“Can you sense that I don’t want to talk about this?” He zipped his jacket back up and dug in his pocket for his keys.
“She loves you, too.”
Will did not need to hear that. “No, she doesn’t.”
“She does?” Abby asked in amazement. “I thought they were just best friends.”
“Hello. Yes, she loves him. As more than a friend. She wants him naked, and he wants the same for her. And neither one of them will make a move. Yet we all know they’d make the perfect couple.”
It was really annoying and painful to stand there and listen to Bree feed all of his delusions. “Bree, just leave it alone.”
“If she gave you a very obvious sign that she was interested, would you go for it?”
He wanted to scoff and tell her it would never happen, but he figured the best way to get her to lay off was to be honest. “Yeah. Sure. But short of her kissing me, with tongue, which is never going to happen, I’m not going to believe she’s interested in me.”
Bree smiled. That close-lipped knowing grin scared him.
“Trust me, Will-sie,” she said. “Bree is going to make everything right.”
God help him.
Two
CHARLOTTE SHOVED BOXES UP AGAINST THE GARAGE WALLS with manic fervor, her hands shaking slightly. She had mentally unzipped Will’s pants. How the hell had she done that?
She had wanted it to happen. She’d visualized it happening. Then had watched the reality right before her eyes. His jacket, and then his pants, had come undone. The jacket had been wishful thinking. The pants had been some kind of a test to herself, to prove the jacket was a coincidence.
It wasn’t. She had mentally demanded his pants unsnap, and they had.
She had the power to strip men with her mind.
Wow. That was truly mind-boggling.
But it had to be a fluke. A coincidence. Not real. Right?
Charlotte remembered how she had mentally chanted, “Down, down, down,” while she had visualized Will’s zipper descending. And then it had.
Yikes.
“What’s the matter with you?” her sister Abby asked from behind her. “You’re like throwing those boxes around.”
Charlotte stopped shoving the huge empty Christmas tree box into the corner and grabbed the robotic reindeer and dragged him out, determined to be normal. She would put the deer in the yard, plug his ass in, and have a normal Christmas like normal people did, who weren’t witches and didn’t make men’s pants unzip with their minds.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.” That was Bree’s voice now, sounding concerned, but Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to look at her sister. Despite being totally different, she and Bree had always been close, and were only two years apart in age. Since they’d moved into their grandmother’s house together the year before when Bree had inherited it, they’d gotten even tighter. Bree would know she was hiding something if she looked at her.
Apparently she knew anyway. “Charlotte, come on. You’re really upset. Tell us what’s wrong. Is it Will? We saw him in the driveway looking a little freaked. Did you guys finally give into the inevitable and make out or something?”
She wished. “No.” Grappling with the deer, dragging him across the concrete floor, she glanced at Bree. “His pants just unzipped, that’s all.”
“Why would that make both of you freak out?” Abby asked, swinging a shopping bag in her hand. “You’re like almost thirty and you’ve known each other for half your lives. I don’t think seeing him unzipped would be that big of a deal.”
It really wouldn’t be if she wasn’t totally in love with him and she hadn’t made it happen by the sheer force of her sexually frustrated will. “I think I did it. With my mind. Which is impossible, of course, so clearly I’ve lost that same mind, and the fact that I have these feelings for Will is causing me to have a mental breakdown.”
Bree held up her hand. “Stop right there. You’re not having a mental breakdown. Now put down the damn deer and let’s go in the house and talk about this.”
“I have to finish with the Christmas decorations.” Charlotte got the reindeer to the driveway and switched her hands to his ears, hoping it would be easier to pick him up that way. He wasn’t heavy, just awkward.
Except that her sister yanked the reindeer away from her and slapped him down in a snow bank right next to the garage. “The deer can wait. There’s almost a month until Christmas. We need to talk.”
“No.” But she already knew she’d lost. Bree was much more stubborn than she was and she would keep at her until she confessed the whole thing. Might as well get it over with because she did not like confrontation or having her sisters annoyed with her.
“Go in the kitchen and sit.” Bree pointed at the back door.
“Fine.” Charlotte figured she could use a little reassurance.
Five minutes later they were sitting around the big round table in the kitchen that Charlotte had painted a distressed white, settled in creaky ladderback chairs, teacups in front of them.
“So what happened?” Bree asked.
Charlotte clutched her teacup with a yellow rose pattern, letting the warmth seep into her flesh. “Okay, this is totally embarrassing.”
“We know you dig Will. That’s not a secret, so don’t worry about it.”
“I didn’t know you dig Will,” Abby said, making a face at her cup as she sipped the tea. “Bree knew, though.”
Of course she did. Bree knew everything Charlotte was feeling. It was a creepy sort of ability her sister had, to get in tune with other people’s emotions. She was a good judge of character as well. “Okay, I do sort of like him. A lot. For a while now. But he’s not interested. So I was just looking at Will, thinking that it would be really, really nice to just unzip his jacket and run my hands across his chest. He has a nice chest, you know. Really, really nice. Muscular. He works out a lot. It’s a cop thing.” Charlotte set the tea down, no longer needing the extra heat. “And then his zipper just went down. Just like…” She gestured with her hand in front of her. “It was totally weird. So I thought, bizarre coincidence, right? So I focused on the zipper on his jeans, thinking while that’s what I’d really like to see come undone, it was never going to happen. So I sort of mentally chanted the word ‘down’ and pictured it unzipping, and then it just was. The snap came undone, and the zipper went down. It was crazy.”
Bree didn’t back her up on that crazy thing. Instead she just nodded, looking satisfied. “So we finally know what your magical talent is. I’ve been waiting for years for some kind of indicator from you…Abby and I have known all along what our talents are. I can sense and alter other people’s feelings, Abby can insert herself into other people’s dreams, and now you can move objects. That’s very cool.”
Not cool. Charlotte rubbed her temples. “I can’t move objects. It was just some kind of bizarre coincidental accident. Like the wind did it and I just thought I did it.” Which was ridiculous and she knew it. The wind couldn’t have managed what she’d seen. “And I’ve never moved anything with my mind before.”
“This was different because you focused. You channeled your emotion—you are in love with Will, and love, grief, and anger are the most intense emotions we experience. All your want and desire was behind the urge to unzip his jacket, and then with the pants, not only did you want him physically and emotionally, you added a chant to your visualization. And it worked, obviously. You really need to hone and train your talent now that you’re aware of it.”
While she wasn’t going to argue that all her want and desire had been behind the urge to strip him naked, she took issue with the outcome of Bree’s conclusion. “I don’t want to be a witch! I’m not a witch.” She wore sweater sets from J.Crew, for crying out loud.
“It’s not like you have a choice. You are what you are.” And her sister looked downright gleeful about it.