Page 22 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)

To Alice’s relief, the code to the shop’s back door had not been changed when she returned.

She didn’t know where else her grandparents might have set up cameras, so she was careful as she made her way up the back stairs to her apartment.

She wanted to go look in the shop for the lost ring, but she didn’t want the cameras to capture her “break-in.” She left Collin outside this time, so he wasn’t seen breaking in with her.

It took a sadly short amount of time to pack her clothes and a handful of personal items into a few bags. How had she collected so few things in life, working in a shop where she sold items to people to fill their own homes?

Arthur appeared at the foot of her bed as she tucked personal papers into her laptop bag.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “For that awful scene and for my grandparents.”

“No, miss, that… I’ve never seen anything like that. What was that?”

Alice shook her head. “There’s a lot of history there.”

“The way they spoke of you after you left,” he said, frowning.

“They want you back here. They don’t want you to know that.

They want you to think they’ve cut you out forever.

They want you to sweat over it. But they know they can’t run this place without you, especially not when things are busy. They just want to bring you to heel.”

“Is that what they said?” Alice asked.

“No,” Arthur replied, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “I’m putting it kindly.”

She frowned. “ That was kindly?”

“Don’t come back here, Alice,” Arthur said. “You’re a sweet girl. You deserve better.”

“I’m not sleeping here, at least, I know that,” Alice said. “There are reasons I need to come back. Besides, I don’t want to leave you here either.”

“I don’t suppose I can stray too far from Bessie, can I?” he mused. She shook her head.

“Well, I don’t like it. But I want you to be protected. That’s more important. Your young man is out back, isn’t he?”

Alice replied, “I didn’t want to include him in this particular bit of breaking and entering. And he’s not my young man.”

“Tell him that,” Arthur snorted. “I’m withholding my judgment on him. If he proves that he’s good to you, I’ll let him see me. Your grandparents? Unless it’s to scare them into apoplexy, they can get—”

“Understood,” she said, cutting him off. “It’s like the ghost cut direct.”

Arthur beamed at her. “Precisely.”

Collin was surprised to see how few bags she was carrying when she emerged from the shop’s back door. “Do we need to come back later?”

“Would you believe I’m a minimalist?” she asked as he shouldered her largest duffel bag. When he answered with the lift of a brow, she added, “OK, fine, I’m not. But I like to keep things simple.”

They took a long, circuitous route around Main Square to avoid Clark’s law office.

“Has he given you any more trouble?” Collin asked, nodding to the window marked TANNER, MOSCOVITZ, AND GRAVES.

“No, he has been eerily quiet,” she muttered. “I’m hoping maybe he realizes he went too far, chasing me down the street like he did, in public. The problem is that he’s probably regrouping to come up with something worse.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what was going on there?” Collin asked.

“I think you’ve been privy to enough of my secrets for one day,” she said.

He considered it for a moment. “That’s fair.”

They remained quiet for the rest of the walk back to the hotel.

She’d expected them to walk into the front entrance of the hotel, but to her surprise, he walked her through the rose garden on the north lawn, past a gazebo frequently used for weddings, and through a door marked STAFF ONLY.

While there was an entrance to the hotel kitchen on the left, opening a door on the right led them into… a house?

“What in the what?” Alice marveled at the comfortable den area with sturdy oatmeal-colored canvas furniture and a large flat-screen TV.

A dining table for six occupied a space just off a completely modern kitchen.

It was basically a single-family home tucked away in the hotel. “How did I not know this was here?”

He nodded toward the staircase central to the room.

“Well, when the hotel was built, the architect who designed it stayed here on-site with some of the construction foremen, and sort of built the hotel around it. And then, when my ancestors took on management and weren’t quite sure how to run things here and maintain some sense of family life, a lot of them stayed here in the ‘guesthouse,’” he said, carrying her bag upstairs.

“Now we’re going to maintain it for long-term on-site employees, such as yourself, or special guests.

You would be welcome at the manor house, but I didn’t think you would be totally comfortable staying with me.

You’ll have privacy here, and security. And housekeeping services.

And complimentary room service, if you want it. ”

Oh, she wanted it. While the “Collin sandwich” had been an abomination, she’d been thinking about the accompanying fries since their lunch.

“Thanks,” she told him.

He shrugged. “Towels, sheets, the good snacks from the minibar cart. Anything you need, I’m here to see to it… That sounded dirtier than I meant it to.”

Alice chuckled. It was a novel feeling, being catered to—something that had been missing from her last three or four “entanglements,” including Clark.

Alice remembered waking up to one particular partner who asked if she wanted breakfast, only to tell her where the closest grocery store was located and how he liked his eggs.

She’d immediately walked out and blocked his number.

“This is just temporary until I figure something else out,” she promised. He opened the door to a guest room and she knew she’d just lied.

The walls were a lovely shade of pale yellow, matching the stripe of the seersucker bedspread on the king-sized bed.

Everything, from the throw pillows to the cherrywood desk to the chocolate leather club chair positioned next to the window, was designed for rest and comfort.

If she’d designed a room, this was what it would look like.

But all she could manage to say was, “It’s not orange.”

“Aura didn’t like the energy in here,” he told her. He carefully set her bags near the desk and stepped closer to her. “So, um, there are no ghosts in this room, right?”

“No,” she said. She looked down at her hands, somehow missing the weight of a ring she’d only worn for an hour.

Maybe it was cursed, instead of haunted?

What else would make her feel this way? “And you’re not going to be seeing them all the time now, unless they choose to show themselves, the way the Shaddow House ghosts approached you. ”

He took her hands, turning them over as if he was searching for wounds. “But if you need to keep them out of here, you can do that?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding.

“That scene earlier with your grandparents, is that…typical?” Collin asked.

“They’re usually far more passive-aggressive than whatever that was.

My parents died young and my dad’s family wanted me, but diseases and accidents seemed to pick them off one by one.

By the time I was nine, the Proctors were all I had left.

They have made it clear that I’m… I don’t know anything about my mother.

I only know what other people have told me over the years.

My grandparents didn’t keep anything of hers.

I mean, there are pictures, most of which they put away.

But no toys, no report cards, nothing. It’s like they took her away so I wouldn’t know whether they were telling me the truth about her.

And they’ve used that to shape this narrative of her life, and I never know if they’re doing that because they’re trying to get me to learn from her mistakes, or because doing that is to their advantage. Maybe both,” Alice said.

Collin asked, “What mistakes?”

“She made one impulsive decision to leave a party with a boy and it threw her whole life off-track. She was supposed to finish college and move away from here. Regina, down at the ice cream shop, told me once. They were friends back before…back when she could have gotten away from them.”

“I doubt she saw you as a mistake,” Collin said.

Alice hummed absently as he rubbed his hand over her wrist. She could feel his sympathy wrapping around her like a warm blanket, sliding over her skin, making her chest ache a little less. Was this real…or some sort of magical quirk caused by Collin’s extraordinary empathy?

“Well, what have other people told you about her?” Collin asked.

“A lot of platitudes about how we have the same hair color and the same smile,” she said, rolling her eyes a bit.

“She loved chunky peanut butter and black jelly beans, which makes me think she was a little bit of a contrarian. She hated jazz music. I mean, really hated it, used to get mad if it came on the radio. That’s something we have in common. ”

There was a silence, but it wasn’t awkward. He folded his long fingers over hers and pulled her gently forward until her forearms were tucked against the warmth of his chest.

“How am I supposed to leave you?” he asked softly. “My whole worldview has been turned on its ear in one day. You’re central to it all… How do I leave you?”

She tilted her forehead against his chin, sighing deeply.

“I think maybe we’ve been through too much together in the past twenty-four hours, between the scene with my grandparents and you chasing me across the island and a ghost screaming in your face and finding out I’m a witch.

It’s probably something akin to trauma bonding. ”

“And yet, here I stand, unable to walk away from you.” He slipped one hand under her chin, rubbing his thumb along her jaw until she was looking up at him.

“You’re right, this isn’t a good idea,” he said, his breath feathering over her lips.

“We’re emotionally and physically exhausted. And I’m technically your boss.”

“Mm-hm,” she murmured, even as her lips inched closer to his. “Those are all very sensible reasons not to kiss you. And I’m going to do it anyway.”

Collin huffed out a relieved breath. “Oh, thank God.”

She pulled his shirt down until his lips were crushed against hers.

Together, their mouths tasted of cinnamon, sweet heat, and sin.

He moaned softly into her mouth, sliding his free hand down her back and pressing her closer.

With the other hand, he still held hers close to his heart.

She could feel it pounding against her knuckles.

His tongue slid tentatively against her bottom lip, and she opened up to him, inviting it in to dance with hers.

She wanted to drag him toward the bed, to burn away the hurts of today against his skin.

But she didn’t want to do that to Collin.

He was someone who felt things deeply, and she didn’t want to use him to make herself feel better.

She’d done that with Clark, and obviously that hadn’t turned out well.

But from the very moment they’d met, whatever she had with Collin was different.

There was premeditated gentleness in him that was so different than her dynamic with Clark that she wanted to burrow into him and stay there.

Collin made her feel secure, desired. And she wanted in return, so much that it physically hurt her not to be tucked closer against his body.

Reluctantly, she pulled away, and his mouth followed hers. For a moment, he looked down at her, dazed, and Alice was weirdly proud of herself. She craned her neck up and kissed him again, pushing him very gently but deliberately toward the door.

“You’re right,” he sighed, opening the door. “This probably wasn’t a good idea.”

“And yet, I’m not going to apologize,” she said, kissing him one last time. “And I apologize to everyone. Ask anybody.”

“One more.” He was nodding and laughing as he backed out the door. He pressed his lips to hers. “Good night.”

“Good night,” She took a step back before she did something very foolish.

He shook his head as if fighting through a fog. “If you need anything, I’m just down the way at the house. Press four on the phone and it dials directly to the line in my room.”

“Pressing four isn’t going to give me what I need,” she told him, smirking ever so slightly.

And in a feat of human superstrength, she closed the door in his gobsmacked face.