Page 3 of Pitch a Witch
Awkward didn’t cover it.
“Talking about food, you must try Hazel’s cupcakes, Ace.” I almost swallowed my tongue when Amber beamed at the beta. His gaze darkened as it bore into mine, and I gave my best attempt at impersonating a deer in headlights while trying to slow the galloping of my heart.
Why me?
“Oh, yeah, Mom. He muusstt try Hazel’s cupcakes.” Stella chortled and wiggled her eyebrows. I wanted to kill the kid. “They are yummy.” Clinging to my arm, she giggled so hard she snorted and slapped her hand over her mouth.
My face was on fire.
“Stella, manners,” Amber chastised her daughter sternly. “I swear she was the sweetest girl only yesterday.” The older woman shook her head at the beta. “One day they are sweet and adorable, and the next they are insubordinate little gremlins that feed on your soul.”
Ace chuckled seeing Amber’s grimace but winked at Stella when she gasped in outrage at her mother’s comment. I made a half-hearted attempt at laughing, but it sounded forced even to my own ears. It was cut short when the young girl stormed away from where we were standing on the outside patio, and Amber rushed after her with an apologetic look thrown my way.
“Kids.” I snickered awkwardly, wishing I was anywhere else but on that patio with this particular man.
“It’s nice to see you again, Hazel.” Ace didn’t waste time and spoke in a tone charged with accusation.
If I’d been a fair person, I had no reason to dislike the guy. He never did anything I didn’t encourage, and then some. Honestly, his only fault had been that he’d wanted more than I was emotionally ready to offer at the time. Plus, fairness had nothing to do with the situation I found myself in anyway.
“Is it, though?” Finally meeting his eyes, I smiled thinly. “Hit me with it, Ace. Now is your chance to pour out everything you didn’t get a chance to say.”
“Coward.” I jerked at the calmness in that one word.
“What?”
“You heard me.” Stepping close enough that his cologne surrounded me in a cloud of fresh citrus, he looked down at me through a half-lidded stare. “I said you are a coward, Hazel Byrne.”
“O-kay then.” Grappling with my heartbeat in the hope not to sound breathless, I cocked my hip and speared him with a fierce glare. “Insults it is, then. Let’s see what else you’ve got, big man. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
With a sigh, he stepped back but reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. I stiffened. “I apologize. It’s not my intention to make you uncomfortable, Hazel. The reasons that made you disappear on me are your own, and I don’t want that to be the cause of you avoiding me while you are here.”
“It’s not like I didn’t deserve it.” Mumbling because all the fight drained out of me, I answered his slight smile with one of my own. “But if you remember, I did tell you I’m an ass the day we met.”
“That you did.” Chuckling, he relaxed the stiffness in his shoulders, which had escaped my notice until that moment.
Probably because the white t-shirt he had on stuck to him like its life depended on it, outlining every sculpted line of muscle on his torso. I might freely admit that I was an ass, but I was not a blind ass. The shifter was stunning, and what was worse was he knew it.
“How are you holding up?” Typical Ace, he cared more about everyone’s comfort than his own. Including mine, though he should’ve flipped me off the moment he saw me and walked away.
“It’s a dream come true, let me tell ya. I’m having a blast.” With a sigh, I followed him to the coolers filled with ice so we could grab drinks, too aware of the heat of his palm on my lower back.
“That bad, huh?” The rumble in his chest as he chuckled softly sounded familiar and put me at ease.
I never understood why he always found me funny, but every single time he laughed, I liked it very much. I would’ve loved having Ace as a friend because he was one of the good ones, but I’d screwed that up when I helped him take off his pants. Not that I had something against staying friends when things didn’t work out, but as soon as emotions got involved, friendship bought a one-way ticket out of town. I was a self-confessed bitch, but I’d never be so cruel to play with a person’s feelings.
“Sitting on my ass while others may be in danger never sat well with me.” Accepting the beer bottle he offered, I clinked it off his before taking a small sip. “I’m in much better shape now than ever before, yet all I do is practice … and bake cupcakes, apparently.”
“Very good cupcakes, according to Amber.” His smile slipped, and he moved closer to keep the conversation between us. “I agree with Alex that you should stay for now. So far, we have three to four attempts to enter the pack’s grounds daily, Hazel. The first couple of days, it was just vampires and one or two brave bastards from the Blackwood pack. Lately, we’ve also been adding demons to the body count.”
My breath got stuck in my windpipe like a fist had been jammed there. My chest tightened painfully as I searched for a way to convey how that made me feel. In the end, I realized there were no words I could find to express the impotence strangling my soul from the fact that those gunning for my head would never stop. They’d just keep coming until everyone I knew or cared about were dead.
“That is actually a very good reason why I shouldn’t be here, Ace.” His mouth opened, but I silenced him with a raised hand. “No, hear me out. If the roles were reversed and you knew people here would get hurt eventually because of you, would you stay?”
Silence stretched while he held me trapped in his bottomless stare.
“I didn’t think so.” Playfully, I tapped his arm with the bottle clutched in my hand. “So, what are we going to do about it?”
“We?” Ace stepped back and took a long swig from his beer. “Ten minutes ago, you didn’t want to be on the same planet as me, and now we are doing things? Together?”
