by Camryn Rhys
“I don’t know if I can.” He pulled his brows together. “And I’m not sure you should forgive me, either.”
With those words out in the open, something released in his chest. Like he’d known he was over-reacting. Pulling a classic teenagery move. And just trying to cover up the fact that he should feel guilty, too.
“But I do. I need you to forgive me.” She stepped toward him, coming almost into his personal space. Heat flooded him and he wanted to grab her in his arms. He gripped the strap of his duffle bag. Harder.
“I don’t want Charity back,” she said, her voice faltering. “My brother’s friend is getting her a bus ticket to Denver. She’s not coming back.”
He gripped the bag tighter. “Why not?”
“Because Brady wants you to stay. And so do I.” She kept approaching, and he found himself not matching her steps backwards, up the hill. By standing still, he allowed her to advance. Her gaze transformed from sad to something else in a flash. Maybe it was desire, maybe it was fear. He couldn’t tell. But the tears were gone.
“Your brother really wants me to stay?”
Jamie nodded. “He read the text messages, too.”
“Does he know you slept with me?”
“Probably.”
“And that I lied about being married?”
“Yes.”
“And that you tried to seduce me to get me fired?”
“Yes.”
“And he still wants me to work for him?”
She took another step. “He thinks you’re a good guy.”
“Thinks?” Kyle studied her face. The marks of her tears still streaked across her cheeks, and he wanted to touch her. Erase all that.
“Knows you’re a good guy,” Jamie repeated. “You didn’t tell him about any of the stuff he discovered on the phone. You tried to make things right.”
He watched for that look in her eye to change. It was definitely fear, and he could see it morphing back into sadness when he didn’t appear moved.
Lana used to manipulate him like a champion. She’d come home late, smelling like someone else’s cologne, and cry to Kyle about someone coming on to her at a party. She’d cancel lunch and fuck her way out of the consequences.
But if he was honest with himself, Jamie didn’t bear any of those signs. Plus, she appeared genuinely frightened that he’d keep inching up that hill and never come back. He exhaled and stepped toward her. The fear vanished.
“This isn’t a commitment.” He reached for her hands. “I’m just saying, you forgive me, I forgive you.”
“I’m okay with that.” Jamie met his grasp and let him pull her against his body. “I need to see where this goes.”
Kyle threaded his fingers through hers and gazed into the emerald depths of her eyes, looking for reassurance. “I think what we need is to start again. No pretense, no lies. Just two people trying to be honest.”
She stepped back and unlaced their fingers, offering her hand. “I’m Jamie. I like to eat pork and ride horses. I have problems trusting men, but I’m willing to work on it.”
He accepted the handshake and held it. “I’m Kyle. I have a slightly crazy ex-wife, and I think I might be falling for this girl. I never know how she feels about me. But there’s something about her.”
Jamie feigned surprise. “She sounds crazy.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, relishing the warmth of her breath and the dance of her tongue with his. He met her eyes and smiled, tracing the dried path of a tear down the side of her cheek and then kissing away the evidence of their shared heartbreak.
“She’s not all bad. Once you get to know her.”
Chapter Eighteen
Mattie dumped the last of the spice blends into the giant bowl and put the bottle in her recycle bin. The Silver Spring Ranch logo was smudged with some paprika blend or another, and her heart had been sinking a little more with each dump, but it was time.
When Brady told her about Kyle’s exodus, she had to do it.
Her oldest son didn’t trust the magick, even though she did, and she had to respect his wishes, as the owner of his business. She was just an investor.
If only the magick hadn’t let Brady down. Then let Paul down. And then let Jamie down. Maybe Brady would’ve listened. But the second sibling was the last straw for him. He was protective of his family, and she understood that.
Didn’t make it easier.
Once all the blends were in the same bowl, she pulled out her mother’s journal and opened it to the erasing spell. Mattie held her hands over the bowl, just like she had when she first enchanted the spices, and little purple tendrils of magick poured from her fingertips. They bubbled over the top of the bowl for a long moment, while she got out all the old words of the Gaelic spell she didn’t understand.
All she knew was, it started with, Fate, hear my words, the way many of her mother’s spells started. That had been the only Gaelic she’d ever learned. Not that it would have helped—the spells were in such an old version of the language, it wasn’t even recognizable.
But she knew how to say the words.
When the long spell was finished, she watched as the magick swirled and puffed into air, dissipating slowly.
“Well, holy damn shit.” Jamie’s voice nearly stopped her heart.
Mattie didn’t turn around right away. She couldn’t breathe. Her daughter’s voice rang through the air while there were still little fingers of the purple energy becoming invisible over the green Pyrex.
“I mean. Holy. Shit.” Her voice had darkened, but there was an urgency under her words that made Mattie almost afraid to face her.
She had absolutely seen the spell.
“What?” Kyle’s question echoed up from down the side stairs and Mattie whipped around.
Jamie was standing in the kitchen door, having undoubtedly just come up from the ranch kitchen. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were so wide, Mattie could see the white around the irises. She turned her head slightly, calling over her shoulder, “Nothing, just give me a second.”
Mattie finally breathed again. “Jamie.”
“No. Wait, just a second.” Her daughter held up her hands, almost like a surrender, and stepped backward. “Just a damn second.”
“Jamie,” Mattie whispered, gesturing fast. “Come here.”
But she kept backing up, and soon, she was at the first of the stairs to head back down, out of the family home, and Mattie lunged for the door.
“Jamie!” She reached for her daughter. “I can explain. Wait.”
The sound of Kyle’s footsteps on the stairs startled them both, and she gave a hard, quick shake of her head, meeting Jamie’s eyes.
Please, she tried to impart. Please don’t.
Jamie’s still-wide eyes finally blinked, and she reached backward.
Kyle grabbed her hand as he ascended, and Mattie backed up into the kitchen while they both walked toward her.
She was almost as dumbfounded as Jamie appeared to be. She stared at their interlocked hands, at Kyle’s big, dashing smile…
What?
“Are you… I thought you were…” She stumbled over her words and finally cleared her throat and started again. “Brady told me you were leaving, Kyle.”
“I was.” He gave her daughter a wide smile, and when she didn’t meet his eyes, he nudged her arm.
Jamie shook out of whatever stupor she’d been caught in and tried to smile back. “Brady sent me back to talk to him.”
“And you’re…?” Mattie indicated their clasped hands.
“Nothing official right now,” Jamie said, and a little bit of pink crested her cheeks. “But we’re figuring things out.”
Mattie looked back at the bowl. A little flash of disappointment fizzled inside her. “I was just—”
“Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” Kyle said, dropping Jamie’s hand and moving to the counter. “I actually would’ve used the rest of them.”
“Well, they’re all gon
e, now.” She folded her hands in front of her stomach and looked down. “Brady reminded me that I’m not running the trail anymore. Jamie is. So I need to let her take the lead when it comes to programs. And I need to let you take the lead when it comes to the food.”
Kyle ran his fingers through the spices, and Mattie tried to meet her daughter’s eyes.
Jamie had her gaze firmly locked. She reached out to him and missed his shirt sleeve. “Kyle,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“We should get back out onto the trail. Brady will need help.”
“Right. I’ll go get the horses saddled.” He smiled up at Mattie. “When we have a chance, let’s sit down and talk about the spice blends.”
“Does this mean you’re staying?” she asked, raising the tone of her voice away from the waver of her fear.
The couple exchanged a look and Kyle shrugged. “I had some things to work out with Jamie, but I think I’m going to stay.”
Her daughter’s smile was bright, when it came, and lit her whole face.
Mattie could see the happiness running deep through that smile. It was a joy she hadn’t seen in Jamie in a long time. And she never thought that a man would be the source of that smile.
It was like a whole new day.
Kyle held Jamie’s hand as he walked away from her, and Mattie could feel the tickle of tears behind her eyes.
The magick had worked.
As soon as Kyle was in the stairwell, Jamie lasered narrow eyes on her, and Mattie could practically feel the heat.
“What the hell, Mom?”
“Just let me explain.”
The kitchen echoed with the remnants of anger, and Mattie didn’t need to do a reveal spell to know that Jamie had something simmering hard under her deeply lined face.
“What was that? That purple stuff I saw?”
Mattie sighed. “What do you think it was?”
“Magick?” She crossed her arms and settled her weight back on her heel. “It had to be magick.”
“It was.”
Jamie’s jaw went to work, and there appeared to be something happening behind her eyes, but she wasn’t speaking.
Mattie started to get nervous and rubbed her fingers against her palm.
Jamie wasn’t often silent.
This was dangerous.
“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it straight.” She took a breath to fortify herself, and tried not to look at her daughter. “There’s an ancient race of people who have power over the energy that the very first Being created. Some call it magick, some call it Fate, or God, some call it energy. I’m sure some call it other things. But my mother descends from those people.”
A sharp draw of Jamie’s brows preceded her mouth opening, but she still didn’t speak. Mattie wanted to touch her daughter, hold her hand, soothe her, but there was no way she’d receive that. Every move Mattie made was met with some kind of defensive posture, and she wasn’t taking any chances.
“So…” Jamie’s voice quivered as she drew the word out and Mattie’s heart wrenched.
She’d never wanted to hurt her children.
“Let me just tell you, I don’t do magick often.”
Jamie snorted. “Yeah. That helps.”
“No, I mean, it’s not like magick is a big part of our life and you’ve never known about it.” The sting of tears brought a fresh sadness.
“Then what is it like?”
“My grandmother escaped persecution as a witch in New England, years and years ago.” Her mind glazed over with memories of her grandmother and her mother. Memories of her last moments on this ranch. She couldn’t bring up all of the history. Jamie just needed to be reassured. “There are people out there who don’t want us to be able to practice magick the way we want. They want to control who can and can’t use spells, and how they use them, and my grandmother said no.” She swallowed down more emotion, as pictures of her mother flooded her mind. Making fire, enchanting tea, special brownies of love.
And Brady.
She’d grown up in a house where magick was practiced openly. But then, Brady was born, and they turned the woods white, and their lives were never the same again.
“So you don’t…practice magick…until today?”
“That’s not exactly true.” She bit her lip. This wasn’t going to be easy for Jamie to hear—her daughter who already didn’t trust people. She wished she knew the forgetting spell.
“Then what is the truth?” Jamie shook her head and closed her eyes. “Please, Mom. Just tell me the truth.”
“The truth… the truth is, we stopped doing magick when Brady was born. But when he came into his power, I had to explain things to him. And it didn’t seem like such a big deal to do a little spell here and there. It was like I could finally be myself.” Fresh tears spilled over her cheeks. “But since you and Paul are…”
“Not your real children, yeah.” Jamie sniffed. “So we won’t be magick.”
“You are my real daughter.” Mattie couldn’t stop herself this time. She crossed the kitchen, took her by the shoulders, and pulled her close.
Jamie began to sob, harder than she had when Mattie had broken the news that she and Paul were adopted, years ago. The last time they’d been like this.
“There is no difference to me between you and Brady and Paul. I’ve had you since you were a baby. You may not have come out of my body, but you are my flesh and blood.” She pulled her daughter back to arm’s length and touched her cheek, wiping at the tears she found there. “Hiding magick from you was for your protection.”
“God, Mom. You don’t get it.” She pointed down the stairs, her face red and puffy. “You made me fall in love with someone. You did this.”
“No.” Mattie shook her head. “No. Magick does not create love. It can’t. Not the spells I do, anyway. Love exists in you. All magick does is reveal it.”
The disbelief was so clear in Jamie’s eyes; Mattie couldn’t do anything but let her step away. She was going to have to wrestle through it on her own.
Mattie couldn’t change her mind for her. There may have been a magickal way to do that, but she wasn’t powerful enough to say that spell alone.
“I don’t know if I can believe that.” Her daughter put her hands on the door jamb and leaned over, resting her head just below them. She sniffed. “How long does it take for the spell to wear off?”
“Not long. Whenever you ate your last meal, as long as it takes the food to work its way through your system.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. “Although it builds up in your system, the more you eat of it. That’s why I made so many versions of the spice blends. The revelation only comes in spurts, until every barrier to love that exists in your heart has been dissolved. It’s called a revealing spell.”
Jamie pushed back from the door and turned her back on her mother, walking down the first few steps toward the ranch kitchen.
“I’m sorry, Jamie,” Mattie called after her.
A sniff and a wave were the only responses she got, and Mattie’s mouth went dry as she watched her daughter disappear. The fact that she’d brought up the adoption worried Mattie to no end. If she felt like there was no tie to this home, she might never return. And that would break Mattie’s heart for good.
Jamie didn’t speak for the entire ride back to camp. It was worse than not knowing what to say. She knew exactly what she wanted to say.
Her mother was a witch.
Her mother had enchanted her.
And Kyle.
Her mother did magick in secret, and made people fall in love.
The whole Singles’ Trail Ride thing took on a new meaning now that she knew the whole story. Damn. She didn’t want to know the whole story.
Why couldn’t she just have come into the kitchen five minutes later? After the spices were all safely in the compost heap.
After the magick.
But there was no hiding from the truth.
Her mother had used magick, and she’d used it on Jamie and Kyle, and everyone else on the trail ride. Maybe all of the trail rides they’d ever done.
There was a wall of couples in the foyer of the bunkhouse. Rows of smiling, framed pictures that showed all the weddings of people who had met at the Silver Spring Ranch.
Were all of those pictures a lie?
“Penny for your thoughts,” Kyle said, riding up beside her and giving her his best hot chef twinkle.
She could swear, he had it perfected. “Where’s the penny?” she asked, with less ‘happy’ in her voice than she would have liked.
He dug around in his jean pockets for an exaggerated moment and Jamie waved him off.
She kicked her horse and rode a little ways ahead. They weren’t far from the campsite, and she wanted to get there so the work would provide a natural separation from Kyle for awhile.
Before too long, he caught up and rode far enough ahead that he could look back over his shoulder and meet her eyes. All the sparkle was gone. “Jamie, what’s wrong?”
She pressed her lips into a line and tried for a smile, but it didn’t work. He wasn’t fooled.
“Jamie.” Kyle’s tone was hard, like his gaze.
She hated doing this. Doing what her mother had done to her. “My mom and I talked about some stuff up in the kitchen.”
“What stuff?”
Jamie kept pace with her horse and tried to decide how she was going to approach this situation. A part of her didn’t want to tell him—wanted to let him find out on his own.
But she couldn’t handle the change in the way he looked at her. She didn’t want him to lose that twinkle.
They’d lied to each other, manipulated situations, engaged in what amounted to adultery at the time, and somehow, he still managed to look at her like she’d hung the stars.
If that happiness went away, it would crush her.
A hard lump formed in the base of her throat and she shook off the foreboding that had settled over her. “Just… stuff.”
“That’s not good enough.”
They passed the last rise before the campsite, and the white cover of the wagon cage came into view. Jamie thought about the last time they’d made this ride. The first time they came into camp, at the beginning of the week. So much had changed since then.
