Page 32 of The Tide is High

“Good, that’ll help with your new school,” Evie said, leaning down to kiss her on her button nose. “Go to sleep; we’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

“That means you hope I forget about this by tomorrow,” Jennifer replied.

Evie turned at the door and took a long drink in of the sight of her niece safely deposited in her bed. Another day when she’d got the job done for her sister and kept Jennifer safe, she patted herself on the back. “Night,” she said with a teasing tone.

“That means conversation over,” Jennifer said, scooting onto her side. “Night, night, Aunt Evie.”

~

True felt the chill in the air and resisted rubbing her bare arms in the hope of keeping that feeling at bay. A familiar shadow emerged in the heart of the fog, and she resisted the urge to run. After all, she did have a formidable witch at her side this time, and Nana could be a pain in the butt most of the time, but she did know her magic.

“Onward to the count of three, ye must make haste or trouble be,” he said, a slight echo in the place he was trapped between the living and the dead.

“I suppose we can’t interest you in a modern dictionary?” Nana said, getting a double-take from True for her efforts.

“Nana!” True hissed. “Just make it go away, onward journey and all that.”

“That’s not why I’m here, dear, not yet,” Nana said in a condescending tone that annoyed True right down to a cellular level.

“Huh?” No sooner had the word left True’s lips than Nana was muttering something as she blew a powder from the palm of her hand into the air. It carried on the sea breeze towards the dark figure. “What are you…?”

True didn’t have long to wait to find out what Nana had just done. The shadowed figure was surrounded by light that seemed to collapse around him. Every inch of light exposed the man inside the shadow as Nana’s magic drew the ghost from inside the veil until he stood before them, not flesh and blood, but a man.

True might have been surprised, but not as surprised as the ghost looked.

~

Evie didn’t even look at the flavour of herbal tea she placed into the cup; she just went through the motions while her mind was on other things – those other things were all to do with her mate. Parker was big, muscled, and as sexy as hell, but she wouldn’t share those thoughts with anyone.

If Jennifer was anything to go by, too much was being said by too many witches, and she needed to watch herself. She turned the lights off as she went through the house, going to the upstairs bedroom that sat along the hallway from Jennifer’s room.

When she turned into the room, she caught sight of the road through the window, and Parker was there, casually leaning his backside against his truck. His arms folded, ankles crossed, and he was looking up at her window. She snatched her head back and wondered how he knew which one was hers; then she wondered why the heck he was still there.

Was the man really going to stand guard outside her house all night?

Evie ducked so she couldn’t be seen from outside and crept to the bed; putting her tea down on the side table, she let out a sigh of relief as her backside hit the mattress. “Men!”

Evie took off her watch and placed it beside her cup. She didn’t hold with the fad for fitness watches, she didn’t want to be tagged like a cow, traced like a shipment of meat, and the unitmessed with a witch’s energy field, and none of that was a good thing.

“Wolf-men,” she said with a little shake of her head and a sneer for the man outside. “Sitting outside my house like I’m a fugitive, prisoner, or worse – a mate.”

With a determined nod, she pushed to her feet, strolled to the window, and wrenched it up. “Go home!” she snapped, palming the window frame and poking her head and shoulders into the night.

“Not happening,” Parker said with an easy grin made clear by the fact she had forgotten to turn off the outside light.

“Where am I going to go?” she demanded, shrugging with frustration.

The sound of another window wrenched open caught Parker’s attention, and they both looked in that direction. “Trying to sleep, witch!” someone yelled.

Parker stood to attention. “That’s my mate!” he growled. The sound of the window being wrenched back into place made her smile. She guessed mate topped sleep, and not just in Parker’s book.

“Now you’re answering for me?” Evie said, raising her eyebrows and regarding him through narrowed eyes as he slowly turned back to look up at her, satisfied the other matter had been resolved.

Parker wondered if she’d just dug a trap for him to fall into, and knowing how devious wicked witches could be – he wasn’t about to fall into it. “I answered for me; nobody disrespects my mate.” It was the truth, and she could take it or leave it as she saw fit.

Evie had to think about that one. In some way, it was sweet and showed his protective side – but she could talk for herself and didn’t need his protection. She’d been doing just fine on her own for years without him – sort of – but now she was back on her feet thanks to True and Hope; she didn’t need a man having her back. That’s what sister witches were for!

Evie groaned, pulled her head and shoulders in, and slammed the window shut. If Parker wanted to play the big bad protector wolf, she wasn’t going to waste one more second thinking about it.

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