Witchful Thinking

by Kristen Painter

  “Everything okay?” The place was tiny, but warm and inviting. Their arms touched as he walked into the narrow foyer.

  “Not really. Someone broke into the library last night and ransacked the place. There were books everywhere. They were pulled off the shelves and tossed around like someone was bent on destruction. It was a mess.” She shut the door. “The sheriff came and there were deputies all over and it was nuts.”

  He already knew about the break-in. He’d been watching the library most of the day and taking photos of the patrons in case Charlotte wasn’t on the Collective’s payroll. Which, judging by her postage stamp apartment, was looking more and more likely. At least she wasn’t on the big money side of the payroll. Unless she wasn’t getting her reward until she handed over the book.

  Then that payday might be enough incentive to sway her. Especially with how little she made at the library. And the Collective might worry that they’d need that incentive to keep her from holding on to the book for herself. But if she was the Collective’s agent, why would she ransack the library? She had access to it anytime. The only reason he could think of was to send him hunting in the wrong direction. From that angle, trashing the library made perfect sense. He dug deeper. “Did they take anything? What did the sheriff find?”

  “Not much. There was nothing missing that we could determine. The place was dusted for prints, which I then had to clean up.” She sighed as she tossed the towel over her shoulder and went back into her tiny kitchen. “They took our fingerprints too, to compare them.”

  “Our? As in yours and the other woman who works there?” He put the wine and the dessert on the counter.

  “Yes. And that other woman is the head librarian, Mildred Merriweather. We also have a part-timer, Norm Poole. Not sure what good the prints are going to do them, though. There’s not a book in there the three of us haven’t touched. And it’s a public library. Everyone in town is going to have prints in there.”

  “True.” Which meant the sheriff’s department wasn’t going to find anything helpful, but it was still a great way to cast aspersions elsewhere. He gently tapped the top of the tiramisu box. “Okay if I put this in the fridge?”

  “Oh, sure.” She blew her bangs off her forehead. “Sorry, I’m talking your ear off with my woes. How was your day?”

  “I don’t mind listening at all. My day was fine. Boring by comparison.” People watching, while necessary, was not his idea of a good time. After taking pictures of everyone who’d visited the library today, he’d uploaded them to the FOL’s cloud to be scanned against the database of Collective agents. Chances were slim a match would be returned, but any opportunity to shift things in his favor was one he would take.

  Of course, he hadn’t taken Charlotte’s picture yet.

  He opened the fridge and put the tiramisu on a shelf. Everything inside was precisely placed and neatly lined up. All the labels were faced out. Charlotte liked organization, apparently. He was good with that. Organization made life easier. He closed the fridge door. “Dinner smells great, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” She shot him a quick smile as she slipped oven mitts on. “It’s almost ready, too.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “Open that wine and pour us some glasses.”

  “I can definitely do that. Wine opener?”

  “Drawer next to the fridge.”

  “On it. But first…” He pulled out his phone, tapped the camera, and held it up. “Let’s get a selfie. I’ll post it and you can like it or share it or whatever, then people will know we’re hanging out.”

  “Sure. In case you turn out to be a serial killer.”

  “Exactly. This will give the police something to go on.”

  She laughed. “Okay, but it’s a little unfair. You look great. Meanwhile, the steam from the pasta water has flattened my hair and melted my makeup.”

  “You look beautiful.” It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself. It wasn’t a lie. She did. But he shouldn’t be saying things like that to a woman he might have to take into custody. “I just mean flattened hair and melted makeup is a good look for you.”

  She gave him a curious glance. “That’s kind of you. But you don’t have to flatter me. I’m already making you dinner. And I know the truth.”

  He took a harder look at her. She was beautiful. Maybe not in a Hollywood way, but interesting faces had always appealed to him far more than perfect ones. Although hers was pretty close to perfect. He leaned in, snapped the shot, then asked, “What’s that supposed to mean, you know the truth?”

  She picked up the pasta pot and poured the contents into the strainer waiting in the sink. “I know what I look like. I’m no beauty queen. On a good day, I’m average. And that’s okay. I’m kind and smart and occasionally funny. I’m one of those people whose good stuff is on the inside.”

  “You’re selling yourself short.” He sent the picture off to the cloud, then put his phone away.

  She put the empty pot back on the stove, turned the heat off, and added the smaller, steaming pot of sauce to it. “And I think you’re being kind again. Which is sweet, but unnecessary.”

  “Just being honest. And it’s absolutely necessary.”

  She gave the strainer a shake, then dumped the pasta back into the pot with the sauce. Then she grabbed what he guessed was a loaf of foil-wrapped garlic bread she’d prepped earlier and popped it in the warm oven. “Well, that’s nice of you, and forgive my skepticism, but I have a hard time buying a guy like you being interested in a woman like me.”

  “I don’t really know what that means.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Walker, I hope you’re not fishing for compliments. You have to know how good-looking you are. And from experience, I know guys who look like you don’t go for women who look like me. It’s just not how nature works.”

  That made him angry. Not at her, but that life had given her enough examples to make her think that was true. There was only one thing he could think of that would give her a reason to believe otherwise.

  As the beast in him came to life, he did what he’d wanted to do since he’d first seen her. He leaned in and kissed her.

  * * *

  Charlotte gasped against Walker’s mouth. She hadn’t expected him to kiss her. Not in a million years.

  Her second thought was there could be only one logical explanation as to why this was happening. The love candle she’d lit for Millie had gone terribly wrong. Somehow Charlotte must have made herself the focus of the spell. Or worse, she’d made Walker the focus of it. Which, yeah, was bad.

  Her third thought was that maybe terribly wrong was not completely accurate. As mistakes went, this wasn’t so awful. But if he was kissing her because of a spell she’d improperly cast, that was unfair to him. She was not the kind of woman to take advantage of a man inappropriately bewitched.

  She pulled away. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

  He frowned. “This is a date, you know.”

  “That’s not what I meant. It’s just that…you know what? Never mind.” She couldn’t exactly tell him she was a witch and that the reason he’d kissed her was the lingering after effects of a spell gone wrong. “It’s fine. Forget I said anything.”

  “Oh. Good. Fine. That’s what every man hopes to hear after kissing a woman.” He rolled his eyes.

  She laughed. “That’s not what I meant. Not exactly. Although, the kiss was good. I think.” She grimaced. All her thoughts about messing up the love candle had distracted her. “I wasn’t totally paying attention.”

  He looked like she’d slapped him in the face with a filet of cod. “You weren’t paying attention?”

  “I was too overwhelmed with the shock of it all.” That was a good cover. “I’m really sorry. I’m also a little preoccupied with the library being broken into and all that.”

  He shook his head. “I guess I can understand that. And it explains why you kissed me back with all the enthusiasm of a slab of Sp
am.”

  “What?” Now it was her turn to look like she’d been slapped. “I do not kiss like a slab of Spam.”

  His brows lifted and he shrugged. “Just telling you what it was like on my side. Pretty Spammy.”

  “That’s…preposterous.” She did not kiss like canned meat. Whatever that meant anyway. Her frustration grew with the smirk that appeared on his face.

  He pursed his lips. “Hey, it’s okay. Some people just aren’t good kissers.”

  Her jaw dropped open. She might not have kissed a lot of men, but she’d never had any complaints before. She leaned in and planted one on him, giving it her full attention and best effort.

  This time, Walker sucked in a surprised breath. She liked that she’d caught him off guard and after another few seconds of her mouth on his, she broke away, trying to look as cool as she could despite the heat curling through parts south. Were his eyes glowing? He blinked and it was gone, so it had to be a trick of the light.

  She backed up, but kept a firm grip on the counter as a precaution against the weakness in her knees. “There. How was that?”

  A second or two passed with him just staring at her, his mouth slack with what she assumed was the shock of her kissing him. Then he sort of shook himself and came around. “It was good. Better. Good. Not Spammy at all.”

  “See?” She turned back to the pot of pasta. “We should probably eat before this gets cold.”

  “Right.”

  She looked over her shoulder. He hadn’t really moved. “You going to pour us that wine?”

  “Huh? Oh, yes. Wine. On it.” He found the opener in the drawer she’d directed him to earlier and got to work. He looked happy to have a task.

  She knew the feeling. She got the garlic bread out of the oven and into a basket, then served up two dishes of spaghetti and carried all three to her very small table.

  He joined her a second later with the glasses of wine. He handed her one. “Dinner looks great.”

  “Thank you.”

  He raised his glass. “Here’s to new friends. And great books.”

  She smiled. “I like that. To new friends and great books.” And if things went well, maybe one more kiss.

  Chapter Seven

  Most of dinner was spent talking about books, a subject that Walker had no trouble keeping Charlotte focused on. They talked about movies, too, and some of the people and places in town, but he steered the conversation back to books anytime she seemed about to ask him something personal.

  He just didn’t want to lie to her any more than he already had, and there was no way he could answer personal questions honestly.

  Not after that first kiss. Which shouldn’t have happened. Or that second one. Which really shouldn’t have happened. Or maybe it was more that his reaction to it shouldn’t have happened. The first kiss had only been to prove to her that he truly thought she was beautiful. But the second kiss? The second kiss had been completely unexpected. And it had done something dangerous to him.

  Charlotte’s sweet, innocent-but-determined effort had turned him inside out. It had awoken the beast inside him and it had taken everything he had not to react in an animalistic way. As it was, he was sure his eyes had glowed a little that second time.

  He was used to the witches he hunted trying to use their feminine charms on him. This wasn’t that. Nothing about Charlotte’s kiss had been manipulative. It had been all about trying to prove him wrong, trying to show him that she was a good kisser.

  And Hades take him, she was. Not good, but great. Soft but with the right amount of pressure, sweet but also a little daring, and tentative in that way that told him her inexperience did not mean she wasn’t willing or interested in learning.

  He was, to use a word, bewitched. And for the first time since meeting her, he didn’t think magic had anything to do with it.

  “You still with me?”

  He looked up from his plate. “Sorry. Lost in thought for a second.”

  She nodded. “Happens to me all the time. What were you thinking about?”

  A lie was the first thing that popped into his head, but he was still stuck on that kiss and honesty won out. “Us. In the kitchen.”

  She bit her lip and turned the sexiest shade of pink. “I don’t usually behave like that.”

  “Oh?” He grinned. “Good to know you don’t always take advantage of the men you invite over.”

  She let out an indignant little laugh-snort. “I did not take advantage of you. Not intentionally anyway. And technically, you invited yourself.”

  “Oh, well, not intentionally makes it all right.” How could she have intentionally taken advantage of him? Witchcraft? Was that what she meant? He couldn’t be sure, but it was a curious statement all the same. He used his garlic bread to wipe the last bit of sauce off his plate. “Dinner was outstanding.”

  “You know it was just a box of pasta and a jar of sauce, right?”

  “Must have been the company that really put it over the edge.”

  She smiled. “Thanks. I think the company absolutely helped. The wine was very good, too.”

  “And dessert is yet to come. Although I need a few minutes before I eat anything else.” He finally broached the subject of why he was there. “I’d be happy to look at that book for you, now. See if I can give you an idea of what it’s worth.”

  “Sounds good to me.” She stood and picked up their plates. “Let me clean up a little, start a pot of coffee, and then I’ll go get it.”

  He got up from his chair. “I’ll help with the dishes. Only fair.”

  “You’re a guest.”

  “And, as you reminded me, the reason you went to the effort of cooking.” He gave her a wink, then went into the kitchen and started filling the sink with hot water. “Get the coffee going, then you can dry while I wash.”

  She put the dishes by the sink. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “You want gloves?”

  He held his hands up in mock outrage. “These are the callused hands of a working man. I don’t need gloves.”

  She raised her brows. “You get calluses antiquing?”

  “Okay, calluses might be exaggerating, but antiquing isn’t all I do.” He grabbed the sponge and the dish soap off the back of the sink and went to work on the plates.

  She emptied the remaining pasta and sauce into a large container and stuck it in the fridge. “What else do you do?”

  These were the personal questions he’d been trying to avoid, but he’d started this conversation. She had him off his game, that was for sure. Thankfully, a few vague answers should do the trick. “I work on motorcycles. I’m rebuilding one now. It’s an old Indian. A real classic.”

  She put the empty pasta pot next to the sink so he could wash it, then turned to the coffee maker behind them. “Did you find that in an antique store?”

  “Estate sale, actually. In an outbuilding.” He put the dishes on a towel for her to dry. “It hadn’t been touched in ages. It was a mess but the bones were good. It was exactly the kind of project I was looking for.”

  “What will you do with it when it’s done?” She stuck the carafe under the running faucet, watching the water until it hit the fill line.

  “Drive it a little, but then sell it and find a new project.”

  “You like projects, huh?”

  “I do. I get bored easily. A new project every couple of months keeps things interesting.”

  She got the coffee going, then walked around him to start drying the plates. “What’s your favorite kind of antique to look for?”

  “Anything that helps me pay the bills.”

  She laughed. “I can understand that. Do you ever think about having your own shop?”

  “Not really. I like traveling too much.” He tackled the pasta pot next. It wasn’t that he loved traveling that much, but the FOL constantly sent him on missions. Traveling was part of his job, like it or lump it. “A shop would tie me down.”<
br />
  A little of the joy in her eyes disappeared. “Traveling sounds fun, but I don’t think I could live my life like that. Too much of a homebody, I guess.”

  He studied her as he rinsed the pot. “As much as you like to read, have you ever thought about writing a book yourself?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Are you psychic?”

  He laughed. “Why? Are you writing one?”

  She nodded, her expression a little shy. “Yes. But I’m just dabbling. I don’t think it’s any good.”

  “I bet it’s great.” He handed the pot off to her. “What’s it about?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s not ready to talk about yet.”

  “Okay, I understand that.” He finished up the last few things, then joined her in the drying. “You have to do what the work needs. But I’d think most importantly with a book, you have to let the story guide you in how it wants to be told.”

  “Motorcycle man, antiquer, washer of dishes, and now philosopher. You’re quite the renaissance man, Walker.”

  “Hey, I have diverse interests.”

  “Apparently. But how do you know how a story needs to be told?”

  He shrugged. “All the antiques I deal with have a story. I don’t always get to know what that story is, but I try to be mindful of that when I’m cleaning a piece up. I don’t want to take the story out of it, you know? In fact, what I’m really trying to do is let that story shine through even more.”

  She smiled. “I like that. I like that a lot.” She finished drying the silverware and put it away. The dark, delicious smell of brewing coffee filled the small space. “I’ll go grab the book and meet you in the living room.”

  He hung up the towel he’d been using. “See you in there.”

  * * *

  Because Charlotte always erred on the side of caution, she’d brought home two pairs of the thin cotton gloves they used in the library. It wasn’t stealing, because she was only borrowing them, but it was a precaution she had to take. She didn’t want Walker to know she could open the book, or risk him seeing the spells inside. The only way to be sure of that was to keep from making direct contact.