He stuck his tongue out at her, the flaps of his old pilot’s hat bobbing. “You’re the meanest old-geezer babysitter in the land.”
Winnie reached for her hand and grinned when she patted it. “You do know I’m just razzing you, right? That I would never pressure you to tell me if you’re finally going to commit to Nash by making his eyeballs roll to the back of his head unless you really, really, really wanted to share.”
Calla loved Winnie—from the second she’d come into the senior center at the very end of her pregnancy and brought four dozen cupcakes for the seniors. Cupcakes she’d sworn she was going to eat all on her own in an effort to crowd little Ben out of her uterus via cake batter and a rush of sugar.
She loved that, to hear people in town tell it, Winnie had overcome some huge obstacles of her own when she’d first arrived in Paris. But what she loved most about Winnie was that she helped others with their obstacles, too, by continuing the legacy Ben’s sister had begun, running a halfway house for witches who were on parole for magic abuse—the very position Winnie had been in just a little over a year ago.
Calla treasured their almost immediate friendship, but this night with Nash was a touchy subject for her—almost too touchy even for girl talk with Winnie. She’d never confided what happened to anyone, but it would be the first intimate encounter she’d had with a man since…
“Oh, you would too pressure me.” But it wasn’t malicious pressure. It was done in the spirit of girl-bonding, and Calla knew that in her heart.
But still…
“Okay, I would,” Winnie confessed with an impish grin, her beautiful face wreathed in that special glow she always had. “So tell me or I’m going to have to use my magic wand. You don’t want me to break out,” she lowered her voice so the two other customers wouldn’t hear her, “The. Wand. Do you?”
Calla mock shivered, running her hands over her arms. Winnie’s magic wand was legendary here in Paris. To Calla, it looked like a purple sparkle stick, but to hear the people of Paris tout its abilities was to compare it to the Holy Grail.
“No fair. I’m nothing but a lowly werewolf with no magic. But I defy you to out-shed me.”
Winnie giggled, placing Ben in his carrier and securing the seatbelts. “Okay, so you’re not going to tell me. Fine. But I’m here to tell you, I won’t be there for the festivities because Ben’s aunt Yaga needs us in Salem. So we’ll be gone for the entire weekend and I won’t be able to dish. But I’ll make sure Daphne looks out for you.”
Daphne, another witch, who was married to the actual Fate, was fashionable and fabulous and had welcomed her with warmth and friendship. She loved Daphne, but she wasn’t Winnie.
Panic seized her. Winnie wasn’t going to be at the dance. Shit. What if she needed some girl support? What if everything with Nash went horribly wrong and she needed a shoulder to cry on?
What could go wrong, Calla?
You know what could go wrong.
Would it hurt to talk about her deep-seated fears and insecurities with Winnie? Would it hurt to tell her why she’d waited as long as she had to sleep with Nash instead of always avoiding the question?
Mostly it was because she couldn’t bring herself to say the words out loud. Still. After an entire year.
So rather than share the one last intimate detail of her life, the one that had made her leave Boston forever, Calla made something up. “I’m worried about what I’m going to wear. I hear the Harvest Dance is a reason to gussie up. Most of my stuff is still in boxes in Boston.”
At the Dark Overlord’s, in the guesthouse where she’d lived for six solid years while she’d catered to his every outrageous, only-sparkling-water-in-a-bottle, wafer-thin-cucumber-slices-for-the-eyes, one-quarter-cup-of-no-pulp-orange-juice-and-not-a-drop-more whim. Reed still had it all because she couldn’t face him long enough to reclaim it.
The dicknuckle.
Fuck, she hated what a coward she’d turned into that last night as Reed’s assistant. But she was working toward healing her shame one day at a time. And she was almost there.
Except for tonight. If she could just get past tonight. If Nash turned out to be the man she thought he was…
Why does everything hinge on Nash being anything, Calla? You are who you are, and if he or any other man doesn’t like it, they can shove it up their unworthy, shallow asses! the feminist in her screamed.
But the feminist in her wanted Nash to be a decent guy. Wanted it desperately—because she was falling; falling hard for him and it would never do if he ended up being a bag of dicks.
As Winnie rose, interrupting her troubled thoughts, she smiled at Calla and waved a dismissive hand. “Is that all? A dress? Don’t be silly. I have a million things you can wear. Just borrow something of mine.”