Chapter Four-Bella
A week had passed since that tumultuous kiss with Conrad Boman.
And when I say kiss, I don’t mean your average everyday smooch.
I mean the kind of kiss that could make a grown Witch reconsider her life choices, forget her own name, and possibly sign away her soul without reading the fine print.
He’d left with a resounding smack of his lips against mine.
The tease.
Ever since then, he’d been patrolling past my bakery most days, and I can only assume nights, too, when he was on duty as Deputy.
Oh, I told myself it was just a coincidence, that maybe The Tasty Tart just happened to be on the way to literally everything else in town.
But I wasn’t buying my own excuses.
It was enough to make a Witch crazy.
My hormones were out of control, my concern over my mystery arsonist was gnawing at me, and I was cranky from lack of sleep.
And on top of all that? I was panting after a man I swore I wouldn’t get serious about.
This was ridiculous.
I was the calm one.
The happy one.
The one who didn’t need a man to make her day brighter.
The one who welcomed whatever excitement the new dawn brought, whether it was a delivery of perfect strawberries or a sudden frog rainstorm.
That was the beauty of my hometown.
Anything could happen at any given moment in Castor’s Corner.
A supernatural population meant that expecting anything else was simply foolish.
I was rarely foolish.
Unless, of course, we were talking about my experiences with men—which, er, yeah, let’s not unpack that just yet.
Despite my best efforts, I’d been a confused mess these last few weeks.
And this was so not my norm.
Evie and Donny were usually the ones fretting about all the weird curveballs life threw us, while I reveled in them.
I’d always liked surprises.
Some of them were even good ones.
Take this morning, for example.
Surprise number one: Sunshine in the forecast after weeks of clouds and cold.
Nice surprise.
Surprise number two: When I pulled my hair into its usual ponytail, my freshly trimmed ends (thanks to Donny’s magical scissors) bounced into soft curls all on their own.
Totally unexpected.
Totally cute.
Another win.
Surprise number three: I found a crumpled old scratch-off lottery ticket at the bottom of my Vera Bradley bag (one of my three hundred seventy-two, give or take). I scratched it off, and I won $4.
Hey, for a small business owner? That’s practically a windfall.
So yeah, the day was shaping up nicely.
My magic was humming, my recipes for the Summer Solstice Festival were planned, and my besties were getting married at midnight on the big night.
I was baking their cake—free of charge.
Not because they couldn’t afford to pay me (please, between Evie’s inheritance and her mayoral salary and Jaxson’s Sheriff-Wolf-whatever income, they were set), but because some things were too important to put a price tag on.
This was my gift.
From my hands, my magic, my heart, straight to theirs.
I was pulling out all the stops—tier upon tier of perfection, each layer more decadent than the last.
Hours of sketching, planning, and recipe testing had gone into this baby.
My kitchen table was buried under notes and swatches of fondant colors, little jars of edible shimmer, and enough cake boards to build a fort.
This wasn’t just a cake.
Oh no. This was the cake.
The kind that made people gasp when they saw it and moan when they tasted it.
The kind that would be immortalized in wedding photos and whispered about at every future Summer Solstice Festival.
The kind that made Witches and Shifters alike weep frosting-induced tears of joy.
And it wasn’t lost on me that I’d been waiting for this moment my whole life—my chance to create the quintessential wedding cake.
The one all other cakes would be measured against.
The fact it was for my two oldest and dearest friends?
That was just icing.
And honestly, the timing couldn’t have been better.
Because I needed something—anything—to keep my brain from circling back to all things tall, sexy, and impossible to ignore.
Otherwise known as Conrad Boman.
The man was like the culinary equivalent of salted caramel.
Sweet, tempting, just the right amount of sinful, and absolutely impossible to get out of your head once you’d had a taste.
And thanks to that recent kiss—you know what I’m talking about, uh huh, that kiss—I’d had more than a taste.
Which was exactly why I needed to keep my hands, my mind, and my heart busy.
So, if anyone asked, I wasn’t avoiding my problems.
I was simply busy, elbow-deep in buttercream.
Sure, Bells, tell yourself that.
Anywho, the last few days had been quiet.
No suspicious smoke.
No mystery shadows lurking outside my shop.
No broken cutlery or upended trash cans.
I’d been lulled into a false sense of security, my mind wandering far too often to a certain tall, broad-shouldered, emerald-eyed—ugh, no.
Not going there.
Not out loud.
Things were looking up, and I was almost ninety-nine percent sure I was going to get over this little hiccup I was having in my brain—not my heart—over a certain sexy Python and emerge all the better for having refused his claim.
Right? Right.
It was just optimism galore in my neck of the woods, er, Castor’s Corner.
That was my story, and yada yada, you know the drill.
The sky was still dark when I pulled my car into my designated space in The Tasty Tart’s parking lot.
Something was amiss. The hair on the back of my neck started to rise. Petyr growled in his seat.
Oh no.
Sniff.
Oh no no no.
Sniff sniff.
Crap on a cracker!
“That’s smoke, my Witchy,” Petyr murmured from beside me.
“Oh no. Not again.” My stomach dropped as I dialed 333—our own Castor’s Corner version of 911—while already sprinting toward the back entrance.
I grabbed the fire extinguisher, whispered a quick enhancement charm, and blasted the storefront where a display rack was engulfed in flames.
“Stand back!” a deep voice ordered.
Conrad.
And right beside him—Ryan, Donny’s mate, equally massive and equally heroic-looking in his firefighting regalia.
They took over without hesitation, but Petyr put himself between me and the fire like the stubborn little puffball he was.
As my familiar, his entire job was to keep me safe, and he was very, very good at it.
“Outside, Bella. Now,” Conrad commanded, stepping in front of me with his arms spread wide.
His face was grim, jaw tight, eyes locked on mine. Concern radiated from him in waves.
“He is right, come.”
Petyr tugged me toward the curb.
I let him.
The last thing this magical town needed was me adding to the drama by inhaling smoke.
“You okay, my Witchy?” Petyr asked.
“Not really,” I muttered, plopping down on the curb and pressing my hands to my face.
Normally, by now, the scent of fresh dough, sugar, and melted chocolate would be curling through my shop, drawing in customers like moths to a flame—bad analogy, given the current situation, but still true.
I lived for those early hours.
For kneading soft delicacies under my palms.
For working out my problems as I worked out the dough.
For filling trays with glossy pastries and wicked little donuts stuffed with everything from cream cheese and lemon curd to chocolate ganache and bourbon caramel.
That was my magic. That was me.
And now, twice in a couple of months, someone had decided to take a match to it.
I had no idea why, but looking at the destruction that surrounded me, I had a terrible feeling things were going to get worse before they got better.
And I wasn’t at all sure I could handle it.