Just One Taste Part 13

It was that oily little man again.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Miss Raymond's eyelashes batted like trapped b.u.t.terflies. They were edged in gold and quite long. "I-he-"

"I thought you went home." Bryant glared at him, unable to see the "viscount with umbrage" effect-if there was any-on the unctuous store manager's face. He shoved both guilty hands in his pocket-his fingers were trembling too.

Bryant was...tempted. He had been so busy lately there had been no time for women. Except for his sister Marjorie, and that was an entirely different thing. Wouldn't she laugh to see him in this predicament?

"So I see. Miss Raymond, I am very disappointed. Shocked. Disgusted. I had such high hopes for you. You are, of course, dismissed. I will expect you to clear your things from the d.i.c.kins and Jones lodgings at once."

Miss Raymond swayed, and Bryant caught her. "This isn't what it looks like, you officious twit! Miss Raymond was only demonstrating-oh, never mind." He turned to the girl, who had lost every bit of rosiness and whose tears were flowing freely now. "Come home with me. It's Christmas Eve, and my sister would love the company. This is all my fault. We'll see about getting you another job."

"I c-couldn't possibly."

"Of course you can. We'll pick up your things and my driver will take us home. The poor fellow is out there in the cold. Everyone deserves someplace warm on this night of all nights."

"At once!" the officious twit shrilled. "And where are you going with that scarf?"

Bryant reached into his pocket and threw a fistful of pound notes in Mr. Parmenter's direction. "Merry Christmas! Now, Miss Raymond, are you ready to begin the New Year a little early?"

She blinked up at him, a tremulous smile on her face. She had lovely lips. Kissable lips. Bryant didn't think too long before he brushed his across hers, causing the officious twit to shriek.

"Yes, my sister will love your company," Bryant said softly. So would he. Maybe Miss Raymond and her scarf were just what they all needed for Christmas.

Spellcheck

I always wondered when reading vampire books how those poor vampires managed to live through zillions of years and not get bored or found out. But being generally freaked out by the blood and biting business, I decided to write about an ordinary eighteenth century woman who was bespelled and doomed to live forever. It just takes one cute, smart twenty-first century guy to solve her predicament.

Prologue.

On a late September Sunday afternoon, Juliet Barton threw a lime green flip-flop at Cade Gray.

She'd missed by a mile. He watched her limp on down the beach. He called out to her, but the cras.h.i.+ng waves washed his voice away. Cade stood still like an idiot until Juliet looked smaller and smaller. He was not going to jog after her. He was not going to defend himself. He hiked up the dunes to his Jeep and never looked back to see if she turned around. Her sandy sandal was in his back pocket.

Break-up up by plastic shoe from Target. That was a first. He supposed there were worse ways to break up. Her aim was bad, and that was good. She could have dropped a plate of spaghetti in his lap last night or beaned him on the head with a stale bagel this morning. She could have done the whole "it's not you, it's me" routine, or even worse, told him she'd been faking every time she cried out, "Oh, G.o.d, yesss, yesss, oh G.o.d, don't stop."

But he had to admit, he never saw it coming. The flip-flop or the break-up. As far as he knew, he was in love. He was almost ready to ask her to marry him. Almost. They'd only spent the summer together. He was prepared to go until Christmas before he stuck a ring in her stocking.

Cade started up the car. He wasn't stranding her. Her new red Taurus was parked right next to him. He'd helped her pick it out a couple of weeks ago. Some car salesmen still treated women like airheads, and he was there for back-up. Juliet had fallen in love with the red one-merlot, it said on the specs-and was as giddy as if she'd drunk some driving her first brand-new car off the lot.

Not that she needed a car anyway. A girl like Juliet could always catch a ride. One look in her big brown eyes, and a guy was toast.

It was love at first sight the day they met. Gay love. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Cade's goofy yellow lab Jack had sniffed and licked Juliet's quivering male wire-haired fox terrier's most private bits in drooly ecstasy as the two humans tried unsuccessfully to untangle their leashes and remain upright.

It occurred to Cade if this had happened in a book, it would be a very cute meet-cute. Cade was, in fact, a writer. If you've ever read the warranty to your toaster oven, put together a home entertainment center or read a tutorial for your computer, you might have seen his prosaic prose in its perfection, in English and Spanish. Being a technical writer was not what he had set out to do, but he made a decent living at it and still had time for a few half-started novels on his hard drive.

Trouble was, he had realized a while back he had nothing profound to say in either language. And it pretty much killed him now to throw adjectives around when simple was best. You're hot. Let's hook up was what he thought as he watched Juliet detach Rufus's collar from the lead when it was clear the dogs were not going to stand still and cooperate. She held the writhing terrier in her arms as Cade patiently unknotted the leashes and avoided Jack's deranged tongue.

"Come here often?" he asked. Jeez. This wasn't a bar, but the dog park. For a wordsmith it wasn't much of an opener, but it wasn't even seven o'clock in the morning and Cade hadn't had his coffee yet. And d.a.m.n it, it had been a Sat.u.r.day, but Jack was a dog and didn't know one day of the week from another. He just knew he had to pee and made sure he woke Cade up with hot dog breath.

Cade always got up before the alarm went off anyway, dog breath or not. Not that he had to get up early to commute. He worked from home, the envy of all his friends who thought he watched ESPN all day. He got up early because he had a lot of stuff to write about and wanted to knock off in time for Rome is Burning and Around the Horn, the first chance he allowed himself to turn on the TV. If he wasn't strict, he might get sucked into Days of Our Lives or The Price is Right, and then how would a frazzled father in Minnesota ever figure out how to put together Pretty Pony's Little Pink Stable on Christmas Eve?

Juliet had looked up at him, kind of grim. Cade knew he'd brushed his teeth before he left his place, even if he hadn't showered yet. He was not quite in Nick Nolteville. He gave her his best smile, and saw a little thaw.

She shook her head. "This is my first time. I moved here not too long ago."

Her face wasn't beaming with friendliness, but she had a nice voice. Southern. She was blus.h.i.+ng, too. Probably because she was embarra.s.sed to be caught still wearing her flannel pajama bottoms under the denim barn coat she wore to ward off the spring early morning chill. Her taffy-colored hair was crazy-curly and pulled back in a banana clip. Taffy-colored. Hmm. Guess he still had a few adjectives in him. But he didn't think they made banana clips anymore-he remembered them from junior high.

"Did you drive or walk?"

Cade could see her edging backwards. Well, duh. She probably thought he and his vicious perverted hound were going to stalk her back home.

"I'm Cade Gray. I live just down the street," he said hurriedly, trying not to scare her. "I grew up here. There's a great coffee bar right next to my apartment. Want to get some?"

Too strong. Too fast. Too desperate. Too late.

Taffy shook her head. "I'm sorry. I've got to go to work. It was nice meeting you."

She didn't bother to put her dog down, but carried him off. Cade knew his name but not hers, and it didn't seem like she was going to tell him.

Okay. No problem. He was here every single morning with Jack, rain or s.h.i.+ne. After lunch, too, when he took a break from his self-imposed home office schedule. He got a little lazy in the evening and lucked out since he lived in a rehabbed brick Victorian with access to his own tiny walled yard from the kitchen door. He didn't even have to p.o.o.per-scoop unless he was having company and wound up outside sitting on the faux park bench, which he'd put together following his own directions. He'd see her again, even if she didn't live in the neighborhood.

He watched her walk down the path and heard the determined slap of her green flip-flops on the cement. A girl with messy hair and plaid pajama pants shouldn't look so good to him, but she did. However, he had a date tonight anyway-Carol Kennedy. Carol was a friend of his cousin Deirdre, who had been trying to fix them up for years: before, during and now after Carol's failed marriage. Cade hated arranged dates. But he had been going through a bit of a dry spell, so maybe Carol would be a thirst quencher.

He'd never felt the urge to get married himself. He'd never wanted to drink coffee so badly with anyone before Taffy, either.

It only took him two weeks of being the Dog Park Stalker before he finally had that cup of coffee, both Jack and Rufus lying calmly under a bistro table on the sidewalk while their owners began the gentle mating dance. It took two full months to woo and wow Juliet into his bed and around other hotspots of Portland, Maine. But as he drove out of the beach parking lot, he was glad he hadn't asked his mother for her old engagement ring yet. She'd probably stroke his stubbled cheek and sigh in sympathy and lament his lot. n.o.body wanted his mom to feel sorry for him. A guy had his pride, after all.

That had been a close call, but it was for the best, Juliet reasoned with herself as she stomped off toward the jetty. She felt the sharp shards of rocks and sh.e.l.ls mixed with the cold sand, but that didn't bother her a bit. Nothing could truly harm her. Well, nothing to be found on a Maine beach at the end of the season. Summer was definitely over. Ever since the Autumnal Equinox she had been searching in vain for some pretext to break up with Cade.

It wasn't as though he made it easy for her. He was smart, her number one male requirement when she felt the need to indulge herself. He was more than reasonably attractive, with longish thick brown hair that wouldn't lie down straight and hazel eyes fringed with the kind of eyelashes that p.i.s.sed off all mortal women. He'd been hit in the face with a bad hop ground ball when he captained the Bates' baseball team, but the crease across his nose only added to his charm. He was tall and fit from playing in some local "old man" slow-pitch league. He made excellent omelets loaded with vegetables. He drank local craft beer in moderation and had nice friends.

And he wasn't serving in the military. Not that she wasn't patriotic. She'd rolled bandages and sold bonds and nursed the wounded. Spied when the opportunity arose. But men in uniform had an unfortunate tendency to meet their Maker after they'd been in Juliet's arms a time or three.

And he was more than adequate in bed. Really, if she had to admit it, extraordinary. All the more reason to hand him his conge. It had been a while since anyone had made Juliet feel the things she felt and say the things she said. She drew her golden eyebrows together. When was the last time she had a truly spontaneous o.r.g.a.s.m that hadn't been the result of some mechanical intervention?

She knew the answer perfectly well. It had been with her third lover, the Viscount Fforde. Major Anthony William Macclesfield until his uncle popped off. Poor Tony didn't even have a chance to enjoy his newly-acquired t.i.tle. He'd died in the Crimea. Goodness, that was about one hundred and seventy years ago. She had been so upset that it had taken her almost a century and some intercontinental travel before she found herself in the arms of a young American training with the RAF in Canada. He'd been very sweet and enthusiastic, but not very skilled.

He'd died, too.

She sat down on a flat rock and sighed. She did not have good luck with men. Six lovers in over two hundred years, seven if you counted her impotent husband and that didn't really seem fair. It had to be some sort of chast.i.ty record for any woman who wasn't a nun. But she was very fussy, and this longevity business was not all that it was cracked up to be.

True, it was very useful for her antique store. Cade had kiddingly called it a junk shop, but she knew better. The advantage of living through several centuries was that you recognized the jewels amidst the junk. Ever since she had rented the Old Port store and hung the Magic Magpie sign, she'd done a brisk business with the throngs of tourists and locals who wandered down the charming cobbled streets. She got grudging respect from the other dealers who'd lived in Maine forever. She'd always be an outsider, but she was beginning to feel comfortable here. Too comfortable.

Which is why Cade had to be cut loose. It was for his own good, really. He'd be fine. He was certainly much too young to die, and it seemed everybody she chose to sleep with for any length of time, even if they didn't bring her to o.r.g.a.s.m, wound up taking a dirt nap. She winged her remaining flip-flop into the sea, bursting into noisy sobs as the seagulls swirled around her head. With her luck, they'd be c.r.a.pping on her head any minute.

Chapter 1.

One year later

Juliet Maria Barton was not a witch or a vampire or a fairy. Faerie, if that's how you wanted to spell it. She was not a werewolf or a werecat or any other fascinating paranormal heroine. In fact, there was no name for the kind of creature she was, and no support group like the Justice League or the Black Dagger Brotherhood. She'd never once in all her travels encountered another being such as herself, although she gathered as much magical arcana as she could and rubbed shoulders with some very shady characters. Even after playing creatively on the wonder of the Internet for the past twenty years, she still was no closer to finding out the truth of her immortality, if that in fact is what she possessed.

She wasn't sure if she would live forever. She hoped not. It had been very vexing to go through such constant upheaval, and it seemed that the world was only getting worse. More terrifying. The Middle East, for instance. Sus.h.i.+. Rush Limbaugh. Thongs. She could cite many examples but knew she had to keep her opinions to herself or be recognized for the anachronism she was. She told people, when she had to, that she was twenty-seven, the age when her husband Sir Joseph Barton blew himself and their manor house up in his last doomed magic experiment. He had been quite mad, but very rich, and her parents had no qualms about marrying her off to him at the age of sixteen in 1778. Sir Joseph had showered her in jewels, sashed dresses, elaborate hats and a brace of high-strung dogs to subst.i.tute for his unfortunate inability to provide her with pleasure or progeny, and she was content for a time. As he fancied himself something of a scientist and was locked away in his laboratory in a futile quest for fecundity, he mostly left her alone, and it wasn't until dear Lieutenant Aubrey St. Just (killed at Quartre Bras) that she realized what should transpire between a man and a woman.

By the time Aubrey came along, Juliet was a bit frantic, hiding out on the Continent to escape both Napoleon and her family who had begun to look at her with undisguised curiosity and not a little alarm. Despite the fact that powdering one's hair and wearing wigs was now pa.s.se, she did so every time she went home for a visit, because she didn't have one gray hair on her head and still had all of her teeth. She was technically fifty-three years old when she experienced her first o.r.g.a.s.m.

Better late than never, she supposed.

Thank heaven society had changed enough so that she no longer was suspected of something every time she moved to a new community. Nowadays, everybody moved. She'd worn her dimples out too many times to count, smiling obsequiously while some society matron looked her up and down and fending off the advances of their husbands who saw her as virgin territory. She spent the whole nineteenth century in widow's weeds, and black was not her color.

She really couldn't realistically put in more than twenty or thirty years anywhere, no matter how infrequently she brushed her hair or how little make-up she wore. Her face was always dewy-fresh, revealing her English Rose origins with every stuttering blush. Over the years, she'd experimented with overeating to add age, but she was cursed with a metabolism that burned up every eclair and empanada and Nathan's Famous hot dog.

In other circ.u.mstances, she'd be grateful to maintain her fair feminine form. Oh, she was certainly not excessively slender, rather a woman of her time, with soft, dimpled, tempting flesh. But how she longed to disguise her beauty. It was a nuisance to keep fitting in only to have to fit out.

Juliet had lived in New England before. She even had a tiny cottage on one of Maine's lakes she'd bought years ago. Her friends in Virginia said she was insane to move to Maine when the winters could be so harsh, but Portland was a lively small city with a thriving economy. Her store was doing well and so was her social life. Her heart might have been broken, but she had plenty of friends.

As if to disagree, Rufus the Eighth snorted in his sleep at her feet.

"I do! I have friends!" Of course, the vast majority of them were dead. She glanced across the shop at the rather annoying Bavarian cuckoo clock, then closed the laptop and went into her kitchenette to put a fresh pot of decaf on. It was too late in the afternoon for the real deal, although even if she missed some sleep, it never showed. She was infuriatingly impervious to ordinary wear and tear.

In fifteen minutes she expected a man and his box of "valuable" books to walk into the shop. He'd seen her discreet ad in the Portland Press Herald. She'd offered to stop by his house, but it turned out he lived on one of the islands and he was making his yearly pilgrimage to Portland. She knew some of those summer cottages were absolute treasure troves for collectors, and was disappointed to skip the ferry ride, inconvenient as it was. Cottage was surely a misnomer; some of the houses had twenty bedrooms or more. Juliet wondered if this guy lived in one of them or in some lobster shack.

She still couldn't tell when she met Seth Pendleton. He was a tall, almost cadaverous man, clad in a plaid flannel s.h.i.+rt and jeans with a worn corduroy blazer tossed over the box of books he carried. He reminded Juliet of a magician, who covered the empty cage with a cloth and then revealed the rabbit.

"If you don't mind, Mr. Pendleton, I'll lock up the shop so we won't be disturbed. Why don't you put the box on the counter for now?"

Juliet went to the door and flipped her hand-lettered sign to Closed. And just like when you could still smoke in restaurants, as soon as you lit up, the entree arrived, a well-dressed woman turned the polished bra.s.s handle of the store. Juliet smiled and shrugged, pointed to the sign and the woman went somewhere else to spend her trust fund.

"Sorry about that," Mr. Pendleton said. He was busy rubbing a grateful Rufus behind the ears.

"No, it's quite all right. I want to give my full attention to you. You've come a long way. I thought I could take you back to my quarters. That way people won't be banging on the window when they see us."

Juliet supposed she was taking a risk inviting a strange man to her apartment behind the store. It was clear Rufus was useless as a watchdog. If she was honest with herself, she'd been taking risks now for more than fifty years. Oh, nothing too stupid. She wasn't sampling any of the myriad designer drugs or parachuting from planes or ice climbing. It's not like she wanted to die. Well, she did, but about seventy years from now, in a nice warm bed with a crocheted afghan over her, surrounded by her elderly children, grandchildren and maybe a few great-grandchildren. When she thought about it, Cade was in that picture, too, rather shriveled up but still a handsome devil.

No point to thinking about Cade. Rufus had given her the cut direct for weeks when she stopped bringing him to the dog park. Juliet didn't dare run into Cade Gray or his dog Jack. Not in his lifetime. It would only hurt too much. If her business hadn't been so successful she might even have considered relocating, far in advance of her usual cycle. But she'd had a nice color feature in Down East Magazine and good press even in the Bangor newspaper. That cute shopping columnist had said, "Juliet Barton casts a spell in her magically-inspired Old Port antique shop. Hop on your broom and fly down I-95!"

It wasn't until 1933 that Juliet realized she might find a cure for her lack of disease by going into the antique business. Up until then, she'd been roaming all over the world checking out library books, haunting booksellers and cras.h.i.+ng covens. Now she sold much of what she acquired, trying out various spells and potions and alignments of objects with no success. She already knew she'd buy everything in Mr. Pendleton's box, if only to give him enough money for a good meal.

He followed her back down the hallway past the tiny storeroom, kitchenette and bathroom to her all-purpose s.p.a.ce. It was a large room, and had in the past been part of someone's business. It suited her to live on the premises, though. She was within walking distance of great restaurants, and she could let Rufus into the back alley to do his business. The sleigh bed, covered with vintage needlepoint pillows, made a perfectly acceptable couch She took off a placemat from her round oak pedestal table so Mr. Pendleton could put down the box. "May I get you a cup of coffee? I should warn you. It's decaf."

"Thought I smelled somethin' good. Yes, please."

"Why don't you unpack the box? I'll be right back."

Juliet had already prepared a rattan tray with all the accoutrements, so she only had to pour the coffee into two oversize Blue Willow mugs. If she'd been dealing with a woman, the Limoges would have been pressed into service, but no man Juliet knew liked dainty china.

Mr. Pendleton seemed to be a simple, Maine man. He wore sensible L.L. Bean duck boots. His graying hair was cropped close to his head. He might have been a summer millionaire, but Juliet thought not. The hands that held the coffee mug were callused. He took a sip of his black coffee and cleared his throat. The dozen or so books were piled neatly on the table, the cardboard box on the floor. Rufus had already given it a disdainful sniff and lay at her guest's feet.

"I s'pose you're wondrin' how I came upon these fancy magic books."

Juliet nodded. She had yet to pick one up. They all looked very old, with tooled leather bindings and gilt t.i.tles.

"I caretake for the Rossingtons. You've heard of them?"