Love Charm for Carlotta (A Short Story in the Love Charm Series)
Read Love Charm for Carlotta (A Short Story in the Love Charm Series) Online
Authors: Carly Carson
Love Charm for Carlotta
by
Amazon Edition
Love Charm Series
Carlotta doesn't believe in love charms.
Especially
not when the bad boy hockey player from her past suddenly re-appears in her
life.
Has the love charm brought him back to her? She doesn't intend to
find out. But, in the small town island atmosphere of Martha's Vineyard, it's
hard to escape your past. Do people change, or will she be courting heartbreak
again if she succumbs once more to her high school sweetheart?
Cover design by Laura J. Miller
Copyright 2012 @Carly Carson
Please see extended Copyright notice at end of book.
Stories by Carly Carson in the
Love Charm Series
:
Love Charm for Ashley:
http://amzn.com/B009RZ8YXY
Love Charm for Brenna:
http://amzn.com/B00A72G096
Other stories by Carly Carson:
Baby,
It's
Cold Outside
:
Amazon:
http://amzn.com/B006FD0LZK
Carly Carson Website:
http://www.carlycarson.com
Fan Page on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/CarlyCarsonAuthor
Friend Page on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/carly.carson
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/Carly_Carson
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:
http://pinterest.com/carlycarson
Link Directory for Carly Carson (if one of the above links
is broken, please check here):
http://carlycarsonauthormyblog.wordpress.com/link-directory-for-carly-carson/
Excerpt
from Love Charm for Brenna
Chapter 1
Vroom! Vroom! Vroom!
Carlotta Mason's heart stopped.
That was the sound of her teenaged years returning in the
form of one bad boy hockey player and his motorcycle. She'd known the sound
when she was 17, and she'd recognize it again if she were 97.
Not because it was the same motorcycle. No, that was
unlikely, as she hadn't seen Jace Burton in more than ten years. But the
reckless and cocky manner in which the bike was being ridden—that identified
the rider as surely as a trumpet call from the heavens would herald Armageddon.
No one would speed on the narrow, winding lane that led to
her small house on Martha's Vineyard. No one, that is, but Jace, who'd spent
most every day of their senior year of high school riding up to this same house
on his battered Harley.
He always drove too fast. He always rocked to a stop right
where the driveway ended by an overgrown hydrangea bush. He always waited for
her on the bike, with one long, booted leg touching the ground, the other
propped on the running board. His hair would be perfectly mussed from the wind
blowing through it, and his broad shoulders encompassed her entire world.
She always ran out of the house to throw her arms around him
in joy, both at his appearance and at his safe arrival.
But today, things were different. She was twelve years older
and a lifetime wiser. The impetuousness of youth had been drummed out of her by
the reality of life.
She willed her heart to start beating again, and then she
ordered herself not to move from her spot in the kitchen. Her hands, buried
deep in a yeast-scented ball of bread dough, would surely anchor her in place.
Boots clattered across the deep front porch, and now her
heart beat too wildly. The love of her life—No!
The boy who'd broken her heart, when her
heart was a fragile, teenaged receptacle of hope and optimism.
The boy who'd never looked back when he'd been offered a
chance to play with a professional hockey team in the National Hockey League.
Carlotta kneaded the bread fiercely, reminding herself that
she'd practically killed herself to eliminate the impulsivity she was born
with. She would never repeat the mistakes of her youth. She no longer bolted
headlong into ill-conceived temptations.
Except for that craziness last weekend when her friends
Ashley and Genevieve had talked her into casting a spell with that—
She froze again.
The love charm.
A blue silk packet made up of a lock of her curly black
hair, a ground-up silver bean her friends had given her, and one of the
overblown blue flowers from the hydrangea bush at the corner of her yard. She
didn't believe in charms and spells, but she'd tossed the silk-enclosed bundle
into the moat at the deCordova benefit. The Venetian-themed ball provided such
a romantic setting, and when she'd seen the moat – yes, impulse had overtaken
her and she'd made a wish and thrown the charm. As she'd expected, no one
interesting had approached her that night, and she'd returned to the Vineyard,
the love charm forgotten.
Now the memory swept into her kitchen, in a sparkle of
remembered hope. She shook her head to dislodge it.
If that damned charm had brought Jace Burton back into her
peaceful life like a boomerang from hell, she'd find herself a voodoo witch and
hex the lot of them—Ashley, Genevieve, and Jace himself.
She'd tossed that rotten heartthrob-without-a-heart from her
life a dozen years ago, and he was never coming back.
A loud rap on the front door signaled that Jace didn't
realize he'd been banned from her life.
Her hands clenched in the stretchy dough as if the bread
could trap her and save her from moving.
She forced herself to begin kneading again. Maybe if she
focused on the work she loved, she could press out this compulsion that ordered
her to walk into the living room, approach the door, and open it wide.
In welcome.
She had to resist that instinct because she could never
welcome his re-entry into her life.
She'd moved past that tumultuous time when Jace was the
center of her existence. She never wanted to go back to it.
"Carlotta!" His deep voice boomed through the
house and she heard his self-assurance, his zest for life, and the poignant
memories of her first love—all wrapped up in one word—her name.
And twining through the memories was the sharp, bitter, edge
of pain, a pointed needle scraping through her flesh.
"Carlotta! Let me in."
A brief
pause.
"Please."
A spring breeze, fresh with the scent of the sea, blew the
white, dotted Swiss curtains at the kitchen window. She welcomed the clean May
wind, praying it would cool the heat that washed over her body every time she
heard his voice.
"I know you're in there, Carlotta." He wasn't
angry, but rather amused. He didn't think she could withstand him.
"Do you still leave the door unlocked?" he
hollered.
She stiffened. Of course the door was unlocked. She'd never
gotten out of the habit, even though she knew it was foolish to be so careless,
even on the Vineyard.
She had a key now, which her parents never had, but she
forgot about it more often than not.
"I know the door is unlocked, Carlotta, because I know
you," he called out. "I'm going to open it now."
She couldn't hear the handle turn from in here, but she
could imagine it. She could picture him walking in, his tall figure dwarfing
the low-ceilinged living room, his boots loud on the hardwood floor.
She should retreat, escape. Her eyes darted to the back
door—
Too late.
"Carlotta." He strode through the short hallway
and burst into her kitchen.
She had to look at him. No mortal, nor goddess, could have
withstood the temptation.
There he stood, six feet tall, brawny, with smooth muscles
pressing up against his short-sleeved t-shirt. As always, his dark blonde hair
had been caressed by the wind, and his strong, even features had only improved
with age.
His blue eyes smiled at her. "I've come back for
you."
Her heart stuttered.
But her voice was colder than the breeze when she said,
"Get out."
"Ouch." He stood his ground. "Twelve years is
a long time to hold a grudge."
"I'll call the cops."
"Carlotta." He shook his head in mock sorrow.
"You know the chief is one of my best friends."
"Was, you mean." Her brows snapped together.
"It's been a long time since high school."
"You underestimate me, honey bun." Two strides and
he'd moved close enough for her to smell his familiar scent of leather, engine
oil, and man. "Even as we speak," he said, "the chief's wife is
scouring the island for a house for me. You remember Annie Dupuis, don't
you?"
Of course she remembered Annie, a perky soccer player in
high school, and one of the Vineyard's top realtors today.
But Annie wasn't important right now.
"You!" she scoffed. "You're going to buy a
house? Where would you come up with the down payment, never mind the monthly
mortgage?"
Money slipped through his hands like sea water through a
sieve. Granted, he was the most generous person she'd ever known. She knew for
a fact he'd bought prom tickets for some of his hockey buddies who didn't have
the spare cash. Not that Jace had ever had more money than the rest of them.
But if he had a few extra bucks, he was happy to toss them in the path of
anyone he perceived as needy.
She shut off her thoughts. She couldn't afford to think of
him in any positive way. She had to be strong.
"I'm not a high school kid, Carlotta." He managed
to look slightly wounded. "I have assets."
She continued kneading her dough. "Are you here to
brag, then?"
"I told you." He peered into her bowl. "I'm
here for you."
"I don't know what that means." She pounded the
dough. "I'm not available to be picked up like a shell on the shore."
"I know you're not married." He plucked an
unfrosted cupcake off the cooling rack, peeled back the paper, and bit off half
of it.
"Hey! Those are for Tommy Rosen's eighth birthday
party!"
"You don't mean as in Tom and Amy Rosen?" He
raised his brows.
"Why not?"
"Amy wouldn't mind me snitching a cupcake."
"No doubt you kissed her down on the beach a time or
two." Carlotta didn't like the bitterness in her own voice.
He grinned. "I'll never tell." He popped the rest
of the cupcake in his mouth. "She can't be old enough to have an eight
year old."
"And a ten year old, as well.
She's thirty, same as you." Carlotta tried to ignore the reminder that her
own thirtieth birthday was a mere two months away.
Jace flashed
her a
half-grin.
"A man only gets better with age."
"Keep your roving eye off Amy. Her husband is the
possessive type."
He spread his hands in a show of innocence.
"Got nothing to worry about from me.
I don't mess with
married women."
Carlotta snorted. That would be the only kind of women he
didn't mess with, then.
He leaned closer. "
Which brings us
back to you.
Sorry about the divorce."
She shrugged. "We never should have married."
Especially when she'd been unable to
forget her high school sweetheart.
She and Rob had called it quits after
only a year of marriage. They'd split up without any claims on each other, and
moved on. Last she heard
,
Rob was living on the west coast.
"Tough, anyway," Jace said softly.
"How about you?"
She
regretted the words as soon as they were out. She had no intention of
reminiscing with him,
nor
of catching up with current
news. The sooner he was gone, the safer she'd be.