“Tell you what, you pay for the wood, the supplies, and I won’t charge for the labor. Deal?”
Before Miki could say anything, he stepped closer. His scent filled her nostrils. An earthy, masculine smell that owed nothing to a cosmetic company and everything to the sexy man staring down at her. Her breath lodged somewhere in her chest. That had to account for her lightheaded feeling.
“And maybe when I’m done with the porch, you’ll let me buy you dinner. We can call it a welcome-to-Rossdale gesture.”
“Is that what it is? A gesture welcoming me to town?”
“No. But, we can call it that if it’ll get you to agree.”
The look in his eyes, interest—purely sexual, combined with masculine assurance—made Miki’s throat dry. Answering interest simmered. Deep in her belly desire bloomed like a heady flower. She was tempted. Poison or not, his gaze promised pure pleasure. It had been so long since she’d felt anything close to what his eyes offered. Sure, he was mortal. But what could a little dinner hurt?
Anticipation surged through her. She opened her mouth to accept and gasped as energy sparked from her hands. The rough texture of the towel changed between her fingers. Miki swallowed, afraid to look down and see what she held. Please, let it be inanimate. Two days before, she’d turned her coffee cup into a baby duck. She ran the small, foil-wrapped disk between her fingers and risked a quick glance.
Her face flamed. She’d rather have the duck. Miki shot Gideon a nervous smile and wished hard, focusing all her energy on making the condom—ribbed for her pleasure—disappear. She muttered a quick spell under her breath,
“Get rid of it fast or I’m going to blubber, the last thing I need right now is a rubber.”
“Sorry?” Gideon asked, brows creased.
Miki bit her lip as, instead of disappearing, the single condom turned into a box of twelve. Before Gideon could see, she whipped her hands behind her back. With the box of condoms in one hand, she groped around the counter with the other. Feeling fabric, she grabbed another towel.
“Thanks for the offer,” she said. “But I’ll have to pass.”
He gave her a long, contemplative look. Eyes wide, Miki offered her most innocent smile and shrugged.
“Too soon, huh?”
Too soon for sex? Well, yeah. Despite the evidence to the contrary in her hands, they had just met. Then Miki realized he probably meant it was too soon to date after her divorce.
She nodded.
“You’re sure?”
Great Goddess, no. But she didn’t have a choice.
“I’m sure.”
He smiled and backed up a couple feet. With a puzzled glance at the bulky towel she now held against her belly, he gave a shrug of his own and nodded.
“I’ll go get a board to fix the porch. That way you won’t have to keep stepping over the damaged area and risk getting hurt.”
Since she couldn’t tell him her brother could replace it with a twitch of his finger, she just nodded and said thanks.
The next thing she knew, Miki was watching Gideon get in his truck and wave. He hadn’t let her pay him. He’d found the right size piece of wood in his truck, claimed it was scrap, and fixed the porch. She wasn’t sure when she’d lost the upper hand or if she’d ever really had it. But she did know she’d need to get a grip on her reaction to the man if she was going to hold her own in the future.
Miki leaned gingerly on the rotting railing and watched him drive away. Life as she knew it might be over. She might be jobless, with her new house falling down around her ears. But, because of the box of condoms on the rail next to her, she suddenly felt mighty optimistic about this new phase of things.
“Hey, Miki? Phone,” Ryan called from the doorway. She turned in time to catch both the cell phone and Ryan’s sneer. “It’s Perry.”
With an echo of Ryan’s sneer, Miki answered, “Hello?”
“You took my furnishings. I want them back.” Perry’s uptight condescension lost a little oomph over the cell phone.
“Sorry, what are you talking about?”
“Mikaela, half of that furniture belongs to me. You know you don’t need it moving into a fully furnished rental. You just took it to be spiteful. I want it back. It’s custom made for this house, it belongs here.”
“I have my furniture, Perry. The furniture I paid for with the loan I took out against my business to redecorate the house. I may not be able to take the paint and fixtures you and the decorator picked out. But I can take the furniture.”
Silence. Then a deep, you are so clueless sigh. The kind that always made Miki feel like a moron in the past. But not anymore, she realized with a grin of freedom. Now she just wished he’d do it a few more times and hyperventilate.
“Mikaela, I want my living room set and wide-screen television. I have clients and my bosses to entertain and I don’t have time to refurnish an entire house.” Frustration coated his tone with a whiny edge that made Miki smirk. “I demand you return my half of the furniture.”
“Right. And wherever you stashed all our money, half of that is mine. Wanna trade?”
While Perry sputtered and spewed, Miki gleefully pushed the off button and tucked the phone into her hip pocket. She snagged the box of condoms and sauntered over the newly replaced porch board and into the house.
She had to unpack, get the house in some semblance of order, start a list of repairs, and look over her finances to see if she could manage any of them. With Ryan and Lena’s help, she’d outlined a series of exercises that should help her build her magical muscle again. And while the kitchen was small and tacky, it had enough room for her coffeemaker. For the first time in months, Miki felt like she had some control over her life. And she liked it.
* * *
With a bobble and a whirl, one of the kitchen chairs flew through the air into the living room.
“Damn it, Mik. Concentrate,” Ryan demanded as he ducked as it whizzed past his head.
“I’m trying,” she said through gritted teeth. Miki stood in the center of the living room, focused on holding a carafe of coffee in the air without spilling any. Easy enough for any witch with a modicum of control. Heck, even for Miki that part was a breeze.
The tricky part was conjuring a coffee cup to pour the aromatic liquid heaven into. She’d managed to call up most of the contents from the kitchen. Pots, pans, and plates had all bobbled their way out of the cupboards, making a shaky passage down the hall and into a pile in the dingily lit living room. Now she was hauling in furniture.
But not one freaking cup.
“Miki, you’re supposed to be conjuring a new cup. Not snagging one from the kitchen. Basic conjuring, c’mon. Any ten-year-old could do it. I could do it at seven.”
“You were a freak of nature,” she informed her brother with a sniff. Like a couch potato on her first ten-mile run, she was woefully out of shape. Psychic muscles, long unused, screamed in protest. Sweat inched its way down her temples and soaked the small of her back.
The last thing she needed was to hear details of her brother’s greatness. He and Lena both had been gifted, able to control their magic early on. By ten, they could do magicks and spells most adult witches struggled with. Then along came Miki. When she was young, she’d figured either she’d been switched at birth or her elder siblings had hogged up all the magic from the genetic pool, leaving her the dregs. She’d managed to forget that inferior feeling during her magic-less years of marriage.
She now missed that sweet oblivion.
Miki sucked in a deep breath. Her lungs filled with the musty air still permeating the house. Then, one hand pointed at the coffee pot to hold it in place, she closed her eyes and focused on finding an inner pool of serenity. Except she didn’t have any serenity inside. What she did have was turmoil, irritation, and the resurgence of a stellar inferiority complex.
Struggling to focus on something else, Miki took another deep breath. She sent her thoughts outward, trying to sense the calm of nature. She
pictured the view from her front porch, the green field of grass ruffling in the soft breeze. She opened herself to the energy of the earth, called on the tranquility of the large range of mountains visible beyond her driveway.
An intense power, like nothing she’d ever felt before, filled her. Unlike her magic of late, it wasn’t a rush of energy zapping through like an electrical current. No, this was a smooth, serene energy. Assured, strong. Like the mountains she was visualizing, it was unmovable, confident. It settled around her like a suit of armor. Miki felt, for the first time in her life, like she could do anything. Work any feat of magic, either routine or extraordinary. Like coming home after a long trip, the energy welcomed her. She couldn’t explain it, but she felt whole.
She opened her eyes and focused on the spinning cleaning supplies, ignoring her brother’s scowl. Still pointing to the carafe, she lifted her other hand, palm facing the ceiling.
The whirlwind of kitchen appliances stopped, the toaster and frying pan frozen, midair. She smirked when a sponge bounced off Ryan’s head on its way to join the rest of the contents of her kitchen. Ignoring the cluttered evidence of her previous failure, she held tight to the glory of her success.
With a lift of her chin and tilt of her head, the air shimmered with light and an oversized purple coffee cup appeared next to the carafe. Miki twitched a finger, and the silence in the room broke with the sound of coffee pouring from the carafe. She held out her hand so the cup slid onto her palm.
She lifted it to take a sip of the steaming brew, smiled, then snapped her fingers. In a flash, the room cleared of all the kitchen paraphernalia.
Brows raised, Ryan nodded his approval. Energy still poured through her, but this time a controlled, usable energy. Miki winked. Another cup appeared, this one covered in pink polka-dots. She gestured and the carafe tilted. Only now, instead of fragrant coffee, it poured the stinky herbal tea Ryan favored. Then, in a puff of green smoke, the carafe disappeared and the cup descended to Ryan’s hand.
“Well?” she demanded, sinking into her favorite chair, an overstuffed recliner of sapphire suede. Tucking her feet under her, she snuggled into the soft cushions and took another sip. She couldn’t quit grinning. Magic, when it worked, was better than any sex she’d ever had. Goddess, how she’d missed it. Not just the power, but the sense of accomplishment that came with it. Maybe she wasn’t on par with the rest of her family, but hey, for an average witch, she was pretty damned good.
“I’m impressed,” Ryan admitted. Miki preened, shoulders straightening. “If you can pull off the focus to not only conjure, but transform, why are you having so much trouble with simple magic?”
Her shoulders drooped. She didn’t want to confess that she wasn’t even sure how much had come from her magic, and how much had been energy she’d pulled from her surroundings. Did that count? She vividly remembered her thrill, when as a six-year-old, she’d been able to call up the wind. The Northern breeze had come when she’d beckoned, responding to her summons with a welcome surge of energy. The thrill had turned to shame when her tutor had berated her for using outside energy.
Probably better to keep the source of her success to herself, then. She’d just have to work harder to control her magic from within.
With an approving sip of his twig juice, Ryan settled into his own chair, a plush red throne-like monstrosity he’d zapped in for himself. Miki eyed it and sighed. This teacher thing had gone to his head.
“Let’s try again.” With a snap, he conjured a steaming platter of lasagna. “How about you serve up lunch?”
“How about I don’t?” Miki snapped her fingers and the platter disappeared. “I’m tired. Let’s take a break.”
“And do what? We’ve unloaded your few possessions. You’ve unpacked the mortal way, with your hands,” he shuddered. “What’s left to do? Start repairs on this dilapidated nightmare? I thought you were going to let Romeo do those.”
“Gideon,” she stressed, “is just going to give me a bid. I doubt I can afford to have him do all the work. But maybe he could do some of the bigger jobs. You know, the major repairs like the balcony and the leaking windows. Maybe the hole in the roof and that sputtering thing the lights do whenever you turn them on. You and I can tackle the minor stuff.”
Ryan snorted a laugh. “Minor stuff? Us? Like what? Mik, we can’t even magically repair this place. We wouldn’t have a clue where to start.”
Her lips quirked. He was right. To do the magic, they’d need to understand what they were actually doing.
“I’m sure we can handle painting a wall or two, right?” His doubtful look made Miki grin. She unwound herself from her chair and rose. Taking his empty cup along with hers, she headed for the kitchen to set them in the sink. Returning, she dangled his jacket off her finger. “C’mon, we’ll hit the library. Pick up a few home repair books, catch a clue.”
“Okay, but I’m not promising to stick around,” he said as he got up and took his jacket from her hands. “I’m here to help you regain control of your powers. Not to be your handyman. Besides,” he said with a sly twinkle in his eyes, “I think Romeo has dibs on that job.”
With a roll of her own eyes, Miki headed for the front door. She was glad her back was to her all-too-observant brother so he couldn’t see the heat staining her cheeks. Dibs or not, she wasn’t in the market for anything other than someone to make this house livable.
Now to convince her body of that.
There’s a New Witch in Town: Chapter Five
Gideon parked his truck in front of the General Store and watched as Miki made her way toward Bea’s Diner.
He sighed. Damn, that woman looked good in denim. Even big city, designer denim. He leaned back, arm stretched along the seat, to enjoy the view. Just the sight of her walking down the sidewalk sent his body into high gear.
Hadn’t he learned his lesson once about the damage those California women could wreak? And most people thought the state’s natural disaster was the earthquakes.
She passed his truck, so his view shifted from her front to her back as she entered the diner. A very nice back it was, too. He eyed the sway of her hips and pursed his lips. California girl or not, she was the finest sight he’d ever seen. Was he going to sit here like a schoolboy, lurking and gawking? Just because the woman had turned down his request for a date?
Nah. It’d take a few more refusals before he settled for gawking.
With a grin, Gideon pocketed his keys and exited the truck. A few long strides across the street and he paused at the diner window to take in the scene. While the scent of fried meat wafted out the open window, he couldn’t make out the conversation. His brows furrowed when it looked like Marcia was refusing to seat Miki. Through the plate glass, he watched Miki make a sweeping gesture toward all the empty booths. Marcia, arms crossed over her impressive chest, shook her head.
God, he’d forgotten how rude some of the townspeople could be to newcomers. Amazing thing to forget, considering the continued decline of Rossdale’s population. He watched Marcia give another negative shake of her head. Miki, her back to him, seemed to be arguing, but the older woman didn’t budge.
Just as he was about to sweep open the doors to rush to her rescue, Miki turned in her heels and stomped out. Gideon had to jump back to avoid being beaned in the face with the swinging glass door.
“Hi,” he said as he caught the door.
Her midnight eyes stormy, a faint flush tinting her cheeks, Miki glared. Then, as she seemed to actually focus on him, her frown faded. The color on her cheeks didn’t though. If anything, it deepened.
“Hi,” she muttered. He glanced at her hand, rhythmically squeezing a bright purple floral stress ball. His brows drew together. Had she been carrying that all along? “If you’re looking for lunch, apparently the grill is being cleaned.”
Gideon’s brows shot up. He doubted old Joe had cleaned that grill more than twice in the twenty years he’d been slinging burgers at Bea’s. He knew the town had a
tendency to be cold to newcomers, but outright driving away business? His gaze shifted over Miki’s shoulder to meet Marcia’s obstinate look.
He tilted a brow, and with a shamed little shrug, she turned her back on them in obvious dismissal.
“I wasn’t interested in lunch,” Gideon answered Miki’s question. He figured she might burst that stress ball if he told her he’d come over because he was interested in her.
A quick fantasy flashed through his mind of Miki spread out on his dining room table. Now that was a lunch he’d give anything to taste. His mouth watered at the thought and he breathed in the tempting scent of her spicy perfume.
Heat, a rare visitor before Miki’d come to town, simmered in his gut. His body gave a full salute of appreciation to the image etched in his brain. Damned if he had ever felt anything this strong, this powerful, this spontaneous, for a woman before. And never one who made it clear she wasn’t available.
“I wasn’t that hungry myself,” she grumbled, glaring over her shoulder. “I really just wanted to get some coffee and relax. Maybe get a feel for the town.”
Her tone made it clear she’d gotten quite a feel for Rossdale already, and it wasn’t a good one. Not sure why, since he knew she wouldn’t stick around one way or the other, but Gideon didn’t want her to hate his town. It could have been the hardening package in his jeans, but he liked to think he was a bigger man than that. Then again, as he looked down at Miki’s exotic face, he had to admit, he was getting bigger by the second.
“Do you like coffee?” he ventured.
Like fireworks in a pitch-black sky, her eyes sparkled.
“Only as much as I like air.”
He laughed and, cupping his hand under her elbow, turned her toward the General Store.
“I’ll treat you to a cup of the best coffee you’ve ever had,” he promised.
Holding Out For A Hero: SEALs, Soldiers, Spies, Cops, FBI Agents and Rangers Page 65
