The Matchbaker (A Romantic Comedy) (17 page)

“That book.” He points to the tome in my lap. “It’s not going to help you.”

Instinctively, I snap the book shut and put it behind my back as he walks around the bench and takes a seat next to me. “What do you know about this book?”

He laughs and scratches his nose as the autumn breeze picks up his wavy locks. “More than you might think. But your counter spell isn’t in there.”

“Then where is it?” I’m intrigued and annoyed at the same time. Why won’t he come out and tell me what the heck he’s talking about?

A wide grin breaks out on his face. “Right there.” He points and I follow the direction of his finger until my gaze lands on A Latte Joe’s.

I turn back to him, my jaw unhinged. He must be joking. “You’re putting me on,” I say.

“You want to get Lover Boy to back off? You’re going to have to get him to drink a piping hot cup of joe.”

“Is your whole life rife with play-on words?”

“Mostly.”

I narrow my eyes. “Does this mean…”

“I’m magical?” Without answering the question, he closes his eyes.

“What are you—?”

He holds up a hand to silence me. I clamp my mouth shut and wait. Things suddenly get quieter. The water in the fountain has stopped flowing. I look from Joe to the fountain and back.

“Did you do that?” I ask, my heart thumping in my ears.

Immediately the water begins to flow again, and Joe turns a rueful smile my way.

“So your magic isn’t limited to coffee?”

He laughs and relaxes back against the bench. “No, and neither is yours. They’re just the mediums our families chose to work through. You know, to contain the magic and all that. They didn’t want to create generations of witches who would use their powers willy nilly.”

“Then how do you know your magic goes further?”

Joe looks at the fountain and shrugs. “I’ve always known, I guess.”

“Well, that’s nice for you,” I say, somewhat bitterly. “But I’m a newbie who
has
used her powers willy nilly.”

“I heard.”

I give him a look. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?”

“Sorry,” he says with a bashful smile. “I couldn’t help it. You’re not the quietest person on the phone, you know?”

“You could have gone back to your shop.”

“I could have, but I was way too intrigued to leave.” He looks at me, and I can’t help but feel he’s using some kind of magic on me right now. What is this pull I have toward him? This sudden longing to be near him? I don’t believe in love at first sight, so the only explanation is magic, isn’t it? “You’re not the first one to try to make a guy fall in love with you, you know?”

Oh, great. “Of course,” I say, cursing my luck. “You’re gay. Now it makes sense.”

“Wait, what?”

“The great hair, the clothes, the chiseled cheekbones…straight men don’t have those kinds of cheekbones. I should have known. God, second time in a week.”

“Okay, let’s back the truck up a sec, can we?” Joe sits on the edge of the bench and twists his whole body toward me. “I’m not gay.”

I raise my eyebrows, feeling the slightest bit embarrassed, while feeling somewhat hopeful at the same time. “You’re not?”

“No!” he exclaims. “I just have good genes.”

I look down at his legs. “They are nice…Diesel?”

He laughs, but I’m not getting the joke. “I meant genes. As in DNA.”

My cheeks burn. “Oh. Right.”

“So, listen…” Joe leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees. “I have to get back, and I’m guessing you do too, but there’s a lot more to talk about, I think. You free for dinner?”

I think about my Lean Cuisine waiting for me in the freezer and back episodes of
How I Met Your Mother
sitting on my DVR. I don’t want to seem desperate, but that paints a pretty bleak picture of my evening ahead.

“Yes, I’d love to have dinner with you.”

~*~

In all my panic over having dinner with Joe, I completely forgot about the coffee and the counter-spell—I forgot about everything really. So when I arrive back at the bakery to find Holly sobbing over the sugar molds, I’m a little in shock. Even more shocking are the tiny folded up notes that Colin has left all over my baking station. Apparently, I ruined his ability to be subtle too.

The notes say things like
I love you
and
Please love me back
and
I’ll see you tonight
.

That one threw me for a loop. We had no plans tonight, and I had no plans to make plans with Colin. Damn it, why hadn’t I gotten that coffee from Joe? I could have ended this whole thing today, but now I’m stuck here with orders piling up and a distraught sister who’s going to melt all the sugar molds with her tears.

Maybe I could send Colin on his own. Yes! I’ll send him across the street and call Joe to warn him.

As if pulled by magic, Colin appears in the doorway to the kitchen. Holly looks up briefly then bursts into quiet sobs all over again. I roll my eyes. I will never, ever practice magic on my own behalf again.

“Hey, Colin,” I say, moving toward him to push him out the door into the store. “Listen, why don’t you take a break? I see you’ve been rather busy this morning.”

“I just wanted you to know how much I love you.”

“Would you lower your voice, please?” I hiss. “And stop putting notes on my baking station.”

“Okay, where would you prefer I put them?”

I drop my face into my hands. Good God. “Nowhere. I want you to stop with the notes, okay. And I want you to leave. Now. Go across the street and get a cup of coffee, okay?”

“But I don’t want coffee.”

Of course he doesn’t.

“A cup of tea, then?”

He shakes his head.

“Hot chocolate!” Surely Joe can do something with a hot chocolate.

Colin scrunches up his nose. “Not cold enough outside yet.”

“Oh, God, I’m screwed,” I moan. “Fine, then. Just go for a walk or something, okay? I need you out of here.”

“I don’t understand why you’re pushing me away.” He folds his arms over his chest like a pouty child.

“You will eventually.” I push him toward the door, but he’s digging his heels in. “This is too hard on Holly. You need to go, okay?”

“Wait.” He turns around and stares at me.

I squirm a bit. “What are you doing?”

“Taking a mental picture of you.”

I fight the urge to gag. “Great! Click! Okay, bye!”

With one last shove out the door, Colin tumbles into the street and I escape to the kitchen again. I have work to do and a date to plan for. At least, I think it’s a date.

I push through the kitchen doors, expecting to find Holly crying at her station again, but she’s moved. To
my
station. And she’s holding the collection of post-it notes in her hands.

She looks up at me with tears in her eyes and a malevolent look on her face. Oh, God.

“Holly, it’s not what you think,” I say.

“You?” she whispers. “
You?
”

I hold up my hands, as if to surrender. “Please, Hol. Just hear me out. It was an accident.”

“What was an accident?” she asks, emphasizing the
what,
so the
h
is audible and a little spit comes out on the
t.

My stomach is churning. I’ve never regretted anything so much in my entire life. I move tentatively closer to my sister, coming to a stop just out of arm’s reach. I don’t trust her not to do bodily harm to me at this point.

“I may have…” I swallow over the lump in my throat and start again. “I may have cast a spell on Colin.”

“You
what!?
”

I close my eyes at the shrillness of her voice. She learned early on that it bothered my ears and she’s used it to her advantage ever since.

“But I can fix it,” I say, all my words coming out in a rush. “I know how, I just have to get Colin to go along with it.”

Holly is fuming. I’m half expecting smoke to start coming out of her ears. “Why?”

My throat constricts. That was the one question I was praying she wouldn’t ask me. I could lie—tell her it was an accident and he got the wrong cupcake. But I’ve never been much good at lying. Plus, Holly knows me better than anyone. She’ll see right through me. And if it doesn’t come out now, it could come out later, and that would be even worse. So…

“I-I was jealous,” I admit, biting my lip to keep from crying. I hate sounding so pathetic and petty. “I’ve had a crush on Colin for as long as I can remember. I thought he was into me too…until it became abundantly clear it was
you
he was into.” I rub my forehead with my thumb and forefinger, trying to avoid eye contact with Holly. “But everything backfired. It’s all a mess, and it’s all my fault. I’m so sorry, Hol.”

“You’re a bitch, you know that?” Holly says with so much rancor it makes my heart hurt. But it’s true.

“I know,” I say. “I’m a horrible person, and I don’t need you to tell me that. But I’m going to make it right, Hol. I swear I am.”

Holly throws down the post-it notes and then crosses the room to the apron hooks. She unties her apron and hangs it up before grabbing her purse.

“Where are you going?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure she’s walking out on me.

She puts a hand on her hip and gestures wildly with the other. “I can hardly even
look
at you right now, let alone work beside you all day.”

“B-b-but—”

“Save it, Candy,” she says, bitterness lacing her tone. “You got yourself—and
me—
into this mess. Once you get us out I’ll think about returning to work. Until then…just leave me the hell alone.”

My sister walks out of the bakery. I’m feeling like the worst person on the face of the earth. I don’t know why I thought I could keep it from her. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea in the first place. Why did I tamp down that niggling voice in the back of my head that told me I was being a back-stabbing bitch?
Be careful how you use your powers.
That’s the voice I should have been listening to. Not the one who promised a handsome stranger. Even if I have to live the rest of my life being insane with jealousy over my sister’s boyfriend, I would much prefer it to how I feel now.

Seventeen

Well, this sucks. I’ve tried on every last date-appropriate thing in my closet and absolutely nothing fits. Nothing. All the buttons gap, if they reach across my boobs at all. None of the zippers on my designer dresses go all the way to the top. And when I put on my wrap dress—the really cute one from Free People—I looked like a pig in a blanket.

I plop to the unmade pullout couch and put my face in my hands. I’ve never felt so defeated in my life. Where did I go wrong? Oh, right. Probably when I traded my Jimmy Choos for Nikes and started spending my evenings in the company of cupcakes rather than tiny portions of gourmet delicacies.

Or maybe it was when I let my jealousy overcome me and I cast a spell on my sister’s boyfriend.

My phone buzzes next to me.
Text message from Joe.
How did he get my number, anyway?

I flick my finger across the text message icon and read:
Dress for comfort.

Wow. He’s good. Either he’s incredibly intuitive or he used magic to guess my thoughts.

With a grateful smile, I text back:
Got it. Thanks. See you soon.

“All righty, boys,” I say, pulling out my favorite set of Juicy sweats, “you get a night out on the town!”

With my sweats and tennis shoes on, I throw my hair into a coordinating ponytail and freshen up my lip gloss, then trudge up the stairs. The TV is on. I hadn’t realized Holly was here.

“Hol?” I shout as I pass through the kitchen. “What are you—?”

Crap
.

“Colin, how did you get in here?”

Colin turns around, a vacant smile spread across his lips. “There you are!” he says. “Look!” He holds up a copy of
Steel Magnolias
on DVD. “I got your favorite!”

“Uh, okay.” I have no idea what to say or do. How does he even know that
Steel Magnolias
is one of my favorite movies? “How did you get in here?”

He gestures to the front door. “You left it open for me.”

“Did I?” I can’t help it. The annoyance is starting to creep into my tone. It’s my fault, but seriously, this has to stop.

“So what should we order for dinner? I was thinking Chinese, but I’m fine with pizza, too.”

Oh, my God! “Colin, I’m gonna have to take a rain check.” I move across the room, snatch the DVD from his hands and usher him toward the door. He’s digging his heels into the shag carpet, so this is no easy task.

“But I had the whole evening planned!” he shouts.

“Yeah, well, it’s customary to let the other party in on the plans you’re making for them.”

“I wanted to surprise you!”

We arrive at the door and I fling it open while keeping a hand on his back. “You surprised me all right, but I’ve got to go. And so do you.”

“Please, Candy.” His pleading tone sends a shot of guilt through me.

Dammit! Why didn’t I listen? I couldn’t even see past my own lust long enough to consider the consequences of using magic for myself.

“I just want you to give us a chance.”

I’ve stopped pushing him and he’s stopped struggling. I drop my hand, defeated. I have no idea what to do. But I do know Joe is waiting for me, and I’m definitely not going to miss my date—or whatever it is—to hang out with a man who is quite literally under my spell.

“Colin,” I begin, but I have no idea what to say after that.

He turns to me when I don’t go on, and his eyes are so droopy and sad that I immediately turn away so I don’t have to look into them. When his hands touch mine, I don’t pull back.

“Why are you running from me?”

For a second I see the real Colin—the one I fell in love with. The one who wasn’t under a spell. He stares into my eyes. Why
am
I running? I’m supposedly in love with him. Enough to cast a love spell on him. I have what I wanted, so what’s my problem?

“I—” My phone buzzes, cutting me off. It’s Joe.

Am I being stood up?

“Crap,” I say as I begin to type:
No! On my way. Sorry!
I turn back to Colin and his puppy-dog eyes. No matter how guilty I feel for what I’ve done, I can’t lead him on. I can’t just pretend we’re in love now and that everything is hunky dory. I have to make this right, and if he discovers he likes me when he’s
not
under the spell, well, then…we’ll take it from there. But I don’t want him like this.

Still, I feel the need to lie so I can get out the door. “Colin, I’m so sorry. I would love to watch the movie with you, but my friend is having a crisis and she really needs me right now.”

“Friend?” he says, as if it’s a totally foreign word.

“Uh, yeah. You know…those people we hang out with? Not family, but…” I wait for him to fill in the blank, like we’re contestants on $1,000,000 Pyramid. But he just stares blankly back at me. Good God. Have I wiped his brain, too?

“Oh, okay.” He nods, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Sure.” He starts to walk out the door and then turns back to me. “Can I call you later?”

He looks so sad and forlorn I’m almost tempted to say yes. “Why don’t we go for coffee before work tomorrow?”

He smiles brightly. “Really?”

“Really,” I say, silently praying that he’ll drink the antidote to this stupid spell.

~*~

Fifteen minutes later, I burst through the door of the restaurant where I’d agreed to meet Joe. He’s standing at the bar, his elbows propped on the counter as he swishes a swizzle stick around in his drink. He’s wearing dark jeans and a structured gray hoodie. I have to admit, his ass looks really good in those Levi’s.

When I tear my gaze away from his posterior, I scan up the rest of his body, only to meet with his amused brown eyes. My cheeks flood with heat. Great. Now he knows I was checking him out. He smirks as he pushes off the bar to greet me.

“I was starting to worry.”

I hold up my phone. “Yeah. I got that. Sorry.”

“Trouble picking out a track suit?”

I laugh. “How did you know?”

“Just a hunch.” He pulls a barstool out for me. “What are you drinking?”

I’m tempted to go for my usual martini, but I kind of want to keep my wits about me tonight. The last thing I want is it to embarrass myself in front of Joe. Besides, I need answers, and I’m fairly certain he has them.

“Amstel Light,” I finally decide. I don’t know why I feel the need to qualify my drink choice, but I add, “Taking it easy tonight,” for good measure.

The bartender drops the beer in front of me and I take a sip before turning to Joe. I’m not sure where to begin, but thankfully he beats me to it.

“So, you cast a love spell on your own behalf, huh?”

I stare at him, mouth agape. “Way to cut to the chase.”

“Why beat around the bush? We both know the score.”

I shake my head and take another swig of my beer. “I’m not so sure I do, actually. Maybe you could fill in some of the gaps?”

“Ha!” Joe throws his golden-brown head back. “That could take years. But let’s start at the beginning of
your
story.”

“Okay,” I say, drawing out the
aaaay,
before I launch into what’s happened over the last few months. The fortuneteller, my job in New York, my eventual take-over of the bakery and discovery of my
talents
. By the end, I was ready for another beer, which the bartender placed promptly before me.

Joe, however, didn’t say anything. He just stood there, nodding, his eyes narrowed.

“Do you want to get a table,” he finally says. “I’m starving.”

“Oh.” I blink a few times. “Uh, sure.”

He settles the bar tab after assuring me tonight is on him, and then goes to the hostess stand to see about a table. I’m left at the bar slightly dumbfounded. I want to know what he’s thinking. Correction: I
need
to know what he’s thinking. It’s driving me a little batty, this whole mysterious vibe he’s putting off. Not to mention, is this a real date? I sort of thought we were only meeting up to talk about all this spell stuff, but if it’s more than that, well, I’m not going to complain.

I follow him across the restaurant, the European music forcing me to walk to a techno beat, and sit down across from him at the tiny table in the corner. It feels intimate and romantic. My only regret is that I’m in a sweat suit and not one of my trendy, designer outfits. If I was, I’d feel like the leading lady in a fun romantic comedy. Like Katherine Heigl in
27 Dresses
, or something. As it stands, I just feel like a frumpy almost-thirty-year-old who’s given up on life.

I peruse the menu and decide on their “eclectic” mac & cheese. It won’t do anything for my waistline, but maybe it’ll cheer me up. Something about carbs and cheese makes me all giddy inside, especially after my protein-bar lunch.

Once we’ve ordered, Joe focuses his attention on me. I squirm a little. Why do I get the feeling he knows way more about me than he should?

“Listen,” he says. “Don’t beat yourself up. Rookie mistake. Everybody’s done it.”

My eyebrows shoot up of their own volition. “Everybody? Does that mean you, too?”

Joe shrugs, a gesture that makes him look even more adorable than he already is. “I may have used a little magic for my own gain a time or two.”

“Two?” Now I’m really curious. “Spill. I need to hear how you screwed up so I can feel better.”

Joe chuckles. “I guess a little
schadenfreude
is in all of us.”

I lean forward and whisper, “It’s my middle name.”

He laughs again as I sit back with a smile, waiting, praying his story is worse than mine.

“Well, the first time I did it was in high school.”

“High school?” I say, compelled to interrupt. “How long have you known?”

“It’s different for us. We grow up already knowing, kind of. I don’t know what kind of curse your family has, but that whole ‘you’ll find out when you’re twenty-nine’ thing must suck. I can’t imagine. At twenty-nine, you’ve got your whole life planned out. What if you were married with a kid…or five? Would you have uprooted your entire life to come here and run a bakery?”

I scoff. “I might not have a husband and five kids, but trust me, it sucked just as much. Although…” I trail off, unable to keep my eyes off Joe. I’m locked in some kind of trance.

“Although?” he prompts, and I realize that what I was about to say would have been entirely too flirtatious for a first “sort of” date.

I flounder, and finally spit out, “Oh, nothing. Eh…I don’t even remember what I was going to say.” I roll my eyes and force a laugh. “Anyway, you were saying?”

Joe thankfully lets it go, and moves on with his story. “Oh, right. High school. Well, there was this big game—”

“Basketball?” I ask.

“Football.”

“Oh.” I blink a few times. I wouldn’t have pegged him for a football player.

“I know, right?” he says, gesturing to his body, as if he heard what I said. “Definitely not your standard football player.”

I scrunch my face into an apologetic grimace. “Not really.”

“So obviously I was a little nervous about the game. I probably shouldn’t have been. I was actually a pretty good player. Fast and agile. I was able to fake out the other team pretty easily, but still…I wanted to make sure we won.”

“So what kind of spell did you cast?” I ask, and it’s only then that I realize what an absurd conversation this is. Asking someone what spell they cast makes me feel like we should be in the Gryffindor tower of Hogwarts.

He takes a breath and then blows it out. “A protection spell.”

“Protection?” I repeat. “Why not a strength spell or a run-faster spell?”

“Ha! I was already faster than anybody on the field. But that didn’t always protect me from getting tackled. And I needed touchdowns.”

“So what happened?”

Joe takes a sip of his drink. “It worked great, actually, but I wasn’t smart enough to realize I needed to downplay it.”

“Oh?”

It’s his turn to grimace. “We won…by 235 points.”

My jaw drops and then I burst into laughter. “You’ve
got
to be kidding.”

“I wish I was,” he says and then shakes his head with a chuckle. “I obviously got found out, and the entire town was in a tizzy, much to the chagrin of the elders.”

My laughter stops and I give him a quizzical look. “I’m sorry, did you say
elders
?”

“Oh, man,” Joe says, his voice gruff. “They really hung you out to dry, didn’t they?”

Our food arrives, but I’m not that hungry anymore. What the hell is he talking about?

I wait for the waitress to leave the table, and then launch into him. “Who are the elders? And why don’t I know about them?”

“I’m guessing you don’t know about them because your parents never told you.” He takes a bite of his food—some kind of chicken dish with goat cheese and spinach—then closes his eyes with a drawn-out, “Mmmmm. This is amazing. You want a bite?”