full of love. “No more runaway bride. You belong to me, and I am never going to let you go.”

  That sounded good to Jessie. Real good. She waved away her sister and Kit as she arched up to kiss the man she loved. It had turned into the best Christmas ever.

  A word from the author…

  I was born in the Midwest, and until the age of five, I believed my hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, was named after me. My dad was a journalist and humor writer, and I followed in his footsteps. Since that seemed to be working, I went ahead and married another journalist. I’ve written tongue-in-cheek about lots of things like marriage, children, substitute teaching, and Little League. In my books I like to examine human nature with a light approach (though there are usually corpses involved), and I love to see characters find love in the most unlikely places. I’ve written seven novels, one of them a finalist in the RWA’s Golden Heart contest, and I’m so pleased to become a Wild Rose author.

  Visit Ann at www.annyost.blogspot.com and www.annyost.com

  Thank you for purchasing

  this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.