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

Rocking back on her heels, Bernie shook her head. Say as little as possible and suck it up, Buttercup, had been her motto from the moment she’d realized no one believed she didn’t know she was a witch.

She’d gone from wigged-out, anxiety-riddled Bernice Sutton to reliable, dependable, model inmate in less than two weeks. If she could do that behind bars, she could do that here in Catch Fire-Ville.

Taking the shovel, she didn’t even think twice about her shredding Kotex slippers as she pushed off the side of the barn. “Not a one.”

Ridge tipped his hat and sauntered off into the blazing mid-morning sun without another word.

Fee blew out a breathy escape of air. “Isn’t he just the shiznit, B?”

“Oh totally,” she muttered, stomping her way toward the farthest stall and unlatching the hinged door. “He’s like fuzzy kittens and Yanni’s pan flute playing in the background all rolled into one nurturing bundle of shiznit.”

Fee padded toward her, scurrying and weaving as he went. “Don’t be so grudgey. It could be worse, you know. You could still be that nutball KiKi Lemieux’s prison pet.”

She was getting testy and she knew it. She’d fought hard to maintain her cool all while she’d absorbed this witch thing in prison. But it was starting to eat its way through her gut. Add to that her stiff upper lip was on fire, and she was a hotbed for a meltdown.

“You’re so right, Fee. I could still be in a nice, cool prison cell brushing KiKi Lemieux’s hair for her, instead of here in Boiled Alive Landing in the middle of August, mucking horseshit. How ungrateful of me.”

“There’s the pity party I’ve been waiting for!” Fee swished his tail and a festive party noisemaker appeared out of thin air, sounding off in the general vicinity of her ear.

Bernie jumped as the abrasive noise intruded on the quiet of the barn. “Knock it off, Fee!” She swatted it away with an irritable hand—only to hear a crackle and a sharp pop, leaving the scent of smoke wafting to her nose.

Her eyes went wide when she looked down at her feet and saw the now-blazing party favor fall to the ground, hitting a bale of dry hay.

Fee squeaked and jumped up onto the stall door when the embers ignited in a dry huff.

“Water, Fee! We need water!” she yelped as the entire bale of hay began to burn in an orange and blue blaze.

Her eyes flew around the enormous barn, one that was so old and decrepit, if she didn’t do something it would surely go up in flames from so much dry wood.

She ran for a thick blanket draped over a stall door and grabbed it, her heart throbbing against her ribs, thick smoke making her eyes tear. “Fee! Make it rain or something!” she bellowed, her makeshift slippers sticking to the dirt floor.

Fee hopped around as the fire began to spread. “I suck dirty ass at elementals, Bernie! But if you listen to me, you can stop this!”

Lunging for the rapidly spreading fire, she threw the blanket on it, hoping to tamp it out, but that only made everything worse as the blanket caught fire, too.

Acrid smoke began to fill the barn in thick clouds of black. Rather than risk smoke inhalation, she scooped Fee up and ran for the door.

“Bernie!” he yelled, clawing the front of her jumpsuit. “You have the power to make it stop. Just concentrate!”

Bernie chose to ignore his advice, running straight for the door. She wanted no part of this witch business, and even if she did, at this panic-filled moment, she couldn’t parse frog sweat from the tears of a Dutch maiden to mix up a spell that would douse the fire anyway.

Smoke continued to billow in thicker clouds, moving upward toward the ceiling as the flames rose.

She couldn’t see a damn thing as she tripped and stumbled toward what she assumed was the front of the barn.

As though manna from Heaven, a weak shaft of light poked through the thick smoke to the barn entry and Bernie aimed for it, holding her breath and running with Fee tucked under her arm like a quarterback at a homecoming game.

She barreled outside to the front of the barn, only evident due to the harsh beat of the sun and her first intake of steamy air.

Fee slipped from her grasp as her eyes began to water and she hacked, falling forward into a hard wall of flesh.

“What the hell have you done to my barn?” someone roared, catching her in a pair of strong arms, preventing her from collapsing to the ground.

Bernie winced as more tears squeezed from her eyes.

Ridge. That was Ridge yelling. Appropriately named, too, for all the ridges his hot, muscled body sported—so sayeth her body, smashed against it.

And then before she could clear her vision enough to get a grasp on her footing, another voice piped in—an elderly one at that. “Break out the marshmallows and weenies, Poise Pad Wearers, and I’ll get the beer—it’s barbequin’ time!”

Bernie groaned on a cough.

Yee and haw.





Chapter 3