Chapter 24
At this singularly inopportune moment, Luna burst into a fit of coughing.
It was so violent, she could do nothing but give herself over to it completely, hiding her face in her arm and turning to one side. By the time the fit passed, Mr. Grimm’s hand was gone from her arm, and he seemed to have vanished into thin air, leaving her alone behind the counter.
And John Ward was approaching across the shop floor.
Luna shook her head. What was she to do? What was she to think? What was she to . . . feel? Every particle of her awareness seemed concentrated on that cold place on her elbow where Mr. Grimm had gripped her so tight.
But he was gone. And Ward was coming. And . . . and . . .
Pull yourself together, Luna!
She smoothed out the front of her apron with both hands. “Well,” she said brightly, pulling her face into a smile, “look what the Gronk Cat dragged in.”
At least, that’s what she tried to say. And it would have been very cool and breezy. Only her voice caught at “Gronk,” and she erupted in another bout of ragged coughing.
When this too, eventually passed, Ward was directly in front of her, leaning one elbow on the counter. “You all right?” he asked.
“Yes. Fine.” Luna waved a hand in the air in front of her face. “I might have a touch of something. You should probably stand back.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Standing back wasn’t really what I had in mind in coming all the way down here. I planned to ask you to dinner. Tonight. At The King’s Crown.”
Luna gaped at him. The gears of her brain seemed to have caught on something; she could feel them straining to turn, but nothing was happening. She gave her head a quick shake to loosen them, and they all seemed to tumble back into motion. “I haven’t seen you in over a month!” she blurted.
“I know. I was on assignment. Remember?”
“And . . . you only just got back?”
“Yeah. Last night, actually.” He leaned his other elbow on the counter, pushed back his hat, freeing that dark curl to bob across his forehead, and grinned at her, all insouciant charm. “I would have stopped by to see you then, but I don’t happen to know where you live.”
Luna pinched her lips. He was obviously fishing for an address, but she didn’t give that out freely. No one knew where she lived, not even her aunties. “Well,” she said, folding her hands in front of her on the counter, “I’m glad to see you’re back all in one piece.”
A sudden scurrying motion brought her eyes shooting upward.
Her stomach knotted. If that drat-blasted mistletoe even thought about descending over Ward’s head, Oh!
she would absolutely murder it. She cast about for the pruning shears, which still lay where they’d fallen on the floor behind the counter.
She made a half-step to retrieve them, but the mistletoe, peeking over a pipe, saw and hastily retreated again, leaves and berries whisking out of sight.
Luna lowered her gaze once more, forcing her face back into pleasant lines.
“So,” Ward said, tipping his head slightly to one side, “did you remember to pray for me?”
“Why of course!” Was that a lie? She honestly couldn’t remember. Surely she must have prayed for him once or twice?
“Good thing.” He grinned. “Because it ended up being a nasty business up north. The sorcerer was something of a milksop, but his connections proved rather more interesting. I can’t go into details, but what was supposed to be a simple dive-in and scoop-him-up turned into a hounds-on-the-scent pursuit.
” He lifted his eyebrows. “Can you picture it? Me striding across gothic moors, sleuthing it up with the best of them?”
It did paint rather a nice image in the mind.
Ward certainly would cut a dashing figure, striding in tall boots, wind sweeping back his long coat and tossing his dark curls.
Granted, the pea-green officer’s uniform probably didn’t suit the aesthetic quite as nicely, but no reason she couldn’t imagine it however she preferred.
“And did you end up tracking down the sorcerer’s connections?” she asked.
“Only one.” Ward made a face. “Nasty bugger. They’re still trying to get him to reveal his associates, but that’s not my department.”
Luna shuddered.
“Anyway,” Ward continued, shifting his angle against the counter, “I don’t want to bore you with all that. What have you been up to while I’ve been away?”
“Oh, nothing much.” She shrugged. “Business as usual.”
“Any interesting tea-visions recently?”
For an instant, she recalled the vision she’d glimpsed in his teacup. And blushed. Ward, after all, had no idea she’d peeked at his future. A gross breach of scrying etiquette. How her aunties would despair! “We’re not supposed to talk about it,” she said stiffly.
“Is that tea witchery law?”
“Something like that.”
“In that case, I solemnly swear to ask you to betray no secrets over dinner tonight. Agreed?”
Luna swallowed. Her throat felt very scratchy. “Tonight?”
“Yes. You’re not busy, are you?”
She wasn’t. She was planning to attend the midnight service tomorrow for Green Yule’s Eve, and .
. . and she sort-of-kind-of had a date with Mr. Grimm.
Didn’t she? Did she? Maybe not. She really had no idea.
Oh gods. They were going to have to . . .
to talk about it. The . . . well, not the kiss.
It wasn’t a kiss. The mouth-bump. They were going to have to talk about it.
And the other thing? The arm-grabbing bit?
That moment of exquisite intensity and .
. . and . . . Did they have to talk about that too?
Probably. Because that was more of a thing.
Than the mouth-bump. More . . . revealing?
No. Maybe? She didn’t know. She just didn’t know—
“Luna Talbot?” Ward dropped his head, brow wrinkling as he tried to catch her eye. “I asked, are you busy tonight?”
“No,” Luna blurted. Then she drew a long breath and forced a smile. “No, I . . . I have no plans tonight.”
“So, can I pick you up at seven?”
“Um . . .”
“You’ll have to give me your address.”
“No,” she answered a little too quickly. “Let’s meet somewhere.”
“All right.” His expression was a bit rueful, but he didn’t push the matter. “Here?”
“No!” Luna’s mind scrambled about for an alternative. “Huck ‘n Clover’s,” she blurted. “I, um, I have a little shopping I need to do.”
“So . . . you’re going to pick up your tinned peas and peaches before we go out to dinner?”
Luna pursed her lips, embarrassed. “Um.”
Ward laughed, dimples flashing. “It’s fine by me! Heck, I’ll even carry your grocery bags for you, if you’ll let me.”
She grinned back, the first real grin of this whole exchange. He really was such a nice man, after all. And those dimples . . . there really ought to be special licensing for those things. “Huck ‘n Clover’s then,” she said. “Seven o’clock.”
“Until seven, Luna Talbot,” Ward said.
Then, to her tremendous surprise, he leaned across the counter like he was about to kiss her. She yelped and jumped back, one hand on her heart. “Ward! I . . . I . . . I’m at work.”
He chuckled again and backed off. “There’s my fresh little daisy. What, is old Grimm such a stickler for standards?”
Luna felt the pressure of Mr. Grimm’s hand as though it was still latched to her arm. She cleared her throat roughly. “Something like that.” Then promptly erupted in another fit of coughing.
Ward watched her with some concern. “If I were a tea witch,” he said when the fit subsided, “I’d tell you to drink some ginger tea for that cough.”
Luna huffed out a little breath and touched two fingers to her throat. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
He pushed back from the counter and settled his hat back, covering up the stray curl. “Later,” he said.
“Goodbye,” Luna replied and watched him exit the shop. As he passed down the aisles, the white and red Green Yule roses sighed, and several of the poinsettias reached out their red leaves just to brush his calves in passing. They were quite shameless, but he did not seem to notice.
Then he was gone. And Luna was left standing behind the counter.
She continued standing there for some moments. Hoping against hope that a new passel of customers would come in. That she’d be busy. Too busy. Far too busy to . . . to . . . to do what she knew she must.
Mr. Grimm was somewhere in the storage room. She could hear him rummaging about, busy with Green Mother knew what. At least he’d not fled into Garden. That was something, wasn’t it?
She blew out a long breath, placing both hands on her fluttering belly. Which would keep on looping and dipping, despite every effort to bring it back into order.
“It wasn’t a kiss,” she whispered urgently. “It wasn’t anything. Really. Just a . . . a . . .”
She couldn’t finish. There simply wasn’t a word to describe whatever that was.
“Come on, Luna,” she added more firmly. “Get a grip!”
Straightening her shoulders, she marched out from behind the counter, forcing one footstep after the other, all the way to the storage room door. It was half-open. She pushed it a little farther, peering inside.
Mr. Grimm seemed to be in the midst of a massive reorganization project.
He’d hauled everything off the center shelf—pots, bags of Mama Morgana’s, stacks of tissue paper, floral wire, all the vases.
They were scattered across the floor with no rhyme or reason that Luna could discern.
He was just in the midst of pulling the largest, heaviest of the empty pots off a middle shelf, when his eye suddenly caught on Luna.
He stopped. Turned to face her. She could see his arms straining beneath his rolled-up sleeves.
“Mr. Grimm,” Luna began in her primmest voice, “I think we must—”
“So, Wardsman Ward is back from assignment, is he?”
The single thaumatic bulb dangling from the ceiling cast his face into harsh lines and shadows, making it impossible to read his expression.
“Um. Yes.” Luna realized she was twisting her fingers and quickly clenched them into fists. “He got in last night, apparently.”