“I can’t even do flowers right.” Thinking to toss them aside in the little flower garden that hugged the front of the redbrick house, he paused. “She’ll see them there.”
For once he would like to get it right with a woman. It would be a bright spot in his life. And he really needed one. But his nervousness around the female sex could never be allayed by his usual confident alpha surety. Women made him go all stiff and fumble for his words. And hiding the stiff part could sometimes prove a problem, as well.
Smirking at that thought, he grabbed the door knocker and muttered, “Please let her like me. Give me this one, okay?”
Who he was asking, he wasn’t sure. He believed in the possibility of God, so if there existed a higher power, he hoped his words would, at the very least, be noted by some force.
Rapping the knocker a few times, he then waited. After ten seconds the door swung open to reveal the flour-dusted face of a witch who sported a surprised look on her face. Hell, he should have called first. But she had told him to stop by for lunch. He must have misunderstood. Par for the course with him.
“Uh...?” Thick black lashes blinking over her blue eyes, she glanced to the flowers in his hand. “Oh! Right! Lunch! I forgot.”
“I should have called.”
“No, that’s fine.”
“You weren’t expecting me. I can leave and—”
“Don’t be silly.” She grabbed him by the wrist and coaxed him over the threshold. “Come in! I was baking some bread.”
“It smells great.” He followed the scent toward the kitchen more than he followed her. Yeast and warmth and crisp browned crust. Mmm... He scanned the many loaves on the kitchen counter. He counted eight but also noted the oven light was on and there was another loaf inside. “That’s...a lot of bread.”
“I know, it’s crazy!” She flung up her hands in surrender, then noted the flour on her fingers and wiped them across her pink frilled apron, which was covered with a white dusting of flour. “Whenever I get the urge to bake homemade bread I always go overboard. I really like the kneading process.” She punched the air with a tiny fist. “Gets out some of my frustrations.”
Lars wasn’t sure if he should sit on one of the stools before the kitchen counter—that might seem too presumptuous—so he stood there holding the bouquet with both hands. Feeling out of his element and, as usual, awkward. “You’re frustrated?”
“It’s because of a decision I’ve been mulling over recently. A witch thing. A spell, actually. So, you brought some pretty flowers for me? I love blue.”
“I do too. I can’t smell them, though. It’s kind of strange.”
He handed her the bouquet and she pressed the oddly colored blooms to her nose, then sneezed. “Whew! Nope, no smell, but I think I got a petal up my nose. Ha! Sit down. Oh, we were supposed to go out for lunch, right?” She glanced to the oven.
“We can do it some other time. I can see you’re busy. It was nice to see you again today. I thought I freaked you out last night. I know I handled things wrong.”
“Don’t worry about it. Today’s a new day. And I have an idea. Because I certainly need to do something with all this bread. How about sandwiches and lemonade out on my patio?”
Spend time with the sexiest woman he’d met in a long time? “I’m in.”
* * *
The opportunity to have lunch with the sexy werewolf was just the thing to knock Mireio out of her incessant worrying over how to locate a vampire for the immortality spell. It would also complement the fruitful results of her bread-making endeavors. Sure, she would hand out loaves to her girlfriends, and freeze a couple, but seriously, what witch needed that much bread?
So she sliced up a loaf of oatmeal rye, making the slices extra thick. The steam rose with a seductive invitation as she spread on some cucumber yogurt sauce, covered that with spinach, pickled onions, peppers and some slivered carrots and radishes. Top that all with broccoli sprouts and finely shredded red cabbage, and voilà!
With a glance and a wink to the candle she kept above the stove, she felt as if her mother was watching over her. She lit the beeswax candle once a year on her mother’s birthday. It was her way of keeping her memory close.
Ten minutes later, the werewolf didn’t seem to mind that there was no meat in the sandwiches. He was on his third half when Mireio returned to the patio with a refill on the blueberry lemonade for both of them.
“This is really good,” he said. He sat on the wide-backed white wicker chair before the tiny wrought iron table. His big form seemed to suck up the chair and his knees kept hitting his elbows. It was doll furniture for the man. “What’s that sour tangy stuff in the middle?”
“Pickled red onions.”
“Love them. Thanks,” he said as she poured him more lemonade.
“I’ll send you home with a loaf of bread too, if you don’t mind. I obviously have some to spare.”
“I’d like that.” He met her gaze only briefly over the sandwich.
He was a shy one, which surprised Mireio after his bold approach last night. But she’d sensed his nervousness then, as well. And knowing what he’d known about her, it had to have been tough to get up the courage to approach her. Especially when she could have reacted badly—and did.
She noticed his distraction as he looked over the small backyard, framed in on one side by ten-foot-high lilac hedges and low boxwood on the other. As he narrowed his eyes she suspected he was remembering. Merciful moons, she might as well rip off the Band-Aid and get all the painful stuff over with.
“Yes,” she offered, “I was standing right there—” she pointed over her shoulder “—by the door that enters into the bathroom.”
“Sorry. I didn’t want to ask. It’s the lilacs. They are what brought me to your doorstep today, and to the brewery last night. The scent is heady.”
“You wolves have good sniffers. Did you happen to remember an old lady screaming from that night?”
“I, uh...” He set the remaining quarter of sandwich on the plate. “Yes?”
Mireio chuckled at his obvious confusion. “It’s okay. Mrs. Henderson is a drama queen. She stopped over the next morning. Wanted to talk about the monster.”
“Monster?”
“Yes. And get this—she’d changed her mind from her original assessment that it was Bigfoot. Now she’s sure it was a Sasquatch.”
“A—really?” His mouth dropped at the corners and his big brown eyes saddened.
“You’re not a monster.” She felt the need to reach over and pat his knee in reassurance. “But it’s a good thing she thinks that, isn’t it? If she was telling everyone she’d seen a werewolf, that could cause trouble for you. How many people actually believe in Sasquatches?”
“About as many as believe in werewolves?” He rubbed his palms on his thighs.
“Right. But don’t worry about it.” She sipped the lemonade. “So you said something like it wasn’t normal for you to tromp through yards in werewolf form. Why were you in my yard the other night? Were you lost? Had you come through the cornfield that backs up to the yard?”
He picked up the lemonade and drank half of it. The man seemed nervous again. Yet much as she shouldn’t push, curiosity was a witch’s best tool when it came to making good choices and weeding out the wrong.
“Well, I mean, aren’t werewolves much more cautious about shifting near humans? And it wasn’t even a full moon.”
“I don’t know why it happened,” he blurted out. “It’s something I’m looking into.”
“Really? Like, something is wrong with you?”
He shrugged. “I went to a doctor a few days ago and he checked me out. Said it was probably nothing to worry about. Might have been sleep shifting.”
“Sleep shifting? I can’t imagine.”
“Neither can I. The doc took a bunch of blood and did some other tests.”
“And?”
