Chapter Two #2
The back storeroom was small, with boxes covering the floor, including several in front of the electrical panel.
Blair moved the stepladder and climbed it, reaching over the boxes to open the panel.
The breaker switches were neatly labelled, and the one marked front of store was flipped off, which was strange.
How could the light be flickering without power?
Blair pushed the breaker up, but about a second later, it went right back down to the off position.
Blair frowned. How could the power have surged the moment she flipped the switch?
Then it flipped again, going back to the on position.
The air filled with a burning plastic scent.
What was happening? A crash behind Blair startled her, and she turned to see a pile of books on the floor, and an empty shelf on the bookcase above it.
As Blair watched, a book slowly slid off another shelf, hanging in the air for a fraction of a second before dropping to the floor with a thud.
The next book did the same. Within seconds, the shelf was empty, with each book sliding one at a time off the shelf and crashing onto the floor, all while the switch continued to flip on and off, making the flickering even more intense.
Blair froze, terrified and confused. This was beyond troubling, now. Gladys burst into the storeroom, and the lights suddenly turned on, the books stilling in an instant. Blair might be losing her mind, but she had the distinct impression that someone was laughing at her.
‘What is going on?’ Gladys asked.
Blair blinked. She had no idea what was happening but had a good reason to think that whatever it was, it had a magical cause. But Blair couldn’t tell Gladys that.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. The breaker switch was sticking, so I had to flip it a few times.’
Gladys frowned, eyes moving from Blair on a stepladder at the far end of the storeroom, to the pile of books on the floor near the door.
‘Not sure why those books fell, though.’ Blair let out an awkward laugh. ‘Maybe I was using too much force?’
Gladys looked sceptical, but she was not the type to suspect someone of wrongdoings. ‘Oh dear. I just shelved those yesterday. Clearly I did a poor job of it. I’ll tidy them tomorrow.’
They left the storeroom, and the door to the bookstore immediately crashed open.
Blair yelped aloud, her heart racing. Gladys also screamed, grabbing Blair’s arm tightly.
And of course, because the disasters kept stacking up on each other tonight, Luke Caldwell burst inside.
He was still in his flannel and jeans with the addition of a knit hat, looking like a lumberjack superhero here to save the damsels in distress.
Blair’s heart was already in overdrive, but now it felt like it would beat right out of her chest. Luke had been a cute teenager, but he was a devastatingly handsome man.
‘Is everything okay here?’ he said. ‘I saw lights flickering . . .’ He paused. ‘Oh. Hi, Blair.’
Blair didn’t know what to say because Luke wasn’t supposed to be in her life anymore, so she wasn’t supposed to know how to talk to him. Her hands fisted.
‘You gave us quite the fright, young man!’ Gladys scolded. ‘All is well, though. Just some electrical issues, but Blair here has fixed them!’
Luke raised one sceptical brow. Did he think Blair wasn’t capable of flipping a breaker switch?
Blair stared at Luke, breathing deep in an attempt to calm her racing pulse.
Why was this happening to her? ‘I . . . am going . . . to go . . .’ Blair walked right past Luke Caldwell and out of the bookstore.
She crossed the street, planning to go back to her café and, like the grown woman she was, hide until Luke was gone.
Of course, he followed her.
‘Blair, wait up,’ his deep voice said as she reached the café door.
Blair didn’t want to embarrass herself by running a third time, so she forced herself to stop, turning to face Luke in the middle of the empty sidewalk. His handsome face was lit by streetlights.
Blair forced her expression to stay blank. ‘Luke. Why are you still here?’
One side of his lip quirked up. That adorably smug look had been her undoing once before, and she wouldn’t let it affect her now. ‘I was waiting for you. Google said your café is supposed to close at six on Tuesdays, but it’s almost eight.’
‘You waited for me to close like a stalker?’
He smirked. ‘No, I waited like a person who wanted to talk to you but didn’t want to bother you while you were working.’
‘How did you even know this is my café?’
He took one step forward, pulling his hat off his head. ‘Um, because you and I once daydreamed about opening a café in Moonbeam Hollow?’
Blair’s hand fisted, her fight-or-flight instinct in high gear. She wasn’t sure what to say . . . Why are you here? Why were you installing a sink in a competitor’s business next door? Why did Gladys’s lights take on a life of their own while an invisible force dropped fantasy epics on the floor?
Luke took another step forward so he was only a few feet away. His hair was shorter than he used to wear it. And his stubble told her that this Luke Caldwell could grow a beard, unlike the one she’d dumped.
Blair winced. She’d dumped him. Horribly. Why was he even willing to speak to her?
‘Can I walk you home?’ he asked. ‘I assume you’re still on Acorn Lane?’
He should be so angry with her, not smirking playfully.
If he’d been the one to break up with Blair right after she’d told him she loved him, Blair would be plotting revenge worse than the Wicked Witch of the West. She would never set foot in the town where the relationship started and catastrophically ended. Ever.
Blair closed her eyes, wishing she’d spent more time practising that invisibility spell so she and her clothes could disappear.
But she couldn’t. She was an adult, and she would deal with this situation like an adult.
Even if part of her was screaming to start snapping at him like they did when they were teenagers.
She still needed to find out more about this bakery next door – the one that could very well put her out of business.
And there was no better person to learn about it from than the contractor overseeing construction.
Or the architect who’d designed it. Or the plumber who’d installed the sink.
Or whatever Luke was to Shirley’s Sugar Mountain.
‘Yeah, I’m still on Acorn,’ Blair said.
‘Can you refrain from running away or tossing hot coffee on me during a five-minute walk?’ he asked. ‘Or are you planning to throw yourself at me again?’
Blair glared at him. Why had she ever liked this person? She started walking fast, and he jogged a bit to catch up.
‘It’s wild being back.’ Luke was next to her now. ‘The whole world changes, but Moonbeam Hollow stays the same.’
Was that a crack about the fact that Blair was still here?
‘What brings you back, anyway?’ She let out an anxious laugh. ‘I didn’t expect to see you . . . as evidenced by me spilling a pumpkin spice latte all over you.’
He chuckled, absently rubbing his leg where the coffee had spilled. ‘Was that what it was? Smelled amazing. I assume you make your own syrups?’
‘Of course I do. My pumpkin spice lattes are the best around.’
‘Same Blair . . . you used to make the best iced coffees. Yeah, I probably should have told you I’d be here. To be honest, I haven’t been to Moonbeam Hollow in so long, I assumed nothing would be the same. Including you.’ He turned to glance at Blair. ‘But you’re exactly the same.’
She wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not, because Blair had changed in the last twelve years.
True, she still had wavy black hair and preferred tights and skirts over jeans any day, but she was a hell of a lot stronger than she’d been back then.
She’d had to grow up fast when she was put in charge of her sisters.
‘You’re not the same,’ Blair blurted out without thinking.
‘You look older.’ And more built. And hotter.
But she wasn’t going to say those things.
‘Is your hair thinning?’ she added, mostly to prevent herself from mentioning his forearms.
Luke laughed again. ‘Yep, same Blair. Straight for the jugular.’ He made a stabbing himself in the heart motion.