Gone With the Witch (26 page)

“Do you miss your parents?"

He gave her a double take, and she really wondered
what he was thinking. "Marvelanne believes that you don't miss what you never had," Aiden said. "You say that you do. I'm split down the middle on the subject."

"Fair enough."
Storm sat straighter. "Hah
! '
I hear a baby
crying."

"Just one?"

"Yep.
Yours.
Pull over at the nearest rest stop, so I can take the wheel."

"If I do have a baby out there, I won't know what to do with her. I don't know how to love."

"That's okay. Babies have a way of teaching us how to
love."
Storm drove from then on, listening to the baby in
her head and getting clearer snapshots in her mind.
Racks of jewelry.
Trinket boxes,
ri
ngs, bracelets, necklaces.
Sea
animals, seashells, turtles.
Lots
of turtles in gold, silver,
and copper.
Somebody who knew Aiden.

"I think you're as flawed as me," she said. "That's why we get along so well."

"From the minute we met," he said. "You think our attraction had
anything
to do with flaws?"

"No, that was lust and pheromones. You've got some
hot and hopping pheromones, there, Scruffleupagus. We're
on the right track," she added. "The crying is really loud now, and I can see—"

Aiden's heart was about to be tested, and the need for a silent spell became strong in Storm:

Mother Goddess, Father God,

For she who pines,

I seek love's signs.

A father, if my wits speak true.

None can save her but you.

A man good of heart and deed,

Soul lost and love in need,

He seeks a home No more to roam

With she who shares his genes.

"Please," Aiden said. "Tell me"

"What?"

"What you see. Are you all right?"

"The snapshots are clear. Now, instead of gold, silver,
and copper discs, I see jewelry from the sea, like this." She lifted the sea horse pendant she'd found in his coach, made
the connection, and dropped it as if it singed her fingers.

"Dear God in heaven," Aiden said.

Chapter Thirty-five

AIDEN'S heart pumped as if he'd run the Boston Marathon.
"What's wrong?" Storm asked.

"We're heading into
Cape May, where Claudette lived
and worked. She designed the jewelry she sold in her shop,
Jewels of the
Sea."

"Now I'm beginning to scare myself," Storm said.
"You're not kidding, are you?"

"I wish the hell I was. She made that sea horse." He was
about to tell Storm to park as close to the row of Victorian
cottage shops coming up as she could get, when she pulled
into a parking lot across the street and stopped, facing Claudette's shop.

"There," she said pointing.

No kidding,
he thought. Aiden nodded, got out, and
crossed the street to the shop, but he couldn't speak.
Claudette had shown it to him once, and then she drove him by her mother's house, though she'd refused to take
him inside to meet the woman. She said her mother only understood men who put down roots, so she wouldn't understand about their relationship.

He'd respected that then. Now he just felt like a shit.

The Victorian sign, Jewels of the Sea by Claudette Lang
ley, still hung over the door, but Claudette's store was
empty. That shouldn't jar him, but it did. Until now, he'd never seen proof of the news about Claudette's death, and now he was being forced to face and accept it. She was really gone.

He hadn't loved her. She wasn't the lovable sort, not
like ... Storm.
Strange thought.
But Claudette had been a good companion when she wasn't trying to change him.

Frightened for some nonspecific reason, Aiden looked across the street at Storm sitting in the driver's seat of his coach, watching him, probably giving him time to come to
terms with losing his ex, except that all he could think
about was Storm herself.

Storm, the bad-girl seductress with a nurturer crying to
be set free,
who'd
wheedled her way into the heart he
didn't know he owned. A storm cloud
who
could be
charming when she wasn't being sarcastic. A Snapdragon, tenacious, a natural energizer, the most insecure of the t
ri
plets, and, oh, how he liked her.

He
liked
her ... a whole hell of a lot more than was
good for his sanity.

When she'd seen his dragon for the first time, her eyes had taken on a stormy sea-green shade; shock, definitely. Then when she fell in love with Triton, or so she said, her
mischievous smile brought a bright aquamarine glint to her eyes. Then a muted gray blue rolled in like a fog when true
arousal had hit her—had hit them both.

Storm stood in the coach and crossed her arms—a
telling gesture. Was she afraid of losing him to a ghost? How could she lose something she'd never had? But she wasn't the one asking the question, now, was she? Maybe she did have him. Maybe he was up the proverbial creek
with nothing to do but sink ... or grab a handy Storm
cloud.

She left the coach, stuck her hands in the pockets of that
sea horse sundress he'd bought her, and ambled over to
him on the sexy three-inch heels he'd also chosen, her blue
hair still rather tame, hardly a spike in sight.

She stopped in front of him. "You okay?"

"I'm a little shaken," he said. "I won't kid you."

"I think you loved her. You'll feel better if you admit it and allow yourself to grieve."

"I liked her. We ... got along. The companionship was good. The sex was ... okay. Not to be disrespectful to the
dead, but sex with you is better than anything 'I could
never
have imagined."

"That's because you can be your real self with me. I'm
another misfit,
an
independently flawed creature who won't
fall in love. You can identify with me,
an
d
you feel safe with
me. That's
all."

He placed his hands on her shoulders, gazed into her
gorgeous eyes, and pulled her toward him. "Is that all?"
He
wasn't so sure.

She nodded, and he kissed her.

When he came up for air, he combed the rebel-blue hair
from her eyes. "I'm overwhelmed by guilt, not grief."

"I told you. It's not your fault Claudette took off and
had an accident—"

"The guilt is because I care more about you than I ever did about her."

"That can't be right."

"Why can't it?"

"Because I'm barely tolerable, never mind likable."

"You keep thinking that," he said, "and I'll keep think
ing different. We'll agree to disagree on this one, shall
we?" He hooked an arm around her shoulder and walked
her back to his coach. “By the way, Claudette didn't die
the day she left me; it was months later."

"Then you're really stupid for feeling guilty."

"You still hear that baby crying?"

"Louder than ever."

"That makes my heart race, and not in a good way. Let's
get going. You d
ri
ve."

Storm's street choices made Aiden begin to clench.
First
his gut and his chest.
Then, as they got closer to the waterfront, his neck and shoulders. He ground his teeth, set his jaw, and the more familiar the roads became, the more Victorian the houses, the tighter his fists. When Storm stopped the motor coach in front of Claudette's mother's
house, Aiden nearly jumped from his skin. "I'll never
doubt your psychic instincts again," he said.
"The
crying baby is in
my
head now, too"

"No, Aiden. That's called hearing." Storm stepped out
of the coach. "Come on."

They followed the sound around the white Victorian
cottage trimmed in sage and lilac to a spectacular seascape
view out back. From the side, a white porch said welcome with potted trees and a lush pot of hydrangeas. Baskets of yellow, pink, and purple flowers hung from the eaves, the calico cushions on the weather-worn rattan furniture echoing every color.

But when they rounded the porch corner, a different
sight stole his breath. An old woman sat in a wheelchair
beside a play yard, in which a toddler in pink ruffled
coveralls accepted a piece of apricot from a bowl on a weathered side table.

The toddler's big crocodile tears stopped when she
saw them.

Aiden's heartbeat went into overdrive.

He could barely breathe.

His lungs had clenched as well.

The old woman's surprise turned to shock,
then
her expression crumpled. She pulled her apron over her eyes and rocked her body back and forth as she sobbed. Aiden had never seen anything like it.

"Cots," the toddler said, showing him her treat.

"Yum," Aiden said, and the dark-haired child nodded
and popped it into her mouth. Did she look like him, or was
that his imagination?

"Are you all right?" Storm asked, kneeling in front of
the woman.

The old lady nodded, but she kept crying.

Aiden stooped down as well, purposely covering the
little girl's soft fingers as she clutched the edge of the play
yard, her hand so tiny, so perfect; then he gave his atten
tion to the woman. "We're strangers. Are we frightening you? Do you want us to leave?"

The old woman shook her head. "You're not a stranger,"
she said into her apron.

The toddler kissed Aiden's hand, surprising him, melting him. When he looked at her, the little one smiled, and he was sure that his heart turned over in his chest, and it would never be the same again.

"Can I get you something?" he asked, turning back to
the old lady, his insides all a tumble.
“A glass of water?
Anything?"

She lowered her apron to wipe her eyes with a corner of
it, and then she clutched it to her heart. "Yes, you
can
get
me something. Go into the house and get the picture on the
mantel in the living room. You'll know the one I mean
when you see it."

"I don't think—"

"Please."

Aiden went into the house where Claudette grew up,
and an overwhelming grief rushed him.
Crystal remnants of her rock-hounding addiction sat on tables and windowsills. He remembered every squeal of delight when she struck crystals. He remembered her laugh, the smell of her
hair, the snuffle of her breathing beside him in bed at night.

When he got to the mantel, Aiden did know which picture. Beautifully framed, it was one of him and Claudette
standing in front of his old motor coach, the last picture be
fore their last frustrating discussion about him
not
settling down. A camping neighbor had taken it fifteen minutes before his snarky, "Go hound a rock," from the seat of his revved Harley, a moment in time he hadn't realized would
haunt him. "Jack-effin'-ass," he called himself as he grasped
the picture. Those were the last words he'd ever spoken
to her.

He should be shot.

He didn't take his gaze from Claudette's likeness all the way to the porch. She was the anti-Storm: at
tr
active but pale with a boyish figure, so soft-spoken, she couldn't say
sex,
a chore she valiantly bore to please him. Now that he thought about it, she was so p
ri
m, she probably thought of it as love, or she couldn't have borne it.