Chapter 2 #2
He turned and looked at the space, then walked over to the section that was entirely decked out in purple.
There was a book there at the center. Love Spells for Lovelorn Witches.
He put his hand on it and then heard her footsteps behind him.
He dropped his hand like he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to.
“That’s a good one,” she said as she emerged from the back, copper hair caught in a ponytail.
She was wearing an orange sweater with a black cat on it, the knit clinging to her curves. He did his best not to linger on that.
He cleared his throat. “Good to know.”
“Do you want to go to the Salty Dog?”
“Sure. I’m always up for whatever it is that Noah is cooking.”
She grinned. “Definitely.”
Noah had come to town a few years ago, an ex-Marine who’d opened the café that was entirely veteran-run.
Cooper had a lot of respect for the guy, but he was definitely an acquired taste.
Not the friendliest person in town, that was for sure.
But the way that Eliana agreed quickly made him wonder if she…
Well, he had it on good authority, from his sister, that Noah was a snack.
Maybe Eliana agreed.
Apparently, it was all right to be grumpy and stern when you were a hulking former military man.
He had asked Lindsay one time why that wouldn’t be true for him, and she said it was because he was her brother and that was gross. He said he obviously hadn’t meant her, he meant other women, and she’d just made retching noises and clutched her stomach.
So, no help there.
They meandered up the street to the pristine, utilitarian diner run with expert precision by the crew.
It had been dilapidated when Noah had arrived in town, and now it was military grade in its cleanliness. And when they walked in, it was packed.
They managed to get a booth in the corner, and they both ordered quickly. Eliana got chicken strips and sweet potato fries, while he got a cheeseburger.
“Thank you for your help. I have secured your beer being served at three different locations during the festivities this month.”
“Great. Just give me quantities and I’ll make sure to provide them.”
“I can do that.”
She picked up her phone and speedily typed in a text message.
“I have a feeling Lenora will get back to me directly.”
“And how do you do that exactly?”
“Do what exactly?”
“I’ve never known anyone quite like you,” he said. “It seems to me that everything you touch unfolds exactly the way you say it will.”
She waved a hand, laughing. “I told you. I have a knowing.”
“But you’re not psychic.”
“No.”
“What’s the difference?”
She shrugged. “I don’t really believe that psychics are real.”
He lifted a brow. “That’s your hard line? Psychics?”
“I don’t mean… maybe that’s not really a fair thing to say.
I think some people are very… gifted in their insight and intuition.
I just think it’s not the psychic hotline, you know?
I don’t think you can just call up the universe and demand it give you the information that you want so that you can tell someone their fortune and get paid. ”
“Didn’t your grandma tell fortunes for money at one time?”
“I didn’t say that my grandmother wasn’t defrauding people. I think she probably embellished what was actually just intuitive. Grandma, Mom, me, we all have that intuition. It runs in the family.”
“And why doesn’t Marcus have the deep knowing?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe testicles block the reception to the other side.”
She was looking at him with a level of sincerity that made him wonder if she actually meant that. But then she smiled. Right then, their server came and set their drinks down between them. And she grabbed hold of hers, taking a long sip.
“Well, he does seem to have a knack for things going his way.” For a while, anyway.
Marcus could start something, and it rarely finished.
But then, he had always attributed that to his friend’s short attention span.
Marcus was the kind of guy who had a lot of ideas.
Then wanted to try to execute all of them.
Which just wasn’t possible. He had started and crashed several businesses already, and they were only just now thirty. Eliana was definitely steadier within her eccentricities. But there wasn’t a single person in their family who wasn’t eccentric.
Maybe that was something that he liked about them, honestly. His family wasn’t eccentric. They were… stoic.
His friend had always been emotional. Dynamic. His dad had died a few years after Cooper’s, and when they’d all come to town, it had been a fresh grief. Marcus had been able to cry about it. In front of Cooper, even.
Cooper had never managed to do that.
He wanted to cry for his dad, but whenever he thought about it, it got stuck in the center of his chest. A big ball of emotion that he couldn’t shift.
He had just learned to live with it.
But he doubted anyone in the Sanderson family had ever held onto an emotion that they didn’t express.
It was terrifying and fascinating all at once.
The food arrived, and Eliana began painstakingly explaining her plans.
“How exactly did you get roped into all this, anyway?” he asked.
“Oh. Well, because I do have the witchy store. And I get so much traffic this time of year. And I think they just figured I would kind of instinctively know how to appeal to the crowd.”
“Is that offensive to you? I mean…”
She laughed. “No. I play into it. It’s good for business. People get into that spooky season vibe, and even though I don’t consider my store spooky at all, it definitely helps drive interest in October.”
She sat there for a moment. “We do need to work on decorations for the wagon.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think it needs to be really festive. Would one of your horses be okay having a giant fake spider on their rump? It’s very light.”
“No. That would get in the way of the harness. Also no. Again, no.”
“Okay, we can put the giant fake spider on the wagon.”
“You really want to decorate the wagon?”
“Yes. I wanted all to be very festive. But I need to work on my spooky stories. The only scary story I have in my back pocket right now is about the time my great-great-great-grandfather got cursed by a witch.”
“What?”
“Oh yeah. Didn’t you know that?”
“I mean, your brother mentioned something about a curse once, but I thought he was trolling me.”
“Oh no,” she fixed entirely authentic, round eyes on him. “He was being deadly serious. You see, our entire family is cursed to never have a love affair work out.”
“That’s not real,” he said.
“It is very definitely real,” she said.
“And what exactly did your great-great-great-grandfather do to deserve that?”
“Oh, he was a horrible playboy. He had gotten several women pregnant and abandoned them. Ruined reputations, ruined marriages. But then, he seduced a young woman who was shamed in front of the entire town. Ostracized by her family. She was so angry that she cursed him with her own blood. And his.”
“What?”
“She cut her own palm, and then she walked up to him and slashed his arm. Then, she transferred her own pain, all the rejection, all the grief, onto him. She said that nobody in his bloodline would ever get happiness from love. And that they were always doomed to end up alone. And that had been true. Of everyone. There are no long marriages, no intact families. My dad was a good man. I often wonder if he died for it. You have a higher survival rate if you just suck, because then the family can get broken up that way.”
“Come on, Eliana, curses like that are not real.”
She spread her arms wide. “Then how do you explain all that?”
“I don’t know. Life is random, and sometimes hard. My dad is dead, and nobody cursed my bloodline. That I know of.”
“Well, that’s the thing. There can always be secret curses that you don’t know about.”
“I don’t think my family is cursed.”
He didn’t. He just thought that life was hard sometimes. And good people died. Kids lost their dads, and it wasn’t fair. That was what had happened to her, it was no curse. He wouldn’t be convinced otherwise.
“Well, that’s nice for you. Mine definitely is. And I don’t think that you, as a non-cursed person, can comment on what it is like for me, a cursed person.”
“And has the curse directly impacted you?”
“Well, I think so. Differently, though, than everybody else.”
Her face went bright red. “What?”
“Well, everyone else in my family seems to have… Well, they have… You know my brother.”
“Yes. He’s my best friend.”
“And you know how he is with women.”
“Yes,” he said dryly. “Successful.”
“Exactly. Everyone else in my family has a great love life. You know, physically. I, on the other hand, am doomed to never have…” She snapped her mouth shut.
“What?” He knew that he was pushing the line by even asking. Knew that he was making a mistake, even. Because her sex life was none of his business. And he shouldn’t be curious about it. Not even a little bit.
“I shouldn’t say,” she said, her face cherry-red.
No, she shouldn’t say, and he shouldn’t push.
“You can tell me.”
He had no idea why those words had come out of his mouth. None whatsoever. It was like they had come from somewhere beyond him. Like he had been compelled to say them even.
As if forces beyond him had pushed those words to come out of his mouth.
“I… I’ve never actually… It’s just not good for me, okay?”
She had never… Oh. Well, he could put that together himself. He didn’t need her to finish the sentence. And it filled him with a sense of rage. He didn’t know enough about Eliana’s personal life to know who she’d been sleeping with, but whoever it was, he hated him.
Not because he wanted her, really.
Because any man who slept with a woman and didn’t see to her pleasure was no kind of man in his opinion.
He had some extremely strong opinions about that.
And he prided himself on being a good lover.
He might not have any designs on forever with anybody, but if somebody was going to trust him enough to share their body with him, then he was going to honor that gift.
“That’s not from a curse,” he said. “It’s because some men are assholes.”
“No. Everyone has been a very nice guy. One time, I was going to hook up with a guy, and when we were making out on his couch, his fuse box flew open, and a fire started. And one time, I gave the guy anaphylaxis. In fairness to me, he did not tell me he was allergic to shellfish.”
“What?”
“It’s a series of disasters. And it isn’t really their fault. Anyway. I just want to be able to put a giant spider on something.”
“Okay…”
“And I promise I won’t make my scary story about my sex life.”
“That’s probably for the best. I have a feeling we would get in some trouble for that.”
“Likely.”
When the check came, he paid for it, in spite of Eliana’s insistent grabs toward the paper.
“No,” he said. “You got my beer placement in this festival, and I’m going to pay for lunch.”
“Well. Okay.”
She still looked a little bit cross about it.
When they finished paying, they walked out of the diner together.
“Thank you again.” She reached into her pocket then and took her phone out. “Oh. I have your beer quantity.” She gave him a number of kegs, and he made a note to talk to Hank about that. “And they want us to do our first hayride on Friday night if we can. So, we’d better get the wagon decorated.”
“I guess so. And you better get to learning a scary story that isn’t about how guys can’t make you climax.” Yet again, he didn’t know why the hell he’d said that out loud.
She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, I didn’t say that a guy could make me… I’ve never actually… I’ve never managed to go all the way. I’m cursed to be a virgin.”