Witch of an Ex, page 5
He grinned at me. “We’ll get ours to go.”
Sounded like a plan to me.
Aldin was getting fed on our dime, so he didn’t have any complaints. That brought up a good point, though.
“I’m guessing we should probably stop by the market on the way and buy some groceries to stock the fridge and cabinets.” Aldin wasn’t my favorite person by a long shot, but I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone going hungry.
“Good point.”
It didn’t take long. We just picked up enough essentials to last the man for a few days. I was really hoping this would not turn into a long-term situation. I kind of hoped a few days would be all we’d need to catch the killer. The fewer, the better.
When we finally pulled up outside Orville’s old home, we had the trunk full of provisions. So much for shopping without a list. And before eating those pesky Raspberry delights too. Shopping while hungry was never a good idea.
To be fair, not all the bags were going in. Some would come home with us. I wasn’t that free-hearted towards the man.
We sat in the car for a few minutes. There was no work van in sight. “Are the workers here?”
Orville took a deep breath. “I called ahead and let them know what was going on. They said they’d clear out for an early lunch so we could have the place to ourselves for an hour or so.”
I leaned over and kissed his cheek. My man could be so thoughtful sometimes that he surprised me. In a good way. Not the way normal surprises make me feel at all.
I waited for him to get out and come around to open my door. Then we walked up the little path of stepping stones to his front porch. I gave the porch the eye. Orville hadn’t changed it at all. It still had the homey, lived in front porch feel to it. Once the business was up and running, that would probably have to change. I’d have to research area business to see how they handled that little issue. How did one decorate a porch for business purposes? I didn’t have a single clue even where to start.
Then Orville had the front door unlocked and all thoughts of porch decorations vanished when he swept me up and into his arms, grinning down at me.
“This feels about right, doesn’t it?”
As it was the first time we were crossing his—sorry, our—threshold since tying the knot, I had to agree. It felt very right.
He bent his head down to kiss me as he stepped through the doorway and into the house. Once his head lifted and I could take in the new front room, I had to stifle a gasp.
This was nothing like the room I remembered. Then, this had been the living room. A room with thick, luxurious carpet and comfy, homey furniture to invite one to sit a spell.
The house I remembered had two bedrooms. One off either side of the main entry living room. Again, all changed.
But I’d get to the bedroom areas later. Right now, my eyes were taking in the changes here.
Orville sat me gently on my feet. Onto gleaming bare hardwood flooring. Hardwood was definitely the predominant feature of the new look. Hardwood floors, an Oak high-top table with Oak tall barstool-type seating, glistening wooden bookcases that were half-filled with reference books. And the crowning point of it all?
A rather large Oak counter with a desk area at its center. The kind of place where a business would have a receptionist seated to handle walk-in clients. Not that we had planned to have a receptionist, mind you.
“I thought we should be prepared for business expansion right from the very start of things,” Orville said. “Start as we mean to go.”
I reached up on my tippy toes and kissed the man. Long and hard. I’d never really given much thought to what my dream office would look like. Obviously, Orville had.
And it was absolutely perfect.
Chapter 8
I wasn’t lying when I said the place was absolutely perfect. It was. But then, I’d only seen the front room at that point. I don’t know how Orville managed to improve on perfection, but he did. The best was yet to come.
He took me by the hand and led me to the room off to the left. “I thought we could each use our very own office space.” The archway into his office now had custom glass doors. The doors allowed privacy while still giving Orville a front-seat view into the main room. More gleaming and glistening wood here too.
To include a newly refinished desk and office chair. He ran a loving hand over the desktop. “This belonged to my father. I didn’t have the heart to replace it with a newer model. But I like to think it cleaned up rather nice.”
“Rather nice is one way to put it.” I walked around the desk. As many times as I’d been to Orville’s house in the past, I’d never really spent much time in his office area. Hadn’t been much need. My visits usually consisted of times spent in other, much more fun rooms. Like the kitchen, for one example. Date nights always started with a good home-cooked meal.
“It’s stunning, Orville.” I looked up at him. “Why do I have the feeling you did this work yourself?”
He grunted. “Probably because I did. That desk means too much to me to allow others near it with power tools.” He glanced around him. “In fact, I did rather a lot of the work myself. The people I hired just took care of the things that were a little too time consuming for me to handle in a decent timeframe.”
Orville smiled at me. “I knew I couldn’t keep you waiting in suspense for much longer.”
“Darn straight. I was beginning to think I was going to have to break into the place for a peek at it.”
He laughed. Let him think I was joking. I don’t think he gets just how much I really hate surprises.
And there was one surprise left. The one room he was saving for last. My office.
“Close your eyes.”
I stared at him instead. “Really?”
Orville grinned at me. “Humor me. A few seconds will not matter now, right?”
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes. Why the heck not give the man his moment? After pulling all of this together in a matter of weeks, he deserved it.
He took my hand and led me through the main outer room and into what would be my office. “You can open them now.”
I did. And then I found that I was having trouble breathing.
The great expanse of wood I had expected. Why break a running theme? But what I wasn’t expecting—not in a hundred years—was the literally breathtaking mural that covered the wall behind my desk.
Orville had never seen the Goddess tree. Not the true one in the Goddess’s realm. But that hadn’t stopped him from bringing it to life. I guessed that Amethyst and Ruby had been involved in getting the details just right.
I walked over to it, still not breathing, and reached out to touch the very center of the tree. I would swear to my dying day that the wood glowed at my touch. There was more than a little magic in that mural. And I was thinking more than the girls had provided too.
I think Orville and his painter had been helped more than a little by the Goddess herself.
Orville laid a hand on each of my shoulders from behind me. “Breathe.”
I did, but it was a staggering breath at best. Taking my eyes off the mural simply wasn’t possible yet. There was so very much to see.
“How did you do this?” I whispered.
“With a whole lot of help.” His fingers squeezed the tops of my shoulders. “I take it you like it?”
I shook my head in wonder, my finger tracing one single leaf on the magical tree. “No. Like is definitely not how I feel about this. Love isn’t even a strong enough word.”
Walking slowly, I traveled from one corner of the room to the other, my eyes gazing over the mural that covered the entire distance. I had the odd feeling that I could stare at this painting for days on end and still not see everything there was to see.
“Who painted this?”
Orville hesitated. “A friend of a friend. He needed the work, and his sketchbook showed incredible talent, so I took a chance on him.”
I swallowed and nodded. “I’m so very glad you did. I think I’d like to meet this man.”
Another hesitation. Much longer this time. “I’m not sure that will be possible. The day he finished the mural, he disappeared. No word. Didn’t even wait to be paid, either.”
Somehow that didn’t surprise me at all. With work like this, the man had been sent. If it had even been a man. With work like this, I wasn’t all that certain that was the case.
“I know the mural is the focal point of the room but is everything else okay?”
Startled, I looked up at him. Then I realized that I’d been staring at the mural for much longer than I had realized. Glancing around, I nodded. The space had a desk and a desk chair sitting before the wall with the incredible painting. In one of the other corners stood two floor to ceiling bookcases, and in the other corner, there was a small table with two chairs for added work space.
Not a place to brew spells or do magical work, but perfect for our new investigating business. I gave him a nod. “It’ll do, Grasshopper.”
He chuckled. “I think you mixed up a couple of metaphors, but I give you full credit for trying.”
Then I realized something important. Orville’s house wasn’t all that big. Two bedrooms, both of which had now been turned into offices, the large living room, which was now our front entry room and receptionist area, and the kitchen.
“Where’s the apartment you talked about?” I glanced back at the mural. My eyes just couldn’t stay off of it for long. I hoped that would pass, or I’d never be able to get any work done here. Which was kind of the point of having an office, now wasn’t it? “And perhaps an even more important question would be... is it too late to change my mind about Aldin staying here?”
Yes, it was selfish of me, but I didn’t want to share this with Aldin. My family, yes. Even my new and extended family to include the Minehearts. I’d come to respect those Earth witches. But Aldin wasn’t Air or Earth. He was a Fire Elemental. The most destructive of them all. I didn’t want him anywhere near my office. Not now. Not ever.
And for Goddess sure, I didn’t want him near it unsupervised. I’d pay for the motel room myself to stop that from happening if I had to. Orville must have known I’d be feeling that way because the man was back to grinning at me.
“Got it covered. Aldin won’t have keys to this house.”
I just looked at him. I mean, that whole thing had been his idea, hadn’t it?
“Come on. The workers aren’t finished with it yet, but Aldin will just have to make do with what he gets. If he has to listen to a bit of sawing and hammering, too bad.”
He led me out the back door and over to his garage. No attached garage for my man. He felt the same way I did about them. They just weren’t all that safe. If one was going to have a garage where one parked an automobile with gasoline in its tank, it was far better to have said garage a fair distance from where one laid one’s head down to sleep. At least that had always been my feelings on the matter.
The garage looked the same when he opened the door, with one major difference. There was now a spiral staircase leading up into the loft. Before, there had only been a ladder. No need for anything fancy, as Orville had only ever used the loft for storage. That had changed.
It wasn’t anything glamorous, but then it didn’t have to be. It served the purpose for which it was intended. A fallback place to stay in time of need.
It reminded me of a small studio apartment. The kind where everything you needed was contained in just the one, large room. The garage downstairs held a tiny bathroom, complete with a shower stall. That was the only restroom that I saw. Not that it mattered. As long as Aldin had facilities he could use without going into the house, I was happy.
There was a kitchenette with a small counter, a fridge—which reminded me of the groceries we had yet to bring in—a small sink, and a tiny stove with two burners and a teeny-tiny oven. Truthfully, I’d never seen such a small stove. It was... cute. Outside of the kitchen area, there was a futon with a nice mattress top on it, a coffee table, and a medium-sized television mounted on the wall.
Not a place where one would be comfortable to live for extended periods of time, but great for a fallback emergency location. I kind of liked that. It wouldn’t do for Aldin to get too comfortable here.
I glanced around, frowning. Orville had said the workers were still working here, but it all looked done to me.
“I thought you said the workers were just on a break. What are they doing?”
A glance at Orville showed an all too smug expression. Then the slow smile started up. “This is going to be our fall back place, right? Where we will go when things get kind of hairy and we don’t want to take that into our families, right?”
I nodded. That was the idea behind it, yes.
Grin and smug expression still firmly in place, Orville walked over to the shorter wall on the right. “Notice anything odd about this space? In reference to the garage below us?”
Looking around, I shook my head. “No. Not really. I mean, it isn’t exactly spacious, but we would likely just be using it for a limited time, anyway.” Besides, I was used to small living quarters. But then, my small quarters backed up to a very large house. That made a difference.
“Well, in point of fact, the garage below is four and a half feet wider than this space.”
I arched an eyebrow. I guessed that fact was pertinent, and I thought I might just know where he was going with this all.
The wall he was standing next to was covered in wood paneling. I’d thought it was a decorative choice at first. Not so much. The paneling did an excellent job of hiding the seam for the secret doorway.
He took pains to show me exactly where to push to open it. Once you pushed that spot, if you kept the pressure applied, you could slide that particular panel back behind the one next to it and gain access to that additional four and a half feet of space.
Orville had built a panic room.
And from the look of it, once the workers finished with it, it would be pretty much impenetrable. Not that I’d be wanting to spend much time in there. The room took small spaces to the extreme. But in a pinch, and to wait until cavalry arrived... it would do nicely.
“Well done, Orville. Very well done.”
I only wish it had been me that had said those words. It wasn’t.
Chapter 9
It would be a vast understatement to say I was angry when I turned to see Aldin standing there at the head of the stairway. A vast, vast understatement. In fact, I was downright boiling mad.
So mad, in fact, that at that moment, I had one goal in life. To push the man back down those stairs. By physical force, or by magic. Made no difference to me, but that man was in for a world of hurt if I had my way.
I didn’t.
Orville restrained me. “He isn’t worth it, Opal, and I’m not the sheriff anymore.”
While I really didn’t think Trevor would arrest me, either, the man had a point. Besides, Aldin was already hightailing it down the stairs on his own two feet.
What can I say? Sometimes the anger shines through in my eyes. The intention, too.
We followed. But not before I turned to Orville with dread. “You didn’t lock the house behind you, did you?”
I wasn’t all that sure why the thought of Aldin seeing my mural bothered me as much as it did. But it did. I figured there was a reason for that. My witchy intuition rarely steered me wrong on things like this.
Then again, it could just be that the mural felt like a piece of my very soul. A piece I didn’t want to share with an ex like Aldin.
My heart felt a lot lighter when Orville smiled. “As a matter of fact, I did. Old habit. Being a law enforcement officer will cause that in a person.”
I gave him a quick hug and then headed down the stairs. I was still angry, but at least now I could think again.
Funny how I didn’t so much mind about him knowing about the panic room as I did the mural. But then again, the man would be living up in that little apartment. And as obnoxiously curious as the man was, he would likely have found that on his own. Then there was the whole workmen issue too. Keeping that room hidden from him really had never been in the cards.
Aldin was waiting for us outside. He put his hands up in front of him when we came out of the garage. “It’s not all my fault. The donuts didn’t last all that long, and the shop owner didn’t take kindly to me just sitting there.”
My anger abated just the tiniest of bits. I knew the Flour Pot’s owner. Aldin was probably telling the truth about that. Didn’t mean the man had to follow us here, though. Especially as he had to have known we dropped him off there for a darn good reason.
The man tried out a smile, then spread his hands. “I really wasn’t kidding about that no place to go thing.”
I blew out a breath. “Okay, so I’ll let you live already.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “And no Karma spell?”
I saw his raised eyebrow and raised him a smile. A slightly evil smile, but a smile all the same. “If you didn’t have ill intentions in following us, then you shouldn’t have to worry about Karma, now should you?”
His uncertain expression kind of spoke volumes to me. The man was up to something. And I wanted to find out what.
But even more than that, I wanted the man gone. Long gone.
ORVILLE TOOK ALDIN back up to the loft to get settled in. He offered me his key ring first. Not that I needed his keys. I had my own.
It didn’t take me long to let myself in the back door and make my way to my office. That’s where Orville found me, too. There was so much peace and comfort in that room now. My own little slice of heaven on earth.
My man might have built a panic room over that garage, and I could see the purpose that it might have in the future. But my panic room would be right here. Nothing cured panic like gazing into the Goddess’s world.
