by Eva Chase
Everyone was looking at me curiously now. Rose slipped her fingers around my hand. “All right.”
My truck was parked over by my dad’s hardware store. Rose didn’t speak as we headed over, but she kept her hand wrapped around mine. “Is this okay?” I said, squeezing her fingers. “If someone sees…”
“They won’t,” she said, sounding a little sad. “They won’t see me at all. I’m a figment of your imagination right now.” Her lips quirked upward, but even that smile looked bittersweet.
So I guessed to anyone watching, our drive out to the house was no different from all my earlier ones: just me in the truck with some equipment as if headed out to a job. As we got closer, my heart started to sink.
What if I’d gone too far? What if this put more pressure on Rose instead of taking some off her? It had seemed like a good idea at the time… I’d loved working on the place more than any actual job I’d taken on. But I wasn’t all that sure of my instincts these days, not when it came to all things witching.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” Rose asked lightly, peering out the windshield and the side window.
“You’ll see,” I said.
Her expression turned more serious as she watched the fields fly by. “Seth,” she said, “what would you be doing right now if I hadn’t come back? What did you want to be doing, in a perfect world?”
“I don’t think it could be perfect without you in it,” I said a little teasingly, and she shot me a look. Lord, how to answer that. I tipped my head, considering.
“I don’t know. More than just doing repairs and building sheds or what have you with my dad, that’s for sure.”
“What kind of more?”
“Well, I guess…” A twinge rippled through my chest. Maybe this wasn’t that hard a question after all. “I’ve always wanted to give something back to the town. To feel like I’m helping build it up, not just little pieces of people’s private property. Sometimes I’ve thought about donating time and supplies to fix up that old playground in Westfield Park. Things like that.”
“That’s lovely,” Rose said. “You should do that. What we have… it doesn’t have to stop you. You know that, right?”
“Of course,” I said. The truth was, I wasn’t even sure why I hadn’t done more than think about it yet. I’d had this idea that I needed to establish myself in the business more, prove myself in my own right as more than just “that handy son of Mr. Lennox’s,” but I knew what I was doing already. My most recent project had proven that.
The farmhouse loomed in the distance, the For Sale sign gone, the yard neatly trimmed. I’d ended up having to rebuild the porch pretty much from scratch, but now it was completely solid. I’d painted the boards a soft yellow that looked the way that rush of magic I’d felt when I’d sworn myself as Rose’s consort had felt to me. The glass in all the broken windows had been replaced. The rest of the exterior needed painting, and the roof could use some new shingles, but it didn’t look like a wreck anymore, at least.
Rose’s expression turned more puzzled when I pulled up the drive and parked by the garage. “Are we coming to meet someone? What’s this about, Seth?”
I got out and came around to the passenger side to offer her a hand out. “I want you to meet this house,” I said. “My first contribution to building something real.”
I fished the key out of my pocket as we walked up to the front door. Everything—the savings account I’d nearly drained, the hours of work squeezed in around my regular jobs, the aches and the splinters—was worth it for the awe that lit her face as we stepped inside.
I’d nearly finished the interior. Every wall had been repainted: the same soft yellow here, a baby blue there, ivory in the hall. With the windows unboarded, sunlight spilled all through the wide doorways of the first-floor rooms. The hardwood floors were a little scratched up but gleaming with a fresh layer of polish. Now that I’d aired the place out, it smelled of the late spring wildflowers blooming in the field out back.
“There are five bedrooms upstairs and another in the attic,” I said. “One for each of us, and you if you ever stay over.”
“One for each of—” Rose spun to face me. “You and the other guys. You’re going to live here?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I haven’t exactly talked to them about it yet. But that was the general idea when I bought the place. I thought, with it being so close to the estate, it’d make it a lot easier for slipping in and out without anyone in or around town noticing… One step closer to actually living together, until we can do that. Because I know someday we’ll figure out a way.”
Rose was outright glowing now. She grasped the front of my shirt and pulled me into a kiss. As I kissed her back, relief and a stirring hunger rising through me, her fingers teased up the back of my neck into my hair. Suddenly that hunger was everything.
“Seth,” she murmured. “It’s beautiful. It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. Thank you.” She blinked hard, as if trying not to cry.
Shit. That wasn’t the reaction I wanted, even if they were at least partly happy tears. I kissed the corner of one eye and then the other. Then I leaned in to capture her mouth again, stroking my hand up her side.
“There’s one thing it’s missing,” I said by her ear.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“It hasn’t been properly christened yet.”
Her lips curled into a proper smile, nothing but joy in it just for this moment. “Hmm. I think that has to be because you’ve never brought me out here before. But we can fix that oversight right now.”
She caught my mouth, her hands gliding up under my shirt spreading heat in their wake, and I gave myself over to the woman I couldn’t imagine loving more.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rose
“When is that woman going to leave?” Philomena muttered. “Surely she has something to occupy herself with that will take her out of that office?”
“I can’t imagine she’ll stay in there all day,” I said, snuggling deeper into the firm cushions of one of the armchairs in the manor’s library. I was flipping through an old witching text and listening to the sounds that traveled through the open door at the same time.
The estate manager’s office was just across the hall. Mrs. Gainsley had been rustling around in there for the last hour.
“Can’t you just whisk yourself into your father’s office with that magic of yours?” Phil asked, swishing her skirts as she paced the library floor. “Why, I’d be off to Paris and, my, even the Orient in a flash if I had that kind of power.”
I gave her a wry look. “I don’t have quite that kind of power. Teleportation takes a lot out of you. If I tried to get to Paris I’d probably end up somewhere in Idaho. Anyway, Dad had Mrs. Gainsley put some kind of magical lock on the room to make sure no one went in. I’m not sure if jumping in there might trigger it. I need her gone so I can fiddle with the spell more carefully. And I want to look in her office too.”
My last search of Dad’s office hadn’t turned up anything, after all. But this time I knew he’d be gone at least a couple days, and he’d left his computer behind. That was enough time for me to secret it away to Kyler for a proper analysis, in case he’d hidden incriminating material on there.
And if Mrs. Gainsley was helping Dad—she must be, she was the one meant to conduct my consort ceremony now—as well as Master Cortland and who knew who else, searching her work materials seemed like a good idea too. If I could ever get access to them.
Her footsteps tapped out into the hall. My heart leapt. I tensed in the chair, waiting and listening…
A door clicked shut. A few moments later, the pipes in the walls hummed. The bathroom. When the door squeaked open again, the estate manager headed straight back to her office. I suppressed a groan and tipped my head back in my chair.
There had to be something else I could do in the meantime. This might be the only day I got without Dad here. I couldn’t count
on him staying away longer. I’d asked Gabriel to tell me as soon as the call came into the garage for one of the drivers to pick him up at the airport…
The cars. Dad had gotten Matt to take him out in the Bentley last night. He always took that car, whether he was driving or being driven, whenever he went out. Maybe he’d left something in it. It couldn’t hurt to check.
“Come on,” I said to Phil. “We’re going down to the garage.”
“Oooh!” Phil said, producing her fan out of thin air and peeking at me coyly over the top. “To visit that new young man of yours?”
“No, to search Dad’s car.” Although if I happened to see Gabriel, that wouldn’t exactly be a bad thing. “And I don’t think I can call that young man ‘mine.’”
“No? I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Phil said as she trailed after me to the stairs.
“So have I,” I said. “But… We kissed and he took off on me. He said he couldn’t do it.” My throat tightened at the memory. “He’s helping every way he can. But expecting him to get that wrapped up in my life… It’s obviously too much. I can’t blame him. I don’t want him putting his life at risk like that.”
He couldn’t have been clearer in the last couple days that while he still intended to help, that was as far as it went. I could practically feel the wall he’d build around himself, keeping me at a distance. Which he had every right to.
I darted across the drive and slipped into the garage’s dim, narrow hall. The place still felt like a stable, even though it had been converted almost a century ago. The door by the Bentley’s “stall” was down at the far end.
When I eased out beside the car, in the empty spot where Celestine’s Jaguar used to be parked, darkness settled around me with the damp smell of concrete and motor oil. I left the door slightly ajar to let in a thin streak of light. It took only a snap of my fingers to unlock the Bentley’s driver-side door.
I started there, conjuring a tiny beam to act as a magical flashlight. My search under the seat turned up nothing. I moved to the passenger side, checking between the seats, in the change holder, and opening up the glove compartment. Nothing waited in there but the manual and car registration as well as a small package of those licorice candies Dad loved.
The tickle of their smell in my nose, mingling with the warm woody smell of his cologne that clung to the seats, made my heart ache. How could he be the same father who’d cuddled with me and read stories to me and snuck downstairs with me for midnight snacks? How could that man be plotting to marry me away as some kind of slave?
I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to ask him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear his answer.
I scanned the trunk and then climbed into the back seat in a last ditch effort to turn up something, anything.
As I bent over to check the floor, footsteps rasped in the garage hall. I ducked down, my pulse skipping, peering between the seats. When a familiar chiseled face framed by dark red hair peered past the doorway, I exhaled in relief. Straightening up, I nudged open the car door. “It’s just me.”
Gabriel came out into the car bay, cocking his head. “Did you need a drive somewhere?” he said with a teasing note in his voice. “You’re more likely to get it if you come tell someone first.”
I mock-glared at him. “I was checking the car to see if my dad left anything here. Seems like no. But I can’t get into his office while Mrs. Gainsley is hanging around up there.”
“I would have thought you could find some way around that, Miss Witch.” He dropped onto the seat next to me and glanced into the storage nook on the door.
“Not so easy when the person I’m trying to get around is also a witch who isn’t supposed to know I’ve got magic yet,” I muttered. “I can’t cast anything on or around her.”
“I’ve worked on a couple cars where the owners wanted to keep certain cargo… discreet. Let’s check the usual suspects.” He prodded the base of the seat, I guessed to check whether it would open. When nothing happened, he moved to the padding at the back.
I watched him for a moment, torn between the tug I felt with him so near me and the distance I could still feel in his demeanor. We were friends, that tone, that smile, said. Nothing more. I got the sense he was going out of his way to make that clear. My throat tightened.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” I said.
Gabriel’s head jerked up. “What?”
“In my room, when I—” I gestured vaguely, my cheeks flushing. “I wasn’t trying to push you into anything. I wouldn’t want to. I guess I just misunderstood.”
Gabriel just looked at me for a moment, his expression unreadable. “It’s okay,” he said, not confirming or denying. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
“So we’re good?”
He gave me that characteristic grin. “We’re always good, Sprout.”
I wasn’t sure I totally believed that, but the tension inside me eased off a little. I shifted over so he could check the middle section of the seat. His hands moved with practiced certainty.
“Is this what you’d want to keep doing?” I found myself asking. “Here, or in town, after this mess is over—working on cars? In between all those trips you’re still planning, of course.”
Gabriel chuckled. “I think so, as long as I can find the work. It doesn’t seem as if people are going to stop driving cars any time soon. And I like working with the internal systems, figuring out how to boost their performance, taking care of them when they’re running down. Everything connects to everything else in a clear sequence. You can always see what needs doing, if you bother to pay attention.”
And Gabriel always did. There’d never been much that escaped his notice.
“Switch?” he said, and I scooted past him, holding my breath at the brush of his body past mine, so he could check the other side. More safe conversation topics—that was what I needed.
“Where are you thinking you’d want to get to now that you’ve been all over South America and wherever?” I said.
“Hard to say where I’d go first. I’d like to see more of the really big cities here—get out to New York, for example. And Alaska, maybe—it must be pretty amazing to experience the kind of stark wilderness you can get up there.”
“A pretty far cry from Argentina, I bet,” I said.
“Sure,” he said, glancing up with a twinkle in his eye. “But that’s the whole point. I want to experience at least a little bit of everything while I’m here on this planet.” He patted the seat. “I think we’re all clear as far as secret compartments go—”
One of the garage doors started to rumble open at the other end of the building. Gabriel stiffened.
“Get down,” he whispered. I was already flattening myself to the seat, snuffing my magical light with a flick of my fingers. He dove past me to tug the door shut with a soft thump and lay down next to me. I wasn’t sure which was more responsible for the pounding of my heart—the thought that I might be caught or the heat of Gabriel’s well-muscled body aligning with mine.
A voice carried down the bay. Tyler’s reedy tenor. “Where are you taking it?”
Matt’s lower, gruffer voice answered. “Just out to Farmington. Got to drop off some business contracts for the boss.”
Just the regular staff, not Mrs. Gainsley or anyone witching. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if they’d seen us by the car. Now that we were hiding together inside it, though, we couldn’t exactly casually climb out without raising a few questions.
I breathed in and out slowly as Matt started the engine on whichever car he was taking. Gabriel shifted his weight, staying on his side as much as he could so he didn’t squash me into the seat. His chest was pressed against my breasts, his thigh between mine. That slight movement sent a quiver of desire up from my core.
His breath spilled over the side of my face, slightly ragged. I swallowed hard, trying to focus on the sounds of the car, on what Matt had said, on anything over than the guy lying over me—
“Sorry,” I whispered. I eased my hand away from my side and turned my head to concentrate on its movements. Gabriel adjusted his weight to accommodate me. The friction between our bodies sent a fresh wave of heat through me. I narrowed all of my attention away from that onto my hand.
I moved it in a slow circle, swiveling at the elbow. A seeking spell, a reaching spell. It sent my magic spiraling out across the countryside toward Master Cortland’s house and settled around the familiar bulk of his presence.
Yes, he was home. Just outside the house. Perfect. I’d rather do this outside with more room to work with.
I clenched my hand and then released my fingers, twitching them as they unfurled. Casting my magic out, out, across that distance with a flare of my spark in my chest.
Out there in his yard where Master Cortland stood, wavering lights with the impression of faces would have shot up around him. Eerie and vague but clearly magical. I made them sway with my fingers for several seconds to make sure I’d have caught his attention. Then I balled my hand into a fist, snuffing them out. Sucking all that magic back to me so there’d be no trace for Mrs. Gainsley to test.
I sagged back against the seat. The magicking had left me a little breathless. Or maybe that was because of Gabriel, braced against me still. The car Matt had taken had rumbled off, but Tyler was still puttering around the garage. A faint squeak suggested he was polishing one of the other cars.
“What did you do?” Gabriel asked under his breath. His face was so close to mine I could feel the movement of his lips in the jitter of breath against my cheek. Every inch of my skin screamed for me to move, to increase the friction, to pull him closer, but I clamped down on that urge.
