Chapter Two
Two
L iberty Wakefield was trouble. The kind of trouble that kept Merle up at night and turned him on every time she walked into a room.
He saw her a lot at WiCKed Sisters.
The small witchy shop had three distinctive spaces: the tea shop, owned by his cousin—Poppy Kitchener; the bookstore, run by Serafina Conte; and the magic shop presided over by Liberty Wakefield.
He helped out when Poppy was short-staffed. Of all his family, he was closest to her, and working in her tea shop was a nice way to get out of his house for a few hours. He was a night owl and preferred spending most of his time at his computer writing code or planning his campaigns. As the dungeon master, he wrote the storylines and voiced the different non-player characters when his group played.
He was currently in the Bootless Soldier Tavern, reading a book on different versions of the Hades myth, trying to find some new ideas. After a long month break, they were finally going to start playing again in the last week in September...right when Liberty walked straight up to his table.
She had bright red hair with a slight curl hanging around her shoulders. She was a curvy girl with a full figure and favored blouses that celebrated her cleavage along with stylish waist cinchers over either jeans or full skirts. There was something about her that stirred his senses and made him want to forget that she worked with his cousin and that he was...well, him and just go for it. Make a pass, snag a kiss and see where it led.
Maybe that’s why he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
It wasn’t just his imagination. She flirted with him all the time. He suspected it was his nerdy exterior and quietness that made her so bold with him. Flirting always took him aback, so he took his time. Somehow it came off as him being flustered.
“I need a favor,” she said as she plopped down across the table from him in the booth.
She picked up the book he’d set down and turned it over in her hands. He noticed the sparkle of the rings on her fingers as she flipped the pages.
“Must be serious since you didn’t call me ‘nerd,’” he said, because she always did.
She let out a long, ragged sigh, tightening her free hand into a fist and then putting down the book. “It is. And before I say anything else, I need you to swear not to say anything to Poppy or Sera.”
Okay now he was worried. “You share everything with them.”
“I need to figure this out first.”
“What exactly is it ?” he asked.
“Uh...you know about me and my mom, right?”
“That you’re both super close witchy women who don’t suffer foolish men?” he teased, trying to lighten the mood. That vivacious energy she always had bubbling around her was gone.
She gave a rough little laugh. “Yeah, well she raised me on her own because the man who fathered me didn’t want a child and gave her money for an abortion. She asked me when I was sixteen if I wanted to know who he was because he’d sent a letter asking to reconnect... I said no, and that was that.”
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
“Because fucking Alzheimer’s. That’s why.”
He knew her Nan had Alzheimer’s and wasn’t doing well. Liberty and her mom, Lourdes, had struggled to keep her at their home and had made the decision earlier in the year to move her into assisted living as her condition worsened.
“What happened?”
She tilted her head forward. “She thought I was Mom and said my biological father’s name.”
Oh.
“Fuck...that’s a lot.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “I’m not sure how I can help.”
“Well, I took one of those DNA tests because his name is so fucking generic, because of course it would be, and it didn’t show anything on my paternal side. And when I type ‘John Jones’ in Google about a billion of them pop up.”
He leaned back, stretching his arms out on the back of the bench. She wanted his tech skills. The ones she was always giving him shit about. She needed him to run a query and find the man.
“So what is it you want from me, Liberty?” he asked.
She lifted both her eyebrows in an exaggerated, exasperated way. “Are you going to make me say it?”
“Hell yes.”
“I need your nerdy computer expertise to track down the douchebag.”
He shook his head. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
She shook her head. “Are you really going to make me ask you nicely?”
He nodded. “And I’m probably going to demand something in trade.”
Liberty hadn’t wanted to come to Merle with something so personal but, frankly, he was the only person she knew with the skills to find out exactly which John Jones was the asshole who didn’t want her. She could just ask her mom but, right now, with Nan getting worse every visit and her mom’s online business picking up since Samhain was right around the corner, she didn’t want to add to her stress.
Of course the nerd was going to demand his pound of flesh. Fair enough, she always hassled him about...nearly everything. But only because he was sexy in a way that she didn’t understand.
He wasn’t the kind of guy she usually dated. He was tall for one thing, skinny for another—and as a woman who was born a size fourteen, she usually preferred her guys bulkier. He had a thick mop of dark brown hair which curled around his face, and he habitually wore jeans, an obscure comic book superhero T-shirt and a faded gray hoodie that looked comfy and lived in. He even had thick framed glasses which he only wore when reading.
So...sexy—
Nerdy! Vanilla!
But his eyes were keenly intelligent, and he seemed to feel the attraction between them and understand that they couldn’t really do anything about it. Neither of them would be good at a long-term relationship. Neither of them wanted anything more than teasing, and even that, she had to admit, was pretty much one-sided. She would say outrageously sexy things to him and he’d just give her that calm look. Sometimes arching one eyebrow at her in that deadpan way of his, like he was waiting to see if she was serious or just trying to get a rise out of him.
Asking for something in return so suggestively... Well, it stirred her base instincts. And for the first time since she’d read the stupid fucking DNA results, she almost smiled.
She’d tried to pull a tarot card before coming to talk, but she was too agitated and conflicted about what she wanted. The cards had been a mess.
Her mind was spiraling: Will I find the right John Jones? Do I want to? How will I tell Mom? Will Mom freak out? Will I freak out?
Yeah, that was why she couldn’t trust anything she pulled. And this entire thing was messing with her energy. For the first time in her life she wasn’t sure of what to do. That wasn’t to say she always made the right choice or decision, but her gut always went all in on a choice once it had been made.
But this thing with fucking John Jones wasn’t working. So here she was sitting across from the one person who could help and had no vested interest in the outcome. Poppy and Sera were too emotionally connected to her to help make this choice. They wanted her to be happy and to have peace of mind where her biological father was concerned. Sometimes her best friends put her comfort before the truth. As much as she loved their protection, she needed to know her father.
“What did you have in mind from me?” she asked.
“You join my latest campaign. One of our players just had a baby and is taking time off from playing. But she’ll be back in January,” he said.
“Your campaign...? Are you talking about you and your merry band of nerds’ weekly D&D game?”
“Technically it’s a campaign.”
Rolling her eyes, she asked, “How long does it last?”
“This one is scheduled for six weeks. You’d have to create a new character and really play, not phone it in.”
“I don’t phone things in. You know that,” she said. Joining his game for a few weeks didn’t sound that bad. “It’s Samhain in four weeks. I would have to work around the rituals I have planned and my shop has been extra busy.”
“We can do that,” he said.
“Great. So we good?” she asked. Ready to head to the bar and order herself the largest glass of pinot noir that the bartender would give her.
“Nope.”
She looked up and met those large, chocolate-colored eyes of his. A shiver went through her. She almost wished he’d asked for a hookup in exchange for his help. Some reason for her to give into the confusing desire she had for him.
She’d pulled cards and journaled to try to figure out why he was so compelling. But apparently it was simple. That full mouth of his and those strong cheekbones made it impossible to not think about how it would be to kiss him. To put her hands on that strong jaw and wrap herself around that tall body of his.
“What?”
“I thought it would be obvious.”
Of course. He wanted her to ask him for help directly.
For a minute, she was tempted to just walk away. If she asked, he might catch the truth of what she felt for him in her eyes. It would be too close to admitting that the flirting and the teasing was just a facade to keep him at arm’s length. That she actually spent her downtime coming up with reasons to go over and talk to him when he was working.
“Are you really going to make me say it?”
He tipped his head to the side and looked straight over at her as he nodded slowly. “And you should make sure you do it nicely.”
“Merle Rutland, you big nerd, will you—”
“That’s not nice, witch.”
“Who said I was a nice witch?” She winked at him. “You know you want me in your D&D group. I did say I could rock your dungeon, so I guess we’ll find out.”
“Only if you ask nicely.”
“Will you please help me find out which John Jones is my father?” she asked.
He leaned forward and took her hand in his, rubbing his thumb along the back of her knuckles and sending a shiver up her arm that made her breasts full and her nipples tingle.
This was going to be a dangerous game.
“Yes.”
“Glad to hear it. So when can you start?” she asked. “I know you said six weeks of gaming, but will it take six weeks for you to find him?” She pulled her hand back from his.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’ll start the search and then keep you posted about the progress.”
“Great. Now?” The excited energy around her was palpable.
“Not here. I’ll do it from my computer at home. I have better resources on it. But you can start living up to your side of the bargain and creating your character.”
“What? I said I’d play. That was it.”
“To play you have to create a character where you will get to pick your skills. As the dungeon master, I can help you.”
“Was this all a ploy to get me to spend more time with you?”
“You came to me,” he pointed out. But she wasn’t wrong.
In his family, he was considered the weak one. His mom and dad had both been athletes in college, and his father was now a high school baseball coach and his mom a tennis instructor at a club near their home. His brothers were both semipro players. But Merle had just never been into sports. His father had tried putting him in every one imaginable and Merle had rejected them all. During high school he’d found D&D and started playing online with a group of people he’d never met.
Online, he was enough. He wasn’t too nerdy, and in the role-playing world, he rocked. So he wanted Liberty to see him at his best. To see if there was more to her interest in him than just flirting.
“Okay. So what are the options?” she asked.
“Why don’t you go buy us a round and I’ll pull up the D&D Beyond website so we can start creating your character?” he suggested.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. What are you drinking?”
“Guinness.”
She left and he watched her strut across the tavern toward the bar. She had on a pair of slim-fitting jeans and a sleeveless black flowy top that had moons and stars printed on it. It was made of a gauzy material that floated around as she moved, as if some kind of wind was following her.
His witch.
He knew she wasn’t his. But this was his chance to try to change that.
This project was going to be a challenge. People who didn’t want to be found were tough to ferret out. And he wrote code for a living. But he had some connections in the hacking world that he could use to help track down John Jones. He pulled his phone out, opened a coders’ networking app and wrote a quick message asking for tips as to where to start his search.
Then he took his tablet from his backpack and opened a blank account window on D&D Beyond. What character would Liberty choose? Likely a mage. She really leaned into everything witchy.
Liberty read tarot cards and charged crystals and the like since she was young. Even her mom did online spell casting and had a small shop in town. He’d always been intrigued by it, but he was a practical man. He’d never put much stock in that sort of magic. Hard work and code were the only things he relied on.
She came back, putting their glasses on the table and sitting down across from him again. “So what kind of character am I making?”
He spent the next fifteen minutes explaining the options to her and she chose to make her character a druid wood elf. He made some suggestions for her character’s backstory since this campaign was one for his reoccurring group. Then he told her about the other players. He’d write her into the storyline and they’d all meet her during a lighter session the night after tomorrow.
“Where do you play?”
“Usually at my place.”
“Where is that?” she asked.
“In that housing development near the outskirts of town.”
“You own your own home?” she asked. “I’m still paying off my student loans.”
“Yeah, I got a scholarship so...didn’t have those. Plus my day job pays really well,” he explained.
“Lucky you,” she said. “I’m not actually sure why I went to college, except maybe to meet Sera and Poppy. I mean my degree is in business studies so maybe it’s useful. But honestly I learned more from talking to Wesley’s dad about taxes than I did in four years at U of Maine.”
She finished her wine and shifted on the bench, sliding to get up and leave. Liberty turned back toward him, her hair swinging around and her eyes meeting his. “So what’s your place like? Is it a real dungeon with lots of handcuffs and chains or what?”
His cock inexplicably hardened at the thought of playing with her in a kinky dungeon. He usually didn’t respond to her when she was in this mood. But he wanted things between them to change, so he scooted down the bench until he was even with her and then leaned forward so his forehead almost touched hers.
“Plan to stay late after the session and I’ll show you,” he said.
Her pupils dilated and her breath came out in a quick exhalation. She licked her lips and he almost groaned out loud.
“Maybe I will, nerd.”
“Until then, witch.”
She headed out of the tavern and he sat there in a semi state of arousal.
This was the oddest night of his life. And that was saying something. But for the first time, he felt like the things that made him odd were good.