Imperfect Magic (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 11)

by Patricia Watters

  Dimitri shrugged out of his tux jacket, walked up to Maddy and kissed her, and said, "Are you really okay with a dude ranch honeymoon? I was kind of joking when I made the suggestion. We could still cancel and go somewhere else, maybe Hawaii."

  "Honey, I'm a ranch girl. I love horses and riding, and I've never been to a dude ranch."

  "You live on one."

  "That's not the same as going to one. When I'm here, I have to help in the kitchen, and deal with guests, and muck out stalls, but at a dude ranch, I won't have to do anything but romp around in bed with my stud and watch the sexiest cowboy I know riding a horse."

  "I've got the stud part down pat, but I'm still working on the cowboy part," Dimitri said.

  "You're amazing at both, and I'm very proud of you." Maddy laced her fingers behind Dimitri's neck. "And speaking of being proud, now that I'm both your wife and your assistant, it's time you break the magician's code and tell me all your secrets."

  "We only just got married," Dimitri said.

  "True, but I don't want to head into our marriage thinking you don't trust me, because like you said, trust is the foundation of any marriage."

  "Yes, but if you force me to tell my secrets this soon, I'll think you married me for that reason, so where's the trust there?"

  "I suppose you could have a valid point," Maddy said. "How about this. To prove my love, before and after each secret I'll kiss you, and the kisses will get hotter and heavier each time."

  "You're using misdirection," Dimitri said. "You think by getting me horny I'll rush through telling you all my secrets just to get it on with you, but that won't work. Well, you won't have a problem getting me horny, but it will take time to tell you my secrets, which doesn't leave much time to act on all those hot kisses, and we have less than a half hour till the donkey illusion."

  "Our first time at the cabin took less than five minutes," Maddy pointed out, "and since the secrets shouldn't take more than ten minutes, that leaves twenty minutes for romping in bed."

  Dimitri locked his hands behind Maddy's waist. "What the hell," he said. "Okay, a hot kiss will get you the secrets to how I materialize on stage and make things levitate, and how I get out of the burning box. But we're talking about a hot kiss. Not a little peck on the lips."

  "Agreed." Maddy tightened her arms around Dimitri's neck and kissed him long and lingeringly, then forced herself to stop, because already the idea of a romp in bed was sounding more appealing than learning the secrets. "Okay, start talking. How do you materialize?"

  Dimitri's eyes rolled upward, like he was thinking, and he said, "It has to do with trans-substantiation, which is the increasing or decreasing of the speed of the swirling of atoms needed to take an object through the light-barrier and into the realm of the super-physical."

  "Don't try your nuclear physics gobbledygook with me because it won't work." Maddy kissed the side of his neck and along his jaw and took a little longer on his lips, stopping when Dimitri opened his mouth. "We'll continue this after you tell me the real secret."

  "Black lights," Dimitri said, then covered her mouth with his.

  "Umm…" Maddy hummed, but before the kiss could spiral out of control, she broke it, and said, "What about black lights?"

  Dimitri darted the tip of his tongue in her ear, bringing a short gasp from her. "Only light-colored objects show up, and since my tux is white in front and black in back, the lights catch only the front—" he kissed the side of her neck "—and since my stage crews' dressed in black with blackened faces and hands, when they move around holding light-colored objects—" he nipped her earlobe "—the objects appear to levitate and float when I give the command."

  "I get it!" Maddy said, in an excited voice. "Sirius flying to you distracts the audience while you turn around and materialize. If you hadn't insisted early on that I watch the audience for their reaction each time, I would have figured it out on my own."

  Dimitri smiled. "It's an old magician's trick to hold onto secrets."

  "Okay, what about the burning crate?" Maddy asked.

  "We are talking about fire here, so I should have a really hot kiss," Dimitri replied. His engaging smile that followed had Maddy's hormones rising even more, but she was determined to fight it, so she braced her hands on his chest to keep some distance between them and gave him an open-mouth kiss, but before it could escalate into dueling tongues, she stopped and said, "We'll pick this up where we leave off, after you tell all."

  "You drive a hard bargain." Dimitri took Maddy's hands from his chest and put them around his neck, and said, while slipping his hands around her waist, "I sit on a swing hanging from the hook on the wrecker arm, and when the box starts burning, I kick the bottom and the crate breaks loose since it's nailed with short nails. The spotlight follows it to the river, and by the time the spotlight returns, I look like I'm hanging from the rope, when I'm really sitting on a swing."

  "I still don't like that stunt. Too many things could go wrong," Maddy said. "And I hate the water torture escape. The same thing could happen that happened at the river."

  "Not a chance, but we really need to get to the barn and make sure everything's ready."

  "Not until you tell me how you get out of the water tank," Maddy said. "I've worried about that escape since I first saw it. I'll make it worth your while, a kiss with a lot of tongue action."

  Dimitri eyed Maddy with amusement. "You're pushing things, honey, but what the heck. Give me that kiss."

  Maddy prepared herself for a short, open-mouth kiss with a little tongue sucking and some darting in and out, so raising her chin and parting her lips, she started in, except that the feel of Dimitri's tongue rasping against hers was like an aphrodisiac, and it was with extreme willpower that she removed the big hand covering her breast, and said, "The tank. How do you get out?"

  Dimitri groaned, drew a long breath, and replied, "Okay, here's how it works. Once I'm free of cuffs and chains, I flip over, go to the top of the tank to get my head above the water, which was lowered by overflow when I was submerged, then I push the lid, along with the padlocks, off the flange, replaced it, then climb out and wait a few minutes to make my dramatic appearance."

  "Hold on," Maddy said. "You're telling me that the padlocks come off with the lid, which means it doesn't matter if they're the best locks in town. They're never opened."

  "You're beginning to get a handle on this magician stuff," Dimitri said. "We're all a bunch of charlatans."

  "I'm finally figuring that out," Maddy replied, "and being the wife of a charlatan, I need to know how to walk through walls in case I have to make a fast escape some time."

  "Fine, but I'll cost you another kiss," Dimitri said, "one that covers a little more territory."

  "You can be very trying at times." Maddy unfastened the top few buttons of Dimitri's dress shirt and kissed her way down to the center of his ribs and across his chest and up his neck, ending with a lingering kiss on his lips, after which she said, "That's all you get until after you tell me the secret. No more interruptions."

  "On man. You're getting me pretty horny, but okay. It has to do with a bunch of stage hands all dressed alike. When I go behind the screen I put on a smock, cap, and glasses and join the crew, who are also wearing smocks, caps and glasses, and while the audience is watching the hands waving above the screen, which are dummies controlled by one of my assistants disassembling the screen, I'm mixing with the stage crew. At the right moment, I slip behind the screen that's been reassembled on the other side of the wall, strip off the costumes, and when lights come on from behind the screen, my shadow looks like I'm coming through the wall."

  "That's it?" Maddy said. "I can't believe how easy all these illusions are, or why no one in the audience can figure them out. What about your disappearing man illusion? The way you told me, you'll disappear while you're telling a story."

  "Okay I'll tell you the secret," Dimitri said, "but because this is an illusion that no magician alive knows, including my father
, I'll need a kiss that's so hot and steamy, we'll have to be in bed to keep from knocking things over and falling on the floor, and by the end of the kiss we'll both be so horny we'll be completely out of control, and what started out to be a romp in bed will end up burning holes in the sheets."

  "I'll agree to that," Maddy said, "but you'd better talk fast and tell it straight because if we show up late for the disappearing donkey illusion, everyone will know what we've been up to in here and that would be very embarrassing, especially with my brothers out there."

  "Got it." Dimitri stretched out on the bed, and once he and Maddy were entangled in each other's arms and legs, he said in a hurried voice, "I'll be wearing a costume covered in tiny sensors that transmit pictures of whatever's behind me to a matrix of screen-like material, so when the sensors are on I'll look like what's behind me, which will make me invisible, and when the sensors are off, I'll be back." He kissed the hollow of Maddy's throat.

  "Umm, what about your face?" Maddy asked. "I assume it won't be covered in sensors. Will it just appear to float around the stage?"

  "It's a story illusion," Dimitri said, while unsnapping Maddy's shirt. "I'll be the headless horseman who roams around Sleepy Hollow while carrying my head, but I'm not really decapitated. I'm trying to scare away Ichabod Crane, my rival for the hand in marriage of the local beauty, Katrina van Tassel, and so the audience knows I'm not actually headless, I'll turn off the sensors and I'll be in one piece again."

  "That's ingenious!" Maddy said, in an excited voice.

  "I know. It's going to make us lots of money." Dimitri kissed the swell of her breast. "And we have less than fifteen minutes to ride off into the sunset."

  Maddy moved her hand over Dimitri's hip and nudged him slightly so she could trail her fingers back and forth along the waistband of his trousers while making little circles there, and said, "I still don't know cups and balls."

  "You will in a minute." Dimitri rolled onto his back.

  Maddy eyed the prominent bulge. "I'm talking about the other balls, the ones in the trick. It shouldn't take more than a few seconds to explain it. But once I have all your secrets, I'll be so pumped up and excited we won't just ride off into the sunset. We'll ride all the way to heaven."

  "Oh man… okay… sleight of hand gets a ball in the bottom cup before I start, but the angle I hold the cup keeps viewers from seeing it, so when I turn the cup over, a ball is under it, and I do the same thing for the next two cups. So get ready to mount up, honey, because I'm busting out of my pants." He was in the process of unzipping his trousers when a series of loud knocks rattled the door.

  "Dimitri!" Sebastian's voice sounded from beyond the door. "We have a major problem."

  "I know. Your timing's shot to hell, Dad. Go away."

  "It's the donkey," Sebastian said. "He disappeared."

  "Maybe he read the poster and took it to heart," Dimitri said. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes. You can start the show with some card flourishes or something."

  "What about the donkey?"

  "Dad, I'm in the middle of my honeymoon right now. You deal with it."

  Maddy nudged Dimitri aside and said, while snapping her shirt. "You shouldn't have told your father that. Now he knows what we're doing in here, and we really need to find Homer. He could go for miles and get in a lot of trouble and I'd never hear the end of it from Annie,"

  Dimitri groaned, fastened his trousers, and stood. "So much for riding to heaven," he grumbled. After shrugging into his tuxedo jacket, he grabbed his top hat and shoved it on his head and followed Maddy out the door.

  As they were walking briskly toward the barn, Maddy pointed, and said in an excited voice, "Over there! Annie has Homer. He must have spotted her and wandered off to be with her, so I guess the show's still on."

  "Fine, but after this performance, I never want to hear about disappearing donkeys again."

  "I absolutely agree," Maddy said, "but just before your dad interrupted us, I got an idea for a new illusion, one we can do for an imaginary audience when we're on our honeymoon, but this time I'll be the magician and you'll be my assistant. It's called the disappearing jeans illusion, and since the magician gets to pick what her assistant wears, you'll be wearing only chaps."

  "So, how do my jeans disappear?" Dimitri asked.

  "You'll do some gyrating to get them and out from under the chaps then toss them away."

  "That's not quite how illusions work, honey. The jeans need to disappear while the imaginary audience is distracted by misdirection, but we can still do the chaps, sleight of hand, and levitation, if that gets me my ride to heaven. In the meantime, will you settle for a disappearing Speedo illusion right after the disappearing donkey act?"

  "Of course," Maddy said, "as long as the Speedo illusion's accompanied by card flourishes."

  Dimitri laughed, took Maddy in his arms, and said, "I can tell you this much, honey. As soon as the show's over and we're back in the cabin there's going to be a whole lot of hot pink disappearing."

  Maddy kissed Dimitri quickly, and replied, "Then let the show begin."

  ###

  Thank you!

  Thanks so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed Imperfect Magic. If you did, I'd love for you to:

  Consider posting a review: Here's the link to Amazon.

  Lend the book: Imperfect Magic is lendable through the Kindle lending program, so please lend it to a friend.

  Take a look at the Dancing Moon Ranch Family Album. The 13-book Dancing Moon Ranch Series is illustrated with over 600 color photographs depicting the ranch and all the characters in the series. You'll also see what it was like during the "missing years" when the heroes and heroines in the series were growing up on the ranch. To review or buy the Dancing Moon Ranch Family Album, click here

  Read the first three chapters of Finding Justice, which is the final book in my Dancing Moon Ranch Series.

  .

  CHAPTER 1

  "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

  The hands can't hit what the eyes can't see"

  –Muhammad Ali

  Dancing Moon Ranch – Sheridan, Oregon

  While standing at the window of the lodge, Julia Barker watched the crowd gathered along the landing strip that ran between the lodge and the winery. All the Hansens were out there, including the brothers from eastern Oregon and their families, everyone looking toward the plane coming in for a landing. It was the day they'd all eagerly awaited, and although she wanted to be out there to share in the excitement of welcoming Jeremy and Billy home after four years in witness protection, Julia couldn't bring herself to join them.

  The front door of the lodge swept open and her grandfather, Howard Barker, walked toward her, and said, "I checked your cabin and when you weren't there, I thought you'd changed your mind about joining us. You could stand off to the side with Maureen and me."

  Julia shook her head. "I'll meet Jeremy and Billy when they come inside."

  Yet, the thought of everyone out there crowding into the lodge was troubling at best, but she'd stay close to the door, so if she felt a panic attack coming, she could slip away to her cabin, her sanctuary for the next few months. She also knew she couldn't stay at the ranch indefinitely, nor could she live with her grandfather and Maureen, who were talking about adding a room onto the back of their house for her. But she wasn't ready to live away from family either, so when the Hansens insisted she stay in one of the cabins until the guest season started up in the spring, it seemed the perfect solution, for now.

  She just needed more time, which was something she'd been telling herself every anniversary since the Oklahoma City bombing, when for hours she'd been trapped beneath a building that had not yet settled after the blast, imprisoned in a tomb-sized cavity surrounded by concrete, and steel beams, and rubble. When rescuers finally made their way through the wreckage, she'd thought it was all over. She had no way of knowing what lay ahead, the complexities of dealing with something the mind couldn't shut out.
For now though, everyone's attention was focused on Jeremy and Billy's homecoming, and she could focus on that too.

  "You'll have dinner with us tonight, won't you?" Howard asked. "Maureen's expecting you." When Julia nodded, Howard squeezed her shoulder and left the lodge to join the others, and Julia returned to the window.

  As she watched her grandfather walk up to Maureen and put his arm around her shoulders, and saw couples clinging to each other in anticipation, and excited kids tugging at their parents' hands while being held back from the airstrip, Julia hated being so emotionally crippled that she couldn't join them. Much of the time she could disguise her claustrophobia, when it was just a few people in an uncluttered room. Today would not be one of those days, and already she was dreading the idea of all the people outside crowding into the lodge. The mere thought made her chest feel tight, as if being squeezed by a vise.

  The whine of engines drew her attention back to the plane, which had touched down and was rolling to a halt not far from the lodge. On seeing a small white aircraft with a dark blue stripe along the fuselage with the words, U.S. MARSHALS SERVICE, displayed across it, Julia was again taken back in time to the one place she did not want to be at the moment, so she forced herself to shove thoughts of that life-changing episode aside. Today was a day to rejoice with the family, and she would, however she'd manage to get through it.

  Only last week the Hansens got word that Billy would not have to testify in court against a key mafia crime figure, and the family would be discharged from the witness protection program and be home just in time for Christmas. The news came the same day Julia arrived at the ranch. She was glad for the distraction because it took the focus off her and the reason she was there, and that was the way she wanted it. From the time of the bombing she'd lived with her parents, but her father's job took her parents to Korea, and the thought of a long flight across the Pacific was something she couldn't handle. Her goal now was to have her own place by spring, something so simple, yet so complex for a person like her.