Margot sliced narrowed eyes to her husband. “I wish you’d stop referring to my circle as ‘the coven,’” she stated.

He bent his face to hers with a smile on his. “The voodoo that you do, sweetheart, I’ve been addicted to for forty-eight years. That wasn’t an insult. But I’ve been a man bewitched for nearly five decades. Johnny here hasn’t even lived that long, so it was a warning. And you and me both know that when that voodoo you do spreads to your acolytes, he needs that.”

Johnny draped his arm across the booth again.

I felt a tingle again.

I also sighed.

Margot’s face softened as she looked into her husband’s eyes.

The waiter arrived at our table with the mushrooms.

Margot looked to him. “Well, finally.”

I giggled.

Johnny’s hand curled around the back of my neck again.

I let out another sigh.

Margot looked to me. “Now, Eliza, do tell me where you got that dress and those shoes, because I’m thinking we’ll go shopping at these places first and then return to your home to taste vodkas. Don’t worry. Dave is a very experienced designated driver. He comes to pick me up after a lot of coven activities, his way of referencing them, not mine. So we can be thorough in our sampling.”

I grinned at her.

She grinned back, her blue eyes sparkling.

Johnny reached for the mushrooms and served me first, pushing four of them on my appetizer plate, before he handed them to Dave who pushed four of them on Margot’s, and only then did he take some for himself then hand the remainder to Johnny.

I reached for my fork.

And made plans to go shopping and drink vodka with the only woman who’d been a mother to Johnny Gamble.

More Importantly

Izzy

“LET ME GET this straight,” Deanna said.

It was the next morning at work, and I wasn’t certain I wanted to let her get this straight. Whenever Deanna performed the lengthy process of “getting something straight,” that something emerged in logical clarity your illogical mind refused to allow it to have until she’d straightened it out, and sometimes that wasn’t a good thing.

I had the feeling if she got this particular thing straight, that being what happened the night before with Johnny, it would absolutely not be a good thing.

Because the promise of it actually being a good thing and that not coming to fruition would be cataclysmic.

“Deanna—” I tried.

“So,” she spoke over me, “three long, agonizing, heartbroken years and Johnny Gamble gets a call from his ex, his Juliet, his Guinevere, his Scarlett, but he has a date planned with you. After this call, he knows he’s got no choice and is gonna end it between you two but for some reason that’s out of character for this guy, he goes through with the date anyway. He also buys you ten bottles of wine to choose from during said date so you have a better shot at having exactly what you want.”

He’d, of course, done that. It had seemed sweet at the time.

It seemed sweeter now.

I continued to stare across my desk at her sitting in one of the chairs opposite me and tried again, “Deanna—”

“During this date, he has sex with you, knows it’s wrong, in fact so knows it’s wrong and he’s so cut up about it, he can’t sleep. You wake up and he delivers a tortured speech about how he’s done you wrong and how his ex messed him up so bad he can’t be all you’d need him to be if things went further with you. You two decide to be friends, but he doesn’t then take you to your car, load up your dogs and give you a kiss on your cheek, telling you to drive safe home. He makes out with you then leads you to his bed and sleeps with you tucked close.”

He’d done that too. And it had also seemed sweet at the time but definitely sweeter now.

And as she talked I was realizing, as much as I loved her, that maybe I shouldn’t share so much with her.

“De—” I started but that was as far as I got.

“You don’t see him, hear from him, then he shows at The Star and he doesn’t walk by you, give you space, take his seat with his second father and the only mother he ever knew, tipping his chin to you if he catches your eye in that hot way hot guys have of saying pretty much anything when they don’t feel like speaking. He stops and he doesn’t say hey or how’s it going. He right off the bat asks you if you’re alone.”

I felt my heart start beating harder because I hadn’t thought about that.

And I gave up trying to interrupt. Deanna was getting something straight and I should have learned a long time ago just to let her.

“Which says, obviously, he was thinking you might be on a date and one could read into that he might not like that much,” she went on. “At all,” she stressed.

Yes, one could read just that.

“So then,” she carried on, “the only mother he ever knew invites you to dinner—”

“She didn’t invite me, Deanna. She pretty much just told me I was eating with them,” I cut in to share.

Deanna kept talking like I didn’t.

“And he’s Johnny Gamble, all that’s Johnny Gamble. He could find a way to make that not happen but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even begin to fight it. He just gives you an out should it be bothering you so much you can’t go through with it, sharing he’d take care of it . . . but only then. Other than that, he doesn’t say boo.”

I bit my lip.

He’d done that too.

Deanna kept at it.

“The situation with Kent comes out, Johnny loses his mind, drags you out of the restaurant, demands you phone him if something goes down then tells you he wants to do you against The Star and take your panties as a souvenir.”

My clit pulsed at the reminder.

Yes, I definitely needed to share less with Deanna.

“And when you bring her up,” she continued, “he won’t even allow you to speak about her. Not because he doesn’t want to talk about her but because he refuses to allow her to get between whatever you two are to each other.”

My heart pulsed at that.

“Yes,” I whispered when she stared at me and said no more.

At this point she said more.

“And you’re barely through the door home before he texts you.”

I was.

Last night, I’d barely gotten through the door before Johnny was texting me.

“Yes,” I repeated.

And then it came.

The declaration.

And the pulse it gave me was more like a shockwave throughout my system.

“This guy is into you.”

“Deanna—”

“I don’t wanna say it,” she told me. “Heck, I didn’t even think I ever would say it. But I’m saying it. Johnny Gamble is into you. Nope, that isn’t it. That man is into you.”

“Shandra’s back or coming back or—” I started.

She shook her head, lifting her hand shaking that too, and interrupted me.

“Make no mistake, that boy’s messed up. She’s got him twisted still and he’s in a bad way about it. But that hold she’s got on him is in its death throes, Iz. He got jacked by a stupid woman who threw away probably the best thing she was ever going to have and that tore him up. And then he met you.”

I was feeling warm inside. So warm I felt it everywhere and it was beginning to burn.

“I told him I couldn’t do just sex and he agreed with that, Deanna,” I reminded her. “So it’s clear he wants sex without anything weighing on that or just to be friends.”