Read Do You Believe in Magic? Online
Authors: Ann Macela
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Magic, #Fantasy, #Paranormal, #Romance, #Contemporary
Do You Believe in Magic? (13 page)
“So do I. That’s what we need to discuss.”
She could see a little anger in his eyes, accompanied by something else. Determination? Frustration? Confusion? No matter. “I disagree. I’m asking you not to compound the issue further by pretending feelings that don’t exist.”
“Feelings that don’t exist? I know myself, Francie, and I don’t have
feelings that don’t exist
.” He said the last four words as if their presence in his mouth left a vile taste.
feelings that don’t exist
.” He said the last four words as if their presence in his mouth left a vile taste.
“Well, I’m not going to discuss anything with you standing in a parking garage. I have to meet Tamara. I’ll see you on Saturday.”
He clenched his jaw and stared at her for a long moment through narrowed eyes. Finally he nodded. “All right, Francie. Let’s get through the dinner and then see where we stand.”
She thought of telling him that they didn’t “stand” anywhere, but kept her mouth shut and opened her door. She did not want to prolong the conversation.
He turned and left, taking long strides as if he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.
She climbed into her car and sat for a moment, her forehead resting on her hands on the steering wheel. He wanted to talk about the kiss and where they stood? What did that mean? Why didn’t the man understand that there was no
couple
, there never was and never would be? Had he convinced himself from two dates and a few kisses that they had a relationship? Not even real dates, but playacting, people impersonating a couple.
couple
, there never was and never would be? Had he convinced himself from two dates and a few kisses that they had a relationship? Not even real dates, but playacting, people impersonating a couple.
She sat up and shook her head. What did he mean about discussing deception? God only knew, there was enough deception in this mess to fill Houston’s baseball stadium. Why discuss it to death?
All she had to do was get through the dinner with Tamara and Kevin. Then she could go back to her own life, blessedly devoid of all this turmoil. She’d be in charge of herself again.
Maybe she’d even start dating for real. Find a nice man, an undemanding man, an honest one. A normal-looking one who didn’t attract women like flies, one who couldn’t charm the socks—and other pieces of apparel—off women. One she could trust. Maybe her computer buddies knew some guys who were interested in computers and liked the things she liked.
She raised her head and looked at her reflection in the visor mirror. In the dim light, her eyes looked huge and weird, slightly haunted. Her stomach hurt, too—little pulses of pain—probably from gulping down that sandwich.
“Idiot,” she scolded herself. “You’re a computer analyst, and you can’t even think straight. You just have to hang in there a little longer.”
She started the car, backed out of her space, and exited the garage. She almost drove onto the freeway before she remembered she had told Tamara she’d drop by. “Idiot,” she said again, as she made the turn to take her to the shop.
She rubbed her stomach again. Maybe Tamara had some antacid tablets she could take.
On his way home, Clay played over the events of the evening. He thought he had worked Brenner well, giving the man nothing but grief. He’d be ready to find an expert when they met.
As for Francie . . . She had on those drab, baggy clothes again. She looked pale, like she wasn’t getting enough sleep. And she was definitely staying away from him, tonight being only the latest example. As much as he wanted, needed to talk to her, he hadn’t pushed in the parking garage. He definitely did not want to provoke a confrontation that would make her angry or drive her away. They needed to be calm and together on Saturday.
To be fair, he admitted she had to be feeling the strain of dealing with Tamara and her hacker boyfriend. That must be what was skewing her reactions to him, her soul mate.
But her statement about hating deception had given him pause. Was he deceiving her? Not about Brenner, of course. But about himself? About his motives? Did she still think what was between them was business, only business? Was “only business” really what she wanted?
How could she want him to go away if she were truly his soul mate? Especially after those kisses.
He certainly wasn’t playacting. Was she? How could she be, with the soul-mate imperative goading her on? She had to be itching and hurting, especially if she was denying her feelings. The ones that supposedly didn’t exist. Did she think he was lying to her about those? His existed, all right. A small sunburst of pain spread out from his magic center as if to corroborate his thoughts.
What about his being a practitioner, he asked himself as he stopped for a red light. Was he deceiving her about that? He certainly wasn’t telling her the whole truth, but as Daria had once said, the ability to cast spells and work magic didn’t ordinarily come up spontaneously in conversation. And look where it had gotten him when he did broach the subject. Definitely not forward.
He had to overcome her nonbelief in magic, and he doubted that would be easy. Not after her out-and-out, bald statements about being “grounded in the real world,” whatever that meant.
He had to show her what he was, convince her of his magical talents, but how? He could cast a ball of light and ignite a candle, but he didn’t have the showy abilities his mother and Gloriana did. On the other hand, Francie had been watching him closely as he led Brenner around the system with the help of his spell-aided program. She had looked fascinated and delighted with his manipulations. He knew she would like to know how he did it.
Maybe that was what he needed to do. Get her over to his house and show her his fancier computer spells. Those ought to convince her. Yeah, the more he thought about it, he really liked the idea. Computer wizardry would come to his rescue.
They had to talk about what was going on between them, and soon. But when she looked at him with those big brown eyes full of anxiety, he couldn’t bring himself to force the issue. It was all he could do not to take her in his arms and kiss her senseless.
First came the dinner on Saturday and the chance to make her see that what was between them was definitely not business, but magic of the most ancient kind. He grinned in anticipation as he exited the Southwest Freeway and turned left on Buffalo Speedway.
His magic center seemed to like his plan. The good, ol’ SMI was almost crooning along with him to the Brooks & Dunn song, “My Heart Belongs to You.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Clay arrived at Francie’s just after six on Saturday night. He was pleased to see Tamara and Brenner were already present. He walked in with a bag holding the wine and a box of French bakery goodies, handed Francie the dessert, and kissed her lightly on the lips. When she frowned, he smiled and kissed her again. “Hi, Francie,” he murmured, “I missed you.” Damn, she had on those glasses and a dull, bulky sweater again.
Francie glared at him but wiped the look off her face as she turned to her other guests. “You know Tamara, of course. This is Kevin Brenner.”
Clay shook hands with Brenner and exchanged greetings with Tamara. Brenner was a thirty-five-year-old, slightly beefy six-footer with thinning blond hair. He looked like he worked out in a gym, but had not gone for the total big-muscles, bodybuilder approach. Probably had played football in high school and college and kept himself up since, Clay surmised.
“I brought both red and white wines.” Clay turned back to Francie.
“Fine,” she replied. “The shrimp looked good at the grocery store, so I’m combining them with pasta and sun-dried tomatoes. I like red wine, and Tamara likes white, so everybody will be happy. Why don’t you bring the wine into the kitchen, and then you can come out here and visit. Dinner will be ready in just a few minutes.”
Clay followed her into the kitchen, put the white wine in the refrigerator, and asked, “Where’s your corkscrew? I’ll open the red so it can breathe.”
“In the drawer on your left,” she answered as she poured the penne pasta into the boiling water.
Clay opened the wine and put it on the counter. Turning, he lifted the lid over the sauce as Francie stirred the pasta. “Hmmmm. Smells good. Need any help?” He intentionally stood very close to her.
“No,” she told him, with a well-placed elbow for emphasis. “Go visit. Do you want something to drink before dinner?”
“Nope, I’ll wait for the wine.”
Clay went back to the living room and sat in a chair across from the couch where Tamara and Kevin relaxed with drinks. A tray of veggies and dip was on the coffee table between them.
“Tamara said you were in computers, Clay,” Kevin stated. “Some sort of consultant?”
“I fix problems for my clients. Hardware and software. What do you do?” He took a carrot, swirled it in the dip, and munched.
“I’m in sales, sales manager, in fact.”
“So you’re in the office more than calling on customers?”
“Yeah. Man, I’d rather be out, but the company decided to promote me, and I plan to go places with them, so I’m playing the corporate game.”
Clay thought Kevin tried to look modest, but didn’t pull it off. “Well, good luck. I’m out on my own because I couldn’t stand the corporate game, not being my own boss.”
“Francie said she met you at one of those computer seminars,” Tamara interjected.
“Yes, the funny thing is, I almost didn’t go to the class. I had just flown back from a pleasure trip to Vegas, spending some of my ill-gotten gains. If I hadn’t gone to the seminar, we wouldn’t have met. Guess my luck was running right for a change. Francie said she was helping you with your computer. How is it going?” Clay smiled encouragingly at the redhead.
“I feel much better about it now. I computerized my shop to make the accounting and inventory easier, but deciding what items to stock is still as much applying intuition and understanding trends as it ever was. All the computerization in the world won’t help me with that. Sometimes I feel like a snail, creeping up on computers while the rest of the world passes me by. I was just never interested much, even with a computer whiz for a roommate in college. I don’t know what I’d do without Francie and Kevin. They’ve shown me so much. Kevin’s very good at finding information and my competitor’s Web sites on the Internet.” She patted Kevin’s hand and smiled at him.
“I’m trying to learn how to program, too, but I’m not very proficient at it yet,” Kevin admitted. “I know how to use our company programs and how to get around the Internet, but I’m nowhere near Francie’s or your league. I’ve taken only a couple of programming courses, so I have a long way to go.”
“Well, for what it’s worth,” Clay stated, taking some more dip on a carrot, “I couldn’t do what you do, selling day in and day out, having to be nice to everybody, including the jerks.”
“You must be a killer consultant, if you don’t have to be nice to people,” Tamara ventured.
“By the time some of my clients finally call me in, they’ve screwed up so badly, they’re begging for help, and usually it’s their own damn fault they’re in the mess in the first place. They don’t want me to be nice. Sometimes I think they need me to tell them off for their own internal reasons. It just means I charge them more, which I then lose at the crap tables.” Clay shrugged to imply the loss of money meant nothing to him and began to relate some client-from-hell stories as Francie called for help putting things on the table.
Dinner degenerated hilariously into more stories, Tamara with rich ladies from hell who came into her shop demanding what looked worst on them, Kevin with customers from hell who changed their minds twenty times before delivery, and Francie with programmers and users from hell who didn’t have a clue what the other was talking about.
Over dessert and coffee, Kevin asked, “You must run into all sorts of things that go wrong with computers. What’s the worst?”
“People, always people,” Clay answered. “If it’s not somebody in the company, these days it’s an outsider, usually a hacker, messing around in a company’s files. You know, like the TV movie where the kid hacked into the Defense Department systems.”
“Is it hard to hack?” Kevin asked with a disingenuous smile.
Good, just the question he’d been hoping Brenner would ask. “No. Getting in is the easy part. Finding what you want or gaining access to the applications can be the difficult part.” Not really, of course, but Clay figured this inept hacker needed to hear it since he’d blundered all over the place inside the Brazos systems. “One of my sidelines is computer security, and I hack into my clients’ computers to demonstrate their vulnerabilities. I don’t mean to be immodest,” he said with a smile meaning just the opposite, “but I can get into anybody’s system, find what I’m looking for, and get out with the company none the wiser.”
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