Amber Leigh Williams - Navy Seal's Match

Harmony shook her head, watching the display between man and dog. “If that’s a guard dog, I’m a canary.”

“Breeds like rottweiler can be seriously misunderstood in terms of behavior.” Mavis gestured to the lovey canine licking the seam of Gavin’s jeans near the knee in a slow savory manner. “Exhibit A.”

“So you’re a righteous beast, eh?” Gavin lowered his crown to Prometheus’s bowed one. “That makes two of us.”

The gesture from man to dog did something. Mavis’s palms dampened. Her lips parted as a rush of warmth flooded her. It started in her belly and curled like a wave before she sucked it back. Feelings, she reminded herself. No .

She studiously rolled her eyes as Prometheus continued to vie for Gavin’s affections. Trying not to follow the path of Gavin’s stroking hands on Prometheus’s ruff, she looked to the smoking truck. “What happened?”

Harmony groaned. “Overheated. Liv’s going to kill me.” She shivered as though contemplating the response of her cousin, Olivia Leighton, to having her beloved Ford maligned in such a way. Squinting from beneath the brim of the baseball cap that advertised the cropdusting and flight instruction business she shared with Mavis’s father, Harmony frowned at the steam. “We’ll have to call James for a tow.”

Gavin gained his feet. “It wouldn’t have blown its top if you didn’t drive like a heretic.”

“I drive just fine,” Harmony said dismissively.

“You drive like somebody trained in low-level aerobatics,” Gavin argued. “Which you are.”

“You like my driving,” she pointed out. “It puts you back in action, which you miss.”

Mavis watched his mouth fold and she quickly changed the subject. “At least you made it to Miss Zelda’s.”

“Everybody calls this woman Miss Zelda ,” Gavin pointed out.

“So?” Mavis asked.

“So, normally that would mean she’s a person of importance or she’s older than...you know... Betty White.”

“Betty rocks,” Harmony declared.

“Actually, nobody knows how old Zelda is,” Mavis informed them. “I’m pretty sure anybody who does is dead.”

“So, great. She’s like biblical,” he muttered. His arms crossed over his big chest. “You set me up with an old lady?”

His smile was on the verge of creeping back into play. She sighed a little. A little , she told herself when the noise made her cringe. “You know what they say,” she said with a shrug. “Age is only a state of mind.”

“Uh-huh.”

He kept looking at her, stance stern, eyes amused and...unseeing. So why, again, did she feel like...

Like he was touching her?

Harmony’s voice broke into the interlude. “Wait a second. You two aren’t...”

Gavin slowly turned his head to her. “Aren’t what?” he asked when she only gawked at them.

“You guys aren’t into each other, are you?” Harmony asked. She held up her hands and took a step back. “Because blech !”

“Seriously?” Mavis responded. “When my brother’s not in training, aren’t you two normally camped out in bed together when your daughter’s not looking?”

“Good point,” Gavin said with a nod.

“Still, this better be some sort of revenge joke,” Harmony told them. “A new tactic to show me how awkward it’s been for the two of you since Kyle and I got together.”

“Of course it’s a joke,” Mavis said. Because how could Harmony’s brother be flirting with her? He was dealing with God only knew how many issues. For example, she was pretty sure he hadn’t yet come to terms with his disability. And she definitely, definitely was not his type.

She backtracked, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “Grab your stuff. I’ll go tell Miss Zelda you’re here. Harmony, you can call for a tow inside. Come on, Prometheus.”

The dog reluctantly fell into step. She reached down and laid her hand against his snout when he sought her. It was still warm from Gavin’s touch.

If she wasn’t Gavin’s type, why did she feel his eyes on her as she walked away?

CHAPTER THREE

“SOMETHIN’ WAYLAID ME in the shower,” Gavin announced to Mavis as he wandered into the kitchen, closely following the mental blueprint he’d drawn of Zelda’s house during the introductory tour. It wasn’t the simplest layout, but he wasn’t blind enough that he couldn’t trust his keen inner compass. It only made most tasks he’d once thought simple now frustrating and a few everyday skills, like driving, impossible.

He found a halo of hair underneath one of the florescent lights on the other side of the high countertop. “Some kind of tree,” he elaborated.

Mavis answered, “Eucalyptus.”

Gavin frowned. The light had gone from the windows. There were a lot of windows in Miss Zelda’s house. The harshness of electric lighting burned the working parts of his right retina. “So the old lady’s aware she’s got plants growing in places they shouldn’t?”

“If you call her ‘old lady,’ she’s likely to strike you dead at some point. And, yes.” He heard a rustle. Pages turning. She was reading a book. Here at Zelda’s, half past dark? “The plants are refreshing. For most people.”

He wrapped his fingers around the edge of granite and jerked his chin at her. “What’re you doing?”

“Studying,” she said plainly.

Feeling around the prep space, he found a large wooden bowl. Recognizing the cool touch of a smooth apple’s surface, he palmed it and brought it to his nose to sniff. “Algebra test in the morning?”

“In your mind, am I still a fresh-faced fourteen-year-old? Pre-tats? Pre-piercings? Prepubescent?”

Not at all, he mused, remembering what had transpired at the inn under the bougainvillea. Ah, that bougainvillea.

Passing the apple from one hand to the other, he countered, “Studying what?”

“Genealogical records.” More rustling. Gavin saw the white face of a page flash as she flipped to the next.

“Mmm.” He took a crunchy, satisfying bite from the apple.

Her head was low over the book. Her hair fell forward at a slicing angle. “It comes with the territory.”

“Territory?”

“The paranormal investigation and research territory,” she explained. She lifted her face. It shone under the bright light, freckles pronounced. He could see the red bow of her mouth. It’d always been lush, like that of her mother, Adrian. The dark slant of her eyes was masked by a large set of reading glasses. Old-fashioned, from what he could tell, and cat-eye. “Didn’t Miss Zelda tell you? This is where our spooky little business comes together.”

Gavin stopped chewing. “Here?”

“Yes. Here.”

He worked his jaw, deciding to study the red coating of the apple instead.

After several seconds, Mavis said, “Is that a problem?”

“No.” He shook his head. “No. Just...on the tour earlier, nobody mentioned athames or cauldrons.”

“Why would it matter if there were athames and cauldrons?” Mavis wondered. “I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.”

“When I trip over a chair and fall on or in either, that’d be a big problem. Unless you witches have broken into the field of advanced healing.”

“You do realize neither Zelda nor I practice Wicca, witchcraft, or anything of the spiritual or magic variety?”

“Communing with the dead?” he said pointedly.

“We listen,” she corrected. “It’s more science than anything.”

Gavin lowered his voice. “And what do people who do actual science have to say about that?”

Mavis’s sigh floated to him. She flipped more pages, with more force. “Some pay attention. Some don’t.”