Witches in Flight (25 page)

“Silly girl was using me as a shield, trying to keep that nephew
of mine at bay.
 
Won’t work for
long.”
 
Charlie grinned.
 
“He’s got Tosh blood in his veins.”

If Jennie understood the Tosh-Hennessey family tree correctly,
it was marriage, not blood, that related Josh and Charlie, but that was one of
those aggravating details that would land a Hasselbad in her nose.
 
Charlie favored greater truth over
actual accuracy—and he had a point.
 
“She wasn’t expecting him at dinner last night.
 
Jamie pulled a bit of an ambush.”

Dark eyes met hers.
 
“Whose side is he on?”

Fair question—and no easy answers.
 
“I hope we’re all on the same side, but
in the short term, I would say he’s actually in Josh’s corner.”

His lips twitched, even as he reached for the tea cup she set in
front of him.
 
“Does he strike you
as needing help?
 
I think that boy
was born competent.
 
He’s waiting
for her.”

And there was the reason why Charlie was a genius with a
camera.
 
He saw things.
 
“I didn’t think young people were that
smart.”

“She’s a butterfly,” said Charlie gruffly.
 
“And her wings are still a little
wet.
 
Beautiful now, but she’s going
to be magnificent when she truly gets going.”
 
He eyed Jennie over his cup.
 
“Just like someone else I know.”

Charlie didn’t dish out personal compliments.
 
Ever.
 
And while his obvious appreciation for Lizard was making her
positively gooey, the rest had alarm bells ringing in her head.
 
“What do you want?”

“The truth.”
 
His
rare grin didn’t help at all.
 
“Yesterday my camera caught the damp butterfly wings, if that girl is
ever smart enough to hand over the film.”
 
He glared at Jennie.
 
“If
she does, you better not screw it up.”

No one had questioned her darkroom skills in two decades.
 
“You might be better with the light,
Charlie Tosh, but nobody works a print better than I do.”

The Hasselbad’s shutter caught her in mid-tirade.
 
Charlie’d always had really fast hands.

Damn.
 
The portrait
session was apparently under way.

~ ~ ~

There was just enough time to make biscuits for breakfast if she
hurried.
 
Toss them in the oven,
have a shower, and she could start the day both clean and fed.
 
Which, most days, was still a minor
miracle.

Two classes, an eye-searing four inches of condo board finances
to review for a client, three new listings to tour, and a milkshake date with
Aervyn.
 
Just another day in the
life of Lizard Monroe, real estate tycoon and occasional witch poet.

Who’d have thunk?

Cold air blasted her face as she pulled butter from the
freezer.
 
Not nearly as cozy as her
warm covers upstairs, but biscuits made with room-temperature butter tasted
like crap.
 
She reached for the
cool new grater Jamie had sent over—one of those fancy-schmancy ones from
the kitchen specialty store that didn’t grate her knuckles along with the
butter.

She was moving up in the world.

“You going to put sausage in those?”

Lizard nearly beaned Josh with the grater as she spun
around.
 
“What the hell are you
doing here?”

He backed up a step and leaned against the counter, hands
sliding into the pockets of his ratty jeans.
 
“Came to see if you wanted to have breakfast.
 
Diner’s running a two-for-one special
this morning.”
 
He waved in the
direction of the butter.
 
“Or you
can give me a biscuit lesson instead.”

Her hair might still be spiking in fifty directions, and there
were most likely still pillow creases on her cheeks, but her mind was clearing
plenty fast.
 
He’d said things last
night that had ripped her to shreds, and now he was here for a cooking
lesson.
 
“What about all that stuff
you said?
 
In the tree?”

“Letting it slide.”
 
His voice stayed totally casual, but something else beat quietly in his
mind.
 
She refused to look.

“What, so it doesn’t matter?”
 
It sure as hell did.
 
It had messed with her sleep, her equilibrium, and—she cursed at
the egg in her hand—even her ability to make biscuits on autopilot.
 
Biscuits didn’t have eggs in them.

“It matters.”
 
His
eyes, carefully averted from hers, held just a hint of the intensity she’d seen
in the tree.
 
“But all I really
wanted to tell you is that if you plan to keep shoving me away, you’re going to
need to come up with a better reason than whatever you were before you got here.”
 
He plucked the egg out of her hand and
cracked it into the bowl.
 
“What
goes in next?”

Frack.
 
Lizard
contemplated the contents of the bowl and sighed.
 
Apparently they were having scrambled eggs with their
biscuits.

And the part of her that was glad he was in her kitchen was way
too big for comfort.

Teeth grinding in frustration at herself as much as her smug
guest, she grabbed a carton of eggs from the fridge.
 
“Go find some green stuff in the garden that smells
good.
 
We’ll put it in the
eggs.”
 
There were plenty of
perfectly good herbs growing on the windowsill, but Josh probably didn’t know
that, and she needed some space.

“Any green stuff?”
 
He raised an eyebrow.

She shrugged.
 
“Taste it first.
 
If you
puke or die, it was probably the wrong stuff.”
 
She was pretty sure nothing that poisonous grew in the
garden.
 
And if the man couldn’t
recognize chives, he had no business touching an egg.
 
Which might be a teeny bit grumpy, but she was freaking
entitled.
 
“Find the stuff that looks
like long, round grass and smells like onions.”

“Grass, onions, check.”
 
Josh headed out the back door, acting like he went chive hunting every
day.

Lizard took a really deep breath and tried to soothe the gang
warfare in her gut.
 
If he wanted
to pretend yesterday had never happened, she was way cool with that.
 
Her brain could just stop replaying his
sad, vulnerable eyes and get on with making biscuits—the butter was
getting totally goopy.
 
She reached
for the flour and scooped, eyeballing three cups.

Elsie walked into the kitchen, eyes still fuzzy with sleep.
 
“Morning.”

Lizard frowned, the vibes from her roommate unmistakable.
 
“You go dancing with your French guy
again?”

Elsie grinned and spun around in a circle.
 
“I did.
 
And not just dancing this time.
 
He kissed me.”

Jeebers, what was this—junior high?
 
Lizard rolled her eyes, smart-ass
remark on the tip of her tongue—and then caught the earnest, freakishly
happy look on Elsie’s face.
 
Never
mind.
 
She didn’t kick puppies or
infatuated roommates.
 
Some stupid,
sexy French guy could probably take care of that all by himself.

In Lizard’s world, any guy you met in a bar late at night was a
jerkwad, even the sexy French ones.
 
Guys that weren’t jerkwads married their junior-high sweethearts and
spent their nights snoring in bed.
 
They didn’t pick up a slightly obsessive psychologist, fill her full of
raspberry Cosmos, and steal a kiss.

But maybe that happened on Planet Elsie.
 
Lizard had long been clear that not
everyone in the universe had to play by the same rules.

And Josh, walking in the back door looking proud of himself and
whistling, just proved her point. Some guys always came up roses, even if
they’d raided Caro’s daffodil stems instead of the chive patch.

She gave a good, swift mental kick to the little voice that
thought he was cute, grabbed the pot of chives from the windowsill, and split
the scrambled eggs into two batches.
 

He
could eat the daffodil stems.

~ ~ ~

Her cookies were a success.
 
Elsie watched the happy, chattering faces in Knit a Spell
and decided she’d finally mastered a decent snickerdoodle.
 
Her friends had always politely eaten
her baking, but today, the plate had emptied before they even hit the juicy
part of the conversation.

Helga beamed, brushing cookie crumbs off her fingers.
 
“Those were delicious, my dear.
 
Maybe I can talk you into making me an
extra dozen next time—Edric has a weakness for snickerdoodles.
 
I’ll trade you a skein of that Koigu
you’ve been eyeing.”

No trade was necessary—but Helga liked to haggle.

Elsie grinned.
 
It
must be contagious, since she’d swapped Caro for some of the rich and spicy
Vietnamese cinnamon currently headlining in the cookies.
 
“Edric’s a witch.
 
I think we’re all born addicted to
cookies.”

Jodi eyed Sam, asleep in his Moses basket, and smiled at his soft
whiffles.
 
“Mine’s still too little
for cookies, but maybe I’d better start practicing.”

Caro settled into a chair, finally done with whatever business
she’d been working on behind the counter.
 
“When he gets big enough, the bakers of Witch Central will be glad to
keep him supplied.
 
We take care of
our own.”
 
She squeezed Jodi’s hand
and winked at Helga.
 
“And the
people who come with them.”

Marion snorted.
 
“What, I have to go find me a grumpy old witch to belong to this group
now?”

Elsie tried not to laugh—that was a pretty accurate
description of Edric until Helga had parachuted into his life.
 
She idly riffled through her growing
mental list of witches, wondering if there might be someone who would enjoy the
stern and steadfast Marion, with her not-so-secret love of bright colors and
cute babies.

I don’t think that was an invitation to matchmake,
sent Caro, highly amused.
 
Marion’s got a husband already.

Elsie was shocked that she’d somehow missed such a basic fact in
the many hours of knitting conversation.
 
They knew all about Jodi’s sexy electrician and Helga’s recent dating
exploits.

Not all women are talkers.
 
Caro’s needles clicked busily, turning the heel on a pair of
socks.
 
And not all husbands are
worth talking about.

The edges of sadness and judgment in Caro’s mental voice told
Elsie a lot more than they once would have.
 
She looked over at Marion, wondering what lay hidden under
the brusque British exterior.
 
As a
therapist, she’d seen a constant stream of people in unhappy relationships.
 
After weeks in the fairytale atmosphere
of Witch Central, maybe it was a good thing to remember they existed.

“How about you, my dear?”

Elsie tuned back in to the conversation and realized Helga was
looking at her expectantly.
 
“How
about what?”

Jodi grinned, rocking Sammy with her foot.
 
“We’ve heard about Helga’s hot
date.
 
What’s got you so happy
lately?”

Helga chortled, picking up a new ball of yarn.
 
“Rumor has it that Edric isn’t the only
witch walking around singing these days.”

Edric was singing?
 
Elsie
tried to picture the stern old witch humming a tune, and then realized there
were four sets of curious eyes turned her direction.
 
Edric was no longer the topic of conversation.

Fortunately, she’d learned some things from Helga.
 
If you were going to talk about the new
man in your life, you had to do it right.
 
She leaned back in the rocking chair, voice casual.
 
“I met a Frenchman.”

“Ooo-eee!”
 
Jodi’s
eyes glittered with a contagious mix of glee and curiosity.
 
“Details, please.
 
Some of us with small babies have to
live vicariously.”