Witch Is The New Black (Paris, Texas Romance #3)

“Don’t suppose that means you’ll let me take you for a spin on my broom?”


That made her giggle. She fanned herself with a grin. “You have a broom? Phew, talk about a kickass ride, huh?”

Gus patted her on the back. “Nah. Warlocks don’t get brooms. But I’d take you for a spin if I had one, for sure.”

“Gus Mortimer, are you in here flirting with Bernie again?” Calla teased from the barn door as she strolled in, her long legs carrying her toward them, her iguana familiar-by-adoption, Twyla Faye, following behind. “Seems every time I turn around, you’re buzzin’ around Miss Bernie like a bee around some honey.”

“All boys flirt with pretty girls,” Gus teased, sticking his thumbs under the suspenders holding up his plaid shorts. “I was just tellin’ Bernie how much we all like her.”

Calla pulled off her riding gloves and smiled at Bernie, her pale skin flushed, her eyes clear and bright. “Now that much is true. We do like you, Bernie. In fact, we like you so much, we were all wondering if you’d come over to the center tonight? Call the numbers for bingo for us? The seniors, every last one, enjoy your company so much, and while sometimes bingo can be a bit chaotic—”

“It’s that damned Glenda-Jo!” Gus crowed, sticking a long thread of golden hay between his teeth. “Her and all those fruity troll dolls she lines up like soldiers of bingo death as if they’re gonna take out her opponents. Damn batshit, is what she is. All I did was breathe on one and I thought she was gonna bust a vein.”

Calla tsked Gus with a grin, swatting him with her glove. “Oh, you did not just breathe, Mortimer. You wiggled your little warlock finger and knocked them over like dominos. I saw you, buddy. You know how Glenda-Jo feels about her trolls and bingo and her crazy superstitions. It was all-out war that night. You provoked her into summoning a Gila monster. Do you have any idea how difficult he was to get rid of? It took Winnie and three other witches to banish him.”

Twyla Faye swished her long tail, her eyes blinking in slow motion up at Gus. “Y’all need a leash, I tell you. I’ve never seen so many ill-mannered centuries old witches in my life! I was almost eaten that night, Gus! Why, you’d think you were all raised in a zoo,” she drawled.

Bernie looked down at Twyla Faye and chuckled. She was still getting used to the talking iguana Calla had adopted after being abandoned by her former witch, but along with everything else, a talking iguana was just another addition to this new world she lived in.

Calla grimaced as she leaned on the barn door. “I swear it’s not as bad as it sounds. Don’t let a little old Gila monster scare you off. We managed to rustle him up…eventually.”

Bernie couldn’t help but grin. “Me, scared? Troll dolls, Gila monsters, brooms, and chaos. Who’d wanna miss that? I’m so in. I’d be happy to help on bingo night.”

Suddenly, she had more than a mission. She had inclusion into this circle of people who claimed she belonged to them, and while she was here, she wanted to treat that with the utmost care and respect.



Ridge hadn’t been able to forget that night in the pantry. And as he watched Bernie, sitting with the seniors at the picnic table under the shade of a pecan tree, helping them plant herb seedlings while holding his hen, Miss Prissy, in her lap, his jeans tightened.

She even looked beautiful in a dress three sizes too big for her, billowing about her legs, her strawberry hair falling around her shoulders in waves of blonde and red. Not even the lazy roll of his favorite creek, just behind his mother’s potting shed to the far right of his equally favorite tree, soothed him today. He was restless and cranky and that had everything to do with Bernie.

This incessant thinking about Bernie didn’t make any sense at all. He’d spent maybe ten minutes in what was essentially a closet with her, joking about food and her parole. Yet, he couldn’t stop seeing her big green eyes staring up at him. He couldn’t stop reliving her much shorter, svelte frame pressing against his own.

This wasn’t like him—to linger for so long when it came to a woman. No woman in at least a hundred years had haunted his dreams quite this way.

He tried to tell himself he was merely intrigued by her elusiveness, curious about her obvious fear she’d make one wrong move, but those things had nothing to do with his body’s reaction to hers.

All while she’d sidestepped his questions, Bernie’d sent signals, making it pretty clear she was here to do her time and hit the road.

Which was something else troubling him. Her time served. Why hadn’t she called sanctuary at Council? At least in order to get a fair trial? And how had she managed not to have a trial at all and still come away only doing ten months when she claimed there were official witnesses to her guilt?

He smelled fish. Rotten fish. The moment Baba Yaga would take his call, he was going to find out what the hell was going on.