The Witch Is Back (4 page)

Christa waved away my concerns with her perfectly manicured, flame-orange nails. “Puh-leeze. This is good for you, Jules.” She brought her nails to her mouth and narrowed her eyes as she studied me. “In fact, the arrival of Mr. Sexy Bitch is the best thing that’s happened to you in the last five years, at least.”

I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “Mr. Sexy Bitch?”

But Christa didn’t respond right away. Instead, she continued that narrowed-eye expression as a lascivious smile stole across her mouth. This meant only one thing—she was thinking about sex.

“Don’t even go there,” I said, shaking my head. Conversations with Christa about sex were never fun.

She pushed away from the counter and walked over to me, snatching the broom from my hand. She made no attempt to start sweeping, though, so she must have just
done it for dramatic effect. “You realize you’re going to need to give it up eventually, right? I mean, it’s been like forever since the last time you had sex.”

“Give what up?” I asked, even though I knew exactly what she was talking about. I was just trying to delay the inevitable.

“The Jolie love flower,” she answered with a straight face.

“Where the hell do you come up with this stuff?”

She frowned. “Doesn’t matter. What does matter, though, is the fact that you’re about to get some action for the first time in I don’t even know how long.”

It had been over a year since I’d had sex, but who was counting? “I’m not going there with him, Chris,” I said, reaffirming out loud what I’d been telling myself since our date last night. Sex with Sinjin Sinclair was most definitely a bad idea.

“Yes, you are. If you get one thing out of that hot-ass man, it’s going to be a sexfest.”

“Sexfest?” I sighed, long and hard, not even finding the energy to laugh. “I really don’t want to go there.” I folded my hands across my chest and tried to stop myself from squirming. Squirming was just so high school and I
was
twenty-eight years old, for God’s sake!

“Why?”

“Because I think that’s all he’s after.”

She studied me for a second or two and then shrugged. “Who cares? I mean, when you get down to it, that’s what all men are after. The sooner you realize that and go with it, the more fun you’re going to have.”

But I wasn’t like Christa. I couldn’t have sex without feelings getting in the way, and the last thing I wanted was that empty feeling when you liked someone more than they liked you. And sex with Sinjin would basically guarantee that I’d fall head over heels for him, probably
at the same exact moment that he boarded a return flight to England. “I’m just not like you, Chris.”

“With some training you could be,” she said with a knowing smile.

But I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be like Christa. I enjoyed my life as it was—predictable but happy.

“So you really like this guy then?” she asked, handing the broom back to me and starting to bite her cuticles.

“I’ve only had one date with him,” I shot back, as much for myself as her. “How much could I possibly like him?”

“Let me repeat myself … so you really like this guy then?”

I ran a hand through my hair and exhaled a pent-up breath of frustration. “I had a nice time on our date.”

And that was the truth. I’d lost track of time just as easily as I’d lost myself in Sinjin’s incredible eyes. We’d talked and laughed so much, it almost felt like we were long-lost friends—I was just so comfortable around him. It was a weird feeling, almost like we’d known each other in some other place and time. I never really put much stock into the idea of reincarnation, but now I found myself second-guessing it—I mean, who knew, maybe in another life Sinjin and I had been acquaintances. Stranger things have happened, right?

Er, maybe not?

I had to shake these thoughts right out of my head—I mean, this was ludicrous! I’d only met the man two days ago!

“Jolie, whatever happens, there’s a reason Sinjin walked through our door.”

I faced her, startled by her insight. I wouldn’t characterize Christa as an especially intuitive person, but there were moments when she surprised me. “You think?”

“Yeah, and you know it as well as I do. If you ask me, the reason is getting you to put yourself back out there
and start dating. You need to leave yourself open to the opportunity of falling in love.”

I inhaled sharply. “Sometimes you say things that I just can’t argue with, Chris,” I admitted finally as a huge smile pasted itself on her face.

“And when you finally admit I’m right, it surprises the crap out of me!”

I’m not sure why I thought it would be a good idea, but I’d suggested to Sinjin that we see a movie for our second date. In general, I didn’t like going to the movies on a date because isn’t the whole purpose to get to know the other person? Well, in this case Sinjin asked what I wanted to do and “let’s go see a movie” just spurted from my mouth, seemingly of its own accord.

So here we were, sitting in the twentieth row and waiting for the horror movie,
Fear’s Door
, to start. It’s not like it had been on my list of must-see movies, but it was the only one that was playing at the right time. As we sat in the theater, waiting for the atrocities to start on-screen, I found myself nervously stuffing my mouth with popcorn.

“Had I known you were hungry, I certainly would have provided something better than that,” Sinjin said with a laugh and a raised brow as he observed my munching with distaste.

I felt a kernel stick in my throat and after experiencing a coughing fit, in which Sinjin patted my back in mock aid, I wedged the popcorn container below the seat next to me.

“Are you all right?” Sinjin asked.

I took a few huge sips of Sprite and nodded, feeling the flush of embarrassment heat my cheeks. Guess I wasn’t the poster child for femininity. Yes, I probably could have used an etiquette lesson or two from Audrey Hepburn. As it was, my etiquette coach had been Christa,
and consequently I was dressed up like a two-bit whore. While I’d fought the metamorphosis into a prostitute the previous evening, this time I’d given in. Mainly because my nerves were on full-steam-ahead and I didn’t have the wherewithal to fight multiple battles.

But now I was wondering if I should have been more selective with my chosen battles because Sinjin was eyeing me as if I were a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie and he was the Cookie Monster.

“You appear quite … different than you did last night,” he said with a smile. “For my benefit, I hope?”

I suddenly wished I had lots more in common with a turtle so I could suck my head and legs into the protection of my shell and not have to witness the amusement in Sinjin’s eyes. “Um, my best friend dressed me up like this.”

He chuckled. “I did not imagine it was your idea, poppet.”

I swallowed hard and looked at the movie screen, wishing I could actually focus my attention for long enough to read the words in what appeared to be a trivia question. As it was, I was so mortified that I’d actually allowed Christa to choose my clothes and, worse, that I’d willingly gone out in public, that I couldn’t even concentrate on the sentence long enough to read it.

“Yeah, it wasn’t my idea,” I managed and reached for my Sprite again, sucking so hard on the straw that my entire mouth filled up with soda. Swallowing it, I started coughing again.

“You look very lovely,” Sinjin said, but it was almost an afterthought—like he felt bad about the fact that I was dressed like a floozy and, consequently, was now choking on my soda.

I glanced over at him and shook my head. “I never should have let her talk me into it.”

I couldn’t help looking down at myself. And I immediately
regretted it because Christa’s red mini skirt was barely covering my upper thighs and the black fishnets that were beneath it hardly helped. The five-inch stiletto heels on the black leather boots I was wearing made walking a near impossibility, but it was my top that was causing me the most chagrin. My bust is much larger than Christa’s, but she’d insisted on forcing me into a size small tube top that had fallen so far down, I could see the sides of both of my breasts.

And my cleavage looked like a butt.

The lights suddenly dimmed and the ads on-screen faded away into blackness as the movie started. I suddenly felt Sinjin’s hand on mine and I turned to look at him, surprised by how cold he was.

“May I?” he asked with a sweet, boyish smile.

I just nodded and watched him fold his fingers over my hand, suddenly feeling as if I wanted to pull my hand away because his was icy cold. “You’re freezing,” I said softly. It wasn’t the type of cold that came from being outside in the snow. No, this coldness felt like it was radiating from inside him.

He loosened his hold on my hand for a second or two and then tightened it again, as if he were startled by my comments. He dropped his eyes to his lap, then brought them back to mine with a deep sigh. “I suffer from a rare condition called Raynaud’s disease.”

I frowned, suddenly feeling like a total asshole for drawing attention to the fact that he was suffering from some disease. Talk about putting my foot in my mouth. “I’m so sorry. I’ve never heard of it.”

He nodded as if my reaction wasn’t unusual, but he didn’t seem embarrassed. “Raynaud’s is a disorder that affects the blood vessels in the skin.”

“And it makes you feel cold?”

He brought his attention to the screen, where the opening credits were scrolling. “Yes. The blood vessels
shrink and limit circulation to my extremities. I believe it is also to blame for my stomach issues and why I am quite often not hungry.” Then he faced me. “Does it bother you?”

I shook my head, still feeling like a total jerk. And I didn’t even really notice how cold his touch was anymore anyway—it was almost as if my body heat had warmed him up. “No, it doesn’t.”

He smiled and faced forward again as the credits faded and the movie started. I wasn’t sure why but I squeezed his hand. Maybe it was just to let him know that I was okay with the fact that he wasn’t perfect, that I accepted him the way he was. He glanced down at me and smiled, lifting my hand to his lips, which were just as cold as his hand. He kissed the top of my hand and brought it back to his knee again.

I faced forward and tried to get involved in the movie, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Sinjin—how close he was to me, how wonderful it had felt when he kissed my hand, how something was stirring deep down inside me for the first time in so long, a kind of stinging at the thought of the other places he could kiss.

God, I’m as bad as Christa!

I forced the thoughts out of my head and mandated my attention to the screen. Some unfortunate half-dressed woman, complete with one ridiculously large boob hanging out of one side of her tank top, was running through a forest, apparently trying to get away from a madman wearing a mask made out of skin. Why the man was after her or how she’d ended up in such a dire predicament, I couldn’t say. And I wasn’t sure if that was because I hadn’t been paying attention or the audience simply wasn’t privy to the information.

Either way, it looked bad for the woman. I mean, how could she outrun a crazy guy when the two buoys on her chest had to weigh at least ten pounds apiece?

I reached for my popcorn again, feeling anxiety bubbling up inside of me. I glanced over at Sinjin, who didn’t seem to be affected by the woman’s fear in the least. Instead, he just watched the movie in a detached, indifferent sort of way.

Raynaud’s disease?
The fact that Sinjin wasn’t quite as perfect as I originally imagined only endeared him to me more. Just as I had my own Achilles’ heel to bear in the form of my self-confidence (or lack thereof), so did Sinjin. Maybe we had more in common than I thought? I mean, maybe most women didn’t respond well when he told them about his condition—maybe he was as nervous about it as I was about dating in general. Maybe I wasn’t as alone as I thought.

Sinjin’s hold on my hand tightened but it wasn’t an intimate squeeze, it was more a reaction born from something else … adrenaline? I glanced at the screen and noticed that the woman had been stabbed and was now dying on the forest floor, while the man in the meat mask stood over her. There was blood everywhere.

“Are you okay?” I asked Sinjin with a small smirk as if I expected that the big tough guy was actually afraid of this corny and ridiculous movie. The smirk fell right off my face when I looked at him.

He was paler than I’d ever seen him and he appeared to be panting, his breath coming in short, quick gasps. But his eyes were what threw me the most—they were lighter than usual, almost white, and it seemed like he was transfixed by the screen. His lips were drawn tightly closed, almost as if he were forcing his mouth into some unnatural grimace. Meanwhile, his grip on my hand was actually becoming painful.

“Um, Sinjin?”

At the sound of my voice, he dropped his gaze from the screen and immediately released my hand. A smile claimed his lips and he shook his head with a laugh.
“Did I ever tell you that I am quite a coward when it comes to scary flicks?”

I smiled up at him and shook my head. “You looked like you’d seen the proverbial ghost.”

He ran his hand through his hair and faced me again, not saying anything, just looking at me. His eyes were as blue as they’d always been. It must have been the light from the movie that had made them appear white …

“Do you … you mind if we leave?” he asked, seeming somehow flustered.

“Sure, I didn’t know horror movies bothered you so much,” I said, laughing lightly. “You should have said something before you agreed to go.”

He stood up and shook his head, revealing an embarrassed smile on his lips. “I did not want you to think me a coward.”

I took his proffered hand and followed him through the aisle of seats and into the hallway. He pushed open the door for me and I blinked against the bright lights of the theater, shielding my eyes with my hand.

“What do you want to do?” I asked him once my vision had adjusted. Sinjin didn’t seem affected by the sudden transition from dark to light and watched me with an amused smile.