Storiebook Charm (A Spellbound Novel 1) Read online

  But Kathy just shrugged again. She looked innocent as she said, “He could handle his mineral and gas rights from anywhere, but my guess is that he’s too committed to Jiggs to run out on him. If I were you, I wouldn’t get myself involved with him.”

  Her spine stiffened at the warning. “Not that I would, but why?”

  Kathy flashed her million-dollar smile. “Jiggs wanted to buy your building, and I’ve heard him say he still wants it. Reid wants his daddy happy. I’m just sayin’, I wouldn’t trust him if I were you. When he wants something, he sets his mind to it and you might find yourself signing on the dotted line if you’re not careful.”

  Storie bristled. There wasn’t a chance in hell that she was going to have anything to do with Reid Malone. Enemy might be too strong a word, but after that night at the lake…and now, hearing how he and Jiggs had tried to take what was rightfully hers?

  “I don’t have anything he wants.” But she tucked the warning away. “And since he never steps foot outside, I’m not likely to see him, anyway.” She scoffed, staring at The Speakeasy, as if he could read her lips. “And he probably doesn’t even read,” she added, as if that was worst of all.

  “’Course he reads.” Kathy looked Storie up and down with a scrutiny that made her back go up. Her gaze traveled to the shop behind her for a second before settling back on her face. “And I’m pretty dang sure that he’ll want something from you.”

  “And I’m pretty sure he won’t,” she said, although it gave her a little thrill to think that he might. An image of Reid Malone flashed in her mind. Six feet tall, broad shoulders, rugged. He’d been gorgeous from what she remembered, in an antisocial, dangerous sort of way. Her cheeks heated at the mere idea that he’d want her, and she pushed away the thought. Her dad had made it perfectly clear: she was a witch and couldn’t be with a mortal man. It was why she’d run away from Reid in the first place.

  A horn blared on the opposite end of the square. Kathy turned to look as she answered. “You can tell yourself that, sugar, but he’s gonna be on you like a fly on honey.”

  Storie ignored Kathy. She might be an expert at real estate, but that didn’t make her an expert on Reid Malone…did it? “I’m here to stay, so if he’s on his way out of town, then that’s that.”

  Kathy pressed her palm to her chest. “You made the right decision coming back here. I think Whiskey Creek is the perfect place to settle down. Kinda gets under your skin and takes hold, doesn’t it? Sure did for your daddy.”

  Just not for Reid. For Storie, there was just something about this little town. The Courthouse Square. The lake… This was where she belonged. She felt it in the very depths of her soul. “Why does Reid want to leave Whiskey Creek?”

  “I reckon he’d have to answer that one,” Kathy said. “This venture you have is gonna be great, especially for Harper and her girls.”

  Storie put on her game face. “I always say, when life gives you lemons…” She trailed off because she really could concentrate, flick her wrist, and turn those lemons into lemonade, but she kept that to herself. She’d do everything she could to just fit in. “You're coming to the grand opening?”

  “I’ll try, but I’ve got a lot going on, and well…”

  Storie finished the sentence in her head. Kathy could sell Harper a house and help with Storie’s title transfer, but that didn’t make them friends. Before she could say anything more, Kathy handed her the keys, gave her a little wave, and said, “Off to make another deal. Ta ta!”

  Storie walked toward the door, but stopped when that darkness crept into her again, working its way through her veins as if it were a snake slithering through her body. She looked up and down the street. Empty sidewalks. Awnings and flags billowing in the light breeze, but no people. The sky was clear, not even a single cloud forming above. Nothing. But something wasn’t right. It was as if she were being pulled toward some invisible seam that divided this world from some other place. The place where she’d been born.

  She steeled her will, rooting her feet to the ground. “Fight it,” she muttered under her breath. But how could she fight what she couldn’t identify?

  Harper had wandered off again a few minutes ago, disappearing around the corner with her daughters, but now their chitter-chatter grew louder, filling the quietness as they came back into view. The girls skipped ahead, stopping to lean over the brick planters, and yanked out a few new weeds as Storie propped her sunglasses on top of her head to hold back her copper curls. She closed her eyes and let her imagination run wild, not difficult to do considering her imagination was the thing that had sustained her on a daily basis.

  Only the image that popped into her head wasn’t her Prince Charming, and it wasn’t even Reid Malone.

  It was a faceless woman. Her mother.

  Strange.

  She looked back at The Speakeasy, starting when she saw another movement. Was that a shadow moving behind the window?

  Reid.

  She pushed him out of her mind, joining Harper, Scarlett, and Piper with the weeds.

  “Add flowers to your list,” Harper said.

  “Those pretty ones you grew in the pots in Clement,” Scarlett said, gazing up at her with a toothless smile.

  “Astrids,” Piper said.

  “Good memory.” The little lavender flowers resembled bluebonnets, but they had silver centers and were the one thing her father had brought with him from the magical world. Everything else had left a bitter taste in his mouth after his breakup with Storie’s mother. He’d called them astrids and she’d planted them, using her magic to keep them growing year-round.

  “I will,” she said, ruffling Scarlett’s hair.

  Today she was seeing her new reality. The gas station had been completely repurposed. Come spring, vines would climb up the boxy brick columns alongside the asphalt drive. She tilted her head and considered the bare columns. They needed the vines now.

  If she was really careful not to arouse suspicion, she could get a few flowers to grow before the opening.

  Piper’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Will a lot of people here buy books? ’Cause I don’t wanna go back to Clement,” she said, a sharpness in the nine-year-old’s tone.

  Storie looked at Harper’s daughters. Together, they’d become the four musketeers. As makeshift a family as there ever was, and Storie would never give it up. “We are making a go of it, and you’re not going back to Clement.”

  But she looked at Piper and Scarlett, who both stood gaping at the building, the stacks of two-by-fours, the table saw, and the last of the appliances to be installed in the kitchen. There wasn't much to be done, but to them, she knew it seemed like an unclimbable mountain. The place hardly looked like a fairy tale, and it didn’t seem like the kind of place where people would find their happy endings.

  She bent down and wrapped Piper up. “It’ll be great,” she said. “Just wait.”

  But the darkness settled over her for the third time, and she knew that it wasn’t going to be as easy as she hoped.

  She felt someone’s eyes on her. Reid, peering from behind the cover of The Speakeasy? Or…

  Over Piper’s head, she let her gaze drift, let her magic take over to identify who was watching.

  The woman she’d seen across the street. She stood in front of the old limestone courthouse, staring at her. Their eyes locked and Storie felt as if she were being pulled by a strand of gossamer, sticky and inescapable. A shiver passed over her. In her mind, as if someone was whispering to her, she heard, Time to come home, over and over and over again.

  Who was she, and what did she want?

  Storie’s breathing grew shallow and she closed her eyes for just a moment. When she opened them, the woman was gone.

  Reid Malone leaned against the dark wood molding at the front window of The Speakeasy, admiring the view. Namely Storie Bell. Being able to look at her was the only upside to the entire situation. What the hell was she doing back in Whiskey Creek, anyway? And right ne
xt door? Her being here just added a huge complication to his plan, which was to search the old station, make sure his dad’s secret stayed just that—a secret—and to find the thing Jiggs needed to make his deal.

  He’d never planned on coming back to Whiskey Creek, and he certainly never thought he’d see her again, but thanks to the multimillion-dollar deal on the table from Gemstone Spirits Company for Jiggs’s Apple Pie Moonshine, and because of his dad himself, Reid was here. They were the two things keeping him in this little town, but Storie…Storie would make things interesting before he left again.

  And right now, that meant keeping secrets and searching for the missing ingredient Jiggs needed to finalize negotiations with Gemstone.

  She infiltrated his mind now, just as she had years ago, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t shake her out of his thoughts. He was two years older than her, and finishing up his sophomore year of college by the time she’d moved here during her senior year, but word traveled in a small town and every time he came home to visit his dad, he’d gotten an earful about the eccentric girl who’d come to town.

  She’d carved her way into his head that night at the lake when he’d saved her life, and it had taken every ounce of restraint not to take her right then and there. He’d wanted to, more than he’d wanted anything, and the memory had been emblazoned in his mind ever since.

  “What’s going on out there?” His father peered through the flattened wooden slats covering the windows of The Speakeasy.

  Reid knocked back his cowboy hat. “Looks like the business next door is going to open soon.” And from the smile on Storie’s face, she looked happy. Like she was really settling down in Whiskey Creek. Dammit. Everything would have been so much easier if only he’d been able to buy the place from Ted. But Storie’s dad had no interest in selling, so now he was going to have to devise some other plan. Hell, he was going to have to get creative, but if it saved his dad’s hide and kept Storie out of trouble, so be it.

  Jiggs let loose a string of curses that would turn even the toughest cowgirl red in the cheeks. “I want what’s mine. This deal with Gemstone has to happen,” he said. “We need it, son.”

  “I know, Pop. Simmer down, would you? You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”

  He guffawed. “Not like that hasn’t happened before.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t need it to happen again. I’m taking care of things.” He just had to be careful, that’s all. Besides, it wasn’t like he’d helped his dad. He’d only just found out about it when the suits at Gemstone came poking around and Jiggs fessed up. Reid had given him a month to get everything in order before it was all going to be shut down.

  Which meant time was running out.

  Jiggs shuffled over, his shoulders hunched, his skin weathered from a hard life in the Texas sun. “What kind of plan you got cookin’?”

  “The kind that’ll get me inside next door so I can look around for real.” But with Storie and her friend renovating the old place—which gave him heart palpitations—he wasn’t able to get in there and search. The Speakeasy and what was now The Storiebook Café shared an outdoor room. There didn’t seem to be any access to it from inside the old filling station, thank God. At least none that he’d found so far, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. If Storie discovered what was happening out there, he and Jiggs would have some explaining to do and their deal with Gemstone might go to hell.

  Not to mention the guaranteed jail time. He could lose everything, but that garden room was his father’s lifeline, and Reid would risk it all to give his dad what he needed.

  “You gonna rustle up some ghosts and scare the bejeebers out of ’em?” Jiggs let out a raspy chuckle, but doubled over as it turned into a hacking cough.

  Reid laid one hand on his father’s back, the other holding him up by the shoulder. “Let it pass, Pop,” he said.

  “You better get that plan into action right quick, son. The clock’s a-tickin’, and I won’t never find no peace in the hereafter unless you get what’s ours so I can leave my legacy on the world.”

  Reid nodded. His father’s days here were numbered. He loved his dad and had come back to help him out and spend some time with him, but once he made the deal happen and Jiggs was settled, it would be time to move on again. He could manage his mineral rights holdings through his lawyer, visit Whiskey Creek on occasion, and everyone would be happy.

  When he was here, he longed for the city, and when he was in the city, he longed for the simplicity of small-town life. But no matter what, he knew Whiskey Creek wasn’t enough. His mother’s words, and her leaving, had made settling down in a place like this too risky an endeavor. What woman would be satisfied with a town the size of a postage stamp, would raise up a family, and would love both the small-town guy and the businessman sides of him? They either wanted one or the other, but not both.

  His mother had always told him that she was too big for such a small town. He’d grown up wondering if he was, too, and if that’s where his discontentment stemmed from.

  Reid had tried to tell his dad that he had enough money to last a lifetime and back, but it was Reid’s money from his mineral and gas holdings, and Jiggs wanted his own. He wanted to leave something behind that had his name on it, and who was Reid to deny his father that?

  He’d heard the story his whole life. The old moonshining still that old Gus Malone had operated. The secret room with treasure and pieces of history tucked away for safekeeping. Jiggs had spent the last five years researching and investigating every square inch of Whiskey Creek in hopes of finding that elusive room, finally narrowing the location down to someplace in the vicinity of The Speakeasy and what was now The Storiebook Café.

  Over the last few months, Reid’d been in and out of the old building next door as much as he’d dared, searching the best he could. Of course it didn’t help that he didn’t know precisely what he was looking for. A definite flaw in successfully executing his search plan.

  Jiggs shuffled back behind the bar, leaning heavily on his cane. Reid watched him for a minute. Giving his dad the one thing that would set him at peace was more important than his desire to get out of Whiskey Creek. What he wanted could wait. He’d give Jiggs his last wish.

  He turned back to the window and watched Harper and her two girls pull weeds from the brick planters. His attention shifted as Kathy Newcastle waved good-bye, leaving Storie standing in front of the corner building, staring up at it. He’d been keeping an eye on her during the renovations, waiting for an opportunity to sneak in and have another look around, but someone was always there and the opportunities were getting slimmer and slimmer.

  He folded his arms over his chest, never taking his eyes off her. At twenty-eight, she had just the right combination of experience and rebellion. He could see in her the defiant tilt of her chin, the way she threw back her shoulders, and her hand propped on her hip as if she were ready to give someone a good what-for. Maybe it was her auburn hair and the bright copper highlights, or maybe it was the faded, ripped blue jeans and tank top. Whatever it was, every time he looked at her, he was reminded of the summer after he graduated from college.

  Don’t think about it. But the memory exploded in him, just like it did on a regular basis. He couldn’t stop it.

  He’d never really known her, but seeing her that day had ignited a desire in him that had gripped him. He knew enough of her story—growing up all over the place, never settling anywhere. Looking at her now, seeing the old gas station come to life, he was smart enough to know that she needed roots more than anything else, and she wanted them in Whiskey Creek. A place to belong. A home, especially now that her daddy was gone.

  Ah shit. He felt like hell for messing with her now, but what else could he do? A fissure of guilt built in him over the fact that he was set to deceive her.

  Angrily, he shoved his guilt aside. There was no way in hell he’d let his thoughts go there as he ripped apart the empty beer boxes, tearing them down to
little pieces. He stood up for what he believed; that was the bottom line. And right now he believed in helping his father get what he needed before he left this earth.

  Reid took one last look at Storie, banishing the temptation that had built in him since that day at the lake, right along with his curiosity about her. He couldn’t be distracted. Gemstone Spirits would be back before long, and if the recipe for Apple Pie Moonshine wasn’t tested and ready, his dad’s deal would go south. And he couldn’t let that happen, not when that was the only thing getting his dad up each morning, the only thing that helped him get through each day.

  Reid wouldn’t let his dad lose that deal, or that accomplishment. He’d do what it took to get into the building next door and find what he was looking for, if it was the last thing he ever did for his dad.

  Chapter 2

  Six o’clock was well past Buddy Garland’s normal quitting time, so where was he, and why was the front door open wide? And if he was still here, why wasn’t he chattering away to himself, or blaring Billy Currington’s “Pretty Good at Drinkin’ Beer”? Which Storie suspected might be true for Buddy Garland.

  An uneasy feeling gnawed in her gut, the same intuitive gnawing she’d felt just before she discovered her ex, Randy, cement specialist of Clement, Texas, and his secretary, Mary Lou, laying rocky aggregate together six months ago.

  Her powers were a blessing and a curse. Sometimes she didn’t want to know that something bad was about to happen. Then again, there was something to be said for being prepared.

  Miranda, her calico, often appeared at times like this, almost like a prewarning, but she was nowhere to be seen and Storie couldn’t put her finger on anything in particular, so she pushed her worries aside.

  “Everything’ll be just fine,” she said quietly, looking at the mess of tools scattered about, the to-do list in her mind growing longer by the second. Harper was at the market stocking up on supplies for the grand opening. She and Harper both had their tasks and knew exactly what still needed to be done.