The Touch of Magic Series, page 95
“I’ll do what I can. But my kids are in fourth grade. There’s a big difference between nine years old and sixteen.” She tilted her head. “Then again, maybe there isn’t.”
They made themselves comfortable on the couch while she explained about Sam needing to stand firm to his principles and decisions. “You should just call it like you see it. You can read the situation. You’re the one who knows what to do here, so just tell him what to do. Don’t ask. Don’t say you don’t know. I mean, you’d get upset if you called your doctor and he said ‘Yeah, well, I just can’t make heads or tales of this test result. What do you think?’”
Sam laughed. Thank God he’d been paying attention.
Sheree smiled. “You have to be in charge and stand firm, even if it means you kick him out and cut him off. He’ll respect it.”
Nodding, Sam finished off the beer. “It sucks for his mom, though. I’d love to help her out.”
“Sure, but you can’t put a criminal back on the streets just because his mom is a good person. You have to do what you can live with,” Sheree pointed out.
That felt good to hear. He’d been leaning that way, but honestly, he’d felt awful about it. But if Deana couldn’t control Jeremy, then why should he have to make up for it if the kid really didn’t care if he went to prison? He felt a little of the weight on him lift. “You’re right.”
“Of course, I am.” Sheree let out a wide grin. Maybe she liked her own humor. “Will you answer a question for me?” Maybe she had something up her sleeve.
“You need legal advice?”
“No.” She glanced quickly down the hall, almost like she didn’t want him to catch the move. He felt his brows pull together, then she whispered. “Rae’s in the darkroom.”
“Oh.” So, she had been here the whole time. His senses hummed now, and he tried to tamp them down. It wasn’t like it would get him anywhere.
“Soooo,” Sheree drew out the word as she tucked her legs up to get comfortable. “What’s going on with you and Rae?”
“What?” He practically jumped back. It wasn’t what he’d expected her to say.
“Come on. Something was up.”
Sam shook his head since he couldn’t think of anything to say. He wasn’t so slick. Sam knew now that he was, in fact, transparent. But he gave lying his best shot anyway. “Nothing’s up.”
“Really? You two looked a little on the cozy side to me there for a while.”
He shook his head again, not expecting her to believe him. But he did it anyway. Oh yeah, he was a fool. Seven kinds.
“Hmmmm. Honestly, we all went to check on you when you were sick, just to be sure you really were sick. The way you and Rae had been, we all sort of figured you two were just disappearing for a bit.”
If only. He had to bite his tongue to keep that one in.
He shrugged and offered the only honest answer that didn’t spill his feelings like marbles across the table. “Sorry, no such luck.”
He considered asking her what Rae thought, but that would be just as bad as spewing his hurt all over. He stayed quiet as she chewed her lip, thinking. So Sam decided it was time to go. Clearly, he couldn’t stay here and have Sheree pecking apart his carefully constructed shell.
Hugging her goodnight, he left, wondering what they had all seen between him and Rae. Then forcing himself to face facts. Whatever they had seen sure didn’t matter now.
CHAPTER 27
Rae stood in the dark room. The tongs in her hand held a black and white photo dripping from the stopbath. Her eyes didn’t see the red all around her, didn’t see much of anything. They had glazed over while her body had strained piano-wire-tight to hear every last piece of conversation between Sam and Sheree. She had forced herself to continue the rote movements of developing pictures. As though acting like she didn’t care would make her really feel that way.
And, of course, the only thing that she could remember now was Sam’s last sentence. “No such luck.” It had just been a kiss. A make-out session. A spur of the moment shot of heat. Whatever it had been, it was gone as soon as she was. Or else it had died with his illness. It wasn’t enough for him to acknowledge it had even existed.
Through sheer force of will, she focused again on the picture in front of her. The darkroom was illuminated by its standard, non-damaging, red bulb, but her eyes had adjusted and she saw the shades of the photo as clearly as anyone in a natural light would. She could easily read the bright hues captured in the still gray planes. In her own eyes, it was one of those perfect photos. Where the paper she held now was exactly as she had expected it to be when she had snapped the shot. And she hoped that other people would see it that way, too.
Looking up at the photos hanging around the converted closet, she tensed and focused her eyes again at the handsome blue-eyed man laughing beside his car. She liked that she could see Sam’s generosity and humor in the photo. And she hoped that other people would see him as she did. She would have to get his permission to hang the photo in the show. She would have to have a real conversation with him.
She wondered again at the quality of that photo. She most likely wasn’t capable of sound decisions, because clearly she was blind. Maybe it was perfect simply because it was Sam. She would have taken it out of the show, except that she was certain she had liked that particular image even before she had thought of Sam in those terms. Or maybe just before she had realized that she thought of him in those terms. But that was of no concern now. She had heard plain as day through the door, that he hadn’t ever thought that there was anything between them. That Christmas kiss under the mistletoe must have been as much a fairy tale as it sounded.
This time, Rae met Sloan at Blessed Be. They were over a block down the street, on opposite sides of Vine. Rae at least got a spot on the same side of the street as the store and she headed to the corner to wait while Sloan caught the light.
She stood there, waiting with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her lightweight hoodie. Looking around at the people on the street, she tried to not get asked how much she cost. It was one of those LA things, to get mistaken for a hooker, just for being on the street.
The weather had turned for the better, making her happy with the sunshine again. It was what she’d signed up for when she’d picked this place for school. Her bragging had even gotten Sloan to choose a job offer here in the city. She’d had two excellent prospects, but her sister was here—her only family left—and Rae had bragged about the weather and the beaches. Anything to get her sister with her.
She’d thought she might leave after graduating, go somewhere with a bigger art scene. But that would have been New York or Chicago. It would have been away from Sloan and all her friends. No, this was the place for her, watching her sister debate whether she should jaywalk, and eventually settling on just jumping the light a little.
Rae grinned at her. “We really should not have missed the Parking Karma class. Everyone is out-performing us.”
Sloan shook her head. “You’re the reason we missed it. You and that hunk of man you have a massive crush on.”
“I told you, that’s way over and done with.” Turning away, Rae started up the gentle slope of Vine Street. “So over.”
“Uh-huh, so over that you have to repeat it. A lot.”
“Yes. If I keep telling myself, maybe it will sink in. Nothing I can do about it anyway.” She shrugged, but Sloan put an arm around her shoulders.
“I’m sorry. I know you really liked this one.” She sighed the way only a big sister can, irritated at the world just for Rae. “After the craptacular mess that was Roger, I’d really thought this one was better. Men. If only you could poke a stick in them to see if they were done.”
Rae grinned. “You actually can, but if you find a good one, it’s too bad, because you’ll be in jail for assault.”
Sloan nodded. “Men.”
They got to the door of the shop and Rae had actually managed to turn her thoughts to last week’s class in scrying. This week was about protecting your home. Rae didn’t really need or believe in that too much, but she wanted to become a regular. Everything helped. Scrying hadn’t really told her much except that she was right. The only problem was that she didn’t know if the scrying itself was right. As Delilah had explained, it took practice to get good at it. Rae had practiced all week. She had plenty of spare time, not having a boyfriend and all. But it kept telling her that the man she’d seen twice now was, in fact, her cousin and that he lived in L.A.
It all sounded like wishful thinking to her.
Until she entered the shop and stopped dead.
Sloan ran into her back, not knowing what was going on, and it occurred to Rae for the first time that Sloan had never seen these people in the flesh. Only phone snapshots of pictures of this Luke guy. But there behind the desk stood Yasmin.
Someone else came up behind them at the door and Sloan jostled Rae, pointing out they were being rude. Rae walked forward, unable to look away from the woman behind the desk. She remembered the loose curls, dark hair with shots of blond that were likely an afterthought. At the time, Yasmin had been all smiles, getting married the next day at the beach. Now, she was staring at Rae, ignoring Sloan and about everyone else at the store.
“Welcome to Blessed Be.” She tilted her head as though listening for something. “Do I know you?”
“Oh no,” Sloan said from over Rae’s shoulder. She was grabbing Rae to steer her, not understanding what was going on. “We were in the beginners’ class last week. For scrying.”
Another shove to get Rae moving, but she shrugged her sister’s hands off. And stepped forward as Yasmin’s expression got more wary. “Maybe you do recognize me. This is going to sound weird . . .”
Of course, when she started like that, it sounded more than weird, it sounded creepy. She sighed. Yasmin didn’t help. Didn’t offer a flip “oh, it’s a wiccan store, we get ‘weird’ all the time!” Nope, she just looked at Rae and her eyes narrowed a bit.
Hoping for the best since this might be her one shot, Rae launched in.
“My college roommate and I were at a little B-n-B up the coast for spring break two years ago. We stumbled upon your wedding. The wine was great, thank you.” She grinned and tried to put the situation at ease. It almost worked.
Yasmin nodded at her, but Rae jumped in and continued.
“Your husband, Luke . . . um, he looks like my mother. Like my grandfather.” Shit. She was totally blowing this. Could she just say she had a feeling? She wasn’t psychic or anything. She’d never called it that. Her mother hadn’t, though it had always been treated as legitimate and never brushed off when Rae got a feeling or if Sloan saw anything.
Yasmin’s eyes narrowed.
Rae tried again. “My mother’s sister had a baby that she gave away. He would be about thirty-five now. Or she, we don’t know.” She hated confessing that part. The baby had been born in Italy, on another continent. Getting the birth information from a sealed adoption had been next to impossible. They weren’t even close relatives, cousins didn’t have much sway with the system. Shit. “But the baby was born in Italy, then my aunt died. We’ve been looking . . .”
Other people in the store were starting to gather around. The man she’d seen at the dog park—Tristan!—came out from the back. He put a hand on the counter next to Yasmin’s almost like a signal. He looked at Rae but spoke to Yasmin. “Is everything okay out here?”
“So far.” Yasmin didn’t look at him either. Her brows furrowed.
For a moment Rae thought she might have said something that triggered the woman. Sloan was now watching in rapt attention. She jumped in to back up her little sister. “Look, we just want to meet this person. To find them and let them know they have a family.”
Rae didn’t add that everyone in their family seemed to have some odd little gift. She hadn’t really thought anything of it, until her mother pointed out how both girls had learned early not to speak of it outside the family. That people thought they were weird even when they were giving useful or even vital information. Then her mother had told her that Emilia had been the strongest in her family. What gift might her child have gotten? Rae didn’t know.
Yasmin was speaking up. “My husband has a family.”
Her heart sank and Rae nodded in accepted defeat. “I’m sorry. If he’s not adopted, then it’s not him.”
She’d felt that feeling when Yasmin and Luke were together, and she hadn’t known which of them it was. Trying to be subtle, she stilled and listened to the feeling in the back of her brain. Was Yasmin frowning because it was her own story? Had they simply found someone who happened to look like their family, but Yasmin was the one they were related to?
Rae didn’t feel anything. Was that because she was stressed? She surely was, she could feel the nerves thrumming as she stood in the middle of the shop surrounded by strangers listening in. She wanted to simultaneously charge forward to make her case and sink through the floor to disappear forever. Or did she feel nothing because it was never about Yasmin? Was it always Luke? God, he looked so much like her grandfather.
Yasmin was still staring at them oddly. “Give me your number. I’ll give it to my husband. He can reach out to you if he wants.”
Nodding rapidly like an idiot, Rae stepped forward and took the notepad Yasmin was pushing across the desk at her. She plucked one of the pens from the holder by the register and started to put her info down as Yasmin turned back to her non-stalker-like customers.
“Let me put my info, too.” Sloan pushed up next to Rae. Though Rae started writing her sister’s address and number, Sloan shook her head and snatched the pen away. Rae blinked. Sloan wasn’t one for acting odd. She didn’t catch on until her sister ripped the top sheet away and waited for Yasmin to finish talking with someone.
“Here’s both our information.” Sloan sounded sweet and kind. Rae wondered. “Thank you so much for helping us out.” She held out her hand to shake a thank you, and Rae got it. She watched the subtle shift in Sloan’s body as the two women made skin contact. Then they split and Yasmin took the paper, admonishing them to get to class before they were late. She promised to give it to her husband.
In class, they had just a moment before Allison, the usual teacher started speaking.
Sloan leaned in first as she peeled her jacket. She whispered, “Do you think she suspected anything?”
“Honestly? Yes. She looked like maybe she read you, too.” But it was too late to change that. “So what did you see?”
“A big Italian family with a bunch of people around a full table. Most of them dark Italians, some Americans. Yasmin and that Luke guy in the pictures there. I can’t be sure, but if that’s his family, he’s definitely adopted.”
CHAPTER 28
Rae climbed the steps to Jack’s place again. It was Lisa’s turn to host, but they were at Jacks. They hadn’t yet decided how the whole hosting go-round was going to change after the two of them had moved in together. Would they meet every third time here? Rae didn’t know. Teetering in her hands was the platter of seven layer dip. She prayed that Sheree would arrive right behind her with the chips and graciously open the door. But when she looked back over her shoulder all Rae saw was the street.
Maneuvering her elbow around, she aimed it for the doorbell, then almost smashed the dip in her face in sheer surprise as the door opened, with Sam filling the space and almost stepping on her.
“Rae!”
Breathing quickly, she re-balanced her precious dip. “Yes?” Where had that cold tone come from in her voice?
“I didn’t see you—” The sentence ended as though he didn’t know what to say. Like an apology or an offer of help was too much to have hanging between them. “I— I was just on my way out to my car.”
Sam held the door wide for her, pressing himself back out of her way, as though a mere touch from her would be more than he could bear. She noticed through the haze of irritation as she slid by that he wasn’t wearing a jacket.
Why should she notice that kind of thing? She shouldn’t. She’d heard him the other day, perfectly clear. She didn’t look back as he closed the door behind her, and she made her way in to set the dip down. She was done being responsible for it. Rae loved to make it, and loved to eat it, but carrying that dip was a lesson in nerves.
As usual when Lisa hosted, the place was set up for a party. A real party. None of Rae’s popcorn was even to be found. Biscuits and honey and jellies were arranged around the table. There were small strawberry shortcakes. Cream cheese and feta stuffed bell pepper slices and of course a big block of cheese set out with a cheese knife and crackers. And this crowd thought to accuse me of being a Martha Stewart? Maybe it was because they all knew that Lisa was a black belt, and no one really wanted to tangle with her.
A snap of warm air buffeted her from behind, and she turned to see who was coming in the door. She had her answer by the sound of the voices even before she saw them. Sam and Sheree were chatting up a storm about whether or not Jeremy could be trusted to wash Sam’s car.
Rae stole the corn chips from Sheree’s hands and pulled the bag open. It wasn’t fair that Sheree got to have easy conversation with the man that she wanted. And he wasn’t really speaking to her. Why? Because he was mad that she made him homemade soup, and put a warm blanket in his bed when he was sick. Okay, more likely he was angry that she made him take that stupid cool bath that didn’t work, and that she had stayed and watched over him when he told her to leave. Sure, he was furious. But if she hadn’t done all that, he’d be dead.
Ungrateful ass.
She picked up the biggest chip she saw and found a perverse satisfaction in marring the perfect surface of the seven layer dip. Then she did it again.
“It’s on!” Lisa plopped onto the overstuffed couch with such force that it nearly bounced her back up. She pointed the remote and cranked up the volume to catch the ‘scenes from last week.’
