An Imperfect Witch (27 page)

Because he was pretty sure the man who had just left was on a mission.

The rogue wave hit the rocks below one more time.  Dev laughed as the droplets hit his face and Fuzzball hissed in entirely unimpressed protest.

Some things were just inevitable.

He sent a quick wish out over the waters for one more bit of inevitability and scooped up his cat.  Time to go home.

-o0o-

Sane clients and a house with no ghosts.  Thank the freaking planet—she needed easy today.

This was the fifth property Lizard had brought the Kennedys to see, and her very shaky nerves were somehow finding comfort in the familiar.

She smiled at Sara and Garth, the epitome of normal young family.  Their three-year-old son Liam, currently perched happily on the co-op’s monster window seat, babbled about something exciting in the street below.

A truck.  Maybe.

Lizard snuck a look in his outer mind.  Yup, a big yellow one.  “I guess he’s okay with the traffic.”  The co-op apartment was on a busy street, but it had the kind of cool, interesting vibe these clients wanted.  Unless they suddenly wanted burbs, which was always a possibility too.  People with one young child could go either way.  By two kids, yards and space often outweighed walking to downtown and a funky cafe at street level.

Sara kissed Liam’s head.  This family touched a lot, in the kind of easy, gooey way that used to make Lizard squirm.  She felt the shaky stuff rear its head.  Twenty-six months in Witch Central and she’d developed a pretty big tolerance for goo.  Dangerous territory.

The little boy reached up and tugged his mom onto the window seat.  “Look.  Big twuck!”  He settled deeper into the squishy cushion.  “Me stay.”

Something in Lizard yearned for it to be that easy.

Garth chuckled.  “No decisions until we see the bathroom, little dude.”

Liam bounced off the seat.  “’Kay.  I have a bath!”

Lizard grinned, already halfway in love.  Most clients just flushed the toilet, but whatever.

Sara trailed behind, eyes roaming over the kitchen.  She sighed and turned to follow her son.

That was the kind of sigh smart agents watched for.  This place could work for the Kennedys, but they needed enough time to actually check it out.  Lizard reached into her sexy leather backpack for surefire Liam bait.  She held up the plastic container of cookies where Sara could see.  “Can I stuff him full of sugar while you look around?”

Hazel eyes flashed in amusement.  And gratitude.  “Bless you.”

Lizard grinned.  Currently, her other life problems included a teenage sister with an attitude problem and nowhere to live and a guy who wanted her to imagine being old and happy.  A small, restless boy was a piece of cake.  She called out in the direction of the bathroom.  “Hey, Liam.  Come watch the street with me.  We can eat cookies and count all the yellow trucks.”

Small feet flew out of the bathroom.  “I count free!  Free twucks!”  He held up four fingers.

Close enough.  “There’s a big blue one that usually comes around the corner about this time.”  Recycling truck.  Pros knew
all
the cool house features.  They sat together on the window seat, sassy realtor and small boy, and communed in the way of big-truck aficionados everywhere.

It wasn’t long before there were footsteps behind them.

“You’re good with kids,” said Sara, smiling.

Her insides hiccupped.  Lizard grabbed Liam just before he took a header off the window seat.  “I’m pretty good at most things where immaturity is an asset.”

Garth followed his wife out of the hallway and laughed.  “I’m borrowing that line.”  He squeezed his wife’s shoulders.  “If maturity was required, Sara would still be very single.”

Nah.  Lizard turned away to look out the window, trying to keep her thoughts to herself.  Garth was funny, goofy, and very sure of who he was.  Witch Central was full of people like that, and they were plenty grown up.  She just wasn’t one of them.

But the guy she loved was—and he wanted this.  A cute kid who loved trucks and had a less-than-firm grip on his primary numbers.

Garth plunked onto the window seat.  “Five years ago, I never would have imagined this as my life.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”  Sara smiled at him fondly.  “You liked big trucks back then, too.”

“How did you do it?”  Lizard froze, the wildly unprofessional question out before she could stop it.

Garth shrugged.  “One day I just knew.”  He ruffled his son’s hair.  “Kind of like a big truck shifting gears.  I was holding someone else’s kid at work and realized it didn’t seem like such a bad thing.”

“He came home with baby clothes,” said Sara, eyes bright with love and memory. 

“And a ring.”  Garth looked sheepish.

His wife kissed his head.  “It was the cute little orange sleeper that closed the deal and you know it.”

Lizard stared at a mud spot on the window, mind in an arm wrestle with “one day I just knew.”

“We love the apartment.”  Sara sounded sympathetic—and a little confused.

Shit.  Lizard slammed on her game face and turned around.  “Sorry, still watching for big trucks.”  Somewhere under the professional veneer, her heart was shaking.  Hard. 

Garth picked up his son and swung him upside down, to raucous three-year-old approval.  “You think we could live here, Dump Truck Man?”

Liam let out an impressive vehicular growl.  “Yes, pwease!”

A polite dump truck.  And an adorable one.  Lizard pushed away the tangled mess threatening to invade her realtor brain.  “Great.  Let’s go put an offer together.”

She walked over to the door, trying to keep the bits of her life neatly in their compartments.

And failing miserably.

Raven’s arrival had let a lot of stuff out of the toothpaste tube of Lizard Monroe’s life.  And maybe some of it wasn’t going back in.

Chapter 22

Moira stopped at the edge of her pool as the sun snuck its way up into the sky, curious.

There had been plenty of guests to its welcoming warmth lately, and many of them admired the pretty flowers at the pool’s edges that managed to survive the Canadian winter winds.  But it wasn’t often her gardens were all aflutter after a visitor left.  And a particularly lovely purple bloom was missing.

She never minded—her flowers had always been for sharing.

But the murmurs from her sleepy plants were quite clear.  A man had come in the night, smelling of courage and fear and love.

And left trailing the vibrations of conviction.

Her garden approved.

And as Moira touched sleeping petals, so did she.

-o0o-

It was a small piece of paper, but there was no doubting its importance.  It sat on Lizard’s table, held to the green plate by a familiar purple rock.  And topped by a beautiful purple flower—the ones she’d only ever seen growing by Moira’s pool.

Lizard approached the table, wary.  Usually Josh left his notes on the fridge.  She was pretty sure this one wasn’t about leftover pizza or jazz in the park.

She touched the petals of the flower and slid out the scrap of white.

I want one more thing.
  The paper almost shook with the intensity of his words. 
And it’s maybe the part that isn’t so patient anymore.  I don’t need to know all that the future holds.  But I want to know you’ll be the one beside me in the middle of whatever comes.

Someday, maybe I’ll be brave enough to actually say that out loud.

Written words—the kind that spoke to her heart best.  She stared at the stark wish scrawled on the barren black-and-white landscape. 

And felt the tectonic plates of Lizard Monroe shift.

-o0o-

Some days, her life had a really warped sense of humor.

Lauren held open the door of the fourth sharply artistic and edgy condo she’d managed to dredge up on ten minutes’ notice.  This client was an
artiste
.  And apparently artistes didn’t let little things like advance notice blemish their radar.

Gaston—and no chance in hell was that his real name—had shown up with airs, demands, and a conviction that she was the very best in town.  Also a conviction that she was female, and therefore wanted her turn in his bed.  That much she’d managed to squelch by condo number two, but he was grating on her very last nerve even as he provided enough fodder to keep her giggling for the next six months.

He walked through the door, peeling off his tight leather jacket as he did so.

Lauren hid a grin—if he wanted to impress a realtor with his tats, he’d picked the wrong inmate of Berkeley Realty.  Or the wrong day—Lizard was currently AWOL.  No clomping feet at work, no texts, and so far, the Witch Central grapevine had come up empty.

He stepped into the middle of the large living area and turned around with an epic flourish of his jacket.  “This is magnificent.  I’m surprised we didn’t come here first.”

The seller, and a very chirpy companion, had been peeling themselves out of bed an hour ago.  “I thought it might be to your taste.  But unlike the others, it’s currently occupied—and I’m not sure the owner is as motivated to sell.”

Gaston raised a very suggestive eyebrow.  “Everyone can be motivated.”

Oy.  Not nearly as easily as he seemed to presume.  Maybe it was a good thing Lizard was in hiding.  “I think it will take a pretty crisp offer to land this one.”

He ignored her, as he’d done at random intervals all morning.  Part of the mystique—or he just had really crappy manners.

She studied him carefully as he walked around.  Most clients she had pegged before they left the first property.  This one was squirmier.  Too many falsified and surprisingly solid layers on top of whoever he really was.

But Lauren Sullivan had twelve years of experience that told her it wasn’t the surface of people that bought homes—it was what lay closest to their hearts.  A good realtor needed to figure out who their clients were when no one was watching.

Gaston peered out a window.  “The view is adequate.”

Good grief.  Lauren turned away and buried a snicker in a cough.  He had a lot in common with a certain crystal ball.  Both dumped into a century that just didn’t treat royalty the way they used to.  She moved to the window.  “There’s a gourmet grocery down about a block and a half.  Excellent deli, passable produce.  And one of the better workout facilities in town one street over to the west.”  The second was an educated guess—she was pretty sure Gaston’s muscles came from exercise of the done-in-front-of-a-mirror kind.

“It has excellent light.”  He turned abruptly away from the windows.  “Not much in the way of trees, though.”

This was the first time he’d mentioned anything green.  “That’s typical of downtown.  What were you hoping for?”

“I appreciate the organic lines of an interesting tree.  A mature one, none of those awful things they’ve planted in the last twenty years.”

A tree with branches to sit in.  Lauren was barely hearing his words because underneath them, something was finally leaking.  “You like the older landscapes.  Flowers?”

He shrugged.  “Perhaps.  My mother enjoyed roses.”

And a small boy had loved them.  Imagined himself the hero of fairy tales as he played near their familiar thorns.

This time, Lauren let her smile show.  “Come on.  I have one more place to show you.”

He raised an eyebrow.  “We haven’t completed this one.”

It didn’t matter.  This wasn’t his place, and the next one would either be the apartment he bought or the one that got her fired.  “Consider this my burst of creative inspiration for the morning.”  She raised an eyebrow in return and played her trump card.  “It’s why most people consider me the best realtor in town.”

It took less than a second for him to make up his mind.  A few more to slide into his slinky leather jacket.

She walked down the hall to the elevator, Gaston hot on her heels, and enjoyed the zing of gut instinct.  It wasn’t often it hit quite this strong.  But if her artiste didn’t buy the slightly rundown first-floor apartment with great Victorian bones, an awesome climbing tree out front, and some sadly unkempt rose bushes in the small courtyard, she’d kiss his jaunty black beret.

He would see the potential—a place where Gaston could be king.

-o0o-

Lizard stared down at the keys in her hand.  Decision made.

She’d expected it to feel less yuck, somehow. 

The keys shook slightly, rattled by hands that hadn’t been steady for hours.  Maybe it was the money.  Or the endless neighborhood streets full of people with 2.4 kids and a dog.

Her fingers wrapped around the keys, pointy bits digging into her skin.  She was not walking this one back—it mattered too much.  And it was a smart, sensible, grown-up choice.  The kind a certain Irish witch had been telling her to make.

She knocked on the door of the cottage by the sea that had somehow become her confession booth.  Maybe Moira could make the yuck go away.

“Ah, I have a visitor.”  The cheery voice behind her steered left, and a well-bundled Moira smiled in welcome.  “Good to see you.  Get the door, would you, love?  My hands are a wee bit full.”