Jake stood on his toes to look around. “Is the purple lady gone?”
Harmony picked him up so he could check the room. “I feel peace all around us. I hope she’s gone and at peace, Jake.”
King touched her arm. “You hope? How will we know for sure?”
Harmony touched a finger to her lips, then to his. “Live here.”
Chapter Forty-seven
“KING,” Harmony said after their ritual, “this is Gussie’s scrying mirror. We sealed it in one of your metal toolboxes, so Gussie couldn’t access it during the ritual. It’s the last piece of her magick in the house. I have a plan to dispose of it. Let’s go.”
“Scrying?” he asked, as they left.
“You read it like you read a crystal ball. Do you need another cane? There are at least a dozen upstairs.”
“A dozen? And you gave me the one with the ring inside?”
“I had no idea, but no wonder I got a sense of the ring near the cane stand. Guess I must be psychic or something.”
“You’re something, all right, and I’d rather lean on you than a cane.”
Harmony’s heart tripped. “I never thought you’d lean on anyone.”
“Walking alone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
“Especially up this hill.” They walked slowly, their arms around each other, toward the edge of the cliff.
“This is the place,” she said, “looking down to the base of the cliff. Gussie loved the sea. Nicodemus died there. Lisette escaped there, and Gussie’s mirror belongs there.”
“This is Mermaid Cliff,” King said.
“Appropriate, since we’re both fond of mermaids.”
King brought her as close as he could with the mirror between them. “You’re the only mermaid I want.”
“I’m glad.” She accepted his kiss but didn’t push for more than he was willing to give. “I promised to explain the meaning of the sea horse after the ritual. Are you ready? The ancient Celts believed that the sea horse was a transporter to the otherworld.”
“Blessed peaceful ghost! What made you choose a sea horse tattoo?”
“It was cute. We were thirteen when we got our tattoos. We didn’t understand the symbolism. You named your boat The Sea Horse . Why? Because you wanted to cross somebody over? I don’t think so.
Yet I believe that your compassion, when you felt sorry for Gussie, is what made Lisette give you the other half of the ring.”
“I think she did it for you.” He looked out over the cliff. “How did you know about this place?”
“I came for a walk last night . . . when I never thought I’d see you again.”
He winced. “I was a fool. Have you forgiven me?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Think harder.” He grazed her neck with his lips to persuade her.
Looking down, she eyed his interest . . . with interest. “I see you’re thinking harder.”
“Ignore that. I have a sock in my pants.” He turned the mirror so she could look into it. “Tell me what you see.”
Harmony gasped. “Lisette! She’s wearing my gown, saying, ‘Thank you.’ Ah, she’s gone, but I did it, King!” She threw her arms around him. “I completed my psychic mandate.”
“Somehow, I knew you would. I’m glad you saw proof. I didn’t expect it, but I’m glad. I showed you the mirror so I could tell you what I see when I look at you . . . at us.”
Harmony’s radar went up, and she stepped back. “I’m listening.”
“During the ritual, I realized that I’d entrusted you with my family’s future, and my thoughts crystallized.
You and I are polar opposites. “I’m broody, skeptical, controlling.”
Harmony nodded. “Single-minded, uptight, impatient, bossy . . .”
King frowned, such an endearing frown. “I’m trying to make a point.”
She slid an arm to his waist via his tush. “Please continue.”
He raised a brow. “I’m all the things you said, while you’re unconventional, willful, impulsive, stubborn, and scary/thrilling . . . everything I’ve been missing in my life. You stir my heart, Harmony, the way you stir that cauldron, arousing fire and peace, magick and love.”
“I do?” Harmony stilled and felt herself coming back to life. “I wanna kiss you, but I can’t get close enough with the mirror between us. Throw it, now, as far as you can, so it doesn’t break on the rocks.”
King tossed it in a sweeping arc, and the mirror slid clean into the sea.
“Yay team!” Harmony cheered. “Give me an O .”
King crushed her in his embrace and kissed her senseless. When he broke the kiss, he looked up and turned her in his arms to face the sea. Dolphins played where the mirror had landed. “Look, they’re celebrating for Gussie.”
The sun slipped from behind a feathery white cloud and crowned the dolphin playground with a rainbow.
Harmony’s eyes filled. “The dolphin symbolizes the end of an old life and the birth of a new one.”
“Speaking of which . . . ,” King said. “When my cane shattered, I think the walls around my heart shattered, too, because all manner of emotions poured out. Then there was this ring.” He took her hand.
“This amazing symbol of the missing half of my heart.”
“I feel like we’re in the lagoon,” Harmony said.
“The lagoon,” King repeated, “was more than passion. That’s why I ran.”
“I know.”
“You’ve always known things about me that you shouldn’t.”
She smiled. “When I got to the castle, I could read you—every sexy move, touch, lick, kiss, and maneuver you imagined—I read your every fantasy .” She wiggled her brows. “But I can’t read your thoughts anymore.” She tried to sound wistful.
He raised a knowing brow. “Want me to spell it out for you, do you? Then I will. Remember what I said about getting married once in a blue moon?”
“I remember. Blue moons happen about thirty-seven times a century.”
King searched her expression. “Do you know the date of the next blue moon?”
Harmony couldn’t stop her smile. “I do, but do you?”
He gave her an enigmatic smile. “Seven days from today. On June thirtieth, there’ll be a blue moon.”
“I found Lisette’s half of the ring with the first full moon of the month, June first,” Harmony said.
King’s laugh lines crinkled to the breaking point. Her heart about stopped with his all-out grin. “And with the second full moon of the month, the blue moon, we can split the ring so we become two halves of a whole, each of us wearing half. Romantic, huh?”
“I could faint from the romance—that was a proposal, right?”
“There’s that smart mouth, but I love you, anyway.”
“Get out!” She pushed from his arms. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You love me?”
“Didn’t I say so during the ritual when I gave you the ring?”
“Uh, no, McClueless.”
King shook his head. “Smart mouth and all, I love you,” he whispered against her lips, and his words touched her in amazing places, especially her heart.
He pulled her down to the wet, lavender- and thyme-scented grass.
Harmony touched his face, his dear, dear face, traced those wonderful laugh lines, gazed into his deep whiskey eyes, his emotions there for her to see, including . . . love. The man she loved . . . loved her in return. Bless the stars, how had she gotten so lucky? Her psychic mandate had turned a handful of unwanted misfits and an off-with-their-heads castle into a home and a family. “I love you, King.” She cupped his cheek. “I love you, but I never thought I’d get to tell you.”
“Harmony Cartwright, will you marry me? In sickness and health, grandchildren and castle renovations—not to mention great times in the sack with multiple multiples—for as long as we both shall live? How’s that for a proposal? Spontaneou
s and romantic, heh?”
She laughed. “I’ll marry you in sickness and health, lust, passion, peace, and love—in spite of your fractured tries at spontaneous romantic sentiment—for as long as we both shall live . . . and beyond .”
Despite his exaggerated wince and the quirky half smile that accompanied it, Harmony could see that King’s emotions sat close to the surface. He cleared his throat. “I love your laugh, you witchy woman.
And I love that you’re a smart, sexy, sassy high priestess. I noticed the first day that you have a great rack, a fine ass, and legs that go on forever—but I didn’t know about the tattoos.” King began his nibbling way down her cleavage, toward the triquetra hidden there, but he stopped, looked up, and grinned, an easy, no-holds-barred grin that overflowed her heart with love. “How can a man not love a woman with tattoos?” he said.
“All this sweet talk is going to my head, McBullseye. Good thing you’re aces in the sack.”
“How do witches get married?” he asked, raising his head. “Do we have to fly in a high priest on a broom?”
Turn the page for a preview of
Annette Blair’s next novel featuring
Storm Cartwright.
Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!
BENEATH a rare blue moon in June, Storm Cartwright, bridesmaid, her black hair streaked blue to match her gown, accepted the arm of Aiden McCloud, the stud man she planned to kidnap after her sister’s wedding—unless he decided to cooperate, in which case, hell was bound to freeze over by midnight.
“Are you sure you won’t come with me to find the baby I hear crying in my mind when I’m near you?”
she asked one last time, just to be fair.
Aiden shook his head, his long dark hair shifting in the breeze, the sexy quirk of his lips was beguiling “
‘In your mind,’ being the operative phrase,” he said. “Yes, I’m sure. Strong instincts of self-preservation compel me to say no. Chasing the voices in your head scares even this tough outlaw biker.”
Storm gave him a flirty wink. “I’m so proud.” Since meeting Aiden—a case of electromagnetic attraction at first sight—her clairaudience had kicked into overdrive. Audible only to her and only when she was near him, that crying baby’s telekinetic plea put all her instincts on high alert. And her plan to follow the sound and find the child—his child, she believed, but he denied—meant taking him on a journey with no destination, a concept he found understandably ludicrous.
He stroked the soft flesh of her wrist with his thumb, demonstrating his ability to turn her to jelly, which did not come as a surprise. “Drop the agenda,” he said, “and it’s a hot-date road trip in a luxury motor home that could pamper you prissy.”
“Hah! Me, prissy?” She bit her lip. Could she accept the hot date and let the sound in her mind direct the trip without him realizing? She’d planned to take his motor home, anyway.
“Forget it,” Aiden said, reclaiming his hand. “No road trip, and no wands or spells to get your witchy way. Your body language alone is beginning to make me twitch. We’ll stay in Salem. You can give me a”—he leaned close—“personal tour.” He eyed the triquetra tattoo revealed by her gown, low on her right breast, then he forcefully shifted his hungry gaze to her lips. “I could make a meal of those blackberry lips,” he whispered.
Good. The stage for her plan was set: A horny hunk, a wedding beneath the stars, soft music wafting over Paxton Island, waves breaking against the shore, fairy lights in the trees, and rose-scented air. A scene teeming with allure.
For weeks, they’d been playing a sexual version of chicken, a bit like juggling fireballs, but almost hoping to get burned. As far as she was concerned, tonight was more than her sister’s wedding. It was an opportunity for some preforeplay foreplay that pointed to a premeditated coed inferno, which might—or might not—take the top spot on her agenda at the end of the day.
She’d make it work and she didn’t need magic to pull it off. She had a plan going for her, a choreographed seduction . . . and celibacy, three weeks’ worth. Abstinence, as in the lack of, as in they’d never had sex—with each other—a rather mystically mutual state of affairs that fit her scheme so well, she hadn’t questioned it, though perhaps she should have.
After the reception, if she and her sisters played their parts right, she and Aiden would drive off alone together on a psychic quest that just happened to include sex as a bonus. Multiple bonuses, and multiple multiples, she hoped. It was a matter of fate, providence, and a spiritual directive of discovery and rescue.
Storm beamed, and judging by Aiden’s quick physical reaction, her anticipation hit him square in the libido. Oh yeah, they were on the same wave length, all right, both hot as a lightning bolt. They had sexual chemistry stockpiled in gigawatts.
“Cut that out,” Aiden snapped in a whisper as he faced her, turning his back on the wedding guests.
“We’re standing, literally, in the spotlight. People are watching.”
“Hah,” she whispered, glancing down. “You’re certainly giving them something to see. You cut it out. This is the bride’s day. Don’t go shortchanging my sister.” On the outside, her scowl matched Aiden’s. On the inside, she rubbed her hands together in glee with tingly, warm sexberry gel. Judging by her mark’s insta-boner, the role of seducer was “up” for grabs.
Aiden leaned in, his nearness tickling her skin and invading her senses like whipped cream and rose petals. “I’m gonna get you for this,” he promised.
Dragon’s blood, he looked hot in a tux. “Finally,” she quipped, tossing down the proverbial gauntlet to speed her plan on its merry way. “You’ll excuse me if I have my doubts about your libido going the distance?”
“Are you kidding me?” He straightened, forgetting to whisper.
“Shh!” Storm faced forward as the musicians began to play “By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” in lieu of the wedding march, and she and Aiden began their trek down the garden path toward the gazebo. There they separated as Aiden went to his side, and she went to hers to witness the marriage of her sister Harmony to Aiden’s best friend, King.
In the center of the gazebo, wearing the beautifully restored gold linen day gown that led her sister to King Paxton in the first place, the bride as high priestess cast a ritual circle that encompassed the bridal couple, the wedding party, the justice of the peace, and four cats.
Harmony—with her clone attendants, triplets extraordinaire—had also chosen her future step-daughter as a bridesmaid, and their pregnant half sister, Vickie, who positively bloomed.
Beside King stood his three-year-old grandson, as ring bearer, his two best friends, and the Scot who’d knocked up the bride’s half sister and married her shortly afterward.
After a romantic and emotional ceremony, utilizing portions of both Celtic and traditional weddings, Harmony and King kissed as husband and wife for the first time. Applause and a hearty rendition of
“Blue Moon” followed them into Paxton Castle for the wedding reception.
The constellations winked, and the moon smiled wide as Storm imagined taking Badass McMagic prisoner, likely in shackles. And later—once he willingly joined the quest—she anticipated having her very wicked way with him.
ForAnnette Blair , writing comedy started with a root canal and a reluctant trip to Salem, Massachusetts. Though she had once said she’d never write a contemporary, she stumbled into the serendipitous role of “Accidental Witch Writer” on that trip. Funny how she managed to eat her words, even with an aching jaw. After she turned to writing bewitching romantic comedies, a magic new world opened up to her. She loves her new home at Berkley Sensation.
Contact her through her website atwww.annetteblair.com .
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