Page 14 of Best Hex Ever
“You’re getting off here too?” she asked.
“Yeah, visiting my mums.”
“Would you mind?” she said, pointing at her bag on the rack above. With Heebie, who was now whining in her crate, unsettled by the movement, she had her hands full.
When he reached up, the top of his shirt lifted and she glimpsed a dark-haired snail trail and heavy, packed muscle. She looked away, blushing. He could pick her up like she weighed nothing.
They got off the train together and stood on the windyplatform. The cold had picked up, and Dina’s breath steamed as she exhaled. She was home.
“You know, since we’re both here for the weekend, perhaps—” But Scott never got to finish what he’d been about to say, because an older woman started calling his name from the station exit.
He smiled. “That’s my mum.”
Dina looked up at Scott—it was hard not to, since he towered above her, taking up most of her field of vision. Maybe she should give him her number? But then the whole interaction yesterday replayed itself in her mind. The bad omens at the café. The fallen hamsa when he’d entered. The tea leaves. It would end in disaster—that’s what was predicted.
Dina could see how it would all play out: the dating, the sex—which would be phenomenal, she had no doubts about that—and then Dina would fall hard, because she always did, and the hex would hurt Scott just as it had hurt those before him.
She looked down at herself, seeing her bushy hair flying out in all directions, her ill-fitting jeans, her top that had a coffee stain on the bottom. There was no way he’d been flirting with her; she must have misread the signals. Not when she looked like this.
If she offered him her number, she’d only be embarrassing herself. She wasn’t ready for more embarrassment, and certainly not for more heartbreak.
“It was nice to meet you. Bye.” She spoke with as cold a tone as she could manage, and walked away, Heebie yowling in her carrier all the while. Then she hurried out of the station, careening down the hill into the center of the village. She only looked back once.
Chapter 6
Well, folks, the idiot award goes to Scott Mason for the second time in one day.How—how could he have messed it upagain? Scott stood on the train platform, watching as Dinaliterallyran away from him, wondering what on earth he had done wrong.
He thought they’d been getting along really well. Dina was wickedly funny, and she’d warmed up to him after he’d complimented her cat. Well, Heebie was a furry little angel so he hadn’t been lying. And he’d seen the way she’d looked at him from underneath those long, dark eyelashes. His mind raced back to when she’d licked some marshmallow off her lip. Just the thought of her tongue parting her lips, firmly licking, the brush of his thumb on her mouth, was making him hard. Maybe he had come on too strong.
Or maybe she just isn’t into you,his traitorous brain thought. He was, after all, out of touch with the dating game. He had no way of knowing now, anyway. Dina was long gone, though he swore the scent of her spiced orange perfume still lingered in the air around him.
Scott had been about to ask if she wanted to get a drink, since they were both going to be in Little Hathering that weekend. What were the chances of them meeting twice in two days,anyway? A younger, more naïve Scott would have believed it to be serendipity.
Dina had obviously sensed that he was about to ask her out, since she’d upped and left before he’d even finished his question.
Ah, well. This weekend wasn’t about him anyway. It was about Eric and Immy’s wedding, visiting his mums, and going for walks with views that weren’t encumbered by skyscrapers. Scott didn’t have much time to ruminate on Dina, because his mum was waiting for him in the parking lot of the station near her bright yellow Beetle.
“Scott! Darling!” Helene shouted, waving over the small crowd of people who had gotten off at Little Hathering, her strawberry-blonde hair tied up with an elaborate headscarf.
Scott laughed and bent down to give his mum a hug. He remembered when he was little and he’d hugged her, he’d only come up to her waist. Now, each hug was a bear hug, his arms wrapped all the way around. But hugging his mum tonight, he couldn’t help but think that she felt smaller than she used to, more fragile.
“It’s good to have you home,” she whispered, stroking his hair. “Now, are you going to tell me who that lovely lady was that you were talking to on the platform?” She grinned mischievously, patting his arm as she tugged him along to the car.
“No one. Just someone I sat next to on the train.” He had never been good at lying to his mum, even if this technically was just a shade of the truth.
“Mmm-hmm, sure.” She winked, before launching into an update on what they’d been up to. The wonderful thing about his mum Helene was that when Scott wasn’t up to talking much, she could carry the conversation for both of them.
“Alex has been painting the garden shed, a color called Majorelle blue. It’s quite something! And the neighbor wascomplaining about our sunrise meditation again, but honestly, if he doesn’t want to see my lady bits he can just avoid peeking out his curtains at five in the morning.”
Scott listened to his mum nattering away as she sped around village corners, telling him all about the improvements they were making to the house, and the different kinds of birds she’d spotted at their bird feeder. Retirement suited her.
Both of his mums had been morticians, but you’d never guess that if you met them. Both sunny and bubbly, they loved to regale people with the story of how they met, their scalpels touching as they both sliced up the Y-incision of the same cadaver at mortuary school.
Scott looked out the window as Little Hathering passed them by. He could understand why his mums loved it here. It was adorably quaint, and each shop on the high street had curved glass windowpanes and hanging lights. As it was so close to Halloween, most of the shopfronts were artfully decorated with grinning pumpkins, cinnamon broomsticks, and cardboard cut-outs of cackling green witches stirring their cauldrons.
Little Hathering was the sort of place where you would find bunting all year round, and the sort of place Americans would think of if you described an English village. It looked straight out of a romantic comedy—the kind his mums loved and made him watch whenever he came to stay. But as they passed through the streets, he couldn’t help but look out for Dina’s silhouette, or Heebie off on the run again.
As they pulled up outside his mums’ house, Scott noticed Eric’s silver Audi was parked outside.
