Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic Book 1) (20 page)

Chapter 28

After Lily left, I hobbled out to the living room, trying to keep my weight on the edges of my feet without rolling my ankles, and collapsed on the couch. Within thirty seconds, two dogs and a cat had piled onto my lap. “Hey, guys,” I said with a laugh. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

Petting the animals with one hand, I called John at his office to beg off babysitting Charlie that night. I hated to do it, but as much as I loved the kid I could hardly chase her around when I wasn’t supposed to walk. More importantly, I didn’t want my mom or anyone else to know I’d been injured again. So I told my brother-in-law that I thought I might be coming down with a cold and didn’t want to give it to Charlie.

After I talked to John, I called my mother to let her know about the change in plans. Luckily, she was too distracted with last-minute party preparations to question me closely. I was just hoping my feet would heal enough in the next twenty-four hours for me to still go. I was their only child now. It wouldn’t be right to miss the party.

“Okay, hon,” she said absently. “Hang on a second.” She half covered the phone to holler out a question about centerpieces to someone else in the room. Then she was back. “You picked up your dress from the dry cleaner’s, right?” she demanded, suddenly
very
focused on me. “And the shoes from your dad’s office?”

“Yes and yes,” I said, grateful that I’d had the presence of mind to run errands that morning before my magic lesson. “Shoes and dress. Check.”

“What about jewelry?” my mom inquired. “I have some lovely pieces that would complement your gown—”

“No, thanks,” I broke in quickly, before she could start listing every necklace she owned. “I’m covered, Mom, I promise. Is there anything you need help with?”

“No, you take a day and rest that cold. I’ll send one of your cousins over with some chicken soup and cough drops so you’ll be good as new before the party.”

“That’s not really how colds work, Mom.”

“It is now.”

I listened to her chatter on about party preparations for a few more minutes; then she added, “Oh, before you hang up, honey, your Aunt Violet happened to ask me who you’re bringing as your plus-one. Is it that young man from . . . um . . . your job?”

I rolled my eyes. I occasionally palled around with a couple of the male Depot employees, although less since I’d stopped going to bars. It wasn’t a romantic thing; I just missed having camaraderie with a group of guys, like I’d had in the army. But I’d once made the mistake of bringing one of them to a family barbecue. I knew he was coming as my friend,
he
knew he was coming as my friend, but of course my whole family had assumed we were on the brink of getting married and having babies. “No, Mom,” I said now. “He’s seven years younger than me. I think he’s dating a sorority girl from Topeka.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said vaguely, but I didn’t miss the relief in her voice. “Who are you bringing, then?”

“Um, no one, Mom,” I said uncomfortably. “I don’t have a plus-one.” I hadn’t sent a formal RSVP to the party—why would I, when I was the one helping my mom update the guest list?—and I had just assumed they’d realize I wouldn’t be bringing anyone. I’d thought I only needed to mention a plus-one if I
was
bringing a plus-one. Apparently I’d had that backward.

There was a silence on her end, which stretched on for long enough for me to attempt to fill it myself. “I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t think it was that important whether I brought a date to my dad’s birthday party.”

She sighed. “It’s not that, honey, it’s just . . . we’re doing this for your dad, you know, because he does so much for the family. He’s been talking about you girls a lot lately, and I know he worries about you.” I found myself nodding along with her, which was stupid for a couple of reasons. “It’d just be nice if he could see you happy and dating, even if he’s not the love of your life. Maybe a guy friend?”

I knew she was manipulating me, but I couldn’t really fault her for it. My dad was the cornerstone of our whole family, and it wasn’t like she was asking for the moon. “I’ll ask around, okay? If I can find someone, I’ll bring him. But no promises.”

“Thank you, sweetie.” The gratitude in her voice made me grimace.

When I was off the phone, I leaned back on the couch, idly scratching Pongo’s wrinkled bulldog cheeks. Who the hell could I ask? I immediately thought of John, but that would be a mistake. My family knew that we were friendly, even friends, but showing up at this thing on his arm would come off as a Statement.

But if not John, then who? I didn’t really have a social life outside of work and my extended family. All my coworkers were either married or college-aged, and going with one of my male cousins would only make my pathetic dating situation more pronounced. Simon would probably be willing to come as a friend, but he had a long-term girlfriend, which made me feel awkward about asking. The guys I knew from summer softball were all married. I wondered if I could get away with bringing Lily. She’d probably get a kick out of it, but it would start a whole bunch of rumors. I didn’t mind being thought of as a lesbian, really, but I wasn’t comfortable lying if my parents asked me outright, which they undoubtedly would. And that led me right back to where I’d started.

Stop stalling, Lex.
I knew what to do, of course. Even as I told myself it was a stupid, halfway crazy idea, my fingers were already typing away on my phone, checking what time the sun would set the next night.

Then I called Quinn.

“So you’re asking me to be . . . what, your arm candy?” he said once I’d explained the situation. He sounded amused, but in a remote way, like he wasn’t yet invested in the conversation, much less the actual event.

“Pretty much, yeah.” I fidgeted, embarrassed, but I didn’t know what I could say to make the situation less awkward or my case any stronger.

“Isn’t your family going to think that we’re dating?”

“I’ll tell them we’re just friends,” I offered.

There was a beat of silence. “
Are
we friends?” he said in a low voice. “Is that what we are?”

I thought about that for a moment. I was never going to have Quinn over to watch a movie or help me move my couch. He was never going to drive me to the airport or come rock climbing with me. But he had kept investigating Charlie’s kidnapper after being told to stop, and he’d done that for me. That wasn’t the same as choosing me over his boss, but it was something. Maybe friendship. “Don’t you think we could be?” I said.

“Yes, but I’m . . . drawn to you,” he said reluctantly, in the same tone you’d use for “yes, but . . . you have crippling body odor.”

“Well, I think you’re supposed to be,” I offered. “Death in my blood, remember?”

There was another moment of silence, this one much longer. Then I sighed into the phone. “Look, Quinn, I promise I’m not going to try to take advantage of you. I pretty much just need a warm body to convince my parents I’m not a hermit. Uh . . . you know what I mean,” I added hastily, as I realized “warm body” might not necessarily apply to Quinn. “It’s a favor, like being a date to someone’s cousin’s wedding.”

“Well . . .” Quinn said slowly, and he trailed off for so long I thought he was scrabbling for an excuse to say no. But then he admitted, in a shamed voice, “I do kind of like to dance.”

Chapter 29

At three o’clock the next afternoon, a cadre of my female cousins descended upon my house.

My feet were much improved, but I was trying to stay off them as much as possible in order to pass for healthy at the party. So instead of going for a hike, I was in the basement lifting weights and listening to NPR in bike shorts and a yoga top. Then I heard the dogs flip out. A moment later the doorbell rang.

Grabbing a towel, I went up the steps and down the hallway as gingerly as I could and peeked through the front window. There stood my cousins Elise, Brie, and Anna, and Jake’s wife Cara, all with mischievous smiles and armfuls of clothing. Expensive-looking clothing, so I herded the dogs into the still alarmingly clean mudroom. Maybe they would normal it up a little.

I opened the front door with my eyebrows raised. “Surprise,” they chorused. Anna even did jazz hands.

“It’s not my birthday,” I said.

Anna, who was twenty-six and a grad student at CU, stuck out her tongue at me. “We’re getting ready for your dad’s party here,” she explained. “Your mom and my mom’s idea.”

Yep, that sounded like my mom. Making sure I was involved. I eyed their armfuls of clothes and makeup cases. “Isn’t that kind of a lot of work for you guys?”

“Your dad’s bribing us,” Cara said shyly. “He’s sending a limo.”

Brie shot me an evil grin. She was thirty-seven, the oldest of our generation, a dentist with two sons and a perpetually harried expression. “Plus, the men have to get all the kids ready,” she said.

Shaking my head, I opened the door wide. “Well, come on in.” I was smiling despite myself.

The four of them trooped inside, chattering about who was watching Brie’s and Cara’s kids and what they were going to wear. Elise, the last one through, paused in the doorway and whispered, “I think Aunt Christy was afraid you’d be sad, you know, without Sam.”

I nodded. “And afraid I’d decide to just stay home?”

Elise smiled ruefully. “You know your mom.”

“I heard Lex has a daaaate,” Anna teased over her shoulder. “Who’s the guy?”

“Or
girl
,” Elise said, fake offended. Anna grabbed a throw pillow off the couch and chucked it at her. Elise batted it aside with a stagy karate chop.

I shrugged. “Just a friend.”

Cara, who was nearly as soft-spoken as her husband, asked, “Where’d you meet him?”

Oops. I couldn’t sound too enthusiastic about Quinn—or like I was working hard
not
to sound enthusiastic—or my whole family would think I was in love. “He was on my softball team over the summer,” I told them. “He’s a nice guy. We go hiking once in a while.” Well, we’d gone on one long hike together, anyway. I just wasn’t going to mention the body-disposal portion of the evening.

I jumped in the shower and spent fifteen minutes blow-drying my hair so that Cara, an actual hair stylist, could pin it up in big curlers. Then I made everyone some coffee and sat at the counter, listening to stories about Brie’s sons and Cara’s daughter Dani and Anna’s history professor and a hilariously drunk guy whom Elise had arrested after he walked through a plate-glass window at McDonald’s. I didn’t talk much, but I laughed and asked questions, my heart warmed by the familiar patter of my family.

Their lives had been dramatically unlike mine since long before I found out I was a witch. When I was a soldier, shotgunning energy drinks, patting down Iraqi women for bombs, and saying prayers every time I got in a
Humvee, I couldn’t believe I’d ever had a life that revolved around a big, sloppy, loving, exuberant family. And when I was with them, it was hard to believe I’d ever buzz-cut my hair and challenged the guys under my command to pull-up contests. But by the time I came home between tours, I’d realized both roles were an integral part of me—the soldier
and
the scion.

When I’d come home from the hospital in Germany after my sec
ond tour, it was harder to remember how to be in the family, how I was supposed to talk and react and smile in front of the people who loved me. Even now there were days when I felt like I was still adjusting to being back, after three years in Boulder. But without my family, I knew a big part of me would have died.

Well. Bigger part.

When my hair was done, I sat down at the counter and swiped on some mascara and lipstick, figuring that was good enough. But Anna gave me a long-suffering sigh and made me sit back down at the counter. She proceeded to put about thirty different substances on my face, only about half of which I recognized. When she finally put the cap back on the last tube, she blew gently on my face—“to get the extra powder off”—and pronounced me done. I went into the bedroom to put on my dress.

There was a stranger in my room. I jerked, backpedaling a step before I realized I was looking at my own reflection. Anna’s makeup had transformed me from my usual youthful-steely look into something softer and more . . . glamorous. Wide, shining curls framed my face in a curtain that dipped over one eye. I shook my
head in amazement, watching the curls bounce. “Not too shabby, guys!” I yelled. Or rather, the stranger in my mirror yelled.

At six-thirty, the limousine arrived for my cousins. I tried to bid them good-bye, since Quinn wasn’t picking me up until seven, but they unanimously decided to wait for my date to show up so they could give him the once-over. “You guys, this isn’t the prom,” I reminded them. “I don’t need a chaperone.”

Elise snorted around one of the apple slices I’d put out for us to munch on. “That’s for sure,” she said, her mouth full. “I’ve seen you shoot, woman.”

My other cousins tittered. “And you’ll see him at the party,” I added. “You can meet him then.” I made a shooing motion, but none of them left their perches around the room. In their long gowns and sculpted hairdos, they looked like the world’s most belligerent bridesmaids.

“Oh, we’ll all be busy with husbands and family stuff then,” Brie argued. “Come on, Lex. We’ll give him the eyeball, make sure he knows you’ve got backup.” She tilted her head to give me a pointed, lazy-eyed stare. I laughed. It was nice to see Brie have a chance to be goofy.

When the doorbell rang at seven, Elise, Brie, Anna, and Cara exchanged wide-eyed looks of glee. They began to get up, but I jumped to my feet first. Mostly because I hadn’t put on my shoes yet. Shoes still kind of hurt just then. “Stay!” I ordered them. In unison, all four of them raised their right arms and saluted, giggling hysterically. I rolled my eyes as I padded briskly down the hall, my skirt swishing at my calves. The dogs were barking madly, but that happened so frequently I barely registered it anymore. I pulled the door halfway open and saw Quinn.

He wore a black tuxedo with a long black tie that was on the thin side. His hands were in his pants pockets, and for a breathless moment I just . . . looked at him. He quirked a private smile at me, giving me a once-over. My dress was made of deep emerald satin, with a simple high-cut halter neckline that showed off the lean muscles in my arms and shoulders but covered most of the scars on my back, including the new ones. The full skirt flared out from a fitted waist, swirling as I walked. Anna, who’d picked it out, had decided the simple gown needed a little something extra, so she’d added a wide metal belt of braided silver links that sat at my waist. We stood there gazing at each other for a long moment, and I felt heat creep up my chest, flushing my cheeks under the makeup.

Then I heard my cousins giggling behind me and remembered myself. “Mr. Bond, I presume?” I said, cocking an eyebrow.

Quinn gave me a small smile. “Does that make you Miss Moneypenny?”

I shrugged a bare shoulder. “I’ve been called worse.”

The giggling intensified, and Quinn raised his brow inquisitively. “My cousins,” I explained. “They’d like to meet you.”

A flare of discomfort crossed Quinn’s face. “It’s okay. I can make this really easy,” I reassured him. Without checking behind me, I banged the door wide open—exposing the four of them, who were huddled in the hallway. “Cousins, this is Quinn. Quinn, some of my cousins.” Before any of them could speak, I grabbed my peep-toe heels and my silver clutch from the hall table, stepped across the threshold, and swung the door shut behind me. “Shall we?” I asked innocently.

Quinn grinned at me.