Maggie Shayne - An Enchanted Season

“Dude, watch it.”

Abby was holding her hand out in front of her, preventing him from slamming into her. They had parked behind him on the street and he hadn’t even noticed them getting out of their car.

“Sorry.” Testing the zipper on his pants to make sure it was still up and locked in place, Will tried to focus in front of him and reestablish a hold on reality. “What are you two up to?”

“Panties shopping,” Abby said, tossing her thick, dark hair over her shoulder, exposing a multitude of black and silver necklaces that looked like they were choking the life out of her. “And is your fly down or do you have to like go to the bathroom? You keep grabbing yourself.”

“Excuse me?” Will blinked at her. What was with the Murphy sisters today? They seemed determined to make him uncomfortable, and he was equally determined to ignore the question about his crotch. “ Where were you?”

“Shopping. I bought a bunch of thongs,” Abby elaborated. She dug into the bag on her arm. “Black, and a pink pair, and one with cherries on it…You want to see?”

Only if he was a total sicko. She was a freakin’ baby. “No, that’s okay.” He glanced over at Bree, wanting some help. Somebody needed to rein Abby in, and it wasn’t going to be him.

Bree raised an eyebrow at him, a slight smile on her face. “Abby, Will doesn’t want to see your underwear. He only wants to see Charlotte’s naughty bits.”

“What?” He didn’t even know what the hell a naughty bit was, but he wasn’t about to admit wanting to see it. Even if he did probably want to see it on Charlotte.

The middle sister, and by far the most straightforward, Bree shook her head, fingering the star hanging from her neck, on the outside of her black, capelike winter coat. “I’ve been pretending I didn’t know this for about a million years, and I’m tired of keeping quiet. You’re in love with Charlotte. It’s totally obvious.”

Shit. “To who?” Please tell him it wasn’t obvious to Charlotte, because he was going to find himself seriously embarrassed if that was the case.

“To me. I’m empathic, remember? I can sense your feelings.”

Right. Bree thought she was a witch who could somehow know accurately everyone’s feelings. While Will wasn’t going to accept that witches existed just as a matter of course, he wasn’t inclined to flat out dismiss the possibility, either. But Bree had been saying that she was one ever since he’d met her and he’d yet to see her do anything magical. Even this revelation wasn’t all that amazing. He imagined it wouldn’t take much for someone to guess his true feelings for Charlotte if they spent as much time with him and Charlotte as Bree did.

“Can you sense that I don’t want to talk about this?” He zipped his jacket back up and dug in his pocket for his keys.

“She loves you, too.”

Will did not need to hear that. “No, she doesn’t.”

“She does?” Abby asked in amazement. “I thought they were just best friends.”

“Hello. Yes, she loves him. As more than a friend. She wants him naked, and he wants the same for her. And neither one of them will make a move. Yet we all know they’d make the perfect couple.”

It was really annoying and painful to stand there and listen to Bree feed all of his delusions. “Bree, just leave it alone.”

“If she gave you a very obvious sign that she was interested, would you go for it?”

He wanted to scoff and tell her it would never happen, but he figured the best way to get her to lay off was to be honest. “Yeah. Sure. But short of her kissing me, with tongue, which is never going to happen, I’m not going to believe she’s interested in me.”

Bree smiled. That close-lipped knowing grin scared him.

“Trust me, Will-sie,” she said. “Bree is going to make everything right.”

God help him.

CHARLOTTE SHOVED BOXES UP AGAINST THE GARAGE WALLSwith manic fervor, her hands shaking slightly. She had mentally unzipped Will’s pants. How the hell had she done that?

She had wanted it to happen. She’d visualized it happening. Then had watched the reality right before her eyes. His jacket, and then his pants, had come undone. The jacket had been wishful thinking. The pants had been some kind of a test to herself, to prove the jacket was a coincidence.

It wasn’t. She had mentally demanded his pants unsnap, and they had.

She had the power to strip men with her mind.

Wow. That was truly mind-boggling.

But it had to be a fluke. A coincidence. Not real. Right?

Charlotte remembered how she had mentally chanted, “Down, down, down,” while she had visualized Will’s zipper descending. And then it had.

Yikes.

“What’s the matter with you?” her sister Abby asked from behind her. “You’re like throwing those boxes around.”

Charlotte stopped shoving the huge empty Christmas tree box into the corner and grabbed the robotic reindeer and dragged him out, determined to be normal. She would put the deer in the yard, plug his ass in, and have a normal Christmas like normal people did, who weren’t witches and didn’t make men’s pants unzip with their minds.

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” That was Bree’s voice now, sounding concerned, but Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to look at her sister. Despite being totally different, she and Bree had always been close, and were only two years apart in age. Since they’d moved into their grandmother’s house together the year before when Bree had inherited it, they’d gotten even tighter. Bree would know she was hiding something if she looked at her.

Apparently she knew anyway. “Charlotte, come on. You’re really upset. Tell us what’s wrong. Is it Will? We saw him in the driveway looking a little freaked. Did you guys finally give into the inevitable and make out or something?”

She wished. “No.” Grappling with the deer, dragging him across the concrete floor, she glanced at Bree. “His pants just unzipped, that’s all.”

“Why would that make both of you freak out?” Abby asked, swinging a shopping bag in her hand. “You’re like almost thirty and you’ve known each other for half your lives. I don’t think seeing him unzipped would be that big of a deal.”

It really wouldn’t be if she wasn’t totally in love with him and she hadn’t made it happen by the sheer force of her sexually frustrated will. “I think I did it. With my mind. Which is impossible, of course, so clearly I’ve lost that same mind, and the fact that I have these feelings for Will is causing me to have a mental breakdown.”

Bree held up her hand. “Stop right there. You’re not having a mental breakdown. Now put down the damn deer and let’s go in the house and talk about this.”

“I have to finish with the Christmas decorations.” Charlotte got the reindeer to the driveway and switched her hands to his ears, hoping it would be easier to pick him up that way. He wasn’t heavy, just awkward.

Except that her sister yanked the reindeer away from her and slapped him down in a snow bank right next to the garage. “The deer can wait. There’s almost a month until Christmas. We need to talk.”

“No.” But she already knew she’d lost. Bree was much more stubborn than she was and she would keep at her until she confessed the whole thing. Might as well get it over with because she did not like confrontation or having her sisters annoyed with her.

“Go in the kitchen and sit.” Bree pointed at the back door.

“Fine.” Charlotte figured she could use a little reassurance.

Five minutes later they were sitting around the big round table in the kitchen that Charlotte had painted a distressed white, settled in creaky ladderback chairs, teacups in front of them.