Sympathetic Magic (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 4)

by Christine Pope

  But she stared straight at him, eyes dark and unblinking. “I’d tell them that I wanted to be with you, here, in this house. With no one else…and in no place else.”

  Something hot and heavy seemed to grow in his chest, and he reached out and pulled her against him, kissing the crown of her head, holding her so close he could feel the beating of her heart within her breast. “Then we’ll just have to figure out a way to make that happen.”

  12

  This morning when Margot awoke, she knew exactly where she was: nestled in Lucas’ bed, curled up next to him, the warmth of his body combining with the weight of the blankets and comforter on top of them to make her deliciously cozy. The light peeking around the blinds was pale gray, not the brooding bruised color of a truly stormy sky. And blinking on the nightstand next to her was his clock/iPod dock, proving that the power must have come back on sometime during the night.

  She wasn’t sure if she wanted to move. Truth be told, she didn’t know what she should do. Last night, still half tipsy — and still drunk with the afterglow of another round of spectacular sex — she’d told him she wanted to be with him here. What had possessed her? Yes, it had been the deepest truth of her heart, but even though he’d assured her they would figure out a way to make it work, she didn’t share his optimism. Coming up for a three-day snowbound fling was one thing. Moving past that to contemplate a life together? Not quite so simple, was it?

  Beside her, Lucas stirred, and she felt him reach beneath the covers to touch her fingers, give them a squeeze. His eyes seemed to focus on her, and he said, “Sweetheart, it’s way too early to be looking that worried.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No need to apologize. It’s just that, even though it might feel that way, the weight of the world really isn’t on your shoulders.”

  Easy for him to say. Yes, he was definitely someone Connor confided in, but Lucas held no formal role in his clan, didn’t have the pressure of generations of tradition bearing down on him.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said reluctantly, more because she didn’t want to quarrel with him first thing than because she believed what she was saying. “I think I just need a shower.”

  “Can I join you?” he asked, eyes glinting.

  There was an idea. But she’d already allowed sex to distract her more than she should, and she knew exactly what would happen if she got into a shower with Lucas Wilcox. “How about next time?”

  Thank the Goddess, he didn’t look all that disappointed. “I’ll definitely take a rain check on that one.”

  Because all her toiletries and fresh clothes were still in the guest bedroom, she went there to shower. Any hoped-for illumination didn’t materialize between the shampoo and conditioner, and when she got out to towel off, she was just as conflicted as when she’d begun.

  As if hoping that a text or voicemail would be the sign from the gods she needed, she went over to the dresser and inspected her phone. It still had a full charge, so the power must not have been out all that long. The phone was also completely devoid of any contact from her fellow elders, or from anyone at all, for that matter. She wished she could blame the communications blackout on connection issues caused by the storm, but she had four out of five bars here, meaning that anything someone sent her should have gotten through easily.

  Obviously, I’m not as important as I think I am.

  Feeling annoyed, and then annoyed with herself for being annoyed, she finished dressing, slipped some silver hoops into her ears, and went back into the hallway. From Lucas’ room she could hear the shower running, so she decided to head downstairs and make some tea. Not that she really expected a cup of tea to help much with clearing her head, but at least it gave her something to do.

  Today she knew her way around much better, so she got the tea going without much delay, did the same with Lucas’ Italian roast and the automatic coffeemaker, and then went to the kitchen door so she could gaze out on what the snow had wrought. All of his hard work of the day before had been more or less erased, the driveway now buried in what had to be more than a foot of snow. She felt a pang of dismay on his behalf, and wished he had two snowblowers so she could at least help him get it cleared.

  Speaking of clear, the clouds overhead looked as if they had actually begun to part, patches of blue appearing above the snow-crowned tops of the ponderosa pines. That had to be a good thing, an indication that the storm was moving on.

  As she was pouring hot water into a mug, Lucas appeared in the kitchen, scrubbed and smiling, hair damp. “I thought I smelled coffee. Thanks for getting it going.”

  “It seemed the least I could do.”

  He bent down and kissed her then, and she breathed in the clean scent of his freshly washed skin and hair. What was it that made a man smell so good? She wasn’t sure, but she knew she wanted to wake up to Lucas every day just so she could breathe deeply of his scent.

  All right, that wasn’t the only reason she wanted to wake up next to him every day….

  She turned away and watched him pour himself a cup of coffee. Today he was wearing more jeans and a Northern Pines sweatshirt. Had Damon given it to him, or had he bought it himself? She supposed it really didn’t matter, but something in her felt a little pang for Lucas and the friendship he’d lost. It had been easy for her to hate Damon; he was merely a figure of fear to her and the others in her clan, not a man at all. Now, though, she realized it had been a little more complicated than that, and she could only wish him peace, wherever he’d ended up.

  Lucas wandered over to the door and peered through the thick glass, a resigned look on his face. “Looks like I’ll be hitting that driveway again after breakfast.”

  “But at least it’s clearing up.”

  His features brightened a bit. “True. I think we’re out of the woods for now.”

  Was he talking about more than just the storm? She flickered a quick glance at him, but she couldn’t tell anything from the placid, pleasant expression he currently wore.

  “Then I suppose I’d better get some breakfast together before you go out and break your back a second time.”

  He brightened up at her suggestion. “That sounds good.”

  It was another round of scrambled eggs, this time with sausage and toast. When they sat at the counter to eat, their legs brushed against one another, and Margot felt her body grow warm just at that casual touch. It was enough that she felt like taking him by the hand and pulling him back upstairs. But no, he had things to do, and she needed to learn how to restrain herself. Anyway, if he got all sweaty from clearing off the driveway again and had to take another shower, maybe that would be the time to cash in that rain check….

  Snow check, she thought then, and fought back an implausible giggle. Margot Emory did not giggle. And yet…right now, she sort of wanted to. Despite everything.

  As they had yesterday, she cleaned up breakfast, and he went to get “suited up” for another round in the driveway. Unlike the day before, however, he gave her a strong, hearty kiss before he went, one tasting of coffee, and she thought she could tolerate coffee when exposed to it that way. A few minutes later, she heard the roar of the snowblower, and hoped the noise wouldn’t irritate the neighbors too much. After all, it had to be barely nine in the morning; she didn’t know for sure, as all the digital clocks in the kitchen were still blinking. Then she had to remind herself that yes, it was early, but it was also a weekday. Presumably the neighbors to either side were not independently wealthy warlocks, and therefore had to get up and go to work, necessitating an even earlier driveway clearing than the one Lucas was currently engaged in.

  Fixing the clocks was something useful she could do for him, so she fetched her phone — still free of texts or voicemails or emails — and used the time on it to reset everything. Well, everything she could reach. There was a clock high up in the living room that would have to be Lucas’ problem, but otherwise she took care of things as best she could.

  That didn’t
occupy her for very long, however, so she wandered back to the family room, thinking maybe she’d turn on the weather again to make sure the snow really had gone away for the foreseeable future. When she entered the room, however, she noticed for the first time the phone sitting on the built-in desk at the back wall, as well as the doodled-over pad of paper next to it. Smiling, she recalled how Lucas had praised her sketch, and said his scribbles were the real doodling.

  She’d read somewhere that studying doodles could tell you a lot about a person, but frankly, she couldn’t remember which sorts of scribbles and underlines and comic faces were supposed to represent which personality traits. On the pad he’d left behind, there were concentric circles and extremely symmetrical 3-D boxes and triangles, as well as stars in a variety of shapes and sizes. In amongst the scribbles, she saw phone numbers and names, a few she recognized, including Angela’s. And then at the bottom, outlined by a large emphatic circle, was the somewhat cryptic message, Buy Lester lunch sometime to say thanks.

  Who was Lester? Margot didn’t recall hearing of any Wilcox clan member with that name, although she had to admit she wasn’t familiar with most of them. And what was Lucas grateful for, that he wanted to buy this person lunch?

  Knowing Lucas, it could be something as simple as loaning him a box of golf tees, although they were a little past golf season at this point. She shrugged and turned on the TV, hoping it wouldn’t take Lucas quite as long this time to clear off the driveway.

  * * *

  He came in through the mudroom on the side of the house and left his snow-encrusted waders there. Time for another shower, probably, and he hoped that maybe he could convince Margot to join him this time. Or, even better, climb into the whirlpool tub and soak away the knots in his shoulders from brute-forcing the snowblower up and down the driveway. He hardly ever used the bathtub, but maybe if they gathered up some candles from elsewhere in the house, ran the hot water, and soaked together before progressing to even more pleasurable activities?

  That could definitely work.

  From the sound of it, she was in the family room, with the TV on again. He paused in the doorway and admired the sight of her sitting on the couch, attention fixed on the forecast. Her makeup was minimal today, just a bit of mascara and color on her lips, from what he could tell, and he liked her that way. She was so beautiful that she really didn’t need much embellishment.

  “So are we really in the clear?” he asked.

  She turned away from the television, a smile touching her lips. He hoped he could make her smile like that often, because he loved the way it softened her face, brought a glow to those wide, dark eyes.

  “Looks that way. At least for the next couple of days. They think there might be another storm coming in late on the weekend.”

  That didn’t bother him, although it was a little unusual to get snow in such rapid succession this early in the year. “Well, I’ll worry about that when it hits.” He hesitated, then said, “And you? I know you’d talked about going back to Jerome today, but since you hardly got to see anything of Flagstaff — ”

  “I told the other elders I’d be coming home today.” Strangely, though the words themselves were emphatic enough, her tone wasn’t, indicating that she was having second thoughts on the subject.

  “Any reason why you couldn’t stay, other than that?” He tried to keep the urgency out of his voice. Surely she must guess how much he wanted her to remain here for as long as possible, but he also didn’t want to sound as if he was pressuring her.

  “Not really. I packed an extra change of clothes, just in case.” Her smile turned sly. “But if I stay any longer than that, I’m going to run out of underwear.”

  That’s really not what I’d consider a problem, he thought. “We do have a mall here, you know.”

  “Ah, so now you’re tempting me with shopping.”

  “Don’t think of it as tempting…think of it as providing you with useful information.”

  With a laugh, she reached for the remote, shutting off the TV before getting to her feet. “By the way, who’s Lester?”

  The sweat on his back seemed to suddenly congeal into ice. “Uh…why do you ask?”

  “I saw his name on the pad by the phone. Maybe I was snooping a little.” Her gaze was fixed on him, but he didn’t see any suspicion there, only a bit of rueful amusement at her poking around the place while he was otherwise occupied.

  Not that he could really call it snooping, when he’d been stupid enough to leave the pad sitting out on the desk in plain view of anyone who might pass by. “He’s…a friend.”

  “Oh. One of your golf friends?”

  It would be so easy to lie. All he’d have to do was say yes, and then they could go on as if nothing had happened. But he hated lying. His mother’s lying to herself and everyone around her had sucked her into a marriage and a family she really didn’t want, and Lucas had been forced to deal with the consequences ever since. And what good would his relationship with Margot be if he lied to her from the very beginning?

  “No,” he said at last. “He’s a private investigator.”

  “Really?” Then her gaze sharpened, as if she’d begun to put two and two together in her head. “What would you need with a private investigator?”

  “I — ” His mouth was dry, and the words wanted to stick in his throat. Somehow he made himself force them out. “I asked him to find out a thing or two about you. Mostly that you weren’t seeing anyone.”

  The longest, most hideous silence he’d ever heard. She stood there, dark eyes boring into him, as if she’d never seen him before, as if they hadn’t just spent the most rapturous night of his entire life together. Finally, “You what?”

  “Margot, I know it was stupid, but I had no one to ask. It was harmless. Really.”

  “You think hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt on me is harmless?”

  “It wasn’t digging up dirt. I just needed to know that you were…available.” God, the words were coming out of his mouth, but they just kept sounding worse and worse. At least, that was how it felt to him, and if he thought that way, he could only imagine what Margot must be thinking. Her elegant brows were drawn together, her eyes, which had been so filled with laughter a minute ago, now colder than the snow piled up against the house.

  “You couldn’t ask Angela? You two seem pretty friendly!”

  “I thought about it, but she was so busy with the wedding that I decided not to bother her. And there wasn’t anyone else I could ask. It’s just — I couldn’t stop thinking about you, Margot. I tried to tell myself I shouldn’t, but it wasn’t that easy.”

  She didn’t reply, only continued to stare at him, arms crossed over her breasts. A protective gesture, and one he hated to see.

  “Would you rather I had lied to you?” he asked then, his tone hardening.

  “No,” she said. “I’d rather you’d not done something so stupid in the first place.” Her eyes seemed to glitter, and he realized it wasn’t from anger, but from unshed tears. She swallowed. “I think I’d better go.”

  Stepping away from the couch, she headed toward the doorway, and Lucas knew all he had to do was block it, just stand there so she couldn’t go anywhere at all, would have to stay and hash this out with him. Something inside told him this would be the very worst thing of all to do, so he stepped out of the way, let her pass him in a waft of soft perfume and cold, cold anger.

  And then she was gone.

  * * *

  Somehow she managed to keep it together as she went upstairs and packed her things, then waited in icy silence for Lucas to open the garage door so she could back her car out. Thank the Goddess that he’d cleared the driveway, because otherwise she probably would’ve stomped out of there on foot if she had to.

  What the hell had he been thinking? A private investigator? Really?

  Once or twice he’d attempted to make an apology, but she’d shut him down with a frigid stare. She didn’t want to talk about th
is. She only wanted to go home, so she could put this entire episode behind her and forget that it had ever happened.

  Never mind that until Lucas’ startling revelation, she’d been happier than she’d been in…forever. Had Clay ever made her feel remotely that good?

  She really didn’t want to answer that question.

  Although the freeway had been plowed, it was still icy and treacherous enough. In a way, Margot was glad of that. It forced her to concentrate on the road, and not what had just happened between Lucas and her. The Subaru had all-wheel drive, so it wasn’t as if she’d had to break out the snow chains or anything, but she still white-knuckled it out of Flagstaff and down past Mountainaire and Munds Park, until at last she dropped to an elevation where there was little evidence of the storm at all, save a few patches of snow here and there in the shadow of a rocky outcropping.

  Thinking some music might help fill the throbbing silence that pounded against her ears, she jacked her iPhone into the car stereo and flipped to her favorite ’90s mix. That didn’t last long, though. A two songs, and then there was Green Day mocking her.

  …I hope you had the time of your life….

  She gave the phone a vicious swipe to unlock it and jabbed the “pause” button. Quiet filled the car again, and she swallowed, hard. The whole way down I-17, tears threatened to fall, but she wouldn’t let them, kept blinking them back. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t allow Lucas Wilcox to make her cry.

  By the time she got off the interstate, she wouldn’t say she felt better, exactly, but at least she didn’t feel as if she would shatter into a thousand pieces if someone touched her. She drove through Cottonwood and Clarkdale, wound up into Jerome, and then turned into her driveway, just as she had thousands of times before. A touch of the remote, and then she was safely inside her garage, the door shutting behind her, sealing her away from the outside world.