Page 27 of How to Flirt with a Witch

“Was it hard to leave them to come to Vancouver?” she murmurs.

“Meh, a little.” The real answer makes my eyes sting. I turn away, ready to change the subject back to the matter at hand. “Thanks for helping me clean up. It looks—” I gasp. The bed is repaired. Completely. There’s not even a dent. “You—you fixed it!”

“Fixed what?” she asks, still facing the photos.

“The crater!” I wave my hands at the bed.

She cocks an eyebrow. “What crater?”

I glare at her. “Don’t you dare.”

“What?” she asks, infuriatingly innocent.

“I’m not that dense, and what you’re doing is called gaslighting, jerk.”

Her mouth opens in surprise, and before I can feel guilty about calling her a jerk, she grimaces. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

She rubs the back of her neck, looking genuinely ashamed.

The apology catches me off-guard. “It’s fine. Just don’t insult my intelligence again.”

She nods.

“And tell me how you fixed the bed,” I say.

The corners of her lips tug upward. “Not a chance.”

I huff. It was worth a shot.

“Look…” She steps closer, making my breath hitch. Her gaze locks mine, forcing me to tilt my head back. “It’s not my intention to lie to you, Katie. But I have to. You don’t understand what you’re prying into, and you’re going to regret it.”

“You say that like you know me.”

Natalie backs up, glancing out the window. She tugs her blazer straight.

“Are you really a doctor?” I scan the coat for clues about what other mysterious vials she might be keeping in secret pockets.

“I’m not faking my title.”

“Okay…” It feels like she dodged the question. “So you have a Ph.D?”

“In a way.” She meets my eye for a fraction of a second. “I’m not a veterinarian, and I didn’t study at a traditional university.”

“But you went to… a non-traditional one?”

“The equivalent of one. I studied for a long time and earned something like a doctorate.”

I wait for her to go on, but she doesn’t.

“What if this happens again?” I ask. Not that I would go out of my way to find another Rebecca, but I could by accident.

She looks at me sharply. “Don’t tell me you anticipate this happening again.”

I shrug. “It’s hard to know what to anticipate when I don’t even know what’s going on.”

She sighs pointedly.

“And you’re still not going to tell me,” I say, more of a statement than a question.