Ghosts of Boyfriends Past (17 page)

“Biz!” Mark shouted over the rushing wall of sound, trying to jerk her hands away from the flash of fire, but the flames had already gone out, the sound and the fury vanishing with a barely audible whoosh and leaving behind nothing but a small pile of ash in the shape of a heart.

Her ears rang and her breathing came fast. “Whoa.”

Now that’s what I call magic.
She hadn’t known she had it in her.

Mark crawled around to her side, eyeing the salad-bowl cauldron suspiciously. “What the hell was that?”

Biz smiled, still a bit dazed. “It worked.”

Oh baby, had it ever worked. The rush of the curse unlocking had streaked through her as soon as the fire lit, a power cascade unlike anything she’d ever felt. Every cell was still tingling with the aftermath, her entire body coming awake after a long sleep.

She was free. Gabriel, Tony and Paul were free to move on.

But so was Mark.

Her high suddenly didn’t feel quite so high.

She studied his face, looking for signs of his changed affections. Mark continued to stare at the salad bowl. “So apparently when you said you were a witch and this was a curse, that was literal. And those guys in the fire tornado were…”

“Ghosts.”

“Right. Okay. Just give me a minute to have an aneurism and I’ll be right with you.”

Biz watched for the moment he realized what had happened. Would he be angry with her? Disgusted? Or, perhaps worst of all, indifferent?

“How do you feel?”

He shrugged. “Fine. A little dazed. How about you? That was some pretty…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “
Damn
.”

She wet her lips nervously.
Fine
didn’t sound much like
deliriously in love with you forever and ever.
“You don’t feel different?”

Mark frowned. “Am I supposed to?”

“You aren’t
supposed
to, necessarily. I just thought you might feel…differently about things.”

“Like
search your feelings, Luke
?” He grinned, dimples flashing, suddenly boyish, a ten-year-old
Star Wars
nerd in a thirty-two-year-old body.

He’d be a great dad
. Oh jeez. Where had that thought come from? Just because he smiled like a kid? She was screwed. So totally screwed. She was supposed to be letting him go and she was fantasizing about having his babies. Bad, bad, bad.

“What was all that
your heart is free to go where it will
stuff?”

Of course he would have picked up on
that
line of the spell. “That’s, uh, part of the curse. Freeing you. You know. From…”

“Biz? From what?”

“Freeing you from loving me, okay?” She jumped to her feet, needing to not be sitting cross-legged on the floor when he told her he had more passion for cockroaches than he had for her. Feet planted, shoulders square. Strong. No slumped little witch to be crushed by a man’s lack of affection.

Mark climbed to his feet, but he didn’t approach her. That had to be a bad sign. Why wasn’t he pulling her into his arms? Assuring her she’d worried for nothing? Soothing away all her cares with kisses? Why was he frowning? Oh God. Frowning had to be a bad sign.

“Let me see if I’ve got this. You just cast a spell to get me to stop loving you?”

“Not quite. I cast a spell to remove the spell that was making you love me.”

Anger crowded the confusion off his face. “I guess you pretty much suck as a witch, then.”

“What?”

“Look, I think I’ve been pretty understanding about all this—”

“You’ve been great.”

“And I know you’ve got baggage. You’ve dealt with some pretty major shit in the last few years and I get that, but you can’t just wave your magic wand and get rid of the way I feel about you. I love you, Biz. Not because of a spell or a curse or ghosts or stories or whatever the hell you think is
forcing
me to love you. I just do. Okay? That isn’t going to change just because it’s less scary for you to magic it away than it is to acknowledge your own feelings for me. You said you love me? So own it. Stop hiding behind magic and—”

His words cut off when she slammed into him and slapped her mouth over his. Her arms twined around his neck, and she kept him locked in the kiss until she was certain he knew exactly where she stood. Only then did she let him up for air.

“Whoa.”

“I love you, Mark Ellison.” She bit her lip, still twitching with fragments of nervous doubt. “You’re sure your feelings haven’t changed even a little? The spell…”

“Biz. Baby, if you believe you can make love happen with a wave of your hand, I believe it too. You’ve bewitched the hell out of me, but it isn’t because of a curse. It’s because of
you
. Brace yourself, because I’m about to say the cheesiest line of my life, but
you
are all the magic I need, darlin’.”

Biz’s breath caught in her throat. Damn. No wonder the man had gazillions of fans reading his articles. He’d hit her right in the heart.

In the silence of an empty, ghost-free house, the grandfather clock began tolling the hour. Midnight.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Mark mumbled against her lips.

“It is,” she whispered back. For the first time in years, it was a very happy Valentine’s.

Epilogue—The Lusty Month of May

“Will that be cash or credit?” Biz raised her voice over the tumult. Charmed, I’m Sure was packed with noisy day-trippers out from the mainland. May Day officially opened the summer season, and life had come back to Parish Island. Though life had come back to her months ago.

Without thought, her eyes scanned the crowd until she saw a familiar dark head chatting with a customer by the new bay window he’d helped add to lighten the place up a bit.

Mark’s “Island Living” columns in the
Gazette
were doubtless part of the reason the preseason events had drawn such crowds this year. It was a good year for Parish.

And a very good year for Biz. She couldn’t seem to stop wandering around with a stupid grin on her face—except when Gilly insisted on calling her Mark’s Biz Marks all the time.

“Do you take AmEx?”

Biz snapped her attention back to the line of customers. The next time she had a moment to think, she looked up to see Mark crouched down in intent conversation with a young boy with carrot-red hair and freckles from his hairline to his collar.

The line at the register had cleared out, so Biz slipped from behind the desk and wove her way toward her man and the boy.

Mark’s deep voice carried to her. “Do you believe in magic?”

She paused, partially hidden by a display case.

“Nah. That’s kid stuff,” the geriatric ten-year-old declared.

“I don’t know,” Mark said, “if you don’t look for the magic, you might miss out on all the good stuff. See that lady over there?” He pointed to Biz and she blushed—apparently not as well hidden as she’d thought. “She put a spell on me.”

“Nuh-uh.”

Biz slipped away, leaving Mark to deal with that challenging philosophical denial on his own. Seeing the rabbit’s foot charm display had been picked over, she ducked into the storeroom to grab a few more.

Stretching for the box on the top shelf, she waited for Tony to push it toward her or float it over her head to the ground, but nothing happened. The same nothing that had been happening ever since Valentine’s Day. Paul, Tony and Gabriel were really gone. But then, that was how it was with death. She’d just managed to delay losing them a while.

If she was honest with herself, she missed the ghosts almost as much as the men they’d been. Almost. But her heart was considerably lighter now that they’d found peace.

Sadly, Curtis had followed them—but on his own schedule, April 5th. He was missed around town, where he’d become part of the Parish family during his final days.

Biz went up on her tiptoes, reaching again for that top shelf. She either needed to grow three inches or get a step stool in here. No more relying on ghostly intervention.

A pair of real, strong arms came around her from behind, grabbing the box and guiding it down to her hands. Atlas arms. Biz set the box down and turned, wrapping her arms around Mark’s waist. She just couldn’t seem to get enough of touching him.

“I’ve put a spell on you, have I?” she asked with a cheeky grin.

“Yeah.” He brushed a kiss across her lips. “And now you’re mine.”

Biz closed her eyes and melted into the next kiss.

It was him who’d shown her what love was and given her the courage to take that risk, him who’d broken the spell she was trapped under, but she didn’t tell him he was the one with the real magic.

The cocky punk had enough of an ego already.

About the Author

Vivi Andrews lives in Alaska when she isn’t indulging her travel addiction. She’s currently hard at work on her next paranormal romance. For more about her books or the exploits of a nomadic author, please visit her website at
www.viviandrews.com
or stop by her blog at
viviandrews.blogspot.com
. Vivi also loves to hear from readers and invites you to email her at
[email protected]
.

Look for these titles by Vivi Andrews

Now Available:

Karmic Consultants

The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant

The Ghost Exterminator: A Love Story

The Sexorcist

The Naked Detective

A Cop and a Feel

Serengeti Shifters

Serengeti Heat

Serengeti Storm

Serengeti Lightning

Serengeti Sunrise

Reawakening Eden

He’s going to be the love of her life…if they survive the night.

A Cop and a Feel

© 2011 Vivi Andrews

Karmic Consultants, Book 5

With a single touch, Ronna Mitchell can catch stolen glimpses of the future and separate truth from lies. But life as a human polygraph machine can be lonely. Craving human contact, she moonlights as a palm reader whenever a carnival comes to town.

Officer Matt Holloway is intent on trailing a hit man when he ducks into a palm reader’s booth to avoid being spotted by his quarry. The beguiling Jamaican fortune teller is definitely intriguing, but she’ll have to wait. He’s close on the assassin’s tail.

When Ronna takes his hand, a startling vision of the future flashes in her mind’s eye. Matt isn’t a typical client, he’s The One. Before she has the chance to introduce herself as the mother of his unborn children, he’s gone, leaving her with a terrifying vision of her soul mate covered in blood. And dead certain she’s the only one who can save her happily ever after.

Warning: This book contains carnies, cops, chases, chance encounters and love at first touch.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
A Cop and a Feel:

Ronna’s panic level reached a new high when Matt’s sandy head disappeared around the back of the Ferris wheel. The image of the gears of the Ferris wheel splattered with blood replayed vividly in her mind’s eye. The crowds swarmed around her, and her heart thudded loudly in her ears. He was going to be killed, and
she couldn’t get to him.

Why were there so many people at the damn carnival? And why were they all moving at an excruciating shuffle pace? Didn’t they realize while they plodded along forming the impenetrable mass of a human herd, the man she was meant to spend the rest of her life with, who was going to give her adorable green-eyed babies and make her laugh until she was ninety-two and too senile to get his jokes anymore, was in peril at this very moment behind the Ferris wheel?
So why they the hell weren’t they moving faster?

Ronna pushed her way through the wall of bodies, too afraid of what might be happening to Matt to toss off apologies as people around her protested her shoving and stomping on feet.

She had to get to him.

Not that she’d be much help if she did. Touch-reading was hardly a super-power capable of stopping a speeding bullet, but she was
sure
she could save him if she was just there with him. He was the love of her life, or at least he would be, and she wasn’t about to let some carnie thug off him behind the Ferris wheel.

A pocket opened up in the crowd between her and the Ferris wheel, and Ronna sprinted forward, running full tilt around the side of the ride and into the heavy shadows behind it, half expecting to stumble over Matt’s lifeless form. In the moment it took for her eyes to adjust to the relative darkness after the spinning strobes of the carnival, she tried to remember how to breathe, gulping in oxygen. She squinted into the dark, one hand pressed over her drumming heart as a figure materialized out of the shadows in front of her.

“Matt!”

Thank God.
Ronna took two running steps forward.

The man in front of her turned toward her. Something was wrong. Ronna slammed on the brakes, her sandals skidding on the sticky asphalt. The form in front of her was too heavyset to be the tall, lean Officer Holloway.

“I-I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I thought I saw someone come back here.”

As soon as the words left her lips, Ronna could have kicked herself. He was probably a Ferris wheel operator. If he found Matt skulking back here, the future love of her life would get in trouble with the carnival operators. Which was better than his blood splashing all over the gears, but still…

“You know, I didn’t see anyone,” Ronna said quickly. A second figure shifted in the shadows to her left. She knew him as soon as he moved.
Matt
. He was okay. Hiding, which, yeah, was kinda weird, but totally okay. She’d been panicking over nothing. “Nobody here!” she sing-songed to the shadow man, bypassing subtle and going straight to obnoxiously Cinderella-cheerful. “Nobody at all.”

She tossed the shadowy Ferris wheel operator a loopy smile. He didn’t say much for a carnie. She still couldn’t make him out, but he didn’t seem familiar. She spent most of her time at the carnival in her booth, but she knew most of the regular operators at least on sight.

He reached toward her, waving something metallic, and Ronna’s vision from Matt’s touch replayed in her mind.