witches of cleopatra hill 07 - impractical magic

by Christine Pope

  Well, most of the time. Her cousin Evan had gone through a pretty spectacular breakup a year and a half ago, but at least he’d had the clan to bail him out and pay off his ex-wife so she wouldn’t talk about exactly what made the McAllister family just a little different from the norm. Jenny had suffered her own guilt over that situation, mostly because she’d had one of her awful flashes of mind reading and had seen that Taylor was cheating on Evan with a Phoenix lawyer she’d met online. That was after the marriage had already begun to fall apart, though, and so she’d kept the vision to herself. Knowing the truth wouldn’t have changed the situation and would have only hurt Evan that much more. Still, Jenny had filed the vision away with all the thousand and one other things she’d seen and wished she hadn’t. She couldn’t change what she saw, but she could force herself to ignore it as best she could.

  Her mind was wandering. Not because the movie wasn’t good, but because she had way too much occupying her thoughts. Once again she bent to take a sip of Coke, and once again she nearly collided with Colin. This time, though, he didn’t back away. His lips brushed against her cheek, and his hand covered hers where it sat on the armrest that separated them.

  Heat rushed all through her body, but she made herself take that sip of Coke anyway. As she did so, Colin settled himself against the back of his chair once again. Even in the darkness, she could see the way his teeth flashed as he grinned.

  Tease, she thought, but she made herself sit back as well and pretend to be engrossed in the three-story images on the screen in front of her. It was hard, though, because she still felt flushed and distracted. Right then, she thought she had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen between them after dinner. Something about this Colin Campbell seemed to be well nigh irresistible.

  Which troubled her, because he really wasn’t her type. Yes, he was good-looking and tall and slim, but she’d always gone for more muscular men, guys who spent time at the gym or at least engaged in a good deal of outdoor activity. She kind of doubted Colin went to the gym at all. He might run — he had the long, lean muscles for it — but she had a feeling that was the only kind of exercise he bothered with.

  They sat all the way through the credits, because Jenny knew that you had to wait for the “Easter egg” at the end to get a sneak peek at what might be happening in the sequel. Eventually, though, they clambered out of their seats and headed toward the parking lot. During the time they’d been in the theater, the sun had sunk almost all the way to the horizon, painting the sky and the oddly jagged mountains to the north and east of town in shades of copper and gold. The wind had picked up, too, cooling the air rapidly.

  Jenny shivered.

  Colin noticed at once. “Are you cold?”

  “I’m fine,” she replied. “It’s a lot colder in Jerome than it is here. I guess I just wasn’t expecting it in Tucson.”

  He didn’t look all that convinced. “Well, it’s not too far out of the way to swing by your hotel so you can pick up a jacket before we go to dinner. Does that sound like a plan?”

  “Sure.” She hesitated, then asked, “Are we going someplace dressy? Should I change?”

  “No. You’re perfect.” It could have been the colors of the sunset painting the red in his cheeks, but Jenny thought he flushed slightly then. “I mean, what you’re wearing is perfect. You don’t need to worry about that.”

  She nodded, and they got in the car and headed out of the parking lot. Stopping by the hotel made a lot of sense, because then she could offload her packages at the same time she was picking up a jacket. Luckily, they’d all fit in the trunk of his car, thereby not offering any incentive to would-be thieves, but she might as well get rid of them while she had the chance.

  As she’d been shopping, it hadn’t really seemed like that much. When she and Colin began pulling bags out of the trunk, however, Jenny realized how much she really had picked up during her spree.

  “Sorry about this,” she said as they began to stagger toward the elevator. “I guess I went a little crazy. I don’t get out much.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s not like we had to hire a Sherpa or anything.”

  She chuckled at that, and led him down the hallway to her room once the elevator deposited them on the correct floor. It did feel sort of strange to have him come in there with her, after the experiences they’d shared at his apartment the night before. He wore a carefully neutral expression, though, and dumped the shopping bags he carried on the bed, then went to the window and looked out at the gardens below.

  “Nice view,” he commented.

  “Thanks,” she replied, which was kind of silly, since she really hadn’t had anything to do with whether the view was nice of not. She went ahead and put the bags she carried next to the ones Colin had dropped on the bed, then headed over to the closet to get the suede coat she’d brought with her to Tucson.

  After she’d shrugged into it, she turned to see that Colin was now looking at her, rather than at the view out the window.

  “What?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s — this is going to sound stupid.”

  “I doubt that.”

  A pause. Then he came toward her, and her heartbeat began to speed up. Was he going to try something now? But the bed was all covered in shopping bags….

  He didn’t touch her. He stopped about a foot away and watched her for a long moment, during which she tried not to blink or flush or do anything to show how awkward she felt right then.

  “I was just thinking how glad I was that I’d met you. It’s lame, I know.”

  “I don’t think it’s lame,” she said. Lame? That was one of the sweetest things anyone had ever said to her, and she’d only known him for barely twenty-four hours. “Well, if it makes you feel better, I’m really glad that I met you, too. Gives me some hope.”

  “Hope?” he asked.

  “That there are still some decent guys in the world.”

  Something in his expression altered then. It wasn’t exactly that a shadow passed over his face, but she could tell that what she’d said had affected him. Then he shrugged and said, tone a little too careless, “Well, I’m glad I’ve restored your faith in humanity. But how about your appetite?”

  “My appetite?” she said blankly. Maybe she’d overstepped her bounds, gotten too personal too fast. He’d seemed open enough, but….

  “Yes, your appetite.” He smiled then, but something about it looked almost forced. “Because where I’m taking you, you’ll need to be prepared to eat a lot.”

  * * *

  God, he was a shit. A total shit. Here Jenny McAllister was thinking he was this great guy — and he had to wonder what assholes she’d hooked up with in the past, if she was looking at him as some shining example of manly integrity — when in reality he was just a lying bag of crap.

  He really needed to tell her the truth. And then he wondered how many of these margaritas on the rocks he’d have to consume before he worked up the courage.

  On a Sunday night, the El Charro Café wasn’t quite as busy as it would have been on a Friday or Saturday, but the place still hummed. Colin had brought Jenny here because it was a landmark, and because she’d commented that there wasn’t as much good Mexican food in her part of the world as one might think. They’d both ordered margaritas on the rocks, shared some casual conversation about the movie and about their respective favorite restaurants, and the whole time he’d been watching Jenny’s beautiful face and listening to her warm, sweet voice, and knowing that this would all come to a crashing end as soon as he told her the real reason why he’d been at Alex Trujillo’s wedding.

  With every passing moment, though, that prospect seemed more and more impossible. Colin told himself that it would be better to wait until they were alone. Really, why make a scene here and have her miss out on one of the restaurant’s world-famous chimichangas? Better to take her back to her hotel, then sit in the car with her and tell her the real reason he’d
come to Alex’s wedding was because he’d been told by a very nice older lady that she’d witnessed Alex shooting some kind of blue fire out of his fingertips, and the reporter in Colin wouldn’t allow him to pass up such a story without investigating it further.

  Yeah, that would go over real well.

  “Well,” Jenny said then, “if the actual food is as good as the chips and salsa and this margarita, then I’m sold.”

  “Oh, it is.” Colin took an over-large gulp of his own margarita. Liquid courage. Only he didn’t feel particularly courageous right then. He felt like an asshole. A lying asshole. “So,” he went on, “what are your plans for when you’re back in Jerome?”

  Something in her face fell, but she said calmly enough, “Same old, same old. My cousin Susan was watching the gallery while I was down here, but it’s back to work once I get home.”

  “Have you always been interested in art?”

  The question elicited a chuckle, and Jenny shook her head. “Not really. The gallery kind of came with the flat above it. But mostly what I’ve found is that people just want to experience art on their own and decide if a piece is something they want to take home with them. They really don’t want someone jibber-jabbering about its meaning, or whatever.”

  He could see what she meant. Not that he’d ever been in a financial position to collect art, but if he were, he knew he’d prefer to choose pieces on his own, rather than have some gallery owner tell him what he should or shouldn’t be buying. “That sounds like it could be fun.”

  “Some days it is, some days it isn’t. I don’t really like having to explain why an artist charges what he or she does. It’s like some people think that creative types should just be able to live on air or something.”

  “And it’s not exactly like you can tell your customers to go to hell.”

  Her mouth pulled to one side as she gave him a wry half-smile. “Well, I might have done that on one or two occasions when I couldn’t take it anymore. I guess I should just be glad that the people I pissed off apparently weren’t the type to go home and vent their frustrations on Yelp.”

  Colin wished he’d been there to see her telling off a couple of rich tourists. He could just see her, hands on her curvy hips, head tilted to one side with that golden mane of hers spilling down her back. “Yes, you should definitely count yourself lucky there. I have a couple of friends who own a restaurant — a very good restaurant — but even so, it seems like an uphill battle sometimes. You get someone who’s had a crappy day or who had to wait a few minutes longer than promised for a table, and they act like someone just kidnapped their firstborn.”

  Jenny’s eyebrows lifted. “Your friends own a restaurant? So why didn’t we go there?”

  Oh, crap. It was true that Linda and Greg’s place was very good, but no chance in hell would Colin take Jenny there, not when she had no idea who he really was or what he did for a living. Luckily, he did have a good excuse ready to go. “You made it sound like you wanted Mexican food, and their place is Italian.”

  That response seemed to make sense to her, because she nodded as she took another sip of her margarita. “True. Well, maybe next time.” Then she looked stricken, as if she’d just realized that she’d made it sound as if there would be a next time. “I mean — ”

  “It’s okay,” he broke in. “I want there to be a next time. I know it’s tough with us living so far apart, but I know we can figure something out.” Even as he spoke, he realized how he was digging himself deeper with every word. Problem was, he wanted to dig deeper. He wanted to be with Jenny McAllister, although he had absolutely no idea how to make that work after the way he’d lied to her.

  She didn’t reply right away, but swirled her straw through her half-drunk margarita. Right then, Colin wished he had the ability to read minds, because he would have killed to know what was going through hers. At last she gave the smallest lift of her shoulders. “I suppose we can,” she said at last. “I mean, Caitlin and Alex did the long-distance thing for six months, and she was even farther away, in Flagstaff.”

  “In Flagstaff?” Colin asked, confused. “I thought she was from Jerome, like you.”

  “Oh, she is,” Jenny replied, now looking a little amused. “But she was going to school at NAU. She transferred to the University of Arizona, though, so she could finish her degree down here in Tucson.”

  “Right.” He supposed he should have thought of that. Truth be told, he was having some trouble keeping all of Jenny’s relatives and their various connections completely straight. If he’d been on assignment, he would have been taking notes on the pad of paper he usually carried with him wherever he went, but he kind of doubted that would go over very well while he was on a date.

  A date. That’s really what this was, although neither he nor Jenny had uttered the word out loud. The whole thing was almost a foreign concept to him, since he hadn’t been on a date since he and Shannon split up. He’d met women here and there, but none of them had caught his fancy enough for him to deal with all the complications of trying to woo one woman while managing the aftermath of a divorce from another. There had been a couple of very casual hook-ups, but that was it.

  “So,” Jenny said, giving him the sort of smile that seemed to indicate that this date would end very well, “does that mean you’ll come up to Jerome next weekend?”

  “If you want me to.” As he spoke, though, he wondered how he was going to manage that, since he usually spent part of his weekends writing those damn diet and fitness ebooks. He was already behind, thanks to crashing the Trujillo/McAllister wedding and all the associated aftermath. Well, he’d just have to put in a few hours every night after he got home from work. It wasn’t like he had what you could call an active social life.

  “It’ll be fun. There’s a good band playing at the Spirit Room on Saturday night.”

  “The Spirit Room?”

  “A local bar. It’s haunted.”

  It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. “Don’t you mean that it’s supposed to be haunted?”

  She chuckled, then plucked another chip from the wooden bowl at the center of the table. “Actually, it’s pretty well documented that the Connor Hotel — the Spirit Room is on the hotel’s ground floor — is very haunted. I’d suggest that you stay there and find out for yourself, but….”

  “But?” he prompted, hoping she meant what he thought she’d meant.

  “I’d much rather have you stay with me.”

  Colin smiled. “I think that sounds like much more fun than ghost hunting.”

  The food arrived then, and they ordered another round of margaritas before they tucked into the enormous plates that had been set before them. He might have been guilty as sin, but he was also hungry. And something about the look in Jenny’s eyes told him that he’d better be well fortified for the evening ahead.

  While they ate, the conversation moved on to mundane enough things — Jenny talked a little about her brother Adam, and how he was starting to make a name for himself as a carpenter who specialized in restoring vintage Victorian and Craftsman-style houses. In return, Colin told her about his own sister Kate, who was five years his junior and working on her master’s in urban planning. He didn’t mention his brother-in-law, though, since he really didn’t like Jeff. About the only good thing Colin could say for him was that he didn’t seem to mind Kate staying in school for a long as necessary. “I think she wants to rebuild Phoenix or something,” he said with a grin, “but she’s got her work cut out for her.”

  “So she’s going to school in Phoenix?”

  “Yes, at ASU. Which explains why she’s still in school — she’s kind of on the eight-year plan. Frankly, I think she would stay there forever if she could, but I guess you have to get out into the real world eventually.”

  Something about those words made a flicker of sadness pass over Jenny’s face, and Colin wondered what it was that he’d said to disturb her. Maybe, being from Jerome, she didn’t have a lot of experience in th
e “real” world. Or maybe she was just thinking about her own sister Roslyn, now gone forever, who would never get a chance to go to college or do anything at all. That had to be rough.

  “Yes, I guess you do,” Jenny said at last, her voice soft. “Although some of us have a harder time with that than others. But you — you seem more like the kind of person to face the real world head on.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Colin protested. “There are some days when I really don’t want to deal with the world at all. Unfortunately, we don’t always have that choice.”

  “True.” She pushed some rice around on her plate, not looking at him. “That is, I guess it’s mostly true. I know some people in Jerome who haven’t dealt with the real world in years.”

  “I guess it’s a good place for that.”

  “You have no idea.”

  They both went quiet then, seeming to concentrate on the food before them. Colin guessed, however, that her thoughts were probably just as occupied as his were. What she was thinking about, though, he had no idea.

  They passed on dessert. As they were driving away from the restaurant, Jenny said, “Do you want to go to the hotel, or back to your place?”

  She’d already struck him as someone who didn’t beat around the bush, but her openness as to where their evening apparently was headed did surprise him somewhat. “Uh…whichever you like.”

  “The hotel,” she said promptly. “That way you can have room service before you head off to work in the morning.”

  Right then he was glad of the relative dimness inside the car. That way, he could hope that she hadn’t seen the flush he knew heated his cheeks. He’d always hated that about himself, and in the summer it wasn’t so obvious, because he tried to get enough sun so he wouldn’t look like a pasty office boy. It was November now, though, and he’d been working so many hours between his regular job and the freelance ebook writing on the side that he hadn’t had a chance to sit out by the pool at his apartment complex even on warm sunny days.