Page 60 of Clearly Charmed

It made sense why she was so angry tonight. She considered Bryce’s presence a threat to what she held dear. But there was something else there. Something that had been eating at her since before Bryce showed up. If I called her on it, she’d deny it, but I wasn’t going to allow it to simmer too long.

Clo rattled around in the kitchen and I turned to watch her. What she’d said about not being afraid of love shook me. Aster may have claimed that Bryce was meant to be something special in my life, but that didn’t matter. My job was to protect this family in spite of whatever I felt for him, and, after tonight, I was convinced I needed to do everything in my power to ensure he never got a shot at hurting a single one of us.

Chapter Nineteen

Snow White Come to Life

Bright yellow caution tape and Street Closed signs covered all the roads leading into the center of Harvest Moon. In two hours most of the town would be utter chaos thanks to Veggie Fest. Parking lots would be at capacity. Tourists and townspeople alike would jockey for position inside the dozens of white tents set up on the streets, looking for the sweetest homemade treats and examining the flowers, herbs and vegetables the locals grew with loving hands.

Even though she grumbled about it, Lia was taking her job in the children’s area seriously this morning. When I delivered her coffee fresh from Drip! Drip! Hooray!, she grunted a ‘thank you’, took a few sips, and went back to focusing on the vegetables in front of her.

Before the crush of children appeared, we needed to cut apart mounds of carrots, peppers and celery, as well as set up water-soluble paint stations so kids could make their own vegetable-print paintings.

‘So do you want to talk about what happened at Clo’s dinner?’ I said, leaning against one of the folding tables and blowing the steam off my own coffee.

‘Nope.’

‘Lee, come on. You’ve been avoiding it and me. It’s not good for you to hold on to things so tightly.’

‘I’m fine, and you need to stop doing that.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Managing me.’

This dialogue had been happening between us for years. Since she was ten, she’d been pushing back on the attempts I made to discuss anything that came close to serious. She was a vat of boiling, unspoken rage that I was terrified was going to explode at the wrong place and wrong time, hurting no one but herself.

‘Do you blame me? Since last March, you’ve become more secretive. Every time I try and talk to you, I get the sense there’s a fury you’re barely containing. Does it have something to do with Belladonna? Has she contacted you too?’

‘She knows better than to reach out to me after what she did to Aster the last time she was here.’ Her focus went back to chopping vegetables with a little too much force. ‘Why the hell is she calling you?’

‘It was an email.’

‘Did you respond?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that’s one good thing I’ve heard today.’

‘Lee,’ I pleaded. ‘Talk to me.’

‘Where’s the chocolate? Shouldn’t it be here by now?’ She focused on slicing up more red and green peppers and putting them in paper bowls around the six-foot folding table.

I’d learned not to push her when she wasn’t ready to talk, but I wasn’t giving up. She was holding on to some kind of pain too tightly, and I wouldn’t let her crash and burn.

‘Mo is supposed to be delivering it any minute,’ I said.

She tipped her chin to two large wood crates in the corner of the tent. ‘Randall Pelgrew picked those from his farm this morning. Brought them by a half hour ago. He said to text him if we need more.’

I walked to the crates and cracked open one of the slatted lids. The sweet scent of Honeycrisp apples wafted through the air.

‘Should I start slicing them up?’ I said.

Just as she was about to answer, Julius shot into the tent, barreling right for me. The Great Dane’s massive body slammed into the folding table, and Lia jumped up to catch it before it toppled.

‘What the hell?’ she huffed as Julius trotted toward me and bowed his head for a pat.

I smoothed the fur on top of his head. Bent down to get a look at his healing muzzle. As I touched his lips, ran my hands down his neck, I waited for that familiar cramping in my bones. The dizziness and tinge of metal on my tongue. When nothing shocked me, I looked into Julius’s big brown eyes. ‘You staying away from those porcupines?’