Page 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

“This is a mistake,” Lilac insisted, and she wasn’t talking about the fact that she’d had to return the caretaker keys to Allen so he could open the cellar. Not entirely.

She gave the twine encircling the square bale of hay a vicious cut with her knife, imaging it was that winning smile on the new caretaker’s face. As if he could beguile her ? She flaked the hay apart into sections and stopped short before stuffing them into the manger for the goats.

A family of mice had made a home there, and she took a moment to forget her anger and gently shoo them aside. When they were safely out of the way, her anger returned and she shoved the hay in place.

The goats, finally out of the weather and smelling the sweet scent of dried grass, bleated with excitement and wiggled in their harnesses, making Rose and Boar’s job of freeing them from the wagon that much more difficult.

“No,” Boar countered. “The only mistake is you being ridiculously rude to him. Allen is the caretaker, Lilac.”

“So he says. ”

“So Zofia says. So the pact says. I spoke with her on the phone, Lilac. It was her, not an imposter.”

He would know, too. They all would. The magic of the pact their grandmother had made with the house elf, who was looking less like an elf and more like a tiny Slavic woman with every passing year, was engrained in each of them. And like always recognized like.

“You were the one who brought our attention to the ring during the fight, anyway,” Rose said, wrangling a goat free of its tresses and giving it a shove towards the manger. “You basically vouched for him, and now you’re doing take-backsies? What gives?”

What “gives” is that he’s a liar. A bullshitter . It took one to know one, and Lilac was a professional. It’s how she could tell any man what he most wanted to hear without seeming like she was patronizing him. How she could wrap them around her finger without them even realizing it and make them dance to whatever tune she played. It was the one talent Grandmother had seen in her . . . and had exploited for the family’s gain.

And yet the way Allen had looked at her when he’d been half-swallowed by the floor . . .. By the Green Mother, her jaded heart had crashed against her ribs with the same wild abandon as a springtime fawn frolicking through a meadow. She’d felt as light as spun sugar, in danger of floating away had his sincere golden-brown eyes not been her anchor. He had seen past her face and right into her soul. Or so she’d thought until she’d recognized the lust for what it was on his face. Of course Allen Sharpe was a schmoozer like all the rest. The knowledge had killed something inside her, but she shouldn’t have been surprised—no man saw beyond her face unless it was to look at her breasts.

But how could she convince her brother and sister she was right when they were already singing this stranger’s praises? Boar had been analyzing the fight, picking apart every attack and block, but he couldn’t see the forest through the trees. Couldn’t see, as Lilac could from the rear, that Allen had fought deliberatively. There had been no “lucky shots,” only calculating strikes. And Rose, well, his friendly attitude and ability to counter her innuendos with his own had seated her firmly in Camp Allen.

“I’m sure she’s just a little upset that we had to find out about Nan the way we did,” Boar told Rose. “We’re all surprised—”

“Please, Boar, mansplain my feelings to me.” Lilac snapped, her composure slipping. She threw the last sheaf of hay down right in front of the goat he was working on. The beast lunged for the food, yanking Boar off-balance. “I wouldn’t know what they were unless you told me.”

“Where are you going?” Rose asked as Lilac marched to the rear of the wagon.

“I’m bringing a few things in. Dad’s only told us a hundred times how the cold crystallizes the sugar in his sweet breads.”

“He has?”

Lilac rolled her eyes. Of course he has, but you never listen. None of you listen! Hugging the crate to her chest, she hurried from the barn across the snow-covered yard to the walk-in cellar.

Allen had only opened one of the double doors in an attempt to facilitate the grocery delivery and keep as much heat inside as possible, but inside, there was no sign of him. Just the stacks of cardboard boxes, coolers, and wooden crates on the cement floor off to the side of the door.

Just as well, for there would be no one to witness her hiding her crate amongst his. Since Boar hadn’t stopped her in the barn, he’d obviously forgotten about her “chintzy beauty products” and thus would be caught unawares when she presented them at the Craft Faire tomorrow, the first of the Yuletide Gala’s events. She removed the sweet breads she’d piled on top—it really was true about the sugar crystallizing—and heaped them onto the nearby kitchen island to sort through later. Grabbing a cardboard box of fruit packaged in chopped paper, she thunked it down on top of her crate to hide it even more.

She’d just decided that another box, this one of dried goods like pasta and beans, would further obscure it when a throat cleared behind her.

“Something I can help you with, Miss?” Allen asked.

“No!” She gulped in a breath, realizing her response was the epitome of suspicious, and repeated in a controlled voice, “No.”

He didn’t reply, just watched her with those golden-brown eyes. Waited patiently for her to continue, or perhaps get out of his way so he could finish unloading the truck. But she couldn’t leave yet; she had to make sure he hadn’t seen anything and wouldn’t see anything until she could sneak back down here later and move the crate to a different hiding spot. A heat bloomed on her cheeks, spreading to her neck, and she got flustered. “Um, well, where were you? Boar’s ready to go.”

“Just using the restroom, Miss.”

Distantly, she heard the rush of a water as a toilet tank refilled itself. Maybe he hadn’t seen anything, after all. Better sell it, just to be sure. “Oh, well, you really shouldn’t have stacked all the boxes right here beside the door, you know? I basically broke my toe when I tripped on my way in here with the sweet breads!”

“Do you want me to look at it?”

His calm question caught her off-guard. “Wh-what?”

“Your toe. I have some medical experience.”

“You do?”

His smile was soft, the same kind you’d use on a frightened animal. He took a step closer and Lilac bumped up against the stacked boxes.

“Homegrown Roots’ butcher shop isn’t the first place I’ve worked. You pick up some first-aid know-how sooner or later when you’re slinging knives around.”

He hadn’t come any closer, but Lilac’s heart was pounding. She wasn’t used to anyone looking at her with kind sincerity in their eyes. Offering to help her with no thought of personal gain.

Except he’s a liar, remember?

Lilac straightened up, hugging her cloak tighter around her as she crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought you were just a delivery boy.” She’d put some ice in her voice, hoping her condescending tone would get a rise out of him and get him to break his carefully controlled persona.

“I multitask,” came his dastardly, even-tempered reply. Those golden-brown eyes flicked to her foot. “So, that toe?”

“Don’t you know a witch’s magic can heal herself?” She sniffed, turned promptly on her heel, and marched out of the cellar. And right into Boar’s broad chest. “Oof! Watch where you’re going, meathead!”

Ignoring her, he looked over her shoulder to where Allen was closing and locking the cellar doors. “You good?”

“Yeah. We can take the truck down if you want. Someone’ll have to hold on in the back, but three can sit on the bench seat up front.”

“Rose and I will walk,” Lilac declared, linking her arm around Rose’s.

“We will? But the three of us are supposed to stick to—”

“We’ll see you down there.” Lilac practically hauled her sister around and started walking. It was like dragging an unconscious mule behind her.

“Lilac, wait.”

She turned, arching an imperious eyebrow. As if a delivery boy who moonlighted as a butcher had any right to tell a Hawthorne to do anything. Even if he had the most beautiful golden-brown eyes .

He trotted the few steps to her, snowflakes catching in his blond hair. “Here.” He dropped the caretaker keys back into her stunned hand. “Don’t lose them on the way to the pub. Something tells me Zofia isn’t above tanning both our hides if we should lose them.”

He was giving the keys . . . back to her? But why would he give up his leverage?

“Allen,” Rose said, “since you’re new here, I think I should tell you that when Lilac looks like this—you know, surly?—she’s really trying to say thank you, but the words are caught in her throat.”

“Oh, so not surly at all.” Allen gave her a teasing half-smile. “Just verbally constipated. Got it.”

Boar threw his head back with a laugh, and Rose beamed a smile at the new caretaker. Lilac just shoved the keys into her pocket, gathered up her cloak, and stomped off in the direction of the village.

Laugh. Laugh all you want. It won’t matter when my potions speak for themselves. Then I’ll be the one laughing when you’re all proven wrong . She threw a glare over her shoulder at Allen Sharpe and his easy smile and disarming persona and attractive face and enchanting eyes. Especially about him.