Sweet Nothings: A Karma Café Novella (10 page)

“Your mother believes,” Odette said with a shrug, as usual standing firmly on neutral ground.

Pressure, generations of it, pressed down on Anja’s shoulders with knobby fingers. It wasn’t that Anja wanted to let her mother down. It was more that she didn’t really buy into the whole fading magic idea.

The problem was, her mother did.

“Fine. I understand her worries,” Anja muttered, starting to slice fruit to fill her grandmother’s crusts. Peaches, strawberries and plums made a pretty medley of glistening sweetness. A dollop of apricot preserves stirred in and a quick wish for a taste of sunshine, and you had Odette’s famous fruit pie. “Even so, she knows as well as I do the rules against manipulation. Even if it is her own daughter.”

“Ah, but has she manipulated anything? Or has she simply made opportunities available?” Odette asked cleverly. “It isn’t as if she whipped up a magical potion and fed it to you. Or to any of those nice men.”

Anja cringed.

“Giving someone courage to face what they want isn’t averting free will, though,” Anja argued, irritated to hear the justification in her tone.

“You honor your heritage, Anja. You know the rules, black and white. But you haven’t yet learned the subtleties of gray.”

There was a gentle chiding in Odette’s arched brow, more effective on Anja than hours of Natalia’s lectures.

Especially when that simple look was quickly followed by Odette turning her back on her granddaughter to cross to the stove.

“Gray isn’t black,” Anja said with a stubborn jut of her chin, stirring the preserves into the fruit with enough aggression to send a few peach slices across the table. Grinding her teeth and glad her grandmother wasn’t looking, she scooped the pieces into the trash. “It might not be pure, but it’s not manipulation. It’s not a removal of choice.”

“Would you want your mother giving you a magical push to find your own true love? You get to choose him, of course,” Odette offered, her tone absent as she checked the kettle of bean and barley soup. She sipped, held the soup on her tongue like a wine connoisseur might test for bouquet, then tossed in a pinch of this and a shake of that before setting the spoon in the sink.

It wasn’t until she’d crossed the room to the three-dozen crusts and leftover dough that she met her granddaughter’s frustrated eyes.

“Shades of gray,” she said. “It’s not forbidden. It’s not even a bad place to work, Anja. But it does demand a very clear purpose, a strong awareness of the possibilities. And, of course, a ready acceptance of the threefold return.”

Anja didn’t need to reminded that the threefold law—that all things sent out returned times three, a witch’s take on Karma—meant the repercussions of playing in the gray would fall on her. Not on Bianca, or Jacob, or anyone else. Even though Bianca had requested it, Anja had cast the spell. She’d called down the energy and infused that turnover. Whatever price Bianca paid, be it good or ill, Anja would pay triple.

Worth it if Bianca found happiness. And, Anja realized with a sigh as her shoulders sagged, she’d not only deserve anything harmful that came her way, she’d willingly take on the undesirable results so Bianca didn’t have to.

But magic didn’t work that way.

Casting the spell didn’t mean she got to pick and choose who was dealt the results. Only that results would ensue.

Her stomach churning, worry a tight throbbing in her temples, she crossed to her grandmother and held out her hands.

“The storm was coming, one way or another,” she said quietly. “I didn’t bring it. I simply gave, I hope, the strength to face it.”

“Shades of gray,” Odette said quietly, taking Anja’s hands in her own. The older woman’s fingers looked frail. Wrinkled and spotted with age, they should be fragile. But they gripped Anja’s with the strength and power of the Crone. The Wise Woman.

“You made your choice, when you stirred up magic for Bianca,” Odette said quietly. “She made hers when she turned to you for help. And he, of course, made his when he sought her here. Now you’ll all deal with the results.”

Anja didn’t how her grandmother knew.

She wasn’t even surprised.

She slid a glance toward the ceiling, wondering what was going on up there. But her gift was magic, not sight.

So all she could do was hope. Hope like crazy that her spell had been a blessing for Bianca. For Jacob.

And not a curse that was going to come back and kick them all in the ass.

Chapter Nine

Bianca stood outside the Karma Café, glaring over the candy-striped awning at the apartment windows above. Her stomach clenched even tighter than the fists at her sides and she took three deep breaths.

She had to go in. She didn’t have a choice.

She wasn’t a wimp, dammit.

She took one more deep breath, and ignoring the knots in her belly, she pushed the door open.

A quick scan showed the café’s post-breakfast, pre-lunch lull. Perfect timing.

She could do this. She’d seduced the hell out of a very sexy man just one day ago. She could do anything she set her mind to. She pressed her hand against her stomach. Yep, anything. Although she might have to throw up first.

A flash of color in the corner caught her eye. Aha. Her feet almost flew over the hardwood as she crossed the room.

“I have to talk to you. Now. Please.”

Anja’s eyes widened and she gave the tiniest wince as she took in the frantic look on Bianca’s face. Before she could protest, or make an excuse, Bianca laid a pleading hand on her arm.

“Please,” she repeated. “It’s important.”

After a quick look toward the kitchen, Anja let out a breath, set her tray of dirty dishes on the table and nodded.

“Of course. Do we need to go upstairs?”

God, no. Bianca rubbed her hands on her arms to try and avoid shuddering. Not letting herself even look toward the staircase, she refused to consider the temptation on the second floor.

“Here is okay, if you don’t mind.”

After another glance toward the kitchen, Anja gestured to the table she’d just cleaned.

“I need to ask you a question,” Bianca said as soon as she took her seat.

“I need to apologize,” Anja said at the same time. “What?”

“Why would you need to apologize?”

Anja grimaced, then shook her head so the long curls slid over her shoulder.

“Question first. What do you need to ask me?”

Bianca frowned at her fingers, all knotted together, then met Anja’s eyes with a pleading look.

“Yesterday. What you made, you created. That spell...”

Anja closed her eyes, looked like she was saying a little prayer, then with a deep sigh took Bianca’s hands.

“Did you find yourself doing things you didn’t want to?”

“No,” Bianca exclaimed. “Oh, no. I did everything I wanted. Every single thing. And a couple of them twice.”

“You’re happy about that?”

“Happy to have finally had the courage to do what I wanted? Of course.” Bianca looked at the woman across from her, not sure if Anja could understand. She doubted that the raven-haired beauty had ever had a single doubt in her life. At least, not one she couldn’t quickly dismiss.

But Bianca had spent the last eight years buried in them. Drowning in them, even.

“Of course?”

“Of course,” Bianca repeated. “Without your help, your magical nudge, I would never have faced my fears. I wouldn’t have seduced Jacob.”

Anja’s lips twitched. “Seduced, hmm?”

“I made him whimper,” Bianca said with a delighted grin.

“I’m confused then,” Anja confessed, pushing her hand through her heavy curls. “If you’re so pleased with the results, what did you need to talk to me about?”

Bianca’s stomach, only seconds ago soothed with the memories of really awesome sex, clenched again.

“Your apple turnover gave me courage. I could feel the changes, as if all the walls I’d built up were blasted away.” She wet her lips, glanced toward the stairs, then stiffened her shoulders and lifted her chin. “But Jacob tasted it, too. I gave him a bite. I used him, Anja.”

“No.” Anja shook her head. “No, no, no. You’ve already defined the spell. It broke down the walls that you’d hidden behind. It wasn’t an aphrodisiac, it gave you no sexual powers that you don’t already possess.”

Bianca wanted to believe that. Oh, she wanted to so much.

“It didn’t make him want to have sex with me?”

“It wouldn’t even have made him admit his desires, let alone act on them. Unless he was afraid, of course.”

Bianca blinked a couple of times, processing that.

She’d hoped that was the case.

She’d gone home, furious, and told her sisters everything.

Well, everything except Anja’s part in the scenario.

They’d fussed. They’d worried. They’d yelled and warned and scolded. And then, almost as one, they’d asked her what she wanted.

She hadn’t been able to answer them.

Not until she’d asked Anja.

Not until she’d found out if Jacob had been under a spell.

Now she knew.

Her eyes drifted to the stairs again, the knots in her stomach still there, but looser. Easier.

“You warned me that change was coming,” Bianca said quietly. “You didn’t mean Jacob.”

“It can be, if you want. It can be just Jacob.” Anja’s own glance drifted, too, hers toward the kitchen. She released Bianca’s hands, folding her own neatly on the table in front of her as if keeping them still.

“The choice is yours, Bianca. It’s always been yours.”

#

Jacob frowned at the duffle bag on the bed, then at the tidily folded jeans in his hand.

Just pack, dammit.

But once he was finished packing, he’d have no excuses left for not heading to the airport.

The airport meant toing home.

Alone.

Since he’d come here a week ago with the intention of heading home with Bianca in tow, ready to kick Lynn’s greedy ass. Going alone meant he’d failed. He couldn’t out Bianca, so Lynn would be free to declare her dead.

He hated failure.

Jacob threw the jeans into the bag with a growl and stormed to the window to glare at twilight falling over the Golden Gate. Shoving his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, he suck in breath through his teeth and tried to get past the anger.

At the situation.

At Bianca.

But most of all, at himself.

What in the hell had he been thinking? Coming all the way across the country, trying to push some sweet, sexy, adorably smart...

Jacob shook his head, trying to dislodge the image of Bianca from his brain. What had he been thinking about?

Oh yeah.

His stupid mistake. Trying to manipulate Bianca into facing a past she had every reason to run from. Pushing her, tricking her.

God, he was an ass.

He didn’t want to leave. He hated the way things were between them, hated that he’d found the most amazing woman ever. Clever, talented and funny. One who made him think of tomorrows, wish he could sit and talk—just talk—for hours, then sweep her into his arms and carry her off and make all of her sexual fantasies come true. He wanted to protect her. To get to know her dreams, to hear her likes, dislikes and favorite color.

Even without any of that, he was crazy about her.

And instead of having a shot at making any of that happen, he’d blown it.

Yep. He was an ass.

His cellphone buzzed, putting his pity-party on hold.

He didn’t want to talk to anyone.