Baehrly Alive (5 page)

I hadn’t eaten lobster for years after that.

“The lobster,” Kodi and I agreed at the same time.

Kodi grinned at me from across the table and reached for my hand. I laced my fingers through his. “This is nice,” I told him. “It’s gorgeous up here.” I glanced out the window and sipped at my sparkling juice—witches didn’t handle alcohol well. “I’m glad we’re doing this.”

Kodi squeezed my hand. “Me, too. You deserve a break with everything you’ve been going through lately.”

I shrugged. “I can’t really complain. I enjoy what I do. Sure, it’s hard work, and it doesn’t pay squat, but I am doing what I love. How many people can say that?”

“Once this big case is over I can help more often,” Kodi promised.

I smiled as I shook my head at him. “You don’t have to do that, Kodi. Not that I don’t appreciate the help! But, you have your own life and that’s… healthy.”

Our salads were placed in front of us and Kodi let go of my hand to give it the attention it deserved.

Flying pigs made the best bacon on the planet—but flying goats made the best cheese. I closed my eyes as I took in a bite of fresh goat cheese, dried cranberries, and pecans on a bed of bitter greens all smothered with a pomegranate vinaigrette.

“We should have this at the wedding,” I said, blissfully savoring every bite.

There was an awkward silence. Kodi put down his fork. “Goldie,” he started. “I need to talk to you about the wedding.”

I nodded, wondering if it would be completely gauche to pick up an elusive bit of cheese with my fingers and then deciding that I really didn’t care—it was too good to waste even a smidgeon. “Sure, what did you want to talk about? Center pieces? My dress?”

“Actually,” Kodi said slowly, looking down at his own—almost full—plate. “I was thinking that we should cancel the whole thing.”

I let my fork slide from my nerveless fingers. It struck my salad plate with a ringing crash that made heads all over the restaurant turn in our direction. “What?” I demanded.

Kodi looked embarrassed, which was saying a lot considering how many of his college stories involved missing at least half of his clothing.

“You brought me to the nicest restaurant in Magic Central to dump me?” I hissed. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You planned this so I wouldn’t make a scene, didn’t you?”

Kodi ran a finger under his collar and stretched his neck. His eyes avoided mine.

“You… coward!” I growled.

The waiter did the whisk thing and our salad plates disappeared and were replaced with two huge steaming plates full of in-the-shell whole lobsters.

I lifted up the cracker and looked at Kodi significantly. He immediately crossed his legs.

“Goldie,” he said in a pleading voice. “Just hear me out.”

I whacked at my lobster. It made a satisfying crunching sound, so I did it again. “It’s not like I have a choice… not if I want dessert.”

A grin spread over Kodi’s face.

I waved a disembodied lobster claw at him. “Don’t look so relieved. I am still pissed off at you. I’m very, extremely irate.”

I beckoned to the waiter—a male dryad—and he appeared at my elbow in an instant.

“Wine,” I said, pointing at my glass.

Both Kodi and the waiter stared at me. I scowled back. “If I’m going to have to listen to why my wedding is off, I need a little reinforcement. I want wine. Now.”

The dryad glanced between Kodi and me and must have decided that he was more afraid of me than the were bear, for he returned with a bottle and wineglasses.

“White wine for the lady,” the dryad said nervously, his tongue darting out to moisten his lips.

I nodded to him. “Thanks.”

He bowed as he rushed away.

I held out my glass. “Well, be a gentleman and fill my glass up, will you?”

Kodi hesitated, but only for a moment. He poured the urine-colored stuff up all the way to the top of the glass.

I sniffed at it, wrinkling my nose at the astringent odor.

I sipped at it.

It was as bad as it smelled. Worse.

But it did make my lobster taste even better in comparison.

Maybe that’s why people drank wine.

My head started to tingle as I down half of the glass in one big gulp, which made faces all over the restaurant turn disapproving.

So much for not making a scene.

“So…” I said, since it didn’t seem like Kodi was going to open his mouth and explain things any time soon. “You’re dumping me?”

Kodi cleared his throat. “Don’t put it that way—“

“But that’s what you’re doing, right?”

Kodi winced and looked around the room, but I had kept my voice low enough not to draw attention from the other diners.

“Kind of,” Kodi admitted. He reached across the table for my hand, but I raised the menacing cracking tool in warning.

He retreated immediately.

Kodi wasn’t a complete idiot, even if he acted like one some of the time.

“Why?” I asked, simply. I had a thousand questions racing through my head, but that was the big one. “Is it because Donovan is living at my house? Because, if that’s it, I’ll make him move back to his apartment.”

Kodi shook his head. “It’s not that at all.”

“If you say anything about ‘it’s not you, it’s me’, you know I’m going to kill you, right?”

Kodi cracked a grin. “Actually, it was more along the lines of ‘it’s not me… it’s you’. Goldie, I love you. I love you too much to see you rush into this marriage for the wrong reasons.

I gulped down another huge mouthful of wine. The room was starting to get a little blurred. I kind of liked it. It was pretty like that—like we were all sitting in a cloud in the heavens.

“I love you, too,” I told Kodi. “How can someone get married for the wrong reasons?” I hiccupped and tried to hide the sound behind my napkin.

It didn’t work and another one took its place, even louder than the first.

Kodi raised his eyebrows in amusement. He reached out and touched the back of my hand with a finger.

“
’This little witch didn’t think,

this little witch had too much to drink.

Cleanse out her body,

before she gets naughty,

and she gets herself thrown in the clink
.’”

My head cleared almost instantly and I scowled at him. “Party-pooper.” It was annoying that even he could work that spell.

“You need to be sober and hear me out,” Kodi said. “I am breaking off our engagement because, well—you’re using me Goldie. Whether you realize it or not, that’s what you’re doing. You’re scared and lonely and you know that I can just sweep in and make everything better. That’s not a reason to get married, Love. Marriage is special, sacred—and I believe in the kind of marriage my parents have—the kind that lasts forever.

“If you married me like this—just for the security I can offer you—you would regret it and you would start to resent me.”

“But, I want to marry you,” I protested. “You know that I wouldn’t have said yes, if I didn’t mean it.”

Kodi smiled sadly. “I know that you meant it then—maybe you mean it even now, but you want to get married for all the wrong reasons.”

“And you don’t?” I demanded. “So what if I would like a little consistency—a little support in my life. So what? What do you get out of it that makes it so noble when you want to marry me and so selfish when I want to marry you?”

I tried to keep my voice down, but I knew we were catching unwanted attention again.

“All I want,” Kodi said, “is you. I want to wake up in the middle of the night with you right there, curling around your body. I want to bicker every day about the little things, like who does the laundry better and how many cubs we should have. Heck, I have no problem taking on your stepmom and your brother—even your vampire-venom damaged soul. But I won’t be used, and I won’t be taken for granted.” He looked down at his lobster. “And I won’t marry someone who is in love with somebody else.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Kodi shook his head.

“Don’t,” he said. “This is hard enough without having to hear you try to make it all better. I know you want to be with me—that you wish you could want all those things that I want—but you don’t. Not yet, anyhow.”

His eyes sparkled in the candlelight as he reached for my hand and leaned over it, pressing his lips against the back. His kiss made my skin tingle. Goosebumps jumped up along my spine.

“I was ready, once,” I whispered.

He nodded. “I know. When you were ready, I wasn’t. Now the tables are turned. Who knows—we may end up together after all.”

“But not now,” I said softly.

“Not now,” Kodi agreed.

Kodi dropped me off at home as he had promised, driving from Boston in his fancy sports car. It should have been awkward; sitting in the dark with the man who had just dumped me like a bad burrito. But it wasn’t.

I grabbed my leftovers and my dessert swan as we pulled into the long driveway. I kissed Kodi’s cheek.

“Thanks,” I murmured.

“For what?” He asked. He raised one eyebrow. “For breaking things off?”

I laughed and swatted at him, almost dropping my parcels in the interim. “No, Brat, for being a good friend—for being here for me.”

“I’ll always be here,” Kodi promised.

I wished that I could see Kodi’s face, but the night was too dark for me to tell what kind of expression was on his face.

I waved as Kodi pealed out of the driveway and roared toward the freeway. I sighed, leaning my forehead against the chilly wood surface of the door into my house.

My hand felt strange, light.

I’d never loved my ring, as some women do. It had been big, ostentatious, and very, very conspicuous.

Not something that was my style.

Now that it was gone—back to Kodi—I missed it. I wondered if he would keep it, or if he would try to find another girl to give it to.

A vivacious, beautiful were bear girl, maybe.

He deserved a special one.

The door opened abruptly, making me yelp and barely save myself from falling into the foyer in an inelegant heap. My dessert swan took a dive and I squeaked in dismay—that chocolate soufflé was too good to let go to waste.

Thank heavens for Donovan’s reflexes. He caught the swan in mid-air and offered it to me. He studied my face as I swept by to grab a spoon and cracked into the foil swan.

“Rough night?” he asked. I knew he was taking in my shimmering dress and my hair trying to fall out of the up-do Willow had insisted I needed to wear. I grabbed out the pins and shook my hair out. Some of those pins must have been jabbing into my skull all night, by the feel of it.

No wonder I was getting a headache.

“I,” I announced. “Just got dumped. And when I tried to get drunk, Kodi used the one freakin’ spell he knows and sobered me up again.”

Donovan raised his eyebrows. “Kodi dumped you?” he asked. “Are you being serious?”

I stared at him, my spoon in my mouth. “Really?” I said around it. “Notice anything different?” I waggled my fingers at him.

“Wow,” Donovan managed. “I hope it’s not because I’m staying here.”

“Nope,” I said. “It’s apparently because I’m having some sort of mid-life crisis and am only trying to use Kodi for his knowledge of Magic and his body.”

Donovan blinked. “You’re sure you’re not drunk?”

I nodded. “I’m sure. I’m just tired. There’s not enough chocolate in the world to make today a better day.”

Petunia chose that moment to wrap her tiny trunk around my knees. I couldn’t help myself. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth and I knelt down to put my arms around her soft pink fuzziness.

“Mmm,” I said, scratching behind her ears and listening to the happy rumbling sound she made when she was feeling contented. “Everybody needs a pet miniature mastodon. They make everything better.” I glanced around, trying to spot the slender form of my familiar. “Where’s Silas?”

Donovan shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think he’s checking in with all the animals. He does that a lot.”

I nodded. “I’ve noticed.”

The soufflé was super-rich. I went to the cupboard to grab a glass. I didn’t even pay attention to what I was grabbing.

Something moved.

And I came face to face with my zombie rooster.

I let out a shriek. The glass went flying and shattered all over the floor.

Fred preened and gave a rooster-ish chuckle.

Obviously, he was proud of himself.

“Zombies don’t make good chicken nuggets,” I reminded myself as I handed Petunia to Donovan to keep her out of the glass while I swept up.

Fred eyed a piece of glass suspiciously, as if I were trying to take away a delicacy. I shooed him away less than gently. I didn’t think swallowing glass would really hurt an undead silkie rooster—but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Even if he had just scared the crap out of me.