“I’m sorry, I’ve got something on my mind,” Joslin said, trying to push the memory of Jake’s arm on her breast and her reaction from her mind.
“Let me guess: shopping or the theatre, or maybe food? You’re the one who wanted to do this, so why am I the one doing the spell?” Annabelle was clearly annoyed at Joslin who normally would have been thinking of those things.
“I wasn’t thinking about any of that,” Joslin snapped.
“Look, if you’re worried about me, I’ll be fine. We both have to focus if this is going to work,” Annabelle said, gesturing for Joslin to join her.
When she hesitated, Annabelle set the candle down and put her hands on her hips, “Okay, spill it: what’s going on with you?”
Joslin looked at her sister, embarrassed, then blurted out, “It’s Jake.”
“What has he done now? I know he can be juvenile at times, but he’s a smart kid.”
“He hasn’t done anything. I mean, he hasn’t done anything on purpose,” Joslin said, unable to say the words.
“You’re not making any sense,” Annabelle said, shaking her head. “What did he do?”
“Nothing, it’s just that I think I might be attracted to him,” Joslin finally spit out.
The frustration on Annabelle’s face slowly faded as she considered what Joslin had just said, then a smile spread across her face and laughter bubbled out of her mouth. “He’s just a kid. Are you sure? I wouldn’t have ever imagined you two together.”
“Me either, and maybe I’m just imaging it,” Joslin said, “And he’s not just a kid; he’s intelligent and kind. He speaks three languages and….” then she trailed off, a blush creeping up her cheeks.
“Did he kiss you?” Annabelle asked, rubbing her hands together.
“No, and stop acting like this is juicy gossip,” Joslin said, “This can’t be happening.”
“Well, you know what they say it happens when you least expect it,” Annabelle said with a grin on her face. “And if it is happening, there’s nothing you can do about it; you either feel something for him or you don’t.”
“I could just ignore it, pretend that I don’t feel it,” Joslin said stubbornly.
“Yes, you could, but then you’d be a mess just like you are now,” Annabelle said. “Just relax and stop worrying about it; let life happen for a change instead of trying to control it.”
Joslin knew that she was right, that she tended to try and control her life so that she never got hurt; it came from a heartbreak she’d suffered years ago. “You know how hard that is for me.”
Annabelle came over and gave her a hug. “Joslin, we’re not talking about something horrible here; we’re talking about something wonderful and exciting. Give yourself a break.”
Joslin nodded her head; she felt better now that she’d told someone how she was feeling, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t still thrown a little off kilter by the discovery, so she let Annabelle do the spell. When they walked out of the bedroom, they had an exact location for Deacon, and Joslin felt more hopeful than she had in days.
***Jake***
Jake and Justin were sitting on a bench in front of the building where Deacon had his office; it was nothing special, just another one of the skyscrapers that filled the New York skyline. But there was something different about this building; no one got in or out without checking in with the receptionist at the front desk located right in front of the elevators.
They’d been watching for hours, trying to figure out how to get past her but had come up empty. “How are we going to get in there?” Jake finally asked, his patience at its end.
“I haven’t quite figured that out yet; we’ll have to be very small not to be seen,” Justin said.
“Mice are small and fast; we could just shoot past her into the elevator,” Jake said, getting to his feet, ready for action.
Justin pulled him back down on the bench. “That’s not going to work; what if the elevator isn’t open? We’d have to wait, and someone is bound to see us. Look, there’s no place to hide.”
“Well, then what’s your idea?” Jake asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.
Justin grinned at him, a grin that told him he definitely wasn’t going to like what he was going to say. “Cockroaches.”
Jake groaned. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”
“If we can get ourselves into the bathroom, then we can use the pipes to get upstairs; then it will be easy to get into Deacon’s office,” Justin said, clearly warming to the idea.
“But we’re not even sure we know where his office is,” Jake said, “That’s a big building.”
“That’s simple; we just pretend we have an appointment with Deacon, then when she can’t find it, we ask to use the bathroom and boom, we’re in,” Justin said, getting to his feet.
“Wait, what’s going to happen when we don’t come out of the bathroom? She’s going to notice that,” Jake said, then got an idea. “We need a diversion,” he added a big grin on his face.
“What do you have in mind?”
Over an hour later, no one except the drunk in the alley behind the building noticed the two men who suddenly seemed to appear out of nowhere. As he watched, the taller of the two quickly made a phone call and then they strolled out of the alley as if nothing strange had happened. He picked up the bottle he’d been sipping out of, looked at the label, then back to the men who had just disappeared around the corner, shrugged his shoulders, and took another drink.
Chapter 6
***Joslin***
They’d been sitting nervously in a car just up the street from the building for more than three hours when Justin finally called. “Deacon is on his way out of the building; he’s got a car waiting to take him to his house in Long Island.”
“We’re just up the street,” Joslin said, nodding to Annabelle, who started up the car and began to creep out into traffic.
When they got right in front of the building, she intentionally stalled the car until they saw Deacon getting into a big black limousine. Then she started the car and pulled behind the limo, leaving a few cars between them. It was a long trip out of the city, and neither said much as she drove, intent on not losing the black car in a sea of traffic.
Once they hit the expressway and traffic opened up, it was easier to follow since the big black car stuck out like a sore thumb. They followed Deacon’s car for more than an hour before it finally turned off on a private road and disappeared.
“Now what are we going to do?” Annabelle asked, pulling the car over to the side of the road. “We can’t follow him in there.”
“Let me think,” Joslin said, getting out of the car to pace next to the road, annoyed when a car honked at her. Then she got an idea. “All we have to do is wait until that car comes back out; we’ll pretend we’re having car trouble to get the driver to stop then use a truth spell to get the address.”
“Oh, is that all?” Annabelle said, looking around her. “What if someone else stops or the limo doesn’t stop.”
“Will you quit worrying? If someone else stops we’ll tell them we’re fine; as for the limo, I think we can manage to get the driver to stop,” she said, unbuttoning her shirt to reveal a great deal of cleavage.
Annabelle looked doubtful, but unbuttoned her shirt. “Justin is going to kill me when he finds out what we did.”
“Not if it works,” Joslin said, popping the hood. “When the car comes out of the gate, I’ll make the radiator smoke; that ought to catch the driver’s attention. Go stand over by the gate, but don’t let the camera see you. When you see the car signal to me, and I’ll do my thing.”
Annabelle watched amused as Joslin hiked up her skirt and leaned up against the car. “This might just work,” she said before she slipped into the bushes next to the gate.
As soon as she heard Annabelle’s muffled, “Here they come,” she did a simple spell that would make the water in the radiator begin to boil, then stood ba
ck as plumes of foul-smelling steam began to pour out of it.
She came around the side of the car just as the big black limo came rolling out of the gate and began to flag it down. Waving her arms and jumping up and down, she created a picture that few men would have been able to resist. Sure, enough the big car came to a stop, the driver’s door popped open, and an incredibly large man stepped out.
“Are you having some car trouble?” he asked, his eyes roaming over Joslin’s body.
Joslin involuntarily took a step back when she saw the size of the man, but she recovered quickly and put a grin on her face. “I think something bad has happened to my engine; it’s smoking,” she said, wringing her hands as if she was very upset. “It’s my dad’s car, and he’s going to be mad if I broke it. I’m not supposed to be driving it.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want a pretty little lady like you to get in trouble; let me see what I can do,” the driver said, his eyes only briefly meeting hers before returning to her breasts.
Joslin wanted to slap him, but instead, she bobbed up and down on her toes, making her breasts sway. “Oh, that would be so nice of you,” she said, then added, “I’m sure I can find some way to thank you,” then batted her eyelashes at him.
The driver was so distracted by Joslin that when he stuck his head under the hood, he didn’t hear Annabelle come up behind him. When she put her hand on his arm, he stood up too fast and banged his head on the hood, then began cursing.
“Where did you come from?” he asked, looking back and forth from Joslin to Annabelle, then back again. “Hey, are you twins? I’ve never done twins before; might be kind of fun.”
“As appealing as that sounds, we didn’t stop you for that. We need to know where you dropped Deacon off tonight,” Annabelle said, hoping she wouldn’t have to use magic on the man.
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business. Who are you anyway?” the man seemed to be getting suspicious, so Annabelle stepped closer to him.
“We’re old friends; we just wanted to surprise him,” she said, trying out Joslin’s coy voice. “We met a long time ago in Europe, and we were in the neighborhood and thought we’d stop by.”
The driver seemed to consider giving them the address, but then changed his mind, shaking his head, he said, “I can’t do that; the boss would have my head on a platter.”
Annabelle looked kind of sad, “Well, then you’ve given us no choice; you might have a headache when you wake up, but it’ll go away fairly quickly,” she said, then began to recite a truth spell.
They left the driver propped up in the driver’s seat of the car by the side of the road; when he woke, he’d have no memory of Joslin and Annabelle, only the vague sense that he’d been violated in some way and a slight headache. As they drove away, their hearts were pounding, and they were breathing hard, not only from moving the impossibly huge man, but from the excitement of what they’d just done.
***Jake***
It was a relief to see Annabelle and Joslin walk through the door; they’d been gone for hours, and he’d begun to worry. As soon as the door opened, he was on his feet. “What happened? Did you find out where Deacon lives?”
Joslin laughed, “Give us a minute to get inside, and we’ll tell you all about it.”
After they’d changed their clothes, they met the boys in the living room, “Before we tell our story, we want to hear yours,” Joslin said, sitting down on the couch next to Jake and tucking her feet under her.
“It really wasn’t that big of a deal; we got in, found the office, listened for a little while, then Deacon left, and we called you,” Jake said dismissively; no way was he going to tell them how they’d gotten in.
“But how did you get in?” Joslin persisted, curious about what they’d changed into.
“Well, umm…” Jake trailed off, thinking of a fancy way to say cockroach.
“We turned into cockroaches and crawled through the pipes,” Justin said, grinning at him.
Joslin burst into laughter, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen. I hope you took a shower when you got back,” she finally managed to say when she stopped laughing.
Jake scowled at Justin, then said, “See, that’s why I didn’t want to tell them.”
Justin laughed. “It got the job done, but I wouldn’t want to do that very often,” he said. “Now how did you two do? Do we know where Deacon lives?”
“Well, we might have used a little magic to get it, but we have an address,” Annabelle said, then added, “Joslin is quite the little actress.”
“Annabelle didn’t do so bad herself,” Joslin said, then gave them a rundown on how they’d gotten the address.
“And he won’t remember you at all?” Jake asked, amazed.
“No, not really. He’ll remember that he stopped to help us, but nothing more,” Annabelle said. “It was a mild spell; I didn’t need anything stronger.”
Joslin was still keyed up from their adventure. “So, what’s our next move? Drive out there so you guys can get inside?”
“I think our next move should be dinner. I’m starving, and I think we’ve all earned a little break,” Justin said, “I hear the food in the restaurant downstairs is amazing, and I made us reservations for eight o’clock.”
Joslin and Jake were both a little disappointed, “But—” they said in unison.
“We’ve got plenty of time to invade Deacon’s home,” Justin said, with a wicked grin. “Tonight, let’s have a nice dinner and think about something else; tomorrow will be soon enough to put the next step of the plan into action.”
When Jake saw Joslin, he was no longer upset that they were going to wait to go to Deacon’s. She’d changed into a little black dress, the kind he saw on television but never in Fairplay. It was revealing in all the right places while leaving much to the imagination, and he couldn’t help letting his eyes roam over her body thinking about what was hidden.
He knew that he was staring, but he just couldn’t help himself; the woman standing before him was one he’d never seen before. “You look beautiful,” he finally managed to say.
Joslin smiled at him. “You don’t look half bad yourself.”
Jake had fought Justin on the suit he was wearing, it felt awkward and strange to be so dressed up, but it suddenly didn’t seem so bad. “Justin said we had to dress for dinner,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
“This is New York,” Joslin said, taking his arm. “Now if we’re all ready, I’m starving.”
The restaurant wasn’t anything like Jake expected; in a city full of glass, chrome, and metal, it was an oasis of green. As soon as the doors swished shut behind them, they were transported to another place: a place full of quiet and tranquility. The plants were only the beginning; in one corner a string quartet played softly, muffling the voices of the diners at the booths and tables.
He felt himself relax immediately as the smell of green growing things reached his nose, quickly followed by the tantalizing scent of food, good food. They followed the hostess to a secluded table on the patio where they were surrounded by fountains and the most amazing flowers he’d ever seen. Besides the candles on the tables, small twinkling light provided the only illumination, and a wall of trees blocked any traffic noise.
Jake had never thought of himself a romantic, but here tonight with Joslin on his arm, he felt stirrings inside himself he’d never felt before. Not just desire, but affection and pleasure; he wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her until they were both breathless. It was more than that though; with her arm tucked securely in his, he felt the need to protect her, to watch over her.
He’d never felt this way about another woman, had never felt his protective instincts kick in, and at first, he didn’t understand what he was feeling. Then he remembered his dad talking about this feeling, explaining that for them it was much more intense than it was for humans.
He also remembered that his father had told him to listen to those feelings, that they came from some special p
lace deep inside himself, that when he met the right woman, he’d know it. He hadn’t fully understood what his father was talking about until now: that he’d know down deep in his gut that Joslin was meant to be his, that they belonged together.
Chapter 7
***Joslin***
When they all went their separate ways after dinner that night, Joslin was even more confused. Dinner had been wonderful, the food, the atmosphere, and especially the company. She was still confused about her feelings, but after spending the evening with Jake, she knew that he wasn’t just the silly kid she thought he was.
They avoided the topic of Deacon and instead stuck to other subjects, and Joslin was again surprised by Jake’s intelligence and education. The truth was that she really didn’t know that much about Jake or his family, and had just assumed that because they lived so far out in the middle of nowhere that they’d be somehow different. But Jake liked so many of the same things she did: things that she’d have never imagined him liking.
By the end of the evening, she knew that she was in trouble, Jake was becoming more and more appealing to her, but she knew that it was a bad idea to get involved with him. Not only was he four years younger than her, but he was also Justin’s brother, and she couldn’t risk hurting him. It would make things between their families even more strained than they already were.
She had no doubt that if she let something happen between them that Jake would end up hurt; she wasn’t even completely sure that what she was feeling was real and not just a product of being together so much over the last few weeks. But then she remembered the feeling of his leg pressed against hers in the tiny booth, the way that innocent touch had made her heart beat a little faster and tendrils of desire blossom inside her.
Stripping off the black dress, she crawled into bed without even putting on the shirt she usually slept in. Thinking about Jake wasn’t getting her anywhere; it was only driving her crazy, and right now they couldn’t afford for her to be distracted. She’d just have to control her emotions, stop thinking about what it might be like if he kissed her, and concentrate on the reason they were in New York.
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