Page 15 of Charming the Cowboy
“It supports my argument that it’s a curse. Because you’re right, in every other area of my life, when I set an intention, I get what I want at least in one form or another. I’m very goodat that. At not only setting intention, but also knowing which direction I’m supposed to go in. Except where my love life is concerned. I’m completely blocked. I have no intuition. My sexual manifestation is nonexistent.”
“Well…”
“I can do a mood board for it, I guess, but what am I going to do? Put up a picture of a naked man and tack a Trojan onto the board?”
“You don’t want to go putting tacks in a condom,” he said, his expression almost comedic, it was so pained.
“I wasn’t going to use that condom,” she said. “At this point, I may never use a condom.”
“Well, don’t say that.”
“I think you should let me try to put the big spider on the horse.”
“Why do you keep talking about the big spider?”
“Because it’s better than talking about my virginity. Now. I think you should just accept that I’m cursed.”
“I’m not going to accept that you're cursed. Maybe that’s half your problem. You think you are, and so you are. Don’t you believe in that shit?”
“I didn’t set an intention to be cursed. In fact, I think it’s very clear that I would like to not be. But I’m being realistic.”
“That… That’s what you think is realistic?”
“At a certain point, the evidence is overwhelming. If you continue to overlook it just because you don’t like what all the signs add up to, who’s actually being unreasonable? The person believing in magic, or you?”
He didn’t have an answer for that. They arrived back at her shop, and she could see that his truck was parked up the street.
“You have a spell book in there for love,” he pointed out.
“You cannot mix things like that with curses. It’s just a bad idea. Anyway, sometimes I wonder if this is the curse’s way ofprotecting me in an odd way. My mother and my grandmother could fall in love. There was just a point where everything went badly. So maybe I should be grateful. But I don’t feel very grateful.”
He looked at his phone, his lips flexing into a thin line. “Uh. Do you want to come over to the ranch after the shop closes?”
“Uhhh…sure? What made you ask me that?”
“Lindsay and Hank and my mom, are really excited about the beer, and they want to thank you with dinner.”
It definitely made it sound like he did not want to thank her with dinner, but then, after her droning on and on about a fake spider and her never getting laid, he was probably weirded out and ready for her to go away.
She was close to saying no. Because maybe he needed a break from her, and she needed one from him.
“Eliana.”
The way he said her name snapped her focus to his gaze. And her heart hit her breastbone hard.
“Please come to dinner.”
Her throat went dry, and she suddenly felt like the foolish girl who’d longed after him at homecoming, and the silly woman who’d wanted to kiss him that night on his ranch, all rolled into one. “Okay.”
Then he tipped his hat and turned away from her, and she felt like that simple motion had flipped her stomach over right along with it.
She did her best not to ruminate about that interaction for the entire rest of the day. She didn’t do a great job. Why had she told him all that? It was like the curse was now working to make her terminally un-bangable. Because not that Cooper would ever, not with her, but if there was a possibility of it, she had well and truly killed it by announcing to him that she was a lame, cursed virgin.
As she closed up, she flexed her fingers, trying to do something with all of the extra energy coursing through her body. She took a couple of crystals off the shelves and held them close to her heart chakra. Then she did some breathing and shoved the crystals into her pockets, hoping that they would protect her from her own idiocy.
She was definitely pushing the boundaries of magic.
Because lame was lame. No matter what plane of existence you were trying to be on.
