“Yep. I wished for a Charlie Hunnam-Hugh Jackman sandwich. You’d better get the mustard. They’ll be here any minute.”
Calla laughed but then she sobered. “How are you, my friend?”
Cozy rolled her eyes at her beautiful friend who was newly married, and happily so. All of her married and exclusively dating friends worried way too much about her. Okay, so she showed up at parties stag. Sometimes she felt like a fifth wheel, but she was managing.
But the concern their happiness was somehow going to hurt her—their guilt because of it—was unnecessary.
“Are you checking up on me again, Werewolf? I’m fine. Really.”
She loved Calla, appreciated her worry, but all this hovering over her was getting old. She didn’t want to be babied. She wanted to be better—to feel better.
It was Christmas, for the love of chicken fried steak. The time for laughter, and sleigh bells, and baking cookies, and white elephants. It wasn’t the time to drag everyone down with her pathetic longing for a man who absolutely did not deserve even a shred of pining.
“I am checking up on you, and I’m going to keep right on checking up on you just like everyone else checks up on you. So will Winnie, and Bernie, and Daphne, and Greta. Because it’s what we do. We’re your friends, and because you’re just not you lately.”
“Really? Who am I?”
Yeah. Who was she? This moping wasn’t like her. She’d broken up with men before. Three, to be precise. It never took this long for her to pull up her bootstraps and get back into the game. But Finn hadn’t been like all those other men she’d dated…
Yet, it had been months since he’d been gone and it still felt as if she’d been run over by a freight train.
“You’re not the easygoing witch I used to know. Now you’re all sound and motion and lights, camera, action. You’re working overtime. You’re involved in every volunteer activity known to man in this town. You’re burning the candle at both ends, Cozy. You have to slow down sometime, honey. Or it’ll catch up with you.”
No. That’s why she kept so busy. She never wanted that kind of pain to catch back up with her again.
“I like being busy is all.”
“No. You like to keep the hurt at bay by filling up your days and nights with endless activities. I’m a werewolf, I have super power and gallons of energy, and even I can’t keep up with you. Not to mention, I can smell your sadness—which, upon reflection, sounds creepy when I say it out loud, but it’s true. It’s what we werewolves do. Point is, you’re going to have a nervous breakdown.”
“Bah. Did that in New York over the summer with Stefania. I’m golden now,” she joked, because it was uncomfortable to remember just how hard her summer had been.
Calla gripped her shoulders and made Cozy face her, and she didn’t like what she was seeing on her friend’s face.
“Okay, well listen. Winnie just called me, and I have something to tell you. We wanted to tell you together but she’s too busy threatening Baba Yaga’s life right now to come over here.”
Winnie Yagamowitz and her husband Ben ran a rehabilitation center for witches on parole from magic-abuse jail. A jail Baba Yaga, their reigning head honcho witch, ran with an iron fist.
Winnie and Ben housed and helped tons of witches who’d committed mostly petty magic-abuse crimes get back on their feet, find jobs, lives and, most importantly, redemption and self-worth.
In fact, Winnie had taken over the rehab house after doing her own stint in jail, with Baba as her jailor. Baba Yaga, aside from being the most powerful witch in their world, was now also Winnie’s aunt via her marriage to Ben. Which had never been awkward until now, apparently.
If Winnie had the cajones to threaten the supreme Baba Yaga, something was awry—very awry.
From the tips of her toes to the top of her head, Cozy knew she was going to regret asking, but ask she did. “Why is Winnie threatening to kill Baba Yaga? Is she insane? Has she lost her will to live? Does she remember what being in magic-abuse prison for six long months was like?”
“I’m sure she’ll never forget her prison stay and how she ended up in Paris as a result, but that was a long time ago. Now she’s Baba’s niece by marriage, which I’m praying is going to give her leniency when Baba eats her face off and turns her into a one-eyed wildebeest or something.”
Cozy barked a laugh into the velvety night even as her heart began to race. “So what’s Winnie so upset about?”
Calla’s blue eyes with the most amazing fringe of lashes went soft and sympathetic. “That’s what I’m supposed to tell you, and there’s no easy way to do this. So do you want me to slowly peel the Band-Aid off or rip it off? Your choice.”
Cozy stiffened, reaching back to grip the rails surrounding the patio area. “Rip,” she said, fighting a wince.
Calla’s sigh rippled on the light breeze, the gulp she took audible as she grabbed Cozy’s hand and held it tight. “Shit, I hate this.”
“Rip!” she yelped, her stomach a jumble of nerves. “Please…”
“Finn’s back after apparently doing time in magic-abuse jail and Baba and the council sentenced him to live at Winnie’s rehab and do his parole here at the senior center.” The words flew out of Calla’s mouth with lightning speed, her eyes filled with guilt.
Wow. No more wishing on shooting stars for her.
Hey, you up there, Shooting Star. Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you! I just said I wanted him to be okay. You didn’t have to really physically show me he was okay. It was sort of a figurative request. Not literal.
Why you gotta be so mean?
Chapter Two
FINN DONOVAN CROSSED his arms over his chest and leaned up against the wide entryway wall to his friend Ben Yagamowitz’s house. His former friend’s house, to be accurate—his really nice farm-style house with festive holiday lights draping from window to window and all along the pathway that led to the stairs.
Warm and inviting, with a Christmas decoration in almost every corner, the house had a wide front porch meant for rocking chairs and lazy nights spent stargazing.
There were pictures colored by, he assumed, Ben and Winnie’s daughter Lola on the fridge in their equally warm and inviting kitchen, with the clapboard cupboards and granite countertops
Ben was labeled former friend because a good, upstanding guy like Ben, chock full of morals and honor, was never ever going to want to speak to a guy who’d up and left his family farm in complete disrepair—and left the woman he claimed to love—for months, without a single word.
Which was likely why the council of elders had sent him back to the scene of the crime. To shame him for skulking away like a thief in the night.
He got it. Message received.
“I will not have that man in my house, Baba Yaga! Do you hear me? There’s no rehabilitation for a douchecanoe like him!” Ben’s wife Winnie bellowed from the family room, where she’d marched Baba Yaga by the arm for further discussion on Finn’s rehab stay.
“Honey…” He heard Ben warn.
“Don’t you ‘honey’ me, buddy! That man left his farm, which fell into a shithole his brother Ridge has just finally managed to dig out. Not to mention, he left without saying a word to Cozy. Those two were crazy about each other. Do you remember, honey? Oh, wait. My supreme bad. She was crazy about him. He was just pretending to be crazy about her. The pig! He fooled us all, but he really fooled Cozy. I will not have him here in my home, wandering through my halls, when he hurt one of my closest friends in this town. Someone who was very kind to me as I adjusted to being a wife and mother here in Texas. Absolutely not gonna happen, honey!”
Clenching his jaw, Finn focused on taking steady breaths, trying to block out the mention of Cozy and his brother Ridge.
“Winnifred Yagamowitz, you will do as the council has ordered!” Baba thundered.
Finn imagined their auspicious witch leader pacing the floor in her strange but favored penchant for ‘80s garb, her bangle bracelets clanking al
ong her arms.
“I don’t like it any more than you do, Winnifred. I don’t want to see all the hard work Ridge and Bernie and the seniors and even the parolees have put into the farm jeopardized. Nor do I want to see Cozy hurt like that again. But I don’t have a choice. The council voted and this is where they’ve ordered Finn do his penance. There will be no further discussion!”
Cracking the muscles in his neck by tilting his head from side to side, Finn crossed his feet at the ankles and sighed. The council was making a point. They wanted his public humiliation to be sprawling and large and as painful as possible.
They wanted to see his kind shun him for being such a shitty guy. A coward. Clearly they didn’t much care if, in the end, it only hurt the people they were most trying to protect.
The council was such a skewed bunch of assholes.
The door to the family room flew open, cracking against the wall as Winnie stomped out with Ben hot on her heels.
She flew up to Finn, her beautiful face wild with anger, her long hair pulled up into a ponytail literally shaking with her rage.
She jammed a finger under his nose, her blue eyes on fire. “You lousy, no-good son of a bitch! If I catch you breaking a rule, one teeny-tiny rule, if you breathe wrong, if you leave one thing out of place, if you have the balls to defy me and my household’s rules, I’ll jack you so far up you’ll feel the effects for years to come, you coward!” she screeched before popping open the welcoming stained-glass front door with the pretty Christmas wreath on it and stomping down her front steps.
Ben eyed him for a moment, his face cold, his lips thin. They were about the same height, Ben being the leaner of the two, but he was powerful and strong. Finn knew because they’d often played football together on lazy Saturdays. Ben had taken him down once or twice, and he’d needed a good massage afterward as a result.
“You listen to me and you listen goddamn good, Donovan. You fucked up. You fucked up big. I don’t know why, and I don’t care anymore. I got done caring about ten seconds after you slunk out of this town like some yellow-bellied loser. I don’t know why you ended up in jail, and I don’t care about that either. But be clear on one thing—my wife’s unhappy. I don’t like that. Not even a little. I have a family I love who I won’t let you upset. I will personally fuck you up if you cause a single second of grief for any of them. Swear to Christ, I’ll kick your cowardly ass from here to Galveston. And I’d bet I’m not alone. Clear?”
Finn lifted his chin with enough defiance to still keep his man card, but with enough humility to show Ben he got it. “Clear.”
Ben’s nostrils flared. “Good. Your room’s upstairs and to the right. It’s the pink and purple one with the ruffles. The house is empty of parolees at this point, so the bathroom’s all yours. Showers are timed. Rules for the house and your chores are posted on the back of your bedroom door. There are clothes from the Goodwill you can use in your dresser. Breakfast’s at seven sharp. You have to be at the senior center at eight for your duties.”
Finn looked directly into Ben’s anger-filled eyes. “Got it.”
“Then get the hell out of my sight,” Ben ordered with a curt hitch of his jaw before he went out the front door, probably to find Winnie.
Baba Yaga swept out of the family room in all her ‘80s fanfare. The ‘80s had been her favorite fashion era, and she proudly sported an off-the-shoulder, torn pink sweatshirt, zebra Spandex leggings and her obnoxious neon-green legwarmers.
She gave him the look—the one that said she was as disgusted with him as the rest of the world. Her dead stare captured his. “I’ll warn you only once, Warlock. I don’t know what the council was thinking sending you here. I tried to sway them, believe you me. But this is my family. As much as I love my witch community, I love my family more. Don’t mess with mine and I’ll let you keep your bloody head, Finn Donovan,” she seethed up at him before she snapped her fingers, disappearing in a cloud of pink smoke to the faint tune of some Prince song.
Fuck.
This was going to be ugly.
But he had no choice. He had to do his time.
He’d done four months in Baba’s magic-abuse prison. Four long months with a psychotic warlock named Petite Pete who was at least six-five, three hundred pounds, and liked to trim his toenails with a pair of pliers.
During that time, he’d been force-fed the way of the warlock in group therapy, owned up to a bunch of shit like all good inmates should, kept his room on par with a military inspection, and kept his nose clean.
He figured his sentence would be over after he’d served his time, and he could get to doing what he’d been doing before he’d been incarcerated.
But Baba had swept into his cell just this morning and informed him the council was meeting on his behalf and he had yet to face parole sentencing.
When the lot of those bags of dusty bones had sentenced him to three months in rehab, Finn had nearly reached over that imposing podium they all sat behind while they dictated his life and attempted to choke out the old robed-bastards.
This would delay him much longer than he could afford.
But when they’d sentenced him to do his parole in the very town he’d vanished from—when they’d sentenced him to do his time in the very witch rehab one of his ex-fiancée’s best friends ran—he’d decided their idea of punishment seemed as though they were playing right into his hands.
Yep, he’d have to see Cozy at some point.
Yep, he’d have to face his brother Ridge, too.
Yep, he relished the very thought.
Welcome back to Paris, Texas, Finn Donovan.
So glad y’all came back so soon.
* * *
The next evening, Jorge lifted his tan head from his orthopedic dog bed set atop the piano Cozy stood beside and groaned long and loud as Flora Watkins approached. “Oh look, another festive doggie diaper from the knitting club. How in the spirit of giving,” he remarked in his typical dry tone.
“You hush, my little outspoken Spaniard,” Cozy whispered-yelled, giving him the eye. “They do it out of love. Besides, it’s not like you couldn’t use another diaper.”
Flora, another one of her feisty seniors, sidled up to Cozy and patted her on the back with a warm smile.
“Is this a bribe, young lady?” she asked teasingly. “I’m sorry, but you still can’t be the Great Christmas Tree, Flora. Yes, your epic recreation of branches on a Christmas tree is undoubtedly on par with Meryl Streep’s performance in Sophie’s Choice, but Clive was given the part because he picked it out of the hat. Fair is fair. However, you make a mean angel number two. Everyone says so.”
Flora shook her head and gave her arm a squeeze, handing her the red-and-green doggie diaper with intricate snowflakes knitted into the band across the waistline.
“Even though I’d make a far better Christmas tree than ol’ Clive, and it’s true, you’re keepin’ me from winning an Academy Award—”
“Okay, then no A Very Zombie Christmas. It was a great idea, Flora, but I think the vote from the other seniors said it all, don’t you? Also, some of the council is part zombie. They have to be, to be as old as they are and still manage to roam the earth. I’m convinced they eat brains to keep them upright,” she joked. “We don’t want to offend our core audience, do we?”
Flora chuckled at Cozy’s poke at the council then suddenly sobered. “That’s not why I’m here, honey.”
Cozy set her clipboard down on the piano, positioned in the middle of the rec room of the center, and tilted her head. “Is everything okay?”
She pointed to the diaper. “We hope Jorge likes it.”
Cozy grinned at her and held up the diaper for her familiar to see. “Look, Jorge! Christmas diapers. Aren’t you the luckiest familiar in the world to have so many people who love you and want to keep you dry? Say thank you,” she prompted.
If Jorge could roll his eyes she was sure he would have. Instead, he stretched his stout, ironically long body and mutter
ed. “Gracias, mi amiga. I can’t tell you how over the moon I am to have yet another way to advertise my incontinence to the general public in bright, festive colors that not only enhance—”
Cozy wrapped loose fingers around Jorge’s muzzle, effectively cutting him off. His incontinence was a sore subject all the snazzy diapers in the world weren’t going to make better.
She turned and smiled at Flora. “So are you ready for rehearsal? Got your vocal chords all flexed and ready to rumble?”
Flora’s weathered face grew hesitant. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Now, before we get going, I want to be sure you’re okay, sugar.”
She fought the shortness of breath she’d been fighting for almost twenty-four hours since she’d found out Finn was back in town. One day later, and a slew of pep talks to herself in the mirror and from Winnie, who’d called to profusely apologize, and she was pretty sure she had a handle on it.
“You mean Finn, right?”
Flora’s eyes grew fiery as she tucked her hand-knit baby-blue sweater around her middle. “I do. He’s a dirtball, scum-sucking, douchenozzle pig.”
Cozy barked a laugh. If she couldn’t count on the seniors to defend her then she couldn’t count on anyone. The moment they’d heard Finn was back, they’d rallied, circling their wagons like warriors, assuring her they’d stake him at dawn if he so much as looked at her wrong.
She gave Flora’s cool hand a squeeze. “It’s okay, Flora. I’m a big girl. I can handle it. Besides, we probably won’t see each other at all. He’s here during the day doing cleanup, and I’m here at night to rehearse with you guys well after suppertime. I think all parolees have a curfew or something. We probably won’t ever cross paths—”
“Clive, get your Tiger Balm out and warm up those old fingers. We got a jackass walking!” Gus shouted from somewhere in the back of the room by the air hockey table.
Cozy’s heart punched the inside of her chest with a right hook. She didn’t want to turn around, but if she didn’t, Finn would know he’d broken her, at least for a little while anyway. No way was she going to allow him the upper hand.
Alphas Unwrapped: 21 New Steamy Paranormal Tales of Shifters, Vampires, Werewolves, Dragons, Witches, Angels, Demons, Fey, and More Page 39