Something Magical (Witches of Hawthorne Grove Book 1) (14 page)

“Dinner? Movies?” He tilted his head. “Actually, I just had the perfect idea.”

Her brow rose. “Oh?”

Jordan nodded. “A swim in the lake behind the house.”

“Are you crazy? The water's probably freezing out there!”

He shrugged. “A shower then, preferably icy cold.”

“I don't think I understand.”

“Strings, Kaylee. I promised no strings, but every time you get near me, I'm the one who gets tied in knots.”

“Hmm,” she murmured, leaning into him before rising up on her tip-toes to kiss his chin. “You know, that's why I started a pet grooming business.”

Sarge must have heard the word
pet
because he came trotting over and nosed first Kaylee then Jordan before trying to wriggle his way between them.

Jordan frowned. “Ah, unfortunately I am not a dog, in case that slipped your notice.”

Kaylee chuckled. “No, you are definitely not a dog, but maybe there's a little bit of animal in you? My clients tell me I'm pretty darn handy at unraveling things.”

T
he bell
over the shop's door jingled melodically, signaling the arrival of what she thought was today's 214 but Esmerelda Seville was neither available for nor prepared to greet her customer.

“Quilt, quilt, where is the dang quilt?” she muttered while digging through every nook and cranny, both material and magical, of Seville's Antiquities and Collectibles for the black-and-white checkered coverlet Serephina had set aside in anticipation of this very moment. Her hair was completely disheveled, her clothes looked slept in—which wasn't true at all—she'd left them pooled on the floor beside the bed exactly where they had fallen last night, and her focus was off. But she
was
here, and she was determined to deliver the quilt she'd arguably skipped a trip to NYC to deliver... only she could not find the thing.

Riffling quickly through the only chest she hadn't yet searched, she growled her annoyance to the mostly empty shop, mumbling, “Serephina is going to kill me! Where is the blasted quilt?”

“Maybe if you had been
home
last night instead of slipping off to consort with the enemy, you'd have gotten my text telling you I put the quilt in your room.”

Serephina's voice was as cold as chipped ice, and Esmerelda would bet her eyes reflected more of the same. She froze, lifted her hands from the chest, closed it, and then stood, slowly wiping her hands together as she turned to face her sisters with what she hoped was a calm expression. Ignoring both the not-so-veiled reference to Serephina's guess about where she'd been last night and the cutting look of accusation in her sister's gaze, Esmerelda forced her breathing to resume, encouraged her suddenly heightened heart rate to slow to a more normal rhythm, and casually propped her hands on her hips. Offering up a wide smile of welcome, she said, “Well! You two are home early.”

Taking a chance the simple greeting would be enough, she started forward toward the front of the shop and the stairs. If the quilt was in her room, she needed to get back there and get it before the lady who was coming here to pick it up arrived. All she had to do was get past her sisters.

She'd taken maybe three steps before a thick, soft bundle of sweetly fragrant cloth hit her in the face, blocking her vision and her path. On the other side of it, Mortianna's words were as forceful as the hand she was using to shove the previously missing quilt into Esmerelda's hands.

“
Go on without me. I'll take care of everything. It'll be fine! You've got nothing to worry about!
Well, Merry, maybe you'd like to explain how Jordan and Kaylee managed to
miss
their flight? Or, you could tell us how you reacted when you discovered Stacy Blaut was no longer
in
New York, but visiting her old buddy Jordan Parker here in good old Hawthorne Grove? I would love to hear that!”

Reaching up with both hands, Esmerelda pulled the checkered fabric out of Mortianna's grasp to cradle it carefully in her own arms, trying to ignore both her sisters' furious gazes and the way her fingers were shaking while she smoothed them over the delicate cloth.
Miss Blaut was in Hawthorne Grove?

“Or, just for fun,” Mortianna added, continuing with a narrow-eyed glare, “why don't you give us the full story, recounting everything that happened when, after four years of absence, Daniel Sutton suddenly showed up at Kaylee Dean's front door?”

Esmerelda could literally feel her skin losing color and she opened her mouth to ask when all of this had happened—she would carefully ignore the question of how her sisters
knew
it had—but, apparently, Mortianna wasn't finished.

“It must be quite an amusing tale, the story of how both our charges ex's managed to arrive in Hawthorne Grove both without our knowing and on the
one
day when Feeny and I just happened to be out of town, magically stranded because we were hundreds of non-magical miles away!”

Esmerelda's mouth worked, but no words came out. If everything her sister had said were true, they could be in big trouble with the CHG. Worse, it was all her fault, and she knew it.

Guilt, the same strain which had been simmering inside her over her hastily made choice since yesterday, slowly heated to a mortifying boil, but Mortianna didn't seem to care.

“Twenty
seven
years, Esmerelda! Twenty seven
years
! We've managed to get through two point seven decades without making mistakes like this, and now—how
could
you?”

The tearful accusation in her sister's eyes and voice heaped more guilt onto the fire of embarrassment and remorse already burning inside her, until...

How could
she
?

Esmerelda's back went stiff with indignation. For the past twenty seven years—since the day all three of them had agreed to a binding contract with the CHG—
Mortianna
had done her level best to screw up everything Serephina and herself tried to do to honor it. And now
she
was pointing fingers? Her chin came up and she leveled a narrow-eyed glare on her sibling. One brow arched high—almost as high as the anger that had suddenly blown up to replace the guilt she'd been feeling over the possibly disastrous repercussions her choice had created—and opened her mouth again to remind Mortianna of just how many mistakes she and Serephina had fielded for
her
when Mortianna sighed, gave an almost piteous shake of her head, and asked, “How could you do this, Merry?”

It was something in her tone that clued Esmerelda in.

Locking gazes with Mortianna, she finally caught the tiny spark of warning almost hidden in her eyes that seemed to scream
keep-your-mouth-shut-and-follow-my-lead
. Relief mingled with suspicion over whatever Mortianna was attempting to do and she became suddenly wary. This was just the sort of situation she generally tried to avoid. Should she keep silent and let whatever little game Mortianna was playing with Serephina play itself out? Or should she just step up and take responsibility for her actions, admit she'd wanted them to go to NYC and leave her behind? That she'd ignored her responsibilities to Mr. Parker and Miss Dean to slip away and enjoy at least one night of …

No, no, no
she could practically hear Mortianna screaming in her head. Admit nothing and deny everything was Morty's motto and was more often than not her go-to piece of advice. But Esmerelda was back to feeling guilty over what she'd done—although she still wasn't exactly clear on just how much that entailed—and she wasn't sure she could make herself keep quiet in such a potentially wired for destruction situation like this.

“Mortianna, I—”

“Should concentrate, Merry,” Serephina all but ordered. “We've a customer at the door. We can discuss this later, and yes, we will discuss what you've done. For now, however, let's get that glamour up and greet the lady of the morning with a smile.”

Relieved to put off the inevitable, if only for a few minutes more, Esmerelda turned and fled the storeroom, determined to at least get the delivery of the quilt right. It may not be much, but it was one less mistake to be laid at her door if they had to face the CHG.

* * *

K
aylee woke
to a stream of warm, pale blue light spilling across her face from the window of one of Jordan's spare bedrooms. Stretching, she swiped her hands across the covers and her palm brushed something hard. The snow globe. She didn't know why, but she'd tucked it into her coat pocket last night before she'd slipped past Daniel and out of her apartment to wait for Jordan outside.

The thing had become a talisman for her—a good luck charm of sorts that kept bad things at bay—and she just seemed to feel better whenever she was holding it in her palm, like now. Shaking the fragile glass ball carefully, she held it up into the beam of sunlight and peered inside, watching the snow swirl and fall in mindless, untraceable patterns, filling the empty spaces between the trees and the grounds surrounding the beautiful old Victorian house inside while her thoughts played over the cheesily romantic evening she had spent with Jordan.

A few kisses after their conversation about Daniel, Kaylee had helped Jordan put together one of the best baked nacho dishes she'd ever tasted. Jordan had started a fire, and they'd curled up on the sofa in front of the television and watched two of the three movies back to back before he'd asked the question of the evening: did she want to go home, or would she stay the night with him?

Her first excuse was the one of no clothes, which Jordan had gotten around by offering one of his old t-shirts for her to sleep in. Kaylee reached down to pull the material close to her nose for another sniff—it smelled clean, of course, but there was still some lingering remnant of his scent within the fabric. It was dreamy. She'd had a hard time falling asleep last night for thinking about it, about him, and about how easy it would be to push back the covers and join him across the hall. All she had to do was say the word, and she could be in his bed—but she wasn't sure she was ready to take that final step.

Like the glass surrounding the house inside the snow globe, her relationship with Jordan was much too fragile at the moment. At least she thought it was. It needed time to grow a little, to mature, to strengthen before they introduced sex into the equation. Especially now that Daniel was back in Hawthorne Grove.

Kaylee rolled over, letting the snow globe slip out of her hands and onto the counterpane as easily as her thoughts slid into a whirlpool of what-ifs concerning her relationships past and present. Why had Daniel come back, really? She wondered if what Jordan had suggested was true—that he'd come back for her—and the thought that it might be made her angry. Did Daniel really think she would have sat around pining for his return for the past four years?

Isn't that exactly what you did do
? Her conscience snipped, and she scoffed at its brutal honesty. It was true, she had waited. But then, she'd pulled herself together and gotten a life, albeit an empty one. And then, Jordan had arrived and changed everything. He'd gotten her out again—out of her apartment and out of her head. Out of the shell she had built around herself to protect her heart.

For one uncomfortable minute, she tried to imagine her life without Jordan's presence in it, and was surprised to realize just how empty it would seem. Had she really had such a gaping void in her world? How was it possible she hadn't known? A quick knock sounded about a half-second before the doorknob turned and Jordan came in bearing a tray laden with breakfast goodies that were still steaming, Sarge loping happily in by his side.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty. I hope you're hungry. I made a little of everything I had. Blueberry waffles, buttered strawberry muffins, bacon, eggs scrambled or fried, and even a helping of grits and some hash browns.”

Kaylee slid back against the pillows, feeling only slightly self conscious because she was half naked beneath the covers he was even now sliding the tray over on. It caught on a seam and he reached over her to tug at the quilt, giving it a quick flick before she could think to warn him. “Oh, wait!”

But her cry came too late. The snow globe rolled over the edge of the bed and landed with a watery crash on the hardwood floor not two inches from the cushioned throw rug that might have saved it.

“What the heck? Where did that come from?” he asked, but now oblivious to her borrowed nightwear and bare thighs, she was out of bed in a flash, standing with both hands over her mouth, her eyes burning with unreasonable tears as she stared down at a watery pool speckled with bits of white foam surrounding a house turned on it's side and two tiny, fake trees.

Vision blurred, her gaze swept up to meet Jordan's while her mind replayed a memory of the day they'd met outside the antique shop and she recalled how every time she'd looked into the globe afterward she'd thought only of him. Looking back down at the house now lying oddly on its side in the shallow puddle at her feet, she thought it odd that the lights seemed to have had gone off and the house now looked empty and cold inside.

Her eyes widened and snapped up as she cast a quick, anxious glance at Jordan, suddenly terrified the globe's destruction was some sort of terrible omen, warning her of bad things to come. Pushing the thought from her mind, she started forward to clean up the mess, but Jordan's hand shot out, holding her back.

“Kaylee, stop. There's glass everywhere and you're bare-footed. Don't move. Or, better yet, get back into bed while I go get a broom or something.”

Sarge nudged her, edging her toward the bed and she nodded, but he didn't quite leave fast enough. The tears blurring her vision and scalding her eyes which had shown up for reasons she didn't understand decided to multiply much too rapidly for her to hold them back. A sob wrenched itself from her throat, and Jordan stopped, his hand on the doorknob, to look back at her.

“Kaylee, are you okay?”

Once again, she shook her head, forcing her hands to move away from her mouth where they had hovered in horror until now, and pushed them down to her sides. “Yes, I'm fine. I—It's just a snow globe. It wasn't even special to me. I mean, I only bought it a few weeks ago, and so I haven't had it that long, really, and … I don't even know why I'm crying!”