Maggie Shayne - An Enchanted Season

Bree kept going, leaving Abby to chat for a minute. She found Charlotte behind the counter so she deposited her bags in the back room and came back to her sister. “Whenever you’ve got a minute, we’re ready.”

“Okay.” Charlotte looked nervous as hell. “Give me five minutes.”

“Sure.” Bree didn’t have any plans for the night. Since she’d broken up with her last boyfriend six months earlier, she’d been enjoying just doing a whole lot of nothing. The relationship had been emotionally and physically exhausting, constantly trying to keep up with Kevin’s mood swings and PMS-like behavior, and she was still recovering. She leaned against the counter, inhaling the coffee bean aroma. The place smelled good, she had to admit. She glanced over at Abby, who was twirling her fingers in Brady’s shaggy hair. “Hey, who’s that guy with Danny and Amanda? The uptight-looking one?”

Charlotte looked over at their table, her hands busy wiping the back counter down. “Oh, that’s their financial advisor…or is it he’s their lawyer? I don’t know, something like that, and he’s in town from Chicago.”

Figured. “Let me get the other bags from Abby and I’ll meet you in the back room.”

Her sister didn’t really answer, just bit her lip. Bree was going to have to hurry before Charlotte wimped out on her. She was not going to tolerate Charlotte screwing up her own personal happiness out of plain old fear.

After a quick hello to everyone at the table, Bree told Abby, “Come on, bring that stuff in the back.” She flashed a smile at Piper. “We bought Christmas decorations. Big, blinky ones.”

“Cool,” was Piper’s assessment. She was a gawky kid, all legs and elbows, her hair an unflattering little bob, but she was a real peach. Bree saw her almost every weekend at the library, perusing for new reading material.

“Here, you take it,” Abby said. “I’m going to the movies with Brady.”

Annoyed, Bree took the bags Abby was shoving at her. “Is that you asking permission? Because it sounded more like you telling me, which isn’t how it works.” She and Charlotte were responsible for Abby while her parents were gone, and sometimes her little sister thought she was all grown up and then some.

Abby looked defiant, but she just said, “Can I go? Brady will drop me off.”

“Can you?” Bree asked him, not really liking the way his hand was resting on her sister’s thigh, but figuring she had no right to say anything.

“Yes, ma’am,” Brady said, with more sarcasm than deference.

“Fine. Be home by midnight.” She turned to go and accidentally looked straight into the eyes of the financial advisor/lawyer. A shiver raced through her when she realized she could sense his feelings. There was disapproval radiating from him. Toward her.

“Bree, have you met Ian Carrington?” Danny said. “He’s our lawyer and a friend of Amanda’s. Ian, this is Bree Murphy, the children’s librarian over at the Cuttersville branch.”

“And tarot card reader,” Amanda added with a grin, her hand sliding down to her slightly raised stomach.

Bree had seen Amanda’s pregnancy in the cards four months earlier. She gave a wan smile at Ian, who wasn’t smiling at all. “Nice to meet you.” Not really.

Apparently he felt the same way. He just nodded. “Likewise.” But then he raised an eyebrow and glanced at her hands. “Children’s librarian, huh?”

If it were any other guy under the age of thirty-five, she’d think he was checking her left hand for a wedding ring. But she suspected he was actually looking at her multitude of sterling silver rings and her black fingernails. That disapproval floated off him again, like a noxious cloud.

Pretentious jerk. She would have him know that Onyx was the hottest nail color of the season. Witches and nonwitches alike were wearing it.

“Yes. Children’s librarian and tarot card reader.” Deal with it. “Be home by midnight, Abby, I’m serious. I’ll see you all later.”

She had a spell to cast.

CHARLOTTE LOOKED AT ALL THE BAGS THAT BREE WAS DIGGINGthrough in bewilderment. “What is all this stuff?”

“It’s camouflage mostly. You said Will doesn’t really have any decorations. So I bought a butt-load of Christmas decorations. It’s unreal how much tacky stuff they have on the market. So I bought a bunch of stuff and you can take it over to Will’s and decorate his apartment. That way he won’t think anything of you hanging up mistletoe.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Charlotte had followed the plan until the mistletoe bit, than she had realized the plan was crap. “I’m going to look like a desperate dork if I hang mistletoe in Will’s apartment.”

Flinging herself down onto the microfiber faux suede sofa she had in her office in a soothing plum color, Charlotte bit her lip. “I can’t do it, Bree. He’s going to know .”

“Isn’t that sort of the point?” Bree emerged with a sprig of mistletoe from a florist’s box.

“That looks real.”

“Well, duh. Fake isn’t going to work. It’s the live mistletoe that holds sexual energy.”

“It’s a plant. What is sexual about that?” Yet Charlotte found herself pulling back a little when Bree waved it in her face.

Bree laughed. “It’s not going to make you spontaneously aroused or anything. You can touch it.”

She was already aroused, and had been essentially every day since the very first minute she’d met Will on her twenty-first birthday, when he’d shown up at the Rampant Lion bar with his buddies, and caught her when she’d tripped getting off her stool, the embarrassing result of alcohol consumption and a poor choice of high heels.

“I don’t need to touch it. Just tell me what to do. This whole thing is way too out there for me.” Way too out there.

“Well, the mistletoe is associated with fertility, protection, friendship, good luck, and uninhibited sexual activity.”

Hello. “Wow. Impressive little green twig. I just thought it was an excuse people used to make out.”

“That, too.” Bree pulled some ribbon out of another bag and started tying it around one of the branches. “But originally Druids used mistletoe to ward off evil spirits and to increase fertility because it stays green all winter long, even when the oak tree it grows on is dormant. Green is the color of growth and fertility.”

Good grief. “I’m not looking to be fertile!” They needed to take things one step at a time.

“It’s also the color of love and sex.”

That she’d take. Both of them. In large quantities, please.

“Which is why I bought you a green sweater to wear.” Bree finished tying off the red ribbon and pulled a cable-knit sweater out of another bag. “It’s plain and boring, just the way you like your clothes.”

How thoughtful. Charlotte rolled her eyes. Her clothes were not boring. They were classic, made from quality materials and designed to flatter her decidedly average figure. She was of average height, average weight, average backside, slightly above average bra size. She looked best in form-fitting sweaters with crisp cotton blouses underneath and a good old pair of cords or khakis and some boots with a kicky heel. Most of her sweaters were in pastels since she was blond, or occasionally when she was dressing up, she went with red. She never wore the emerald green Bree was shoving at her.

“This is furthering my conviction that I’m going to make an idiot out of myself.”

“Why? It’s not like I just gave you a push-up bra, a thong, and thigh-high stockings and told you to go for it. It’s a cable-knit sweater, loser.”

Charlotte yanked it from her sister’s hand. “You’re not being very nice to me.”