Page 66 of Love Spells: And Other Non-Refundable Magic

Flora near the door. Flora laughing. Flora pushing her hair behind her ear while she listens to a third person talk. I keep finding her without meaning to, until eventually I catch her doing the same thing.

“You know she keeps looking at you, too,” Dani says when she reappears beside me.

“I know.”

She gives me a look, probably because I answered too quickly, but I don’t care enough to take it back. Across the room, Flora catches my eye again, and this time neither of us looks away.

Something warm curls low in my belly as I smile at her. I know what attraction feels like. None of this should feel particularly new, not at my thirty-four years of age.

But standing in the middle of a crowded Halloween party, watching Flora look at me like maybe she wants something to happen between us too, it does.

CHAPTER 19

FLORA

I think I might be having a panic attack. Not literally. More in, like, the figurative sense of the word. Because by the fourth time I catch Merry looking at me, I know the previous ones weren’t accidental.

I’m standing near the patio door with Maggie, holding the same drink she handed me twenty minutes ago, although I’ve barely touched it. The house has gotten progressively warmer as more people arrive, and someone finally opened the sliding door behind us, letting in a stream of cold air that feels good against the back of my neck.

Merryweather is across the room.

Again.

She looks away when our eyes meet, but not quickly enough to convince me she wasn’t staring.

I take a large sip of my drink.

Maggie follows my gaze. “Okay, I think this is enough.”

I don’t look at her. “What?”

“That.”

I should have known better than to do anything involving socializing with pretty women with someone who has known me long enough to recognize the difference between me attending a party and me attending a party while keeping track of one particular blonde woman on the other side of it.

Maggie had noticed Merry almost immediately.

I didn’t tell her much. Because there isn’t much to tell. She’s a woman I met at work who has somehow become a woman I keep running into. We’ve had three conversations that shouldn’t have accumulated into anything significant and yet have apparently been enough that I recognize the sound of her laugh from across the crowded room.

“She’s a total babe,” Maggie says as she bumps her shoulder against mine. “Go talk to her.”

“She’s with her friends.”

“So are you.” I glance at her. Maggie raises her glass. “And I’m very secure in our relationship.”

I laugh despite myself.

Across the room, Merry looks over again.

This time, I don’t look away.

Neither does she.

For a few seconds, the party seems to rearrange itself around the space between us. People move through my line of sight, someone brushes past me toward the patio, Maggie says something about the music, but Merry stays exactly where she is.

Then she smiles.

It’s small. Different from the easy, wide smile she gives people when she’s talking. This one feels almost tentative.