Page 27 of Enchanted to Meet You

Alarmed, he asked, “What smell?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sniffing delicately. “It’s so familiar. I think it’s... cannoli? Have you been eating cannoli in here?”

“No.” It wasn’t his fault Wake Up West Harbor also had such a fine selection of pastries in addition to such good coffee. “Cheese Danish.”

“Oh, yes. Those Danish at Wake Up West Harbor are hard to resist. Wait, stop. This is my house.”

She pointed at her cottage, so he didn’t have to pretend he didn’t know which one it was. The storm did not appear to have done any harm to the cheerful yellow exterior or the already weathered shingled roof. Even the bright marigolds on either side of the steps leading to her front porch looked unbattered by either wind or hail.

“It looks okay.” Jessica heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank God, because I’m positive my car is destroyed. Do you want to come inside for a minute? I just need to check to see if Pye is all right. He has a cat door in the back. I hope he had the sense to use it.”

Did he want to come inside? He hadn’t been inside a home—a real home, not a hotel room or some European villa or the bunkhouse at his father’s ranch, which hardly qualified as a home—for as long as he could remember. He couldn’t agree fast enough, though he tried to seem casual about it.

“I guess I could come in,” he said. “Do you have any coffee?”

“Of course. I suppose coffee’s the least that I owe you for getting me out of there,” she said, as she unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door to exit the tiny car. “Though I wouldn’t have been there in the first place if it weren’t for you.”

“Sorry. But it’s your town I’m trying to—” He bit off the rest of what he was going to say when he saw her step out of the car, then wince in pain and clutch at the knee she’d been rubbing. In a split second, he was at her side, offering a supportive arm. “What is it?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”

“It’s nothing.” It wasn’t nothing. She was grimacing. “I think I twisted my knee a little when I dove into the car, is all.”

“Let me look at it,” he said.

She laughed and rolled her eyes, though it was clear from the way she was limping as they made their way up the marigold-lined path to her front porch that she was in pain. “I told you, it’s fine. You’re not going to look at my twinged knee.”

A second later, however, she stumbled, and let out a little cry of pain.

“That’s it.” Derrick leaned over and scooped her up, sweeping her into his arms and carrying her up the steps to her front door.

“What are you doing?” Her voice rose. Fortunately none of her neighbors appeared to be home, or if they were, they were used to hearing her yell, since none of them seemed disturbed by it. “Put me down!”

“I understand your embarrassment,” he said in the same calm voice he used to speak to agitated animals on the ranch, “but you shouldn’t be walking on it. This is a medical emergency, and you’re only making it worse. Could you unlock your door? I have my hands full at the moment.”

“It’s not a medical emergency,” she said, but she did in fact reach into her bag to pull out her keys, then insert them into the front door’s lock. “I’m perfectly capable of walking.”

“It’s better to stay off it until it’s been medically assessed.”

“You’re going to throw your back out.”

He grunted. “Not likely.” If she’d only seen what his father had forced him to lift regularly back at the ranch.

The inside of her house looked exactly the way he’d expected it to. Small and cheerfully decorated, with all the original white wainscoting and moldings, it was a classic 1920s seaside cottage—though the “sea” was only a tidal estuary a block away, and a chimney had been added during some long-ago effort to winterize the place. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases built on either side of the fireplace were crammed with books of every size and length, from tomes on witchcraft, alchemy, herbology, Italian cooking, sewing, fashion history, and the occult, to celebrity memoirs and even murder in the British countryside.

She’d furnished the living room in beachy pale blues and white, so that the black cat curled in a comfortable ball on her sofa stood out in sharp contrast to all the pastels in the room. It raised its head when Derrick deposited its owner on the sofa cushion beside it, and let out a sleepyMeow?

“There,” Derrick said. “The cat is fine.” And so was its owner.

Jessica pushed back some of the dark curls that had fallen into her face and smiled down at the cat beside her, which was stretching luxuriously in place and letting out an enormous yawn. “Yes. I guess he is. Thank you.” To the cat, she said, scratching it beneath the chin, “Hello, Pye. You’re a very good boy. Thank you for staying home like a gentleman and not getting killed by hail.” The cat looked pleased by this praise, and stretched some more. To Derrick, Jessica said, “But listen, you can’t go around grabbing women like that without their permission.”

“I didn’t grab you.” He felt a little wounded that she wasn’t more impressed with his chivalry. “I carried you because you were hurt. I already explained, it was a medical emergency—”

“Was it, though? Or are you so enamored of my body that you couldn’t wait to get your hands on it?”

She was joking. But he understood now that she used humoras a defense mechanism when she was uncomfortable, so he responded in kind, hoping it would set her at ease.

“Yes.” He sat down on the couch beside her—only slightly disturbing the cat, who gave him a suspicious glance, then resettled a few inches away—and gently lifted the leg she’d injured, placing her foot on the driftwood coffee table in front of them. “This whole thing, including the storm, was all part of an elaborate plan I concocted so that I could ravage you.”

“Ha!” Her dark eyes danced. She was suppressing a smile, too, so he knew his attempt at humor had worked. “I knew you were lying when you said you weren’t here to implant the light in me.”