Magic for Joy

by Holly Jacobs

  She concentrated on the fact that Gabriel was just a man. She was only here with him because he was Sophie’s father.

  “We might make a fortune selling the sauce, but my great-grandmother would come and haunt us both. It’s an old family recipe.”

  “A secret recipe?” Gabriel asked.

  “Sometimes things are better left a secret.” Secrets. Joy suddenly had a number of secrets in her life. Secret fantasies and three fairy godmothers were quite a secret. But even more secret were the feelings that Gabriel seemed to be awakening—feelings totally separate from what she felt for Sophie. Feelings that were best left unidentified.

  “And sometimes things need to be shared to be appreciated,” Gabriel said, still talking about the sauce, she was sure.

  She only wished she’d been speaking of it as well. Pull yourself together, she reprimanded herself. All she was feeling was a good old-fashioned case of lust. Gabriel was easy on the eyes, and it had been a long time since Joy had been in the company of a male for more than a day or two. But Gabriel was spoken for, and Joy had a life to get back to. And that, thankfully, was that. Joy didn’t need any complications in her life, and lusting after Gabriel St. John would be a huge complication.

  “About the sauce—don’t hold your breath on this one. My family would disown me if I shared the recipe.” Nervously, she moved to the refrigerator and took out a head of lettuce. “And, speaking of family, my brother Max lives just outside Erie. I don’t know what you normally do on Saturdays, but if you’re not going into the office, I thought I might go and spend the day with them tomorrow. It would give you and Sophie a chance to be alone and get used to relying on one another. Would that be a problem?”

  “Would you be back in time to stay with Sophie while I go to that business dinner with Helen tomorrow night? If not, I can back out. She’ll understand that things are a bit unsettled with Sophie’s unexpected arrival.”

  Remembering the Helen that had stormed the house breathing flames, Joy doubted she was the understanding type. “I’ll wait and go in the afternoon and take Sophie with me, then there’s no worry.”

  “Joy, I’ve already let you put yourself out too much and—”

  “I’d prefer you thought of this as the first decent vacation I’ve had in years. I love to cook, and I haven’t had much of an opportunity to indulge myself. I’ve got dozens of books I want to read that I never quite manage to get to and Alice, the wonder who holds Ripples together, is sending me a lot of the paperwork I’ve fallen behind on.”

  “But—”

  She ignored what she thought might be a protest and continued, “I have my laptop and will probably be getting more paperwork done here than I have in years. So, don’t feel guilty about letting me indulge myself.” Her voice dropped, “And spending an afternoon with Sophie is indulging myself. She’s quite a kid.”

  “Yes, she certainly is, but it takes quite a woman to recognize that.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.” Joy turned back to the sauce, suddenly feeling flustered. Everything about Gabriel was flustering her tonight, and she wasn’t sure why. “Speaking of Sophie, why don’t you go find her and get her washed up for dinner.”

  Gabriel left the kitchen, and Joy breathed a sigh of relief. She could ignore her attraction to Gabriel when he wasn’t around. The trick would be to keep her distance when he was at home. She’d have to simply keep remembering that he was dating.

  “STRIKE. YOU’RE OUT,” Aretemus Maximillion Aaronson yelled.

  “You’re blind, Ref. That was a ball, not a strike.” Joy stormed over to her brother Max and stood, nose to nose with him. Nose to chin was a better description, but being shorter had never stopped her.

  “My call stands,” Max said stubbornly.

  “Well, we better ask Grace to make an appointment with an optometrist for you, ‘cause you’re going blind.”

  “Well, better to be blind than unable to hit a perfectly good pitch,” came his retort.

  “Perfectly good if you were pitching to that oak tree.”

  When they heard a muffled sob behind them, both adults stopped their fight. “Honey, what’s the matter?” Joy asked Sophie.

  Sophie was sitting in the grass, her face in her hands. “You’re fighting with Max.”

  “Honey, remember when I told you I didn’t fight fair and that I’d learned that from my brothers?” Joy asked, as she dropped to her knees in front of the child.

  Sophie nodded.

  “Well, I guess I didn’t explain it well enough. Max and I like fighting. It’s even more fun when Nick’s here, too. We do fight all the time. When we were kids, my mom would come out and yell at us. You’re driving me crazy, she’d scream. Then, a lot of the time, she’d join right in with us. We were a loud family, but it doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”

  “Really?” Sophie asked, with a small sniffle.

  “Honest and truly.” Joy crossed her heart and held up a scout sign.

  In a hushed voice, Sophie said, “I was little, but I remember Mother and Daddy used to fight all the time, and they don’t like each other at all.”

  Joy was at a loss for how to explain the difference. “Honey, your mother and father fought because they wanted different things and couldn’t find any way for both of them to get what they wanted. So they fought and finally decided they would be happier if they both went their own way.”

  Struggling for a way to explain falling out of love to a six-year-old, Joy continued. “Now, Max and I, we just like to fight. It’s our way of saying, I love you. He’s a boy and never liked to say it to a girl, and I was a little sister who wouldn’t be caught dead saying those words to the older brother, so we fight.”

  “Really?”

  “Honest and truly. You remember the other day when we got your daddy by jumping out and yelling boo? Well, we didn’t do it because we didn’t like him, but because we did. I know it’s confusing, but life’s often confusing, even when you’re big. So, if you don’t understand, you ask. I might not know all the answers, but I’ll try to figure something out.” Joy gave Sophie a hug and pulled her to her feet.

  “Okay.” Looking shyly at Max who had stayed in the background while Joy talked to her, Sophie said, “And it was a ball, not a strike.” It wasn’t exactly a shout, but it did Joy good to hear it.

  Max looked stricken. “Oh, no, she’s warped you already. Has Joy ever told you what I do to little girls who can’t tell a ball from a strike?”

  Sophie looked a little worried and shook her head.

  “I tickle them,” Max shouted and gave chase.

  Sophie shrieked and raced across the yard. Joy made her way to the back porch where Grace.

  “He’s such a big kid,” Grace laughed.

  Max had done a brilliant stumble, and Sophie was standing a couple yards away, uncertain what to do.

  “Tickle him,” Joy shouted. “He hates it if you tickle his sides.”

  “Traitor,” Max screamed as Sophie overcame the last of her reticence and attacked.

  “She’s a beautiful little girl.” Grace stood and entered the house, beckoning Joy into the kitchen.

  “Yes, she is. I’m afraid I’ve quite lost my heart to her,” Joy said, following her inside and sitting down at the kitchen table.

  “And her father?” Grace took the seat opposite Joy.

  Joy studied her very innocent-looking sister-in-law. Grace’s blonde-haired, blue-eyed features gave her an air of innocence, but the intensity of her gaze made Joy suspect that she knew more about what was going on then she’d admitted. “He’s a toad. A total antithesis of one of your storybook heroes.”

  “He is not. Why Blossom has done nothing but swoon over Gabriel since—” She caught herself. “You tricked me!”

  “They truly are real?”


  Grace nodded. “And Gabriel St. John is not a toad.”

  “He might as well be, because he’s not for me. In case your fairy spies—”

  “We resent that term.” Myrtle, Fern and Blossom were suddenly sitting in the chairs around the table.

  Fern looked stricken. “Grace asked, and we just said he was passable.”

  “Passable? He’s more than passable. He’s gorgeous.” Joy paused as she realized what she’d said. “I can see I’m not the only tricky one.”

  Blossom smiled triumphantly. “We knew you liked him.”

  “Liking him and wanting him are two different things.” She didn’t add that wanting him was becoming more and more of a possibility. “And, getting him is even harder since you’re all ignoring the fact that he has a girlfriend. A girlfriend he’s spending the evening with, in case you all forgot.”

  “They couldn’t be out on a date if Helen had a disease. Joy won’t let us give her one,” Blossom complained to Grace. “Not even a little one.”

  “I don’t blame her. Do you remember what happened to Susan?”

  “You promised you weren’t going to mention that anymore.” Blossom frowned.

  “No. You asked me not to mention it, but I never promised.”

  “Well, you should have.”

  “Now, now,” Myrtle soothed. “Everything turned out just fine for Susan and Cap after she recovered from the mono. And we didn’t stop by to discuss our previous adventures. Joy, dear, we just popped in for a quick hello and to let you know we finally have a plan.”

  “Better ask them what it is,” Grace prompted.

  Joy was torn with the desire to know, and a fear of what the plan might be. She sighed and asked, “What is it?”

  “Oh, now, darling. Don’t you worry about it. We have things under control.” Fern patted her hand. “And Gabriel did kiss you Thursday night, after all.”

  “A chaste good night kiss on the forehead. He could have given it to Sophie, for Pete’s sake. And he’s out on a date with Helen, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Oh, no. We didn’t forget. It’s part of our plan,” Blossom promised.

  “What plan?”

  “Bye Joy, bye Grace.” And the three fairies were gone.

  “Do you know what they’re up to?” Joy asked her sister-in-law.

  “Not a clue.”

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  Rather than answer the question, Grace said, “So, tell me about this Helen. What’s wrong with her?”

  “Wrong with her? Why nothing. She’s tall, willowy and beautiful. I’m sure she’s just what Gabriel’s looking for. Actually, she reminds me quite a bit of Trudi, his ex-wife. He must like the type.”

  “And other than being beautiful, what type is that?”

  Joy just shrugged. What she wanted to say was shallow, arrogant and self-centered, but she didn’t. It wouldn’t have been fair. Oh, she thought the adjectives safely described Trudi, but she’d spent time with her and had had an opportunity to make that assessment. She had only met Helen once.

  She tried to be fair, even when she didn’t like it, so she just shrugged. “I don’t think our first meeting went very well, so I’m reserving judgment. Suffice it to say, I doubt Helen and I will be best friends.”

  “Then I guess I don’t like her already.”

  “SO OUT WITH IT,” Max said as the evening was drawing to a close. They were alone in the kitchen doing dinner dishes. Grace had taken Sophie with her to give Charity her bath. “I want the whole story.”

  “I told you the whole story.” How could she explain to Max why she had stayed when she hardly understood herself. “I couldn’t just leave her, Max. She’s been uprooted and she’s not sure anyone wants her. She became attached to me, and I couldn’t walk away from her. She needs me.”

  Maybe that was the answer. What she hadn’t said was that it was a nice feeling to be needed. Max and Nick had been older, so much more sure of their futures. They never really needed a little sister. Her parents functioned more as one person than as two individuals. Though she’d never doubted they loved her, they never really needed her.

  Joy needed to be needed.

  Drying the dish Max had passed her, Joy probed deeper. Maybe that need was why she started Ripples? The people the foundation helped needed her and the services Ripples could provide. Did that make her selfish? Maybe she wasn’t altruistic, but self-serving.

  “Joy?” Max asked. She realized the dish in her hands was long dried. She’d have to think about the question later.

  “Hmm?”

  “I said, what is it you need?”

  Joy picked up another plate. “Trust a psychiatrist to ask a question like that. Well, Artemus . . .” She used his hated first name to needle him. “If you want to analyze me, analyze why I’m seeing fairies. Or better yet, analyze yourself and figure out why it is you, a man of science, have accepted that three fairies really exist.”

  He ignored her comment and said, “The only reason I’m letting you go back there—”

  “Letting me?” she gasped, outraged.

  He scowled at her. “Yes. Letting you. You may be an independent woman, but I’m your big brother. And those fairies are the only reason I’m letting you go back. They don’t believe in casual sex.”

  “Funny, neither do I,” Joy mumbled. Her mother and father could be trying, but not even they could surpass Max and Nick in protectiveness.

  “They’ll want you married first,” Max continued, as if she hadn’t said a thing.

  Joy grabbed another plate. “And since I’m not in Helen’s, or even his ex-wife Trudi’s league, I don’t think you have to worry about us getting married.”

  “What do you mean not in their league?” Max rinsed a bowl and placed it in the strainer. “We’re not exactly paupers.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  With a brotherly tenderness that forced tears to clog her throat, Max lifted her chin. “Joy?”

  “Max, I’m too round, too clumsy, too . . . just too everything that isn’t glamorous. It’s one of the reasons I’m so good at raising money. Women don’t see me as a threat, and men think I’m cute. Maybe just once I’d like to know what it’s like to be one of the Helens or Trudis of the world, and have a man drool over me.”

  “Done,” came a trio of voices, though no fairies were visible.

  Darn. Joy wasn’t used to being eavesdropped on. “Max, did you hear that?”

  He shook his head.

  “I heard the fairies. They said, ‘Done.’ You don’t think they would . . . I mean they couldn’t . . . could they?”

  “Maybe I should have warned you earlier to be careful what you wish for. You never know who’s listening.”

  Joy could only stare at him in horror. What had she done?

  Six

  “I LIKED THEM,” Sophie said, smothering a yawn. “Charity was cute. Grace let me rub powder on her belly after her bath, and she giggled.”

  Joy resisted the urge to glance at the girl. She kept her eyes glued on the dark country road. “I’m glad you had a good time, sugar.”

  “Do you think, if I ask Daddy, he’ll get me a baby like CheChe?”

  Joy choked on absolutely nothing. Wouldn’t Gabriel love to be asked to supply Sophie’s new sibling? Then thinking of Helen being its mother, she frowned. No, she didn’t like the thoughts of Helen acting as Sophie’s surrogate mother, much less presenting Gabriel with a child. If she had to put a name to the emotion she felt at those thoughts, it would be jealousy, though goodness knew she had no cause to be jealous.

  If she was jealous, then she must care for Gabriel. And though she cared for him—if only for Sophie’s sake—it wasn’t the type of caring that would produce
jealousy. They were developing a friendship, nothing more. So she definitely wasn’t jealous.

  “I think you better hold off asking your father about that baby.”

  “Maybe for Christmas,” Sophie said.

  “Stranger things have happened.” Anxious to direct the six-year-old onto a safer subject, she said, “Now, keep your eyes out for your Dad’s driveway. It’s darker than I expected, and I’ve only driven this way once before.”

  “There was that big house on the corner and then Daddy’s turn.” Sophie yawned again. “I remember from before.”

  Spotting the house Sophie had spoke of, Joy slowed to almost a crawl and found the driveway easily. The lights of the house winked their greeting to her. As the truck wound down the drive, Joy felt the same warm rush she had felt as a child when she returned to her parent’s house after being on a trip. It felt like returning home.

  She hadn’t really felt at home anywhere in years. Her apartment was just a place to stay between where she had been and where she was going—a place that held her bed and her personal things.

  Gabriel and Sophie’s house wasn’t home, she reminded herself. It was just another stop in her travels. In another week or so, Gabriel would have arranged daycare for Sophie. And Joy would be on her way to her next stop.

  Her need to travel, to see new things, suddenly dimmed dramatically. The pleasure she had derived from globetrotting had been losing its glow for a while. Suddenly there wasn’t even a spark left.

  “What is it you need?” Max had asked. Joy thought she heard the fairies whisper an answer—a name—but she wasn’t sure she liked their answer at all.

  “OKAY, DIANE. JUST remember you can have fun and get the job done.” Joy juggled the portable phone on her shoulder and peered out the window. She couldn’t see Sophie and was worried about what the girl was getting into.

  “Yes, you can. He sounds like a nice man.” Joy moved to the dining room window, which offered a view of the west side of the yard. No Sophie.