By Magic Alone (17 page)

“Everyone is getting antsy out there,” Chloe said, stepping into the kitchen. “We should get the food out before Isobel and Grandma Verda start brawling. Wine, too. We definitely need wine. Lots of it.”

“We’ll only be a second.” I prayed that Chloe would take the hint, so Alice and I could finish our conversation. “Alice was just telling me—”

“That it’s time to serve the food,” Alice said, effectively cutting me off. Damn, damn, and damn again. “Everyone take a dish and let’s go feed the masses.”

Impatience reared its ugly head, but I couldn’t really argue, so I nodded and grabbed a large bowl filled with spinach and tomatoes. Maybe I’d have a chance to get Alice alone again before the evening was over.

Or maybe I’d force Scot to fill in some of the blanks.

“Three glasses of wine,” Scot said after we were buckled into his SUV. Verda was going home with Vinny, so we were alone. “You drank three large glasses of wine with Elizabeth and Chloe?”

“Something like that. Maybe four. Or five? I don’t have an actual count because Chloe kept filling the glass before it was empty.” I knew my limits, and I’d gone over them. “I cannot drive my car. So you get to drive me home or I get to call a taxi. I don’t really care which.”

“You’re drunk,” Scot said. “I take you to meet my family and you get drunk.”

“‘Drunk’ is a little harsh. Tipsy is more like it.’ I pointed out the window to Nate and Elizabeth, who had just exited Alice’s house. “Your brother-in-law is carrying your sister. And Ben had to propel Chloe to the car. They did this to me. Can’t blame me.”

Besides which, I’d enjoyed myself. A lot. I liked Elizabeth and Chloe. They were charming, and while they’d shot a few odd glances at each other I couldn’t identify, they hadn’t once made me feel uncomfortable. I liked Joe, too. And I was pretty much a goner for Rose. Hell, I liked everyone—even Alice, though the jury was out on her feelings for me. She’d flat-out avoided me the rest of the evening. But still . . . so what if I’d had some wine?

Scot’s lips—very fine lips, I might add—trembled in the makings of a grin. “Okay, Miss Lush. I’ll drive you home. But I’m not coming back in the morning to take you to your car.”

“No reason to. Kara or Leslie will. Or if they can’t, you can drop me off there tomorrow night instead of at home. You know, after our
date.
I won’t put out at all.”

“But baby,” Scot teased in a husky tenor. “I’ll buy you a nice dinner. Show you a good time. If you don’t put out, why should I bother?”

“Huh? Oh!” A balmy flush stole over me. Yep. Too much wine. I tried to laugh off my embarrassment, but I’m sure I failed. “Put
you
out. Not put out. But if I were to put out, you’d have to show me more than a good time, buster. A simple dinner won’t cut it. No siree Bob.”

“You’re trouble,” Scot murmured. He turned the ignition on and backed out of the driveway. “Crazy amounts of trouble.”

“Yeah, and you’re a walk in the park,” I fired back.

He laughed. “You surprise me, Julia. Look, I pushed you into this arrangement, and I know you don’t understand why.
Let’s call a truce and just get through this the best we can. What do you say?”

“I say you’re still an ass hat . . . but I like your family. So fine, a truce.” Besides, getting along with Scot would make this situation that much easier. It should, anyway.

“Good.”

Maybe it was our truce, maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the whole getting-to-know-his-family bit, or maybe it was the gentle purr of the engine, or possibly it was a combination of all four, but I had a relaxed, comfortable, and—for better or for worse—loose-lipped hum taking control. “You looked at me funny earlier.”

“Define
funny.”

“When I was holding Rose. You looked like a man who . . . ah . . . liked me.”

“My opinion hasn’t changed.” The words were tough, but the tone lacked believability. To my tipsy ears, anyway. “I love my niece. What you saw were my feelings for her. They had nothing to do with you.”

“Hm. Well, that’s good. Because I’m dating someone else. I’d hate for you to fall in love with me. That would kind of screw everything up.” Okay, well, I was
about
to be dating someone. Jameson. Not really a lie, even if it was only Sunday lunch. “And you should really think about giving Leslie another chance. She’s nothing like me. Doesn’t share my philosophies about love at all.” What else had Leslie said to say? Oh, yeah. “She’s
changed,
Scot.”

“I told you last night, Leslie and I are over. We have been for a while.”

“Because she cheated on you.”

“I’d say that’s a damn good reason.” He slowed the SUV at a light. His thumb started tapping again. Nervous? About what? “I hope you’re right. I hope Leslie”—Scot’s voice cracked the
tiniest amount—“doesn’t throw something potentially good away again.”

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say about her?” I realized belatedly that bringing this specific topic up under the influence of alcohol wasn’t the greatest idea. My brain didn’t want to cooperate. Otherwise, why would I be relieved by his response instead of dismayed? I tried for one more push, anyway. “Why not take her out once more? Just to see?”

“Because what’s done is done. Relationships aren’t a chalkboard. I can’t erase what happened, or how she threw it—” Breaking off, he cursed. “Never mind. I don’t want to discuss my relationships with any of the women I’ve dated, including Leslie.”

I’d have to give more thought to the Leslie and Scot thing. I didn’t press any further, just stared out the window. Scot was also quiet. Before too long, we turned into my parking lot.

“So, thanks. For tonight. I enjoyed meeting everyone. You have a nice family.” I shoved my door open. Then, remembering the scene that had touched me so profoundly, I said, “Really nice. They care about each other. They care a lot about you.”

“I care a lot about them.” Scot nodded toward my building. “Think you can get to your place on your own, or do you need some help?”

“Tipsy is not drunk, and I can walk just fine when I’m tipsy.”

“Alrighty then, Julia. Have a good night and I’ll see you tomorrow. Seven.”

“Yep. Casual. I remember.” He didn’t drive away until I’d entered the building, which proved he wasn’t a total ass hat. But damn if I hadn’t wanted him to come up with me.

Stupidity. With a sigh that began at my toes, I unlocked my front door and let myself in. After the hours I’d spent in noise
and bedlam, my apartment seemed way too quiet—absurdly quiet—so I flipped on the TV on my way to the bedroom. And then I saw the journal.

It was still on the floor. I literally hadn’t touched the dang thing after dropping it. Verda’s words tickled my senses, and almost as if she were standing right in front of me, I heard her again. “Magic, Julia. You experienced magic.”

For whatever reason, that statement didn’t seem as ridiculous now. I can’t explain the why of that or what I did next. Not in detail, anyway. Hard to put into words an action that doesn’t follow any rhyme or reason. But I grabbed the pen with one hand and the journal with the other and curled up on my sofa. My muscles buzzed with the memory of the energy, the fire that had roared through them earlier.

Verda’s handwritten message and her question about wishes merged with everything else, and before I knew what I was doing, my hand flew across the first page of the journal. I didn’t think about what I was writing, because I wouldn’t have written it if I had. For one, I wouldn’t have had the courage. For two, I surely would’ve talked myself out of it. But the quiet moments with Scot, the softening in his gaze when I held Rose, and the effects of the wine created a nice, happy fuzz that allowed me to push past my mental barriers. I wrote,

A slow, deep, engulfing warmth encased my fingers and spread over my skin. The air thickened with the arid stillness that occurs right before a summer storm rolls in, with its
flashes of lightning, knives of rain, and shouts of thunder. I gripped the pen tighter and the writing in the journal blurred enough that my wish—fantasy?—became an illegible mess of blue ink.

I inhaled weighted air though my nose, exhaled through my mouth. I did this over and over until the constricting pressure surrounding me evened off and then finally lightened. Dizzy, I dropped the pen and the book and struggled to stand.

Wine. That’s all it was. Too much wine.

I stumbled toward the bedroom on wobbly legs, but only made it a few steps when a reverberating knock echoed through my apartment.
No.
It couldn’t be. But I knew. I knew in a way I’d never known any other thing at any other time ever.

Still, I pretended that I didn’t. Because acknowledging that would have been too damn much. I told myself that my visitor was Kara or Leslie. Or both. I told myself that someone in my building had ordered food and the delivery guy was at the wrong place. I told myself that the neighbor down the hall had locked himself out and needed to use my phone to call the landlord or the maintenance guy. And I kept telling myself these things as I approached the door, as I unlocked the door, and yep, even as I swung it open.

“Sorry, Julia,” Scot said. “I remembered you had my jacket and—”

I grabbed his sweater and pulled him inside. His arms came around me and he yanked me against him tight. Hard. The second before his lips touched mine, he whispered, “Yeah. Crazy amounts of trouble.”

I dumped two Extra Strength Tylenol capsules into my palm, swallowed them with a glass of water, and then, without a flicker of hesitation, followed those up with two more.

After the kiss, which could also be described as the stupidest moment of my life, Scot and I had jumped apart as if the fires of hell and damnation were licking at our ankles. Well, okay. That was how
I
felt. Scot’s polite but quick-footed departure didn’t necessarily mean his thoughts were on a par with mine.

He’d kissed me in such a way that my toes curled, and the flower of attraction—probably a damn rose—finished unfurling its stupid, fluttery petals, and the icicle that had begun to melt in Scot’s car last night became a messy, watery puddle. He might have left because our kiss had given him a stomachache and he hadn’t wanted to toss his cookies in front of me. Perhaps he’d recalled Verda’s dinner-table pronouncement of our someday three boys and had escaped before we went on to create number one. Or, I supposed, there was always the chance he’d become filled with so much desire for a wine-saturated woman that he had to get away before he acted on his lust.

I doubted it was the last one. My guess was on one, two, or the fires of hell and damnation. Or all three, for that matter.

Whatever the case, we’d kissed, he’d left, and I spent the remainder of the night trapped in the repetitive motions of staring at the journal, gazing off into space, and touching my lips in disbelief and surprised pleasure. That is, until the swift and heavy hand of guilt squeezed my insides to such a degree
that I was fairly sure I’d be the one tossing her cookies. At some point, alcohol and the conflicting tide of emotions forced me to get in a few hours of sleep.

Waking up in yesterday’s clothes with a headache and that rumble of uneasiness that brought about a shot of nausea was not something I’d experienced often, and up until the other day hadn’t happened since college. I took a scalding hot shower, scrubbed myself with gobs of cherry-blossom-scented body wash, used my ultraexpensive, so-thick-it-was-like-butter conditioner on my hair—hair that Scot had decreed beautiful—and meticulously shaved my legs and underarms. I toweled off and rubbed moisturizer—also cherry blossom scented—into every inch of my skin. It wasn’t until I’d wrapped an oversized towel around me and had taken tweezers to my eyebrows that I realized what I was doing.

I was
primping.

Beautifying myself in the way a woman does when she expects a man will see her buck naked. When she expects a man’s hands—and, uh, other parts—to be on her body.

“Holy hell,” I muttered. The tweezers fell into the sink with a soft clank. I glared at my reflection in the mirror as if it—
I-
— weren’t any better than a wanton whore. This was wrong on so many levels. Scot was taken. Oh, okay, he wasn’t
taken
taken. But to Leslie, he was hers. And that meant he was hands-off. Completely, irrevocably, until-the-end-of-time hands-off. Even if nothing ever occurred between Scot and Leslie again, he was untouchable.

But God, I so wanted to touch him.

Especially those smiley-face freckles. They were begging to be touched. Caressed. Tickled. Licked.

“Stop,” I told my reflection in a firm, no-nonsense tone. “Even if Leslie weren’t an issue—but she is!—the most you can ever have with Scot is meaningless sex. Steaming-hot, make-your-toes-curl
sex, probably, but . . . No! He’s not right for you. You are not right for him. So stop!”

Unfortunately, my strict chiding didn’t halt the sudden image of my legs wrapped around Scot’s naked torso with the bedsheets tangled between us. It didn’t detract from the very real fact that sex—meaningless or otherwise—sounded pretty damn great. And it also didn’t stop me from noticing that I had one perfectly plucked eyebrow and one that resembled a curled-up caterpillar. Okay, a baby caterpillar, and there certainly wasn’t any unibrow stuff happening, but in direct comparison with the other brow? Not attractive.

“Okay.” I picked up the tweezers and waved them in front of the mirror. “You can pluck. But no more primping!”

“You
like
Scot?” Kara’s startled voice hit from the side of me, from the hallway outside the open bathroom door. “Are you serious?”

I dropped the tweezers again, my heart in my mouth. “Shit, Kara. How long have you been standing there?” Maybe I was going to have to rethink this whole sharing-keys-with-my-friends thing.

“I was in the living room and heard you talking. I thought you knew I was here . . . and yeah, Julia, ‘shit’ about sums it up. What’s going on?”