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

But why did he care if Bernie wasn’t given a fair trial? Why was that his business?

She’d avoided him all week, and he’d done the same for obvious reasons. He didn’t need to sate his curiosity with a woman who was as hell-bent on leaving Paris as he was.

All that aside, now he was gawking at her from the cover of his old pickup, Betty-Boop, his mouth watering at the flare of her hips in her outdated dress, the luscious upward tilt of her breasts. She was sexy as hell, even in a dress that did little but cover everything she owned, and still he wanted to peel it off her body to find out what she owned.

Fuck.

Grabbing her check, her shoved the paper in his shirt pocket and popped open the truck door, closing it with a hard shove for good measure.

As he approached, Calla’s grandfather, Ezra, waved. “Ridge! Good to see you. You senior-slumming today?”

Ridge liked Ezra, respected him, had known him the better part of his life. What he respected most about Ezra was he’d somehow managed to stick it out in a town full of witches as a werewolf.

He chuckled down at him. “You know I can’t resist this bunch, Ezra. I’m like a moth to their flame.”

“That’s not moths, Ridgie-boy,” Clive snickered, tucking his chew inside his cheek. “That’s mothballs, and it ain’t no flame. Unless you’re smellin’ Flora’s clothes burnin’, that is.”

Ridge watched Bernie fight a grin when she tapped Clive on the back and gave him “the look”. “Clive Stillwater, I can’t believe you just said that! Didn’t we agree it’s not nice to pull Flora’s pigtails in lieu of putting in the work and using your words? Your honest ones? Honey gets you more than vinegar ever will,” she chided the old man, and did so quite comfortably, Ridge noted.

Flora scooped up some of the dirt from her seedling planter and flicked it at Clive. “You just watch yourself there, you pruney, geriatric Magic Mike, or I’ll see the image of your face in my cauldron’s brew tonight!”

Bernie threw up a finger as she looked across the wide table at Flora, her eyes surprised. “Wait, you really have a cauldron?”

Everyone paused a moment, silent, while a puffy white cloud passed over the sun, and every senior eye was on Bernie.

The breeze lifted her hair as she stared back at them.

But then Glenda-Jo’s fingers went directly to the pearls around her neck as she laughed. “You’re so funny, Bernie. Some of the things you say make my stomach plum hurt from laughin’! Of course we don’t have cauldrons anymore. Tupperware is much easier on the back than hauling around those big cast-iron things these days. Why, we haven’t had cauldrons in at least two hundred years. I use my old one as a planter.”

Ridge saw the way Bernie’s face changed, a brief flicker of recognition to cover her confusion before she blurted, “Right! Sorry, it must be the heat, messing with my brain. Phew, like an inferno out here, right? Nonetheless, no more talk of mothballs and cauldrons. We have oregano to plant if we hope to have some fresh for the spaghetti dinner come early fall.”

Her reaction to cauldrons was odd. Curiouser and curiouser still.

But you’re not going to linger, are you, Donovan?

Nope. He wasn’t going to linger. Rolling his shoulders, he looked directly at the woman he was no longer lingering over. “Bernie? Can I have a word with you, please?”

She rose slowly and hesitantly, planting her palms on the table and slipping off the bench. “Of course, Mr. Donovan.”

“Mr. Donovan,” George Wiffle spouted on a cackle. “Hah! We’re all friends here. No need for formalities.”

“You hush now, George, and mind your manners,” Calla reprimanded, her stern teacher’s look in place.

Bernie’s footsteps followed behind him toward the barn, and if footsteps could be reluctant, hers sure sounded heavy with dread.

He didn’t want her to hate the idea of having a conversation with him. In fact, that bugged the shit out of him.

Stop lingering.

Turning to face her, he pulled her paycheck from his pocket and held it up. “Your paycheck for the week, with a small added bonus for keeping Flora from killing Clive.”

She visibly swallowed when she took the slip of paper and calculated the amount. “I can’t take that.”

“Of course you can.”

She backed away, her poofy skirt fluttering around her legs. “No. No, I can’t. It’s too much.”

“It’s only an extra fifty dollars, Bernie. No big deal.”

“It’s fifty dollars I didn’t earn.”

“On the contrary. You more than earned it when you kept Flora from holding Clive under the creek while y’all were skimming rocks.”

She fought a grin, but it happened anyway. “You heard about that?”

“Who didn’t hear Clive caterwaulin’ like he was being skinned alive? All of Paris heard it.”