by Tasha Black
“I can do it,” Tess snapped.
There was silence, during which she inwardly cursed herself for her stubbornness. But this was her thing. She wasn’t about to throw in the towel just because of a few extra wires. Lane women were not quitters.
She tugged at the next wire, and the next as the others went back to the pies.
Slowly but surely, she untangled everything until she got to the fan motor at last.
It had a cover plate of sorts that snapped off the same way the casement had - neat design.
Tess slid her screwdriver into the seam and popped it open.
At last, she had the actual motor in her hands. Now she was truly in her element. She immediately began breaking it down, cleaning each part, and bringing them back to harmony with each other. The whole thing would soon purr like a kitten again.
By the time she was finished she looked up triumphantly only to realize that the others had all gone back to work.
Quickly, she reassembled the motor, popped it back in its casing, replaced the wires, put the filter back, clicked the mounting into place and congratulated herself on a job well done.
She lifted the door and began to slide it back into place when the springs engaged, popping it back out.
She tried again.
Same thing happened.
Again.
She’d have to use a little more force to overcome the pressure from the springs.
She lifted the door, aligned the slots with the pins, and slid it down again, a bit harder this time.
The door settled into place with a satisfying click.
Then the glass door shattered.
Tess watched in horror as the diamonds of tempered glass exploded outward, skittering across the floor like hail.
Silence.
“Are you okay?” Will’s voice boomed across the room.
“I’m so sorry,” Tess nodded tearfully.
She didn’t dare look up. She knew Hedda would be purple with rage. And she hoped Kate wouldn’t kick her out, but she couldn’t blame her if she did.
“Great, now it’s going to take twice as long,” Darcy muttered.
Darcy wasn’t wrong. The oven was working before, albeit not as well as it would have been with the fan. But now they were down to one commercial oven to make the pies for the season plus the two hundred for the firehouse.
Tess was going to have to take responsibility for her mistake.
“I’ll just grab a broom,” Kate said kindly.
“No. No, I’ll grab a broom and I will clean up,” Tess said clearly. “And I will stop trying to fix things. And I will make pies, exactly the way you tell me, night and day until they’re done.”
“Tess, you don’t have t—” Johnny began.
“—No. I insist,” she said. “You guys go on and do whatever else needs doing. I will make the pies. Everyone shouldn’t have to suffer for my mistakes.”
“I’ll help,” Will volunteered.
Tess looked up at him in surprise.
Unfortunately, in doing so, she also caught Hedda rolling her eyes. But that didn’t matter in the moment, as long as she had one ally.
“We can all help,” Kate said.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Will replied. “We got this.”
“We’ll let you get to it, then,” Kate said, then turned to the others. “Kids, come on back to the house.”
The group filed out, leaving Tess and Will alone with nothing separating them but a thousand sparkling pieces of glass.
“They look like diamonds, don’t they?” Will asked with a smile.
5
They’d only spent another hour or two in the kitchen cleaning up the glass and finishing the pies that were in the works, but Tess felt as if she had been working non-stop for a week. Her feet hurt and she was covered in a light apple residue from head to toe.
At least she’d been mortified enough not to fall prey to her attraction to Will as they cleaned, cooked and cleaned again.
Only now, out in the crystalline winter night, boots crunching in the snow between the house and the barn bakery, did she become physically aware of him again.
She stole a sideways glance.
Will’s breath plumed in the night air, reminding her of the dream. He was so tall, so solid, she could scarcely believe the earth didn’t tremble beneath his tread.
She could practically still taste his dream kiss.
He turned to her, and she quickly turned back to the farmhouse, carefully studying the icicles that hung from the fascia.
The gutters needed to be cleaned. Icicles were a pretty symptom, but clogged gutters were a problem. She forced herself to envision the potential damage to the soffit, so as to stop envisioning his hands on her, his mouth on her neck…
They were almost there. And then she would go upstairs and he would drive back to his apartment. He didn’t know what she was thinking. She only had to make it another ten yards without doing something foolish. It wasn’t like he could read her mind.
Ten yards.
Nine… Eight…
“Seven?” he asked.
She almost tripped over her own feet.
“Tomorrow?” he asked. “Should we get started around seven?”
“Yes,” she blurted. “That’s perfect.”
So he was coming back, then. He wasn’t just helping tonight.
They reached the back porch.
Will paused and turned to her.
Tess met his hazel eyes again, wondering what she would do if he tried to kiss her.
“Hey,” he said softly, placing a big hand on her shoulder. “You’re going to be okay.”
Before she could take in what he had said, he was crunching away through the snow, his big form heading to his pick-up truck under the sycamores.
Tess watched his leather jacket disappear under the snowy trees, then turned back to the house. She could still feel the warmth of his hand on her shoulder.
She tapped her boots off and left them on the porch so as not to track in any snow. Besides, it was late and she didn’t want to wake anyone.
She tiptoed through the kitchen and then she heard it.
A soft, crooning sound, as if someone had left a radio on.
When she rounded the corner of the kitchen island, she spotted the source.
Johnny had Neve wrapped in his arms. He was swaying her gently and singing a love song into her hair, his pale cheek bright against the rich bronze of her neck.
Neve’s eyes were closed, her expression pure happiness.
“Baby,” Johnny crooned.
Tess watched, breathless.
Johnny slid his body down Neve’s.
Neve opened her eyes.
“Johnny,” Neve scolded.
But Johnny slid down further, burying his face in Neve’s belly, then down further still.
Tess was frozen in place, wishing she could be anywhere else, but afraid to move a muscle and get caught watching.
“Your mom is upstairs,” Neve hissed, trying to grab him and pull him back up.
But Johnny kept going, until he settled down on one knee, and then let go of Neve’s hips with one hand to reach into his pocket.
“Neve Whittaker,” he began.
Neve’s hands floated down to her sides.
“Neve, I love you,” he said.
“Johnny,” she breathed.
“Will you marry me?” he asked.
“Y-you… I…”
“Say yes,” Johnny said firmly, but his voice was a note higher - baritone instead of his usual bass.
There was a perfect instant of silence, and then the tinkling of Neve’s laughter as she offered him her hand.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she laughed, watching his big hands tremble as he slid the ring over her finger. It shone in the firelight, but not as beautifully as the tears shone in Neve’s dark eyes.
While they were distracted, Tess began to slink away, unable to take her eyes off the happy couple.
She was drawn to their happiness, though it made her own chest feel hollow and empty by comparison.
She had lived with her sisters on the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere for years, without a man around. Why did she care so much all of a sudden?
Tess bit her lip hard, and then slipped out the back of the kitchen and through the dining room to the stairs, leaving Johnny and Neve alone, and feeling a pang of guilt at having stumbled upon them.
As fascinated as she had been, this was their moment, not hers.
Hers would come along someday.
Wouldn’t it?
6
Tess was tempted to sneak out during the night and use her magic to fix the oven as everyone slept. She was very, very tempted.
But doing so would mean explaining her gift. And although Derek Harkness had happily accepted Hedda’s magic, Tess wasn’t so sure the rest of the family even knew about it. She hadn’t seen her sister use even the most minor spell since she arrived.
And Tess knew from her time on the mountain that shifters generally did not like magic.
So she’d just have to do as she pledged, and make pies the hard way.
So many pies…
She drifted off while trying to calculate how long they’d stretch, laid end-to-end, saddened at the thought that no one else would see any intrinsic humor in determining the circumference of a pie.
Her alarm went off at six and she dragged herself out from under the quilt. She felt as if she hadn’t slept at all. Her thoughts of pies had given way to haunting dreams of wandering the woods, searching for Will Harkness.
She rubbed her arms to chase away the goose bumps - more from the chilly air than the content of her dreams. She’d been warned that the attic room was cold, but she was surprised by the delicate lacework of frost lining the old window panes.
She bathed quickly in the old clawfoot tub, wondering at how long it had been since she’d had a bath instead of a shower.
Afterward, she slid on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and her favorite pair of boots. She snuck down the stairs and was going through the kitchen to get to the back door when she found Will, sipping a cup of coffee.
“Good morning,” he said with a smile.
“Hey, good morning,” she replied.
“Long time no see,” he joked lazily.
Tess smiled.
“I fixed you a cup,” he said, gesturing to the island, where a large mug of coffee waited for her.
“Thanks,” she said, relieved. She’d planned to go straight to the barn to get started, but it would be good to have some caffeine first.
“There’s milk in the fridge. Did you sleep okay?” Will asked.
“Yes, thanks,” Tess replied, opening the fridge and grabbing the milk.
“Liar,” he said.
She looked up at him, but he was smiling.
He couldn’t know about her dreams, could he?
“I used to sleep up there,” he said. “It’s freezing, isn’t it?”
She grinned.
“Yeah, it’s so cold. I keep having these dreams…” she trailed off. She did not want to talk to him about her dreams.
“Yeah, you’re even cold in your sleep, right?”
She nodded.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got just what you need to keep you warm all night.”
Tess fought to keep from doing a spit-take with her latest sip of coffee.
Keep me warm all night?
She didn’t doubt that for a minute, but it was still rather unexpected.
“I’ll dig out the old electric blanket for you,” he told her.
Oh.
“Shifters run hot, but humans have to take better care of themselves. Mom used to keep an electric blanket up there someplace in case the cousins came.”
“Thanks,” she said with a grin she hoped didn’t look as dumb as it felt.
They drank their coffee for a few minutes in silence.
Tess found herself looking out the window at the pink sun struggling to rise behind the snow-covered sycamores. It was peaceful here, though without the shelter of the mountains around her, it felt a little exposed.
“Ready?” Will asked after he had put their mugs in the dishwasher.
“Yes,” Tess said, filled with the confidence of a woman with keen mind and a bellyful of coffee.
They grabbed their jackets, put them on and went out the backdoor.
“Snow soon,” Will said.
“How do you know?” Tess asked, shivering already in the cold air.
“I don’t know,” he replied thoughtfully. “I can taste it I guess.”
Oh god, of course. He was a shifter. Animals sometimes just knew about the weather, didn’t they?
Funny. There had been shifters back in Copper Creek, but since Tess and her sisters didn’t interact with them often, Tess had never really thought much about what it would be like to live as a person with an animal side. Or an animal with a person side.
She studied Will out of the corner of her eye. He certainly had an animal magnetism. And there was something about the way he moved, silently in spite of his immense size, that hinted at the wolf beneath the surface.
The wind picked up a bit, and by the time they reached the barn, Tess was chilled to the bones and actually looking forward to some time in front of a hot oven.
Will opened the heavy door and they stepped inside.
The rich scent enveloped them before the lights went on to reveal the shop.
Tess forced herself to walk right past the floor-to-ceiling shelves with hundreds of types of jellies and jams without poring over the handwritten labels. She didn’t gaze at the penny candies in their glass jars, or the huge wooden crates of fresh produce. She turned her head to avoid taking in the homey little garden signs with sayings like “Trespassers Will be Composted” and “A Dirty Hoe is a Happy Hoe.”
No, today she was all about business. Get in, make pies, get out.
“Ready for some baking, huh?” Will asked.
“I’d better be,” she replied.
“We can do this. It’ll be a little intense, but it’ll be fun,” he told her, flipping the switch that lit the stairwell to the basement.
If the upstairs smelled good, it was nothing compared to the bakery.
“First thing we want to do is pre-heat the oven,” he said, heading in that direction. “Grab eight pies out of the fridge to get up to room temp.”
Tess opened the commercial refrigerator and began placing pies on the counter. There were exactly eight of them. So at least they could begin with a full oven. How long could it possibly take to bake pies? If it was half an hour they would have all two hundred done in thirteen hours if they stayed all day.
“How long do they need to bake?” she asked.
“An hour, or until they’re golden brown, I’d say not more than an hour and ten minutes,” Will replied, taking off his flannel.
Oh, boy.
Well, it wasn’t like she had anywhere better to be.
The journey of one hundred miles begins with a single step.
“Let’s chop some apples,” Will offered.
She nodded and went over to the big butcher block counter and grabbed a knife while Will carried over a crate of apples.
His muscles rippled. She tried not to stare. Goodness, he was strong.
“So what do you do when you’re not baking pies?” Tess asked.
“I teach karate to little kids,” he said with a smile. “And I wait tables.”
“So one job for love and one for money?” she offered.
He nodded.
“Something like that, I guess. How about you?”
Oh, I’m a witch. I used to live off the land on top of a mountain in Appalachia.
“I’m um, still figuring that out,” Tess said.
It was true. Now that the portal in her old town, Copper Creek, no longer required a witch to watch over it, she was basically useless.
She was
only visiting Hedda and her husband’s family at Harkness Farms for the holidays.
Tess and her other two sisters, Anna and Elise, had moved to small town together. One without a shifter or magical population - at least not that they knew of. They were trying to start normal lives for themselves.
Anna had practically fallen into a job working at a small independent book store. She always had her nose in a book anyway, and the owner had taken a liking to her uncanny ability to match the customer to the right book. Though it was hardly a high paying job, Anna was as happy as if she had been elected president, and they lived so simply she didn’t want for more.
Elise ended up working around the corner at a florist’s shop. She swore she didn’t use her plant and nature magic on the job, but the women who ran the place couldn’t get over how good she was at coaxing the flowers into a longer life with her careful arrangements and sponge-work.
Tess had always liked to work with her hands, but using her spells for that work was not possible in a human setting, especially given the price of her magic. So while her sisters enjoyed their new lives, Tess applied for jobs at hardware stores and as an assistant to a few handymen, and even pondered going to trade school. It seemed a waste when she could already do so much without an expensive education. But it was a man’s world after all. There was no place for her magic.
“Good for you,” Will said.
She looked up in surprise.
“Too many people out there are trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. It’s good you’re trying to figure out what makes you happy,” he explained.
“Not many people look at it that way,” she said.
“Well, I’m not exactly a career success myself, but I’m happy,” he told her, flipping an apple into the air and catching it before setting to work peeling and cutting.
“Teaching little kids has to be fun,” she said, grabbing her own apple and peeling it. “That sounds like a good life to me.”
“They’re awesome,” Will said, smiling.
“Is it… violent?” Tess asked.
“Children’s karate?” he asked incredulously.
She nodded.
“God, no. They say a pledge at the beginning of each class promising never to use what they learn on another person unless they’re in danger.”
