Chapter Two
Blair took her orange mug and rushed right out of Shirley’s Sugar Mountain without saying a word, ignoring Luke’s voice calling out, ‘Blair, wait!’
She was not going to wait. She was not going to look at that man one second longer than she needed to, because if she did, the image of the last time she saw Luke Caldwell would come rushing back to her.
Luke, a skinny teenager then but just as beautiful, looking at her with pleading eyes, begging her not to walk away from their relationship.
Luke telling Blair over and over again that he loved her, and that he was willing to stay right here in Moonbeam Hollow with her if that’s what she wanted.
Luke finally telling her that if she wanted him to leave, she would never see or hear from him again.
The last thing Blair needed was to relive the moment when her heart had been ripped in two because she told Luke Caldwell that she didn’t love him.
It had been a lie. She’d loved him so, so much. More than she thought was possible.
And now he was here. Back in Moonbeam Hollow, and right next door.
Doing . . . what exactly? Blair had stalked Luke’s social media after he left town.
She may be a witch, but she was only human.
Blair knew Luke had studied architecture like he’d intended to.
She knew he worked in a top Toronto firm designing skyscrapers and hotels.
He wore suits and ties to work, not perfectly fitting jeans and flannel.
Why was Luke working construction in Moonbeam Hollow instead of designing skylines in the city?
To be honest, Blair didn’t really want the answers to those questions.
It had taken years for Blair to finally get over Luke, and clearly she hadn’t done a very good job of it, based on her pounding heart as she rushed through the Harvest Moon Café straight to the privacy of her back room.
She sat at her cluttered desk and put her head in her hands.
This was ridiculous.
She should not be responding this way. Luke was only a man.
The fact that he was her first and truly only love meant nothing.
So what if they had history? Blair had some sort of history with three-quarters of the permanent residents of Moonbeam Hollow, seeing as she grew up here.
Mind you, her history with others wasn’t nearly as intimate.
The door to the back room opened, and her sister Bianca walked in. ‘Why are you wearing the pumpkin spice latte you took next door?’
‘Not now, Bianca. I came here to be alone. Someone needs to stay out front.’
‘Agatha sent me here, saying I had to support my sister. She’s guarding the counter and said she’d holler if someone needs one of us. I have no doubt we’ll hear her.’
Blair agreed. Not for the first time, Blair wondered if she should cast a silence spell on all the Stitch Witches.
‘What happened next door that made you look like the whitest Brown woman I’ve ever seen?’ Bianca asked. ‘Did you catch a glimpse of the sexy contractor’s . . . tools?’
Blair rolled her eyes at her sister. ‘This is not what supporting me looks like, Bianca.’
Bianca crossed her arms, leaning against the door. ‘Briarwoods are famously bad at the emotional support thing. What happened?’
Blair exhaled long before speaking. ‘Luke was next door.’
‘Luke . . . Perry? Evans? Skywalker?’
Why were little sisters so infuriating? Blair gave her sister an annoyed glare. ‘Luke Caldwell.’
‘Oh.’ Bianca’s forehead furrowed. ‘I think I would have been less surprised if you said Skywalker. Like as in your nerdy-ex-from-high-school Luke?’
Blair nodded.
‘So, you poured a pumpkin spice latte on yourself and ran away? That’s not what I would have done.’
‘Still not really helping, Bianca.’ Blair pulled off her cream sweater and put on the blue sweatshirt she kept at her desk. It didn’t really match her brown tights and skirt, but it would do. ‘I need to figure out how to calm myself before I go back out there.’
Bianca reached into her pocket and took out a small brown bottle. ‘Ashwagandha tincture. I distilled it in North Africa. Put three drops under your tongue.’
Blair raised a brow. Potions were really Blair’s thing. ‘You carry tinctures in your pocket?’
Bianca reached again into the pocket of her black skirt and pulled out a handful of similar tiny brown bottles. ‘You never know what can happen in a day. Go on, it’s not magic, just a good old-fashioned medicinal plant extract. It will calm your nerves.’
Blair did as instructed, trusting her sister because Bianca really did know her way around plants.
‘I need to go,’ Bianca said after Blair gave her the bottle back.
‘Got a call from Raj’s farm – there may be an issue with this year’s pumpkin crop, and Raj wants me to take a look.
The festival will be screwed without enough pumpkins.
Try not to crash into any more exes. Oh wait, you don’t have any others. ’ Bianca smirked.
* * *
Blair closed the café late that night because her bakery supplier had got mysteriously lost on the one straight road into Moonbeam Hollow.
He finally arrived with muffins, bagels and croissants for the next few days, muttering something about cats on highways in a kind of confused daze.
All Blair could think of while she unpacked the baked goods was who would want these when the bakery café next door would presumably be baking in-house?
And that made her wonder again why the hell Luke Caldwell was back in Moonbeam Hollow at all.
The man was an architect, not a plumber.
Maybe that hadn’t been him? Maybe Blair’s subconscious brain was playing a nasty trick on her and superimposed Luke’s ridiculously handsome face onto the body of a lumberjack.
(Luke’s physique had not looked like that when she last saw him.)
But no. Blair knew it in her bones – that was him.
It wasn’t only his face and that smirk. He smelled like Luke.
Smiled like Luke. And the particular way he said her name, sounding equally exasperated and enchanted by her.
That was him. He was right next door . .
. She wasn’t going to be able to avoid him.
Immediately after Blair turned her open sign to closed, her phone rang. It was Gladys, the owner of the bookstore across the street, the Wolf Willow Bookstore.
‘Blair dear, I saw your light on. Please don’t mention this to Belinda, but would you be able to pop over to the bookstore a moment? I stayed late to do inventory, but the lights are going absolutely haywire – I have no idea what’s going on.’
Blair glanced out the window at the bookstore. And yes, the store looked like a flickering candle.
‘I’ll be right there,’ Blair said.
After Blair locked her door, she rushed across the street to the bookstore, not even glancing in the direction of the bakery. Luke probably wasn’t there, anyway. Hopefully he took the hint that Blair didn’t want to talk to him.
The Wolf Willow Bookstore was a charming store packed with dark fixtures and bright windows.
The moment Blair walked in, she was hit with the familiar scent of old paper and the black tea that Gladys was constantly sipping.
The wood floors had a warm patina, and the narrow aisles were lined with dark shelves crammed with books, everything from romance and fantasy to sci-fi and historical novels.
But the amber lights were flickering, casting the store intermittently in shadow.
Gladys was behind the counter at the computer, a worried expression on her kind face.
She was a lovely, capable woman who’d run the bookstore for decades, but she was easily in her seventies now.
She took off her glasses, letting them hang on a beaded chain around her neck and pushed her short grey hair behind her ears.
‘Thank you so much for rescuing me, Blair! I have no idea why the lights would be doing this, unless it is something to do with the breaker. The last time this happened was when we hosted a midnight release party for that hockey romance book, but that made sense considering the snow machine. But today has been full of mysterious nonsense!’
Blair glanced around the store. Other than the lights, everything looked fine. ‘What else happened today?’
‘A large order of a popular fantasy book came in with all the covers upside down! I had to cancel the pre-orders, almost causing a riot. You know how feral those romantasy readers are!’
Blair’s eyes widened. This was getting strange. First, Raj’s farm and now the bookstore? It was no wonder Blair had been feeling that something wasn’t right since she woke up. Equinoxes were supposed to be about balance, yet this town had been off kilter all day.
‘May I ask, why don’t you want Belinda to know?’
Gladys shook her head. ‘Oh, that girl would come right into the store if she knew there was a problem. Today is her day off, but she already came in once to deal with the defective book order. She can fret over Wolf Willow Bookstore tomorrow. Belinda stacked the boxes of defective books in front of the electrical panel, so I cannot reach it without using the ladder, which I am expressly forbidden to use. Hip-fracture risk, you know.’
Blair exhaled. ‘I know where the breaker box is – you stay and finish your work.’ Blair headed to the back stockroom of the bookstore. She’d been here before a few times when she’d helped her sister take inventory when large orders came in.