Page 51 of Which Witch is Willing?
Of knowing what she knew.
“Moira Jo, you been motherin’ everything with a heartbeat since you’s tall enough to gnaw the kitchen table.”
Despite the leaden heaviness in her chest, Moira felt one corner of her mouth tug into a smile. Sal had always loved to tell that story. How, absent the fancy rubber teething toys favored by more civilized folk, Moira had cut her teeth on any piece of household furniture with wooden legs.
“This is a little different than nursin’ a three-legged goat back to health,” Moira pointed out. “Or rescuing a baby pig from the carnival freak show.” As if on cue, Cheeto, who had settled himself into her lap, hiccoughed, releasing a little puff of smoke.
“Actually, I think it’s exactly like that. Well, just look at me and the boys. Half the time I think it wasn’t us that raised you, but you that raised us.”
Truthfully, Moira had had the same thought more than once.
“You got a talent for lovin’ critters that are different,” Sal continued. “And it sounds like that child’s gonna need all the love it can get.”
“Lookin’ after y’all was one thing. We’re talking about a baby. A human child.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, but given who’s going to be its daddy, I don’t know if that’s safe to assume.”
Moira blew hot air from her nostrils. “Don’t even get me started on that subject.”
Wind whipped the of Uncle Sal’s hair into an unruly halo. “He ain’t all bad.”
“All evidence to the contrary,” Moira scoffed. “You don’t know Nicholas Kingswood.”
“I know he went to a lot of trouble to get me and the boys here. Buyin’ that ratty old bait shack and tradin’ the old pontoon for the Moira Jo. A man doesn’t do them kinda things unless he’s ass over hooch bottle in love, in my experience.”
Love.
She felt her body tense up in an instinctive flinch.
That word again.
Was Nick even capable of love? He certainly knew a brand of adoration and obsession, but as far as Moira could tell, it was mostly reserved for himself and certain kinds of Italian cars.
“How about you?”
“How about me what?” Moira asked, aware she was deliberately trying to buy herself time.
“Do you love him?” Sal asked, his obsidian eyes boring into hers with startling focus.
Well if he didn’t have the most irritating habit of getting straight to the goddamn point.
Moira looked from the man in front of her to the small, warm bundle in her lap. Until recently, this was everything she’d known of love. And then she’d met Tierra, and Claire, and Aerin, her heart expanding effortlessly to include every one of them. Hell, even Aunt Justine, who she’d wanted to kick down the stairs a lot less lately.
Then, there was Nick.
Nick with his whisky in the firelight eyes and his hair the color of earth after a heavy summer rain.
The man who’d stopped her from flinging herself into the sea only to shoot her through the heart with his flaming arrow when she’d asked. The man who had brought her the greatest pleasure and greatest pain she’d ever known.
She remembered the first time she’d seen his face. A glance stolen beneath the fringe of dark lashes as she pretended to sleep in the airplane seat she’d stolen from him. She’d seen his mouth. His beautiful, sensitively carved lips drawn up in a smirk.
A smirk that informed her in no uncertain terms that she was in big, big trouble.
She had loved him then.
She loved him now.
She’d loved him every minute in between.
