Page 8

8

Since the courtyard was in shadow when they got to the house, pizza and cheesy bread in hand, Marc and Bellamy decided to eat outside. Whoever had designed the outdoor living spaces, they’d done a very good job, since everything was laid out with an eye for an understated, natural beauty, whether that was the grouping of sandstone boulders and wind sculptures off to one side, or the fountain — an unusual feature made of sheets of sandstone and brass that had been treated to show interesting shades of deep umber and metallic green, the sort of thing Marc would like to offer his clients in Tucson — that dominated the center of the courtyard.

Its splashing added some soft background noise as they sat down at the table under the overhang. Now that the sun wasn’t beating down on them — although it still had probably an hour before it would completely disappear behind Mingus Mountain, some twenty miles to the west — the air felt friendly and warm rather than oppressively hot.

Bellamy had scooped up a bottle of chianti from the wine fridge in the kitchen along with a pair of glasses, so now all they needed to do was sit there and eat the wonderfully cheesy bread and pizza and wash it down with wine. Despite everything that had happened today, Marc could feel himself relaxing with every passing moment, as if all the worry and speculation had taken place in an utterly different world, one that seemed to have very little connection to the friendly, warm space where they now sat.

“This is some good pizza,” he said as he lowered his half-eaten slice to his plate.

“Told you,” Bellamy replied with a smile. “I mean, Pisa Lisa is really good, too, but I wanted something homier tonight.”

Especially since he wasn’t sure whether a higher-end pizza place would have even deigned to make them a Hawaiian pizza. No judgment at Moondog’s as Marc had handed over a couple of twenties to the guy behind the counter. Bellamy had made a few noises about paying, but he’d pointed out that she was already providing the wine and the venue, so it was only fair that he should cover the food.

“It’s nice that you can be in a place that feels so far away from everything but is still close enough to town that your takeout isn’t cold by the time you get it home,” he commented.

She nodded, but because she’d just taken a bite of cheesy bread, she had to wait until she was done chewing before she could respond.

“Yes, I was kind of surprised by that. But even though the ranch is technically outside Sedona’s city limits, it only takes about ten minutes to get to all the restaurants and other businesses on the west end of town.”

Maybe that was part of the reason why she’d felt okay with staying here. Splitting hairs, Marc supposed, since you could see the town’s famous red rocks in pretty much every direction from the property, but still, it wasn’t part of the city despite sharing the same zip code.

“Nice work if you can get it,” he remarked, and she grinned at him, then sipped some chianti.

“Yeah, I kind of fell in clover,” she said. “The homeowner is a regular at Sedona Vines, and one night during happy hour we were chatting about how I was commuting from Jerome and wasn’t sure whether I should try to find a house someplace a little closer, like maybe in Page Springs or Cornville. And he said he had his house up for sale but didn’t like the idea of it sitting empty while it was on the market, and offered to pay me to watch the place for him. Obviously, I jumped at the chance.”

Marc thought he would have, too, if he’d been given a similar offer. Sure, he liked his vintage house in the Sam Hughes neighborhood down in Tucson, liked how it was close to so many restaurants and so much nightlife, thanks to its proximity to the university, but it couldn’t really compare to a house like this one, with its multimillion-dollar views.

Not that he would have been able to afford a place like this, even with the combination of the stipend from his clan and the money he earned running his landscape business. The house he’d bought hadn’t been too much of a stretch, just because the home was being sold by the former owner’s heirs and they’d wanted to get it off their hands as quickly as possible, but this place? It had to be worth seven figures…and not the low range, either.

“Why’s he selling?” Marc asked then. If he’d owned a place like this, he would never have wanted to move.

Bellamy shrugged and reached for another slice of pizza. “He said his portfolio was too big and that he didn’t come here enough to justify owning the house. I get the feeling he’s not much of a desert guy. At least, he said he also has houses in Telluride and Vancouver and condos in New York and L.A., and they were enough to keep him busy.”

Not for the first time, Marc wondered what it would be like to have the freedom of movement that the civilian population seemed to take for granted. True, most people weren’t rolling in the kind of cash that allowed this Ike guy to own so many premium properties, but even so, regular civilians could still pick up and live anywhere they liked, rather than being stuck in the clan territory where they’d been born.

And sure, that wasn’t completely true anymore, because with the way things had changed over the past twenty-five years or so, members of the McAllister clan had gone to live among the de la Pazes and the Wilcoxes and even the Castillos in New Mexico, but still, they didn’t move around nearly as much as nonmagical people did.

“Must be nice,” he said, and Bellamy gave an understanding nod.

“I know. I suppose I could let myself be jealous, but I decided to just be happy to stay here for as long as it all lasts.” She paused there to sip some chianti before she set the glass down again. “And after it’s sold, then I guess I’ll fall back on my original plan of trying to find a place somewhere between Jerome and Sedona.”

Since her tone was almost philosophical rather than resigned, Marc could tell she’d already made her peace with the way this couldn’t be a permanent solution to her housing situation.

“Or maybe in Sedona itself?” he suggested before adding, “I mean, it seems as if everyone is okay with you living here, so….”

“Define ‘okay,’” she said with a grin. “My dad still isn’t too thrilled with me, although I think in his case it’s just as much empty nest syndrome as anything else. But yeah, since everything’s been hunky-dory between the McAllisters and the Wilcoxes for longer than I’ve been alive, it seems kind of silly to keep treating Sedona as if it’s supposed to be this mysterious, off-limits kind of place.”

While Marc was inclined to agree with her on that point, he couldn’t help asking, “So, you don’t think there’s anything to the Sedona vortexes and that stuff?”

Still smiling, she settled against the back of her chair. “Well, I wouldn’t say it’s ‘nothing.’ There are places here where, if you go there alone and settle into your thoughts, you really can feel the energy and how it’s different from anyplace else you’ve ever been. At the same time, I’m not sure it has much to do with our witch powers. Regular people can feel those energies, too — sometimes their skin tingles, or they experience a sensation of calm and grounding with the earth. Other people just feel energized. Anyway, back in the day, maybe it was a good thing for the two witch clans to avoid the place, if only to give more of a buffer zone between our two territories. Right now, though, I think we’re shooting ourselves in the foot by avoiding such prime real estate.”

Marc couldn’t help chuckling at that comment. “Expensive real estate, I’m guessing.”

“Oh, yeah.” She reached for a slice of pizza and took a bite, her expression now almost contemplative. “Housing prices are way higher in Sedona than they are in Cottonwood or Clarkdale, or even in Jerome itself, although things there tend to be more expensive because there are so few houses to go around. But honestly, even though it’s nice to have a short commute right now, I’m not going to worry about it too much. It’s not like I’m having to drive around Phoenix.”

Or even Tucson, although he had to admit the worst thing about his hometown was how there weren’t any real freeways and you had to drive overland everywhere. If you were used to it, then the setup wasn’t such a big deal, but still, people who were accustomed to being able to jump on the highway to get where they were going always suffered a rude awakening when they dealt with having to drive across town for the first time.

Bellamy’s phone, which had been sitting on the tabletop, gave a soft bing then, and she sent Marc an apologetic look.

“I should probably check that,” she said. “It might be Devynn getting back to me about the Olsen clan.”

“It’s fine,” he replied. “I was just about to grab another slice anyway.”

Her gray eyes danced at him, even as she reached for her phone and unlocked it. For a few seconds, she was silent as she scanned the text she’d just received, but then she shook her head and set the cell phone back down on the table.

“Jeremy couldn’t find anything at all,” she said, now sounding disgusted. “Or at least, as far as he can tell, the Olsens have been a nice, polite, law-abiding clan for generations. No sign that any of them have ever left their territory in Minnesota, nothing to show there’s been any kind of drama with them at all.”

Unlike the Arizona clans, Marc thought ruefully, although he realized that most of the turmoil they’d been involved in really hadn’t been of their own making. Still, someone looking in from the outside probably would have thought they were a big old hot mess.

“But,” Bellamy went on, her tone a little more cheerful, “Devynn says that’s just from a quick inspection, and that Jeremy’s going to keep digging just in case one of them maybe went rogue and they did their best to sweep it under the rug.”

“Any mention of the amulet?” Marc said. Probably not, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

“Nope,” she replied. “I suppose it’s the sort of thing they would try to keep on the down-low — even if that Lawrence Pratt guy might have talked about losing the amulet to a couple of witches in the Arizona territories. I kind of doubt he did, though. From the way Devynn described the situation to me, he didn’t want anyone to know about the artifact or what he was using it for. So I have a feeling when he went home with his tail between his legs, he wouldn’t have said anything about it.”

That story made the most sense. After all, the warlock had been using the amulet so he could play magician to an unsuspecting public. That wasn’t the sort of thing you’d want to confess to your clan’s prima, even though Marc had a feeling the truth must have come out eventually. It was kind of hard to hide that sort of thing from someone whose magical powers were so much stronger than yours.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to see if Jeremy’s able to dig up anything,” he said, doing his best to sound cheerful. “In the meantime, it seems as if the elders and Connor and Angela have everything managed, so I suppose we don’t have to worry about it too much.”

“No, I suppose we don’t,” Bellamy responded, although she didn’t seem too pleased by the prospect, judging by the way one corner of her mouth turned down and she avoided his gaze as she reached for her glass of wine again.

Was she worried he’d pack it in and go home now that he’d delivered his warning and the McAllisters were properly on guard?

Maybe he shouldn’t flatter himself.

On the other hand, he couldn’t ignore the way they got along so well, how it felt as if they’d known each other forever rather than only a couple of days. And it was also refreshing to be around someone who didn’t seem to care too much that he had prophetic dreams. Even among his own clan, there were people who would give him the side-eye when they thought he wasn’t looking, as if they believed he’d have a sudden vision of them standing in front of him wearing only their underwear or something.

It didn’t work that way, of course, but he was kind of tired of having to explain the minutiae of his seer’s gift. Maybe that was part of the reason why he’d mostly dated civilian girls, telling himself that he much preferred women who took him at face value. And sure, there had been a huge part of his life he hadn’t told them about, but wasn’t it that way most of the time when you started dating someone?

None of those relationships had been very serious, and he could tell his parents were starting to get impatient with him. Not to the point where they’d started leaving bridal magazines around the house for him to find whenever he visited, but enough that he could see they weren’t planning to humor him indefinitely.

Why was it such a big deal for witches and warlocks to get married early, anyway? This wasn’t the bad old days when you needed a bunch of kids to work your farm, or when infant mortality — if your clan was unlucky enough to not have a healer — was sky-high. What difference did it make if he waited until he was thirty, or whenever he felt ready?

Because most witches and warlocks…even if they weren’t searching for a consort, like his cousin Rosa would soon be…still were able to recognize the person who was their soul mate, their perfect match in every way. That was part of the reason why divorce rates were very low among witch-kind, even though it did happen from time to time.

He wouldn’t allow himself to stare at Bellamy — that would have been way too obvious — but all the same, he couldn’t help wondering if she might be the one. Gorgeous and smart, the sort of woman who didn’t seem to be fazed by much and was also easy to be around?

Sign him up.

“But I also don’t think we can let our guard down,” he continued, and something about the way she sat in her chair appeared to shift subtly as she sat up a little straighter, her gaze moving back toward him. “That’s why I think I’m going to check with my hotel tomorrow morning and see if I can extend my stay by a few days, just to be safe.”

Bellamy’s lips pursed. Rather than tell him that wasn’t necessary, though, she only said, “Or you could try getting an Airbnb. It might be more comfortable than a hotel room.”

He hadn’t even thought of that, but she was right. After all, he had a couple of weeks to play with before he absolutely had to be back in Tucson, and if he was going to hang around the Verde Valley, he might as well give himself a place where he’d have a little extra room to spread out.

For one wild moment, he wondered if Bellamy might offer to have him stay here, and then he shot down that notion pretty quickly. Not only would it be awkward, but for all he knew, there was some sort of clause in her contract with the homeowner to ensure she wouldn’t invite any guests to stay at the property.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to focus on getting a vacation rental here in Sedona, where he could be closer to her. Logic might suggest it made more sense for him to stay in Jerome, closer to the prima’s house and any future attempts at seizing the amulet, but Marc reassured himself that if he did have any more prophetic dreams while he was here, he was only a text or a phone call away. After all, he didn’t have the sort of power that would be much help in a situation like this once he’d given his initial warning.

Even as the thought passed through his mind, however, he had a feeling he was probably being a little disingenuous. Although he’d never been called upon to use the shielding talent he’d inherited from his father for very much, he knew it might come in useful if he needed to protect the amulet from some sort of magical interloper.

On the other hand, the only way that would work was if he just happened to be in the exact right place at the exact right time, and with Connor and Angela coming back to Jerome to keep watch over the thing, Marc guessed his own magical ability might be superfluous.

“An Airbnb is a good idea,” he told Bellamy. “I’ll check into that tomorrow.”

“There’s probably plenty of availability,” she said. “August is usually the slow season around here, although we get lots of day-trippers from the Phoenix area because even though it’s hot, it’s still about ten degrees cooler in the Verde Valley than it is down there. But those aren’t the kind of people who’d be renting Airbnbs.”

Off in the distance, thunder rumbled, and Marc looked up at the sky. To his surprise, clouds had moved in while they were eating, and now both the moon and the stars had been obscured.

“I was wondering if those thunderheads were ever going to do something,” Bellamy remarked, not looking too concerned by the shift in the sky.

“Can you sense what’s going on with the weather?” Marc asked then. He figured it was probably safe to broach the question, since she’d already told him that her gift was working with the wind.

For a few seconds, she looked thoughtful. Before replying, she broke off a piece of cheesy bread and ate it in an almost contemplative sort of way, as though doing so would allow her the time she needed to formulate her reply.

Then she said, “Sort of? I mean, I’m not a true weather witch like Addie Grant up in Flagstaff, but since weather tends to move with the wind, I can kind of feel what it’s planning to do. During monsoon season, it’s a little harder, just because the winds are so unpredictable and it’s often really tough to say where a thunderstorm wants to move. This one” — she paused to tilt her head toward the sky, even as another boom of thunder echoed across the landscape — “was taking its sweet time figuring out what it was going to do. But I guess it finally decided we’d gone long enough without rain.”

As if in answer to those words, a few fat drops began to fall, almost evaporating before they hit the ground because the air was so dry. But then more and more began to patter against the flagstone pavers that covered the courtyard, the blessed moisture beginning to soak into the planters where the wind sculptures — now spinning wildly as the breeze picked up — were installed.

“I love that smell,” she added, and closed her eyes as she inhaled the scent of wet stone and earth.

“Petrichor,” he said, and she smiled, still with her eyes shut.

“Right. I remember the first time I smelled rain falling on the red rocks here in Sedona. There’s something magical about it, don’t you think?”

Marc supposed there was. Or at least, he knew there was definitely something magical about the woman who sat at the patio table with him, her lovely chin tilting upward as she drank in the suddenly damp air.

In fact, she got up from her seat and walked out into the rain, arms spread wide to embrace the storm and the miracle of the moisture falling all around her. Maybe some people would have thought that foolhardy at best, considering the way thunder continued to rumble overhead, but he guessed that she could sense the movements of the weather better than he and wouldn’t have gone out into it if she hadn’t known it was safe.

And he remembered how he used to play in the rain when he was a little kid, entranced by the rare storms that moved across his desert hometown.

It was definitely something to be celebrated…as was Bellamy McAllister herself.

Without really thinking, he got up from his chair and stepped out into the rain as well. The heavy drops were colder than he’d anticipated, and he could already tell how the temperature had dropped a good ten degrees or even more, falling from the mid-eighties where it had been when they sat down to dinner to somewhere closer to the upper sixties.

“You’re crazy,” Bellamy said with a grin. Her coppery hair was already plastered to her head, but she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“So are you,” he replied, returning her smile.

For just a moment, they both stood there in silence, gazing at each other.

And then he took a step forward…and so did she.

Another step, and they were standing so close that he could almost sense the heat of her body under the rain-soaked clothes, hear the thudding of her heart.

Were they going to do this?

He thought they probably were.

Her face lifted to his, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to bend down and press his mouth against hers, to taste the tang of pineapple and the darker fruit of chianti on her sweet lips, to pull her toward him so they were pressed body to body as the rain continued to fall.

Thunder crashed, and he could practically feel the zing of electricity and taste the sharpness of ozone on the air as the lightning bolt hit the earth, at most a few hundred yards from where they stood.

Bellamy pulled away slightly and said, “We should probably go inside.”

Yes, as much as he’d loved kissing her as the rain poured down around them, getting hit by lightning didn’t seem like a very good way to end their evening.

Not when he knew he wanted to stick around a good long time so he could continue to be entranced by her.

“Good idea.”

They hurried under the cover of the patio roof, pausing to gather up the remains of their dinner so they could take it inside. Once they were back in the house, the chill of the refrigerated air hit his rain-soaked clothing, and he had to hold back a shiver.

“Would it be absolutely crazy if I turned on the fireplace?” Bellamy asked, and he shook his head.

“Not any crazier than standing out in the middle of a thunderstorm.”

She shot him another grin, and then she went over to the fireplace and flicked the switch to turn on the gas. Immediately afterward, she headed to the thermostat, presumably to shut off the A/C until they’d gotten warmed up.

“Want a towel?”

Marc looked down at his rain-spattered clothing. He wasn’t quite as soaked through as Bellamy, but a good toweling-off seemed to be just what he needed.

“Yes, thanks.”

“Back in a sec.”

She went down the hallway and then came back a moment later holding a pair of cheerful towels in southwest shades of turquoise and rust and cream. “Here you go.”

He sent her a grateful smile and then did what he could to blot his wet hair and his damp T-shirt. There wasn’t too much he could do about his jeans, but they hadn’t gotten as wet as his shirt, so he hoped they would dry quickly enough.

“We should stand in front of the fire,” Bellamy suggested. “That’ll help speed things up.”

Another very good idea. He headed over to the fireplace, and she followed a pace or two behind. Once there, she worked at getting the worst of the wet out of her hair and her clothes, although really, he thought the only sensible solution for her was to change into something dry.

A conclusion she seemed to have arrived at as well, because after a moment, she shook her head and looked up at him, her expression now rueful.

“So much for my Singing in the Rain moment,” she said. “Do you mind if I get out of these wet clothes? Yours don’t seem to have suffered as badly, but — ”

“It’s fine,” he told her. “I can already tell the fire is helping, so I don’t mind waiting here for you.”

“Be just a sec,” she replied, then went on her tiptoes so she could press a kiss against his cheek. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Go anywhere? As far as he was concerned, he was just fine with standing here for as long as it took.

In that moment, he knew he would never willingly leave her.

She’d kissed Marc Trujillo. Kissed him in the rain like she was trying to re-create a scene from The Notebook or something.

And it had been wonderful. More than wonderful.

Sublime. Yes, that was it. Sublime…heavenly…any other adjective she could think of to describe something that hadn’t seemed to be quite of this earth. Sure, she’d kissed more than a couple of guys along the way, but she knew none of those kisses would remain with her until the day she died.

But that one with Marc….

Honestly, she hadn’t planned for any of this to happen. Sure, she knew she was attracted to him, but he’d mostly just seemed friendly despite a couple of glances that she might or might not have thought showed some interest. Nothing smoldering, though, that was for sure, and she figured he either didn’t feel about her the same way that she felt about him, or at least had decided they couldn’t have much of a future, not when they lived hundreds of miles apart and had very separate lives.

Well, the kiss they’d shared seemed to have blown that idea out of the water.

Acutely conscious that he was waiting for her back in the living room, she peeled herself out of her damp jeans and wet blouse, then realized her bra was soaked as well. As much as she would have liked to just put on a tank top and yoga pants and said the hell with it, she wasn’t sure what kind of message that would send.

Other than she’d be all too happy to bring him back to the bedroom and make sure he was properly warmed up.

But no, she wasn’t going to do something that crazy. Exactly once in her life, she’d had a one night stand, and even though it had been fun enough, she’d found herself wishing afterward that she hadn’t jumped straight into bed with the guy like that.

Especially since he’d pretty much ghosted her afterward. Not that she’d been expecting some kind of long-term relationship with him, but still, she thought that was kind of rude.

And sure, this wouldn’t be a one-night stand, not when she’d been hanging out with Marc for the past couple of days, but still, she thought it better to play it at least a little safe until she knew for sure where they stood.

So she put on a clean bra and a Sedona Jeep Adventures T-shirt and a baggy pair of cargo pants, and headed back to the living room. He might as well see her at her sloppiest and then decide whether he was really that attracted to her or not.

He smiled as she approached, which seemed to signal he didn’t much care what she wore.

“Getting dried out?” she asked, and he nodded.

“The fire is helping a lot. Still, I think the next time we want to stand in the rain, I should probably switch into some swim trunks or shorts or something first. Jeans like to stay wet.”

That they did. But because she really didn’t have anything he could change into — even the loose-fitting cargo pants she wore now probably wouldn’t get past his well-muscled thighs — she only said, “I can get you my blow dryer, if you think that’ll help.”

He chuckled. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m okay.”

Just as soon as he finished speaking, though, his expression abruptly sobered, and those deep, dark eyes met hers, steady and yet as hot as the flames dancing in the fireplace behind him.

It wasn’t the sort of look you’d get from someone who only wanted to be casual.

“And…are we okay?” Bellamy asked, figuring she might as well get it out in the open. She knew she’d never responded to a kiss the way she had to the one she’d shared with Marc a few minutes earlier, but even though his expression seemed to indicate otherwise, she still wanted to be sure this wasn’t some sort of off-hand encounter for him.

At once, he moved away from the fire and took her hands in his. It didn’t seem as if getting soaked in the rain had chilled him too badly, since his fingers were warm.

Reassuring.

“We’re okay,” he said quietly. “Or maybe…more than okay. From the first instant I saw you, I felt some kind of connection, but since I was here on what some people might have called official business, I wasn’t sure whether I should act on it.”

“But you did anyway,” she replied, and he let go of one of her hands so he could reach over and push a damp strand of hair away from her face.

“I did,” he echoed, and then smiled. “I suppose I could take the easy way out and say I was just caught up in the moment, but honestly, I would’ve been happy to kiss you in the parking lot of a gas station if that’s how things ended up.”

The image was so silly, she couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing that we decided to eat in. The courtyard is much more romantic.”

“True.” His gaze strayed to the patio, where the flashes of lightning had already begun to lessen, a signal that the storm was moving away. To the north and west, she thought, so he probably wouldn’t have to contend with it on his way back to Cottonwood. When he looked back at her, though, his expression seemed almost diffident. “So…you have tomorrow off, right?”

“I do,” she said, a nervous little tingle going through her body. It sure looked to her as though Marc Trujillo didn’t plan on going anywhere. “What did you have in mind?”

His fingers found hers, and tightened slightly. “I was kind of hoping you might want to give me a tour of the local wineries.”

Oh, she could do that.

Most definitely.

“It’s a date,” she said.