Page 16 of Love's a Witch
I drew myself up. “I most certainly did not.”
“I mean, we all did, right? He was kind of the golden boy of sorts. Still is, I guess. Hell, I’d make a play for him if I didn’t have my sights set on another.”
“Who do you like?” I asked, desperate for a change in conversation.
“That, my friend, takes more than breezing back into my shop after years of silence.” Raven nodded to the front door, where bells jingled and new customers arrived. “I’ll tell you over a pint sometime. Call me. We have a lot to catch up on.”
Raven packaged everything neatly in an eggplant-purple bag, with a pretty sparkling black bow attached to it. She tucked her card inside, along with her number, and gave me a quick hug before attending to her new customers. Bundling the bag under my coat, since it was too pretty to get wet with snow, I beelined for the car, my mind whirling.
Had I fancied Knox? More so than anyone else?
It was weird how my mind had blocked out many memories from that time in my life. It had been so chaotic, my parents constantly fighting, and I’d tried to spend as much time away from home as I could. Then, when Mum had taken us abroad, well, we’d flitted from town to town so fast that everything had blurred together. Call it trauma or call it a blessing, but either way, the memories lay hidden behind the veil of time. Including any supposed crush I might have had on Knox. That certainly won’t be rekindled, that’s for sure.
Picking up my pace against the icy wind that shoved me back, I pushed toward the parking lot. I blew into the car, slamming the door behind me, a flurry of snow and packages, to find my sisters already there.
“Sorry about that. Were you waiting long?” I gasped, my cheeks stinging from the snow.
“Not too long at all. But it’s cold.” Lyra rubbed her hands together and blew on them, nodding toward the ignition. “Can you start the car?”
“Aye, nae bother.” Already my Scots was coming back to me. I’d largely been Americanized since I’d left, finding it easier to blend in at schools when I’d let my accent drop, but it was slowly coming back now that I was here.
Home.
Turning the key, I blinked at the clicking noise that emanated from the steering column. Lights flashed on the dashboard, but the car didn’t start.
“Damn it,” I breathed, slamming my fist on the steering column. “Battery’s dead.”
“Noooo,” Nova wailed.
“I didn’t pack for this weather.”
“How can we have a dead—”
Something pounded my window, and we all screamed.
CHAPTER FIVEKnox Douglas
I wasn’t sure what the MacGregor sisters were doing huddled in their car, which looked to have its bumper being held together by duct tape, but I could surmise pretty easily that there was a problem when it didn’t immediately start and leave the car park. Slanting a glance up at the murky gray clouds and sleeting snow, I sighed and pulled my waxed canvas jacket on.
I’d taken a seat at the Rune & Rose, needing a moment to decompress with my mate Liam, who owned the place. He was as tall as I was, with lighter hair than me, and bright blue eyes that had melted more than one woman’s heart.
“How you getting on, then?” Liam nodded out the window toward the snow.
We’d known each other since after high school, and nothing had made me happier than when he’d decided to stay here and open his own pub. His witchy-themed cocktails were infamous, and a huge draw for his clientele. Even now, as he poured dry ice into a glass of gin, and the drink bubbled and steamed, his customers laughed and filmed the display for their social media. His drinks were innovative, each one being named after a different type of magickal potion or a famous witch, like Isobel Gowdie, condemned to death in Scotland’s history.
“Och, it’s a bit brisk, isn’t it?” I said, downplaying the calamity of winter weather wreaking havoc on our town. Ever since Sloane had slammed the door in my face the night before, I’d been dealing with one issue after another, as the snow caused chaos through the town. A hot coffee and a cuppa soup was what I needed.
Notmore problems with Sloane.
A memory surfaced. Sloane, sullen and angry, kicking a football down an alley behind her house, shouts sounding from the open window.
A plate had smashed, the noise echoing across the cobblestones, and Sloane had whirled, wiping a tear from her cheek.
I’d stopped, unable to resist offering help to someone, particularlythissomeone.
Sloane MacGregor. I’d seen her at my football practice one day, walking past the pitch, and I’d quickly grown fascinated. We didn’t go to the same school, and were a few years apart, so I’d started detouring on my walk home to go past the street I’d learned she lived on.
Hoping for a glimpse. A chance run-in.
