Never Been Witched

by BLAIR, ANNETTE

  “I intend to get better.”

  “Morgan!” a woman sniped—yep, snipe said it all. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself in broad daylight!”

  “And it starts,” Morgan whispered, kissing her once more but quickly. “Mother,” he said taking Destiny’s hand and squeezing it, as if for her safety, as he led her toward the rigid-backed woman who looked as if she’d rather chew glass than look at her.

  As stern as an army sergeant on the stoop of her white, New England Cape Cod, Morgan’s mother stood about four foot nine, and she couldn’t look less welcoming if she were about to meet a cobra.

  Destiny stifled an urge to hiss.

  Though the woman couldn’t be more than fifty, she looked seventy. White hair, no makeup, lips so pursed, an onion would seem sweet by comparison. Even when Morgan kissed his mother’s dry cheek, and her mouth relaxed for a beat, her lips held their deeply carved lines, probably from a lifetime of sucking lemons.

  “Mother, this is Destiny Cartwright. We were spending the day together when I called you, so I invited her to come along.”

  “Thank you for having me, Mrs. Jarvis. You have a wonderful son, er, home, and son.” Flipping frangipani, she was shaking in her bargain vintage Manolos.

  Morgan’s mother stepped aside, nearly knocking her off the stoop while blocking her entrance to the house. Uh-oh.

  Morgan caught her around the waist, clearly ready for a fight. He pulled her tightly against him—each of their body parts met, even the most intimate—and the look he gave his mother offered a counter challenge.

  Escorting her around his mother, Morgan let her precede him into the house. Maybe he hadn’t been exaggerating.

  “Behave yourself,” Morgan snapped, and Destiny realized he’d been speaking to his mother. Had the woman called her a trollop?

  “Aren’t you the pretty one?” an ageless, white-haired man said as he ruffled his newspaper to fold it. He jumped to attention, a move he’d probably learned the hard way over the years.

  “Hello, Mr. Jarvis,” Destiny said extending her hand, while mother and son continued to bicker on the stoop. “I’m Destiny Cartwright, Morgan’s friend.”

  Morgan hooked his left arm around her waist as he stepped up to shake his father’s hand. “I see you’ve met my girl.”

  His mother hissed, but his father winked. “Good for you, son. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, Dad.”

  Hmm. He called them Mother and Dad. Formal and informal.

  Either Morgan’s father was twenty years younger than his mother, or the woman was not as old as she looked. Maybe she’d married a younger man late in life. “Oh, is this your wedding picture? It’s beautiful.” Nope, she’d married young and started out looking the same age as her husband. Life had been tough on her, or she’d been tough on herself.

  Destiny examined the entire wall of pictures. Most of them were of Morgan in his priestly garb beside his mother. “Wow, there’s actually an active association for mothers of priests, and you were the president, Mrs. Jarvis?” Yikes, talk about your own agenda. “But where’s Meggie? There are no pictures of Meggie here? I wanted to see what she looked like when she was small.”

  A nut dish hit the floor and barfed cashews all over the rug. Mrs. Jarvis got on her knees to snap them up. Destiny tried to help and got her hand shoved aside so hard, the woman scratched her.

  Destiny stood, patted the bloody scratch with a tissue, and thought about getting a tetanus shot. This was like Ward and June Cleaver’s before the exorcist arrived. Either that or a reality show, Psycho Mothers of Suburbia, and she hadn’t yet spotted the cameras.

  Destiny took in the room: rust colored sofa, orange burlap lampshades on teak lamps on crocheted doilies, white milk glass hobnail vases and basket, kidney-shaped coffee table.

  Destiny sought Morgan with her gaze, but he stood in the far corner of the dining room, adjacent to the parlor, asking his father how he was feeling. How could she interrupt them?

  She swallowed and tried to calm herself. “Mrs. Jarvis,” she said when the woman rose from the oval, fringed persimmon area rug. “Is there anything I can do to help you in the kitchen?”

  How stupid. This wasn’t Sunday dinner in the seventies. And she didn’t need anyone’s approval.

  So an ex-priest brought a witch home to meet the parents. So what? Normal new millennium stuff, though somebody forgot to tell the mother from hell—positively appropriate in this case—who hadn’t responded to her offer of help, anyway.

  Olive, as her husband called her, had ignored her offer and marched into the kitchen, letting the swinging door shut in her face. Charming hostess.

  Destiny had at first pictured Morgan’s mother as a green Olive. Now the woman appeared more in her mind’s eye like a black one, though she didn’t want to be unfair. She liked black olives.

  Destiny girded her loins and confronted the fighter in her kitchen. While being ignored, she noticed the statue of one of their saints facing the wall. To keep busy and useful, she turned it right side out to face the kitchen.

  Morgan’s mother rushed over to turn the statue back to the wall. “When the Blessed Mother doesn’t do as I ask, I can’t look at her,” Olive snapped.

  Whoa. Destiny backed up a step. “Do you turn the statue in the bathtub, too?”

  “Brazen thing.”

  This must be how Morgan felt that first night at the lighthouse, after she gave him a concussion, the cart fell on his balls, and Caramello clawed him.

  Olive Jarvis opened a linen drawer, took out a black cloth, and draped it over the statue. “The wall’s too good for her now that Father Morgan’s brought home a hussy!”

  Shock caught Destiny by the throat. She stepped back as if struck, faced the venom in the woman’s expression, and raised her chin. “That would be the Whore of Babylon, thank you.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  MORGAN ran when he heard Destiny’s scream.

  He found her doubled over in the kitchen, trying to catch her breath, except she wasn’t crying, thank God. She was laughing.

  Judging by his mother’s mottled burgundy face, she looked like her head might explode.

  Morgan took Destiny’s arm. “Kismet, are you okay?” He caught his mother’s evil eye and changed tack. “Destiny, what’s wrong?”

  “Her expression when I—because she—” Destiny pointed his mother’s way but couldn’t seem to catch her breath enough to talk, because she was laughing too hard. She fell against him, tears streaming down her face. “Not important.” Destiny shook her head. “House?” she whispered in his ear, her hand in his hair as she tried to subdue her breath-stealing, hiccupping laughter. “Show me the house.”

  Translation: “Get me the holy Hades out of here.” He knew the feeling well.

  “Mother, I’m giving Destiny a tour of the house to calm her down.” He led Destiny through the dining room, and she started laughing again as she maneuvered him toward the stairs. As they passed his father, his dad winked.

  At the top of the stairs, Destiny stopped. “Your room,” she said.

  Morgan took Destiny to his old room, a boy’s room with bunk beds and red and blue plaid curtains. Nevertheless, the laughing charmer closed the door and went for his zipper.

  “What are you—?”

  “I’m a hussy, I know.” She unzipped him and pulled out his enthusiastic pecker, pushed him back against the mattress of the bottom bunk, where he’d slept as a kid, followed him down, and impaled herself.

  “This bed never felt so good,” he said, raising his hips to meet her.

  “Morgan?” his mother called from a distance. “Morgan, are you up there?”

  “Bathroom!” he whispered, helping Destiny off him, both of them groaning, hitting their heads on the top bunk, and making for the bathroom, him hobbling like an ass with his pants around his knees.

  Destiny started laughing all over again, at him, at them. “I like
being a hussy.”

  He locked them in, leaned Destiny against the pale blue tiles edged in black, and slipped inside her warm and welcoming center.

  It was wild, taking the woman you lo—lusted after, under dangerous circumstances, with the threat of getting caught.

  Faster and faster he surged, kissing Destiny, devouring her, as greedy and insatiable as him, cupping his ass, fondling his balls, and generally making him hotter. “This is the most fun I ever had at my parents’ house,” he whispered.

  A knock at the bathroom door nearly gave him a heart attack.

  They stilled. Destiny’s eyes got so wide, he kissed her.

  “Morgan?” his mother called from the other side of the door. “Are you in there?” She jiggled the knob, and his heart actually stopped.

  Des saw the fear on his face and looked as if she was about to crack up again. Who wouldn’t? How absurd was this? His mother trying to break in on them.

  What was she gonna do if she caught them? Ground him?

  He placed his hand gently over Destiny’s mouth, and she placed her hand over his, her eyes dancing merrily, her hips beginning a slow torture that he couldn’t stop or deny. Damn it, at thirty years old, he could damn well do what he wanted and who he wanted wherever he wanted.

  They moved in sync, slow and silent—sex, sex, sex—in his old room, his little old bathroom, but who cared, because Destiny was here milking him, until he lost control, they both did, and they exploded together, fast and bright as the sun, there in his parents’ house, no sin allowed.

  Morgan stayed inside Destiny, his palms on the wall on either side of her head, his breath coming hard and fast.

  He kissed the perspiration on her brow, her cheek, her nose, and then her lips again, hungry and sated at the same time. He brought her head against his heartbeat. She kissed his knuckles. A perfect moment, if he didn’t have to figure out what to say when they got downstairs.

  He heard the back door slam, which brought him to action. “Quick, we have to clean up. Sex is sticky,” he noted, bringing the amusement back into Destiny’s eyes.

  They washed each other, the most intimate experience of all. He wanted to kiss her again. He liked her, sincerely. So much so that he wanted to show her every silly pebble and seashell in his childhood collection box.

  After they washed and got their underwear in place, they faced the mirror, him standing behind her. He straightened his collar while Destiny, a head shorter, brushed her hair. She turned, and he patted the moisture on her brow, cheeks, and neck, while she stood on tiptoes and rearranged his hair.

  Finally, he fished her strappy high-heeled sandals from behind the toilet, and she put them on, which raised her up and brought her head to his chin.

  “Lipstick,” she said.

  “No thanks.”

  “Too late,” she said. “You’re wearing it instead of me.”

  “Oh, good God.” One more shot at the mirror with a facecloth for him and a tube of lipstick for her.

  He looked for a place to put the lipstick-covered facecloth, and decided it was time his mother grew up. He folded it over the towel rack, lipstick side out.

  At the top of the stairs, he took Destiny’s hand. “Chin up,” he said, as they went downstairs side by side. “I’ll take care of this.”

  His father rattled his newspaper and jumped from his easy chair. “Quick, sit on the couch and grab a crab puff. I told her you went to see the neighbors’ prizewinning garden.” He winked. “She’ll be back any—there’s my bride.” His father turned back to them. “The neighbors have a new baby, a boy. She miscarried four times in the last six years, and they’re so excited. He’s such a blessing.”

  “Gordon, mind your talk in company.”

  “Olive, we’re all family here.”

  “It’s me, Mr. Jarvis. I don’t think Mrs. Jarvis considers me family.”

  His mother gave a tight-lipped nod. “If the miniskirt fits.”

  Chapter Thirty

  MORGAN coughed. What was he supposed to say to that? To the devil with being careful; his mother could stand the truth for once. “I like Destiny’s skirt. I especially like looking at her legs in it.”

  His mother regarded Destiny with deep dislike then—an understatement. “I won’t let you destroy him,” she snapped.

  “Did you just threaten my friend? It sounded like you threatened her,” he said. “Mother, Destiny is our guest. You taught me to be gracious to guests in this house.”

  Destiny elbowed him. “It’s okay, Morgan. Your mother has a right to her own opinion. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

  He pulled Destiny down to the sofa and slipped his arm around her, brought her close, lifted his legs, and crossed his ankles on the coffee table, a rebellious act that he wouldn’t get called on, because he was the chosen child. “I’m playing your knight in shining armor, Kismet.”

  “I’ll let you,” Destiny said. “If and when I ever have an enemy who needs vanquishing.”

  Saints alive, he couldn’t fight them both. “Mother?” Morgan sat forward. “Is lunch ready yet? We’ve got a long ride back.”

  Conversation at the table became stilted when all avenues, also known as “the third degree,” led to the undeniable and unspoken conclusion that he and Destiny were both staying at the lighthouse.

  “I thought the lighthouse had only one bedroom,” his father said.

  Destiny rubbed her nose. “It has four bedrooms, Mr. Jarvis.”

  Morgan cleared his throat. “But only one bed. That’s why I’m glad that you taught me to share, Mother.”

  His father coughed into his napkin, his mother sucked lemons, and Destiny kicked him under the table. “Quit poking the tiger,” she whispered. “Seriously, Mrs. Jarvis,” Destiny said. “Why aren’t there any pictures of Meggie in the house?”

  His father now choked on the coffee he’d sipped to stop coughing.

  Destiny stood and poured Morgan’s father a glass of water from the pitcher on the table. “Should you be having coffee, Mr. Jarvis,” she asked, “if you’re not feeling well?”

  “I feel wonderful. Never better. Why would you think—”

  Morgan’s mother coughed, rearranged the napkin in her lap, and Morgan’s father shut up.

  “Mother, Dad,” Morgan said, standing and pulling Destiny up with him. “We have to go now. Thanks for lunch.” He took Destiny’s purse from the floor and set it on the table. It fell over, and her huge pink penis pop rolled into the center of the table.

  His mother screamed as if a rat sat there.

  His father’s rolling belly laugh about knocked him over. He’d never heard Gordon Jarvis laugh like that in his life.

  “Well, Dad, you do sound healthy. Thanks for the talk. The hussy thanks you, too.” Morgan railroaded Destiny to the door. When he’d nearly got her over the threshold, she stopped and tugged him to a halt.

  She stood her stubborn ground, and he got a really bad feeling about that. “By the way, Mrs. Jarvis,” Destiny said, “I’m a wit—”

  Morgan yanked her into his arms and shut her up the only way he knew how. He kissed her, and kissed her again, after which, he picked her up, still dazed from the kiss—both of them—and carried her down the walk. He deposited her in the passenger seat of his rebellious Mustang and walked around to the driver’s side.

  He would have gotten away, if his father hadn’t come ambling out to the car, hands in his pockets. Morgan rolled down his window, but his dad went around to the passenger side.

  Destiny rolled down her window, and as if she and his dad were on the same wavelength, she raised her face for his father’s kiss.

  “You’re good for my boy,” his father said. “I like you.”

  Then his father came to his side and strangled on his words, as usual.

  “Say it, Dad. You’re allowed to say any damned thing you please.”

  The poor man, who’d rarely been allowed to talk around his wife, blustered, but for maybe the fir
st time in Morgan’s life, he unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “I love you, son. Be happy.” He squeezed Morgan’s shoulder. “You have good taste in women.” Then his father turned and went back into the house to face the wrath of Olive the Ornery.

  If Morgan didn’t know better, he’d think his father had just congratulated him for getting laid.

  “Quick,” Destiny said. “Drive, before your mother comes after me with a broom.”

  “It would serve you right if she tried, after nearly telling her you’re a witch.”

  “Sorry, I got carried away.”

  “Ya think?”

  She broke into laughter all over again.

  Charmed the holy frustration out of him. Scared the swell out of him, too.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  “STOP here,” Destiny said a few minutes later, raising the hair on the back of Morgan’s neck, though he shouldn’t be surprised.

  “Where?”

  “The cemetery, of course. I wanna see Meggie’s grave and say a prayer.”

  He didn’t ask how she knew where to stop, but he did need to know why. “Des, what are you looking for?”

  “Buffy. She’s the tallest gravestone in here. She looks out above all the rest, but you know that.” Destiny stopped to shield her eyes from the Indian summer sun. “There she is.”

  Meggie had named their guardian angel Buffy when they were in kindergarten.

  Morgan stopped to see if Destiny would actually go to Meggie’s grave, but he shouldn’t have doubted her. By the time he joined her, she had knelt to run her fingers over the carving of Meggie’s name.

  Butterflies appeared as if from nowhere, different species in varying colors, fluttering around them, landing on the carving of Meggie in her grotto of angel wings. No butterflies on the other gravestones. They looked forlorn and barren.

  The butterflies reminded him of the ladybug infestation, and he wondered if he’d find a butterfly painting in Destiny’s new portfolio, though she did have a butterfly tattoo.

  Destiny began to weep, softly, shocking him, releasing the emotional lock on his heart as if from a cage. She was mourning with him.