Sympathetic Magic (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 4) (2 page)

A crunch of gravel made her turn around, eyes narrowing. No one else should be up here, unless it was Connor and Angela coming back to Jerome for something they’d forgotten. But no, that didn’t make sense. Margot knew the couple had planned to be on the road by around ten, and it was already almost eleven. They should be halfway to Phoenix by now.

The man who appeared around the corner of the house in that moment was tall and dark-haired, but he definitely was not Connor. He stopped a few feet away from where she stood on the back stoop, the expression in his eyes startled even behind the sunglasses he wore.

Despite her best efforts to ignore it, an odd little thrill traced its way down Margot’s back. “What are you doing here, Lucas?”

At once he removed the sunglasses. His dark eyes twinkled in the bright sunlight. “Checking on the house. You?”

“The same,” she said shortly. In that moment she wished she hadn’t dressed so casually, that she wasn’t wearing the skinny jeans she’d bought against her better judgment, the slim-fitting T-shirt, or the thong-style jeweled sandals that showed off her recent French pedicure. It was as if Lucas’ gaze had caught every detail about her appearance, right down to her toes…and worse, he liked it.

At her reply, he let out a chuckle. “Those kids were so distracted, I think they probably forgot half of what they said to anyone over the past few days. Late last night, Connor asked me to come up and check on the house, since he was afraid he’d forgotten to lock the back door, and Rachel and Tobias were still going to be tied up at the resort today getting everything cleaned up and cleared out.”

“Angela made the same request of me,” Margot replied. “And good thing, since they actually did leave the back door unlocked. But I’ve taken care of it. Sorry you had to waste a drive out here.”

“Oh, I don’t think it was wasted,” Lucas said, still with that glint in his eye.

The way he was looking at her left little doubt as to his meaning. She drew in a breath, trying to come up with a way to let him know there was no point in him wasting any more effort on her. Maybe in some small corner of her soul, she’d admit such attention was just the tiniest bit flattering, but her rational self knew she had to get rid of him now and offer nothing that could possibly be construed as encouragement. Goddess knows he was bad enough already when she was offering nothing but
dis
couragement.

He forestalled her, though, saying, “Well, since I’m here, why don’t I buy you a drink?”

“A drink?” she repeated with some incredulity. “It’s eleven o’clock in the morning.”

“True,” he said amiably. “But it’s Sunday. Someone has to be offering brunch around here…you know…champagne? Mimosas?”

She crossed her arms and sent him what she hoped was a sufficiently quelling look. “This isn’t your country club, Mr. Wilcox.”

He did not appear offended. “Lucas. I’d say after that dance last night we should be on a first-name basis.”

“Very well…Lucas.” Although her tone was as severe as she could make it, his expression didn’t change. He only stood there, gazing up at her where she stood on the back stoop, a slight smile playing about his mouth…a mouth she tried damn hard not to look at for very long. It was far too distracting. She went on, “No one offers brunch here in Jerome, and I don’t generally make a habit of drinking before dinnertime.”

“Okay, no mimosas. A cup of coffee?”

“Sorry, but I don’t drink coffee.”

“Iced tea? Sparkling water? Lemonade?”

Despite herself, Margot could feel her lips twitch. He was persistent, wasn’t he? And after the last few fallow years, it felt good to have a man paying this much attention to her, even if the man in question happened to be a Wilcox.

But because he was a Wilcox, she knew she couldn’t let that smile grow any further, couldn’t do anything except send him on his way as soon as possible. Yes, Angela’s constant message for the past few months had been Wilcox/McAllister togetherness, but Margot was not going to allow her
prima
’s wishes to sway her. Bad enough that Adam McAllister had been so openly flirting with that one Wilcox girl last night at the reception. So much for his supposedly broken heart. Margot knew she was made of sterner stuff.

“Nothing, thank you.” She stepped down from the stoop, knowing she would have to go right past Lucas to make her escape. If only witches truly did have the ability to fly away on a broomstick. It would have been so much easier.

He did shift slightly on the path so she could walk past him, but not so much that she wasn’t acutely aware of how tall he was, looming over her like that. Neither could she ignore the slightest tantalizing trace of the cologne he wore, something clean and woodsy, teasing her like a glimpse of the great pine forests surrounding Flagstaff itself, a place of course she’d never been.

“Rain check,” he said, seeming content to stand there and watch her leave. A few more paces, and she’d made it past the corner of the house. Lucas was gone from her sight.

Why, then, did she experience a small pang, as if she wished he would have followed her?

L
ucas drove back
to Flagstaff with the top down, letting the warm wind blow through his hair and wash over him. It was a beautiful mild mid-September day. The only thing that would have made it better would be to have Margot sitting in the passenger seat, less than a foot away from him. He could almost picture her there, a patterned scarf tied around her hair, sunglasses concealing her dark eyes. Very glamorous, very Audrey Hepburn.

Too bad there was probably a greater chance of the late Ms. Hepburn rising from the grave to ride with him than of Margot Emory ever condescending to do so.

The other times he had seen her, she’d been dressed conservatively and somewhat formally, in sheath dresses that complemented her slender frame but didn’t exactly ooze sex appeal. Today, though, in those jeans, with the scoop neck of her T-shirt showing more cleavage than he’d expected and her pretty bare feet in those sandals?

In a word, damn.

Obviously Angela’s determined
glasnost
policy of late hadn’t done much to change Margot’s opinion of any and all Wilcoxes, including himself. True, some walls took a long time to break down, but Ms. Emory’s were obviously very thick. And high. And reinforced with steel, apparently.

Had she agreed to dance with him simply as a subtle way to torture him? Lure him into thinking she might be unbending a bit, just so she could go back to shooting him down unmercifully?

It might have been easier to think that, but for some reason Lucas didn’t think it was precisely what was going on. More like…he’d caught her in an unguarded moment last night, and now she was doing whatever she could to recover the ground she thought she’d lost.

And it wasn’t that she was seeing anyone else. Even before the reception, he’d gone back and forth as to whether he should just ask Angela about Margot, but when he’d actually worked up the nerve to call and do so, Angela wasn’t home, and he didn’t want to bother her by calling her cell when she was out and about…most likely occupied with some detail or other associated with planning the wedding, since that seemed to be her main reason for leaving the house, aside from her unending doctor’s appointments. Of course, asking such questions of any of the other McAllisters was out of the question, so after some more hemming and hawing, he’d asked his friend Lester, the private investigator, to poke around a bit. Not a lot, not about anything that would be intrusive. Just to make sure Margot didn’t have a boyfriend that she was keeping on the down-low.

There wasn’t a lot to dig up, as it turned out. She’d been born at Verde Valley Medical Center, as were most of the McAllisters (those who weren’t delivered by the clan healer back in the day, anyway), had gone to school in Clarkdale and Cottonwood. No record of any marriages. Mother lived down the hill in Clarkdale, father listed on the birth certificate as one Paolo Cantu but nowhere in evidence after that. Her name was on the deed to the house she lived in, a deed that had been updated about a year ago, when the mother relocated from Jerome to a senior community.

“Nothing besides that,” Lester said, giving his report as the two of them shared a beer at the Beaver Street Brewery in downtown Flagstaff. “Not even a speeding ticket. Anyway, I hung around in Jerome for a few days, playing tourist, saw her come and go a bit. She had dinner with a couple of what looked like women friends one night. Drove down to Cottonwood to go to the grocery store. Spent a lot of time watering her roses. Sat in the garden and read a book, and then was writing in a notebook or something for a while.” Lester shook his head, although his expression was amused, and took a swallow of beer. “A real pistol, that one.”

Lucas had shot Lester a pained glance at that comment but decided to let it go.

Anyway, because of that bit of investigating, Lucas knew Margot was just as unattached as he. In a way, it would’ve been easier if she’d been seeing someone. Then he could blame her indifference on her unavailability, instead of her intractable inability to see that not every Wilcox was a black magic–wielding would-be kidnapper.

All right, Damon actually
had
been, but that was beside the point.

He didn’t want to think about Damon, though. Right then he wished he didn’t have to think about anything at all. It would be easier that way.

Forcing himself to focus on his surroundings, he saw that the scrub junipers flashing by had now given way to tall ponderosa pines. It still shocked him, the alteration in the landscape. How it happened so fast. A change in the elevation, he supposed.

He knew it was too much to hope that Margot’s feelings toward him might shift that quickly.

T
he days went
by quietly after that. Late in the week after their wedding, Angela and Connor returned to northern Arizona, spending a few days in the house on Paradise Lane before heading up to Flagstaff so they’d be there in time for her latest doctor’s appointment. Angela seemed to have gotten visibly larger in only the few days they were away — or maybe it was just that Margot wasn’t used to seeing her normally slender
prima
so, well,
round
.

“Everything okay with the house?” she asked of Margot. They were sitting on the front porch, enjoying a mild afternoon breeze, as the house was still somewhat warm.

“It was, after I checked. You did leave the back door unlocked.”

Angela put a hand to her brow. “Oh, wow, sorry about that. But I guess it’s good that I asked.”

“Maybe, except that it was somewhat unnecessary, as Connor had asked the same thing of Lucas.”

“He did?” she asked, her eyes widening. “Oops.” Then she added, her expression growing somewhat sly, “And how is Lucas?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Margot said shortly, glad they were on the porch, so she could make a hasty escape. “I haven’t seen him since. I expect you’ll find out when you go back to Flagstaff.”

And after that she said a quick farewell and departed, inwardly fuming. Had it been a simple mistake…or had Connor and Angela both asked their respective relatives to come check on the house so they’d “accidentally” bump into each other?

Goddess save her from happy couples who felt the need to matchmake every unattached individual in a ten-mile radius.

By the time Margot got back to her house, she could practically feel the scowl she’d dug into her own forehead — a scowl that didn’t lessen when she saw that her mother’s car was parked behind hers in the driveway. True, because of the way the lot was set up, there really wasn’t anyplace else to park, but really, the last person she felt like talking to now was Sylvia Emory.

I knew I should’ve gotten the key back from her
, Margot thought in annoyance, although she knew locked doors didn’t stop most witches if they wanted to get in. Still, whatever happened to privacy?

She did her best to settle her expression in more serene lines as she entered the house. The smell of cinnamon tea drifted out to her. Normally, it was a scent she enjoyed, one that evoked changing leaves and colder days and the Halloween decorations nearly everyone in Jerome put up. Now, though, it just told her that her mother had gone ahead and made herself at home in the kitchen.

Attempting not to sigh, Margot entered that room, saw her mother sitting at the round table under the window, watching the late afternoon sunlight slant in through the stained-glass suncatcher hanging there, casting hues of blue and red and gold and green over the white tile countertops.

“Tea?” said her mother, lifting a chubby brown teapot from the trivet that sat in the middle of the table.

“Thank you,” Margot replied. She knew it was pointless to ask her mother what she wanted, or what she was doing there. In time she’d get around to it, but on her own terms.

“I see our
prima
is back in town,” Sylvia remarked. “Not staying, though, I would imagine.”

“Not for long.” After blowing on her tea, feeling her mother’s sharp blue gaze on her, Margot added, “She has to see the doctor soon.”

“And I imagine she’d rather be someplace cooler. What were those two thinking, going all the way down to Bisbee in September? It must have been a hundred degrees.”

“They wanted to see the vineyards, talk to the growers.” Yes, there were vines planted all over the Verde Valley, but the growers still got a good portion of their grapes from the wine-growing regions down south, especially around Willcox. Margot tried not to think of the irony of that one small town being given that name. Two “L”s, to be sure, but still….

“Hmm,” her mother said, which could have meant anything. Really, why was she here? It wasn’t out of character for her to drop by unexpectedly, but in general she only did that when they hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks. Since not even a week had passed since the wedding, and Margot had shared a table with her mother then, she couldn’t quite figure out why the urgent need to be here now, of all days.

“And what have you been up to?” Sylvia asked then.

Something seemed to click in Margot’s head. She set down her teacup, shot her mother a narrow look, and replied, “Nothing at all. Tending my garden. Reading. Renewing the illusion across Boyd Willis’s driveway again so another drunk tourist won’t back into his garage.”

That driveway had proved to be a magnet to intoxicated or merely befuddled travelers over the years…until Margot came up with the idea to cast a long-lasting illusion of a sturdy stone wall across the entrance to his property. Even someone who’d spent a hard afternoon drinking at the Spirit Room tended to look twice before backing into that. But the spell wouldn’t hold indefinitely, so she maintained a schedule of refreshing it every two weeks. The only drawback was that Boyd had to wait until the street was absolutely empty of civilians before he came and went, as otherwise they would see him backing his ancient F-150 right through a wall, but that seemed a small price to pay compared to having to replace the garage door once a year.

“That’s all?” her mother asked.

Irritated, Margot snapped, “What else would I be doing?”

Without blinking, Sylvia reached out and poured some more tea into her cup. The sweet-smelling tendrils of steam curled upward, and she inhaled deeply, then said, “Well, I’d hoped you might be getting out and about more.”

“And where precisely am I supposed to be getting out and about? I’m an elder here — I can’t just go running around on a whim.”

Her mother looped a finger into the handle of her teacup but didn’t lift it, seeming content to merely let it rest there on the tabletop. “I think you could go many places, if you’d only allow yourself.”

“And what precisely is that supposed to mean?” Her mother loved to talk that way, in elliptical sentences that made her sound like the clan seer. In reality, her gift was for growing things — the glory of the garden outside was her work originally, although Margot privately thought she did just fine on her own without any magical help.

“My dear, the borders are open! We can go almost anywhere we like now. Haven’t you ever wanted to see Flagstaff?”

“No,” Margot said shortly. That was a lie, as she’d often wondered when she was younger what it would be like to walk amongst those ponderosa forests, to breathe in cool air scented with pine. Those lands had been off limits for so many years that she’d stopped thinking about them somewhere along the line. Now, though, with this new joining of the clans, she realized she could go there…if she dared.

Her mother lifted an eyebrow and finally took a sip of her tea. “Not even to see your new friend?”

“Friend?” Margot asked, although she thought she knew exactly who her mother was talking about.

“The tall one…you know…who you danced with at the reception.”

More than ever she found herself regretting that single foolish lapse in judgment. It seemed everyone was conspiring to get her together with Lucas Wilcox. Well, all right, not everyone — she had no doubt that Bryce McAllister and Allegra Moss would be properly horrified if hers and Lucas’ “relationship,” if one could call it that, were to progress any further than that one ill-advised dance.

“If you mean Lucas Wilcox,” Margot said, not bothering to hide the irritation in her voice, “he is not my ‘friend,’ and I have no intention of going to Flagstaff to see him, or for any other reason.”

“Too bad,” her mother replied, her placid expression saying that she was used by now to her daughter’s curtness. “He’s a handsome one.”

“He’s a Wilcox.”

“So? Being with a Wilcox seems to be working fairly well for our
prima.
”

This was ridiculous. Connor’s and Angela’s was a very special case, a relationship that apparently had been preordained by the Goddess. Margot wouldn’t question the situation, as it was clear they were meant to be together, but one fated pairing didn’t mean it was suddenly open season on all the Wilcox men. Maybe her mother could forget how Damon Wilcox had kidnapped Angela right from her bedroom, and how his grandfather had attempted to do the same thing with Aunt Ruby back in the day, but Margot’s own memory wasn’t quite so short. Yes, according to Angela, Lucas had nothing to do with Damon’s plots, had actually tried to talk him out of the kidnapping, but that didn’t change the fact that he was born a Wilcox, was still a Wilcox, and would be a Wilcox until the day he died.

Just as she was a McAllister. Oh, her last name was Emory, but her grandmother had been Amanda McAllister, and so Margot was as much a part of the clan as anyone. More so, as she was an elder. And a McAllister elder couldn’t go off dallying with one of the Wilcoxes, no matter how good-looking he might be.

And that,
she thought,
is a big part of the problem. Those Wilcox men…they definitely have the “tall, dark, and handsome” thing down pat. I doubt they’d be as much trouble if they didn’t.

“Mother, if you’ve only come up here to ask whether I’m seeing Lucas Wilcox, the short answer is no, I’m not, and the slightly longer answer is, no, I am not, and never will.”

For a few seconds her mother didn’t say anything, only drummed her fingers against the glazed ceramic surface of the teacup she held. At last she said, her tone far gentler than her daughter’s, “Margot, being an elder doesn’t mean you have to live your life alone. That’s not what anyone intended.”