Chapter 2
Chapter Two
He should’ve known Eliana would text him first thing in the morning. He also should’ve known that she would’ve immediately gotten exactly what she wanted.
It was just how she was. A magical, infuriating, ridiculous human being. Always had been. From the moment he’d first laid eyes on her, she had shifted something inside of him.
Her eyes had always been round and a bit too intense. Like she could see things inside of him that he couldn’t even see. And she hadn’t changed, all through their growing up. All the way to now.
What had changed was the shape of his fascination with her. It had been an intangible, unknowable thing through their growing-up years. A kind of protectiveness.
He could remember her going to her first dance at school, and he’d been worried about her date getting handsy with her. She’d been…like another younger sister, in many ways. He’d wanted to keep her safe. He’d wanted to see her happy.
He wanted to be the one to make her smile, but he wasn’t good at that. Because he was serious and she was sunny, and even though he had trouble shining any back on her, he’d taken a lot of joy in that sunshine glowing over him the past few years.
Now though…
His fascination with her wasn’t quite so wholesome.
He wanted her. Badly. In a way that wasn’t brotherly, protective, or even about her happiness.
His refusal to act on it, though, was about those things.
Because his attraction to her wasn’t only about her beauty. She was compelling in a way no other woman ever had been to him. She was intense, and odd, and interesting. Not compliments, traditionally, maybe, but they were things that interested him.
But Cooper knew better than to ever act on the tooth-aching need that he felt for his best friend’s little sister.
First of all, because Marcus had warned him away years ago – something about a curse, and the total vulnerability of his sister because of that family curse.
Which Cooper didn’t believe at all. He could believe that Eliana was maybe more fragile because she’d lost her dad. Because she’d had a parade of shitty stepdads and, as far as he could see, a loving but chaotic upbringing.
Curses, though, he didn’t believe in.
Marcus didn’t have a wife because he was a cad. Eliana didn’t have relationships because… well, he didn’t know why.
She was an incandescent person. He might not believe in any of the hocus pocus stuff, but she did, and it was oddly charming in its way. He was always amazed she didn’t have men following after her in a pack.
He knew why he stayed away. Partly because of Marcus.
Because he was the best friend Cooper had ever had.
And partly because Cooper also knew that for her sake, he couldn’t ever go there if he couldn’t promise something real.
He couldn’t. His whole life was shaped around a violent, sudden loss, and there was just no getting around that for him.
He couldn’t fathom having a wife, children, and that meant any of his relationships were destined to be…
Physical.
She was too special for just physical.
She was so…effective. A weird word, but it suited her. When she set her mind to something, it seemed to happen.
And if you were to ask her about it, she would probably say that it had to do with her deep knowing.
Meet me at lunch to discuss?
Sure.
There was no reason not to meet her at lunch.
He had chores to get done, but was usually through with the cattle by midday, at which point he turned his focus to brewing.
At this point, he had a pretty comprehensive thing going.
But he was still perfecting the product and getting it all off the ground.
He had two absolutely perfect brews. He could replicate them, and he had all the licensing he needed to be able to do them at his facility, now he needed permission to sell it.
The idea of setting up some kind of café on the ranch had been his dad’s.
He’d dreamed of a brewery. Of being able to not be quite so dependent on the ranching side of things.
Because it was fickle. Because it was difficult.
Fundamentally, he’d dreamed of a life that wasn’t quite so hard for his kids.
It seemed like such a terrible thing that he died doing something that he hadn’t loved all the way to his bones.
Not that he didn’t love the ranch and the land, but what if things had been different?
What if he had been able to get the brewery up and running.
What if he had been able to shift the business structure of the ranch.
Well, maybe he would still be here. Maybe his tractor wouldn’t have turned over on him.
Either way, they all felt bound to see their dad’s dream become a reality.
Cooper was more involved in the actual brewing process; his younger sister, Lindsay, was all about figuring out the marketing, and his older brother, Hank, was dedicated to the oversight of everything. Keeping it all running.
Their mom was just glad they were all close to home, and that was when she wasn’t wringing her hands about being a burden. Or about them feeling like they had to carry on their dad’s legacy.
She always told them that they could go do whatever they wanted, be whatever they wanted, but Cooper knew the truth. It had all been set in stone the day his dad had died.
Cooper had only been eight. Hank had been eleven. And poor Lindsay had been in diapers. She didn’t even remember their dad.
But he’d known then they had to carry on the Langdon family legacy in a way that made their dad proud. He’d known that he had to take care of his mother. But it was up to them to make sure their sister was raised right.
To protect her.
Yeah. He’d known all that even at eight. It was even more true now.
He put his phone in his pocket and turned around to see his brother riding toward him. He had just been about to grab his horse out of the barn.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Good news. I got the city council to agree to serve our beer at these fall festivities they’re doing.”
Hank actually looked impressed, which was a rarity. “Really?”
“Really. Well, thanks to Eliana.”
“Did you have to sell her your soul?”
“She’s not that kind of witch.”
Hank’s expression was overly amused. “Oh really?”
“I agreed to drive the wagon for the haunted hayride. Which means I’m going to need to borrow a wagon. And some hay. And a couple of horses.”
“Hey. If it gets the beer circulating around town… You can have whatever you want.”
“That’s essentially what I said to her. And is how I got into this mess.”
“Well, better you than me.”
“They’re counting on my sunnier demeanor, I’m sure.”
That was funny, because neither of them were particularly sunny.
“It is a haunted hayride, though,” Hank pointed out.
“True. So maybe I should be a little more offended than I am.”
“Definitely.”
“I’ve got to go meet her for lunch, to talk about the logistics.”
“Are you going to come home loaded down with crystals again?”
That had only happened once. Hank made it sound like it was a regular occurrence.
In high school, when he’d been a senior and Eliana must’ve been a freshman, she had slipped some crystals into his pockets before the biggest football game of the season.
When he had gotten undressed in the locker room, they’d all fallen out, and he’d had to explain the presence of a whole bunch of glittery rocks to his team.
He had known immediately who was responsible for it. Because there was only one person who would be eccentric enough to do something like that.
She had always been… herself. That was for sure.
The drive down to town was a quick enough one, and he didn’t hit any traffic coming in. Sometimes, the highway was packed with cars coming in from Portland for the weekend. As soon as he found a place to park, his phone lit up. It was a text from Eliana telling him to meet her at the store.
He had only been in the store a handful of times, it wasn’t exactly the kind of place he would ever patronize if he didn’t know the owner. And even then, he only ever went if his friend was in town, or if his sister really wanted to go.
Lindsay thought Eliana was fascinating. And it wasn’t uncommon for him to get dragged to town, and then dragged into The Water Witch so his sister could buy yet another deck of tarot cards.
He didn’t know anything about that stuff, but he didn’t understand why one person could possibly need so many.
Lindsay liked to proudly proclaim that anything she bought in Wild Rose Point didn’t count because she was supporting local business, and it all went back into the economy, which would eventually feed them too.
He had a hard time arguing with that, actually.
Especially because he sort of internally used that same excuse whenever he went drinking at the Seaglass or went to grab a bite at the Salty Dog.
Supporting local business.
He sighed and walked across the street and onto the little path that led to the alcove where The Water Witch was situated.
It was back behind the other buildings on Main Street, a little semicircle of buildings, The Water Witch, a real estate office, and an ice cream shop.
There were tables out in the center courtyard.
Eliana’s shop was almost hidden, and yet, it never seemed to be hurting for business.
He pushed the door open and immediately felt out of place. The shop was an explosion of color and sparkle. Of a dizzying sort of well-ordered chaos that was difficult to explain if you weren’t standing in the middle of it.
His whole life was comprised of things that you could see, touch, and ground yourself in. Eliana was on another planet. And so was her shop.
“Just one second.”
He heard her voice coming from the back room.