A Little Light Magic Read online

  Nick saw it, too. “Oh, Christ,” he muttered. “Just what I need.”

  Johnny strolled up to them, fists sunk deep in the pockets of his baggy jeans. “I think you’d better stop harassing the lady, big brother.”

  “Stay out of this, Johnny. It’s none of your business.”

  “Like hell it isn’t.” He planted himself at Tori’s side, his easy movement doing little to mask the tension in his body. “You think I’m gonna stand back and let you bully Tori? Forget it.”

  “Bully her? How? By cutting her a break? Jesus.”

  Nick snatched the check out of Tori’s hand and crumpled it in his fist. “Fine. You’ve paid me. Are you happy now?”

  No. She was miserable.

  She ran to her car, leaving Nick and Johnny standing together on the asphalt.

  “Well, now, that was slick,” Johnny said, as Tori’s Toyota peeled out of the parking lot. “I shoulda been taking notes.”

  Nick felt like punching something, and Johnny was standing too close for comfort. “Just shut up, okay? I’m not in the mood for your jokes.”

  “You never are.”

  “You got that right.”

  Johnny propped his hip against a car. “So. You got Tori pregnant?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on, Nick. I heard you telling her to save her money for the baby. It’s déjà vu all over again for you, isn’t it?”

  Nick swore. “No, it’s not. It’s not my baby Tori wants.”

  The smirk abruptly vanished from Johnny’s face. He pushed off from the car. “Then whose?”

  “She wants to get artificially inseminated by an anonymous donor.”

  “No shit?” Abruptly, Johnny’s smile returned. “Why? Your little guys not swimming straight?”

  “Damn it, Johnny, it’s not a joke. Tori’s decided she wants a baby in nine months. I’m not in the position to give her one on that timetable.”

  “No? Well, then, maybe I’ll volunteer to help her out. Sounds like a job with benefits.”

  Nick grabbed a fistful of Johnny’s shirt. “Don’t even think about it.”

  Johnny regarded him steadily, his blue eyes unblinking, just inches from Nick’s own. He didn’t struggle, didn’t even glance down at Nick’s fist.

  “You know, this might not be the best time to mention it, big brother, but you seem a little on edge.”

  Nick drew a breath and unclenched his fist, releasing him. “I’d be a lot calmer if I wasn’t doing your job on top of my own.”

  “What? I turned in the Carter bid. And finalized the subcontracts for Light house Harbor.”

  “Doris told me you want more time off.”

  “I’ve been called back to the Franklinville Hospital set. Is that a problem?”

  “Hell, yes, it’s a problem. You’re flat out of personal days.”

  “I’ll make up the time in the evening.”

  “You’ll work during business hours, or not at all. Take off for New York, and you’re out of a job.”

  For once, Johnny looked nonplussed. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Shit, Nick. Are you firing me?”

  “I’m laying down the law. Something I should’ve done a long time ago.”

  “This is about Tori, not you and me.”

  “Tori has nothing to do with this. This has been coming for a long time, Johnny. Go to that audition and you’re through with Santangelo Construction.”

  Real hurt flared in Johnny’s eyes. For a split second he looked very young, and completely lost, like he had in those months after their father’s sudden heart attack. Hell. At least Nick had been an adult when he’d lost his father. Johnny had been nine.

  He hesitated. What the hell was he doing, kicking his little brother out of their father’s business? He opened his mouth to take it all back, but before he could, Johnny, true to form, flipped off one of his smart-ass remarks.

  “That’s fly, dawg. I’ve been ready to cut outta here for a while now.”

  “Everything’s a joke to you, isn’t it?” Nick demanded. “When the hell are you going to grow up?”

  Johnny’s hands had curled into fists. “Grow up? And just what does that mean to you, Nick? I do every damn thing you ask around here. I’ve jumped through every one of your F-ing hoops. I may not do it nine-to-five, but the work gets done. What else do you want? Blood?”

  “No. Just competence. You screwed up another change order on Bayview. It’s gonna cost me.”

  “So sue me. You never made a mistake?”

  “I’ve made plenty,” Nick said tersely. “But unlike you, I don’t expect everyone to clean up after me. You…you’ve had everything handed to you. You get a free ride to college and what do you do? Drop out. Do you know what I would have given to be in your place?”

  A vein in Johnny’s temple jumped. “Believe me, I know. It was the only damn thing that kept me there for two years. I wanted to make you proud. Now I see all I made you was jealous.”

  “Jealous?” Nick couldn’t believe it. “Of you?”

  “Yeah. Maybe you’re still jealous. Maybe you can’t stand that I have the balls to go after what I want.”

  “Oh, give me a—”

  “Take a good look at where you are, Nick.” He jerked his head at the corner of the parking lot, where trash overflowed from a Dumpster. “You used to be an artist. You dreamed of designing buildings. Skyscrapers. Museums. But you settled for this.”

  Nick stared at him. “If I’m such a loser, then why do you work for me?”

  “Who the hell knows? Because Ma asked me to? Because you’re my brother? Because I once worshiped the ground you walked on? All I ever wanted was for you to stop working long enough to see me. Who I really was.” He scuffed the ground with the toe of his running shoe. “But I’m not missing this audition, Nick. Not even for you. I can’t. It’s my best shot to get what I’ve been working for all this time.”

  Slowly, Nick picked up his briefcase. “So you expect me to give you more time off?”

  “I don’t expect you to give me shit, Nick. And I’ll even save you the trouble of firing me.”

  Johnny shoved his hands in his pockets. “I quit.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Motherhood is a giant step into the great unknown.

  Look before you leap.

  “I’m not surprised Nick wouldn’t support you when you told him about the donor,” Mags said, jiggling Lily on her shoulder. “You want to have another man’s baby. It’s an affront to his male ego.”

  “It’s all that testosterone,” Chelsea said as she walked down the vitamin aisle at Healthy Eats, clipboard in hand, taking inventory. “It makes men territorial.”

  “I wasn’t expecting him to be so angry,” Tori said. She rubbed her bare arms. “He wants me to wait, have the surgery instead, but he says he’s not interested in marriage and he definitely doesn’t want any more kids. So where does that leave me?”

  “He’s just mad you’re not shaping your life to his needs,” Mags said. “But he doesn’t want to shape his to yours, either.”

  Mags was right about that. “I’ve been there with Colin,” Tori said. “I swore when we split that I would never again rearrange my life goals for a man.” She let out a long breath. “It’s just that I…have feelings for Nick, you know?”

  Chelsea sent her a troubled look. “Maybe you should consider putting the pregnancy idea off for a bit. Until summer’s over. After all, you’re just getting your shop started.”

  “But it might take a couple months to get pregnant,” Tori said. “And if I wait too long, it might not happen at all.”

  The three of them fell silent.

  Finally, Chelsea gave Tori’s arm a squeeze. “You have to go with your heart. Just remember, we’re here for you, whatever you decide.”

  She decided to do it.

  The next day, she paid the fee to Choices. In return, she received an instruction booklet, an ovulation predictor kit, an insemination syringe and—her heart
beat faster each time she looked at it—a home pregnancy test kit.

  A couple days later, the ovulation kit said all systems were go.

  Another call to Choices, and by that night she had everything she needed to do the deed. A vial of sperm. A syringe. An instruction pamphlet. She laid the first two on the bed and read the third.

  Looked at the syringe. Looked at the vial.

  Felt vaguely panicked.

  Read the instruction booklet again.

  Relax, it advised.

  Easier said than done.

  She opened the cabinet where she’d stashed the last two candle magic spell kits. She’d been saving one of them for this very moment. Green was the color of fertility. The green bag held a candle of the same color, a circle of green felt, a long, sharp needle, and instructions that included a freshly peeled hard-boiled egg.

  She didn’t happen to have any eggs, because of the vegan thing, so she went up to the corner convenience store and bought a half dozen. Then she waited by the boiling pot, her anxiety rising with the bubbles. Even after the water had cooled and she’d lit the candle, even after she’d wrapped the egg in the green felt and secured it with the needle, even after she’d snuffed the candle and buried the egg in her tiny backyard, doubts whispered down her spine.

  She returned to her bedroom and put on a CD featuring calm forest and waterfall sounds, hoping it would soothe her nerves. The CD player was the one Nick had bought her, after he’d tossed the beat-up one with the frayed electrical cord in the trash.

  There was a stabbing sensation in her chest and stomach, as if Tori’s heart were breaking into sharp slivers and sliding downward.

  She sat abruptly on the edge of the bed, hugging herself, trying to block Nick from her mind. She tried to concentrate on the baby, the one she’d make without him. Would it be a girl? A boy? Would the child take after his anonymous father? Were there biological cousins he’d never know? Grandparents and aunts and uncles who would never cheer at any of his soccer games?

  Would he ask about them? Miss them?

  Would he end up, like Tori, longing for a real family?

  You’re jumping into this baby thing half blind, Nick had said. For the first time, Tori stopped to consider that maybe he was right. But not for the reasons he’d recited—that she didn’t have enough time or money. Or that raising a child might cause heartache or sleepless nights. Those things didn’t matter. She was ready and willing to brave them.

  What she couldn’t find her way around were the new images that had taken up residence in her imagination where her future baby resided.

  The child was no longer a little girl who looked like Tori.

  He was a little boy with Nick’s eyes and Nick’s smile.

  She picked up the vial of sperm, wrapped it in a paper towel, and threw it in the trash.

  She just couldn’t do it.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Brothers fight. Sometimes, they even draw blood.

  “Johnny told me you cast a candle magic spell for him,” Leigh told Tori Saturday afternoon during a rare lull in customer traffic. It was the Fourth of July, and they’d been doing a brisk business. “Do you think you could cast one for me, too?”

  Tori studied her assistant. Leigh had been acting strangely the last few days—vacuuming the clean rug, dusting the dustless counters, and rearranging the merchandise with a single-mindedness that Tori could only call obsession.

  She’d been talking a lot, too, in a nervous kind of way.

  “I thought you don’t believe in magic,” Tori said.

  Leigh got out a bottle of spray cleaner and started wiping down the spotless glass on the front of the sales counter. “Well, I didn’t, at first. But Johnny told me about the spell you cast for him, and…”

  Tori laughed. “And because of that you’ve changed your mind? Even though he hasn’t even gone for his final audition yet?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m just…well, I just thought maybe a love spell would help. Johnny said you had one.”

  “Let me guess. You want me to cast it on Jason.”

  “Yeah.” Leigh abandoned the rag and sprayer on the counter. “I told him I’d meet him tonight. His family’s out of town.”

  Tori regarded the girl seriously. “Ah. So that’s why you’re so jumpy.”

  “I’m kinda nervous.” She swallowed. “Kinda? Who am I kidding? I’m petrified. But if I knew he really loved me, I think it would help me relax.”

  Tori touched her shoulder. “Jason loves you, Leigh. I can tell every time he looks at you.”

  She didn’t seem convinced. “A spell might help.”

  “Love spells are tricky,” Tori said. “It’s bad karma to cast them on a specific person.”

  The girl’s face fell. “Oh.”

  “But…I could cast a general love spell. If Jason’s already in love with you—and I know he is—he’ll feel it.”

  “Oh, Tori, would you?”

  She retrieved the last of the Cajun witch’s spell kits. Inside the red bag she found a small vial of rose oil and a very thick, blunt-tipped red candle.

  Leigh picked up the candle, her expression a study in thoughtfulness. Making a circle with her thumb and forefinger, she tested its thickness.

  Her fingertips didn’t touch.

  Tori blinked. With a little imagination, that candle looked like…

  Leigh giggled. “Right. What do I do now?”

  Tori refocused on the instructions. “Pour some of the oil on it.”

  Leigh opened the vial and drizzled some on. “Now what?”

  “ ‘Rub it in,’ ” Tori read.

  Leigh ran her fingers up and down the candle, lightly at first. Then, her grin widening, she anchored the base with one hand and started stroking up and down.

  “Oh, my God.” Tori smothered a snort of laughter.

  Leigh shot her a look. “I wonder if Jason’s this well endowed?”

  Tori’s shoulders started to shake. “You’re not supposed to be thinking of Jason, remember?”

  “Oh, right. I forgot.” Leigh stroked faster. “How long do I have to keep this up, do you think?”

  Tori consulted the instructions. “Until—”

  She broke off as the candle slipped out of Leigh’s fingers, skidded across the counter, and bounced on the floor.

  “Um, until that happens, I guess.”

  Leigh burst out laughing. Tori joined her, and for a while neither of them could stop. Every time Tori thought she’d gained some control, she’d exchange glances with Leigh and they’d both start up all over again.

  “Anything else?” Leigh finally managed to gasp.

  Tori’s sides hurt. “You have to light it. To release its, um, energy.”

  They dissolved into laughter again.

  Finally, Tori bent to pick up the candle. Leigh was still giggling as she prepared to light the match.

  “Here goes.”

  The flame sizzled, then caught and held. A scant moment later, the door to the shop opened. Tori’s head snapped around. Nick’s grandmother stood on the threshold.

  “Nonna!” Leigh jumped up. “What’re you doing here?”

  Nonna peered suspiciously at the burning candle. “I came to invite Tori to our Fourth of July barbecue tonight.”

  “Sure,” Leigh said, quickly blowing out the flame. “She’d love to come.”

  The barbecue at the Santangelos’ was a boisterous affair, awash with chatter about Rita’s upcoming singing debut at midnight that night at Johnny’s club. Nonna frowned, but everyone else wished Rita luck.

  Everyone except for Nick, that was, since his place at the table was empty.

  “He’s got a business dinner,” Johnny told Tori. He manned the grill, wearing a chef’s apron emblazoned with the words, STAND BACK—I’M SO HOT I’M ON FIRE!

  “On the Fourth of July?” Tori asked, incredulous.

  Johnny shrugged. “The man doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘holiday.’ The
client’s Canadian, in town on a working vacation, so what does he care about Independence Day? When he called last week, Nick jumped.”

  When the dinner was ready—hamburgers and hot dogs for the Santangelos, a veggie burger for Tori—Sophie took the seat between Tori and Leigh. “I wanna go to Atlantic City, too, Daddy,” she told her father. “To see the fireworks. Uncle Johnny said he’d take me.”

  “So I did,” Johnny said. He looked from Alex to Tori and Leigh. “What about it? Everyone game?”

  “Sure thing,” Alex said. Leigh shot Tori a nervous look. “Just as long as I’m back here by eleven.”

  An hour later Tori stood on Atlantic City’s Steel Pier, surrounded by squealing children and laughter.

  “Did you see?” Sophie tugged her arm. “Did you see me on the spaceship ride?”

  Tori smiled down at her. “I saw.”

  “The Ferris wheel’s next,” Johnny announced, materializing with two paper cones topped with fluffy balls of cotton candy. “Then I’ll win some prizes for the ladies.”

  He wasn’t joking. Within the hour, Sophie was hugging a five-foot purple alligator, Leigh was the proud owner of a glow-in-the-dark alien, and Tori had the fuzzy stem of a giant smiley-face flower in hand.

  “Is there any game you can’t win?” she asked Johnny, impressed.

  “Nah, can’t think of any.”

  Tori returned his cheeky grin. This was fun. Twilight and the fireworks were still an hour or so off. The Atlantic City Boardwalk was alive with tourists, either milling about on foot or riding in hand-pushed rolling chaises. On the pier, rides spun, kids laughed, and hot dogs and popcorn scented the air.

  Families were everywhere. And wonder of wonders, Tori felt like she was actually part of one. Sophie clung to her hand while Alex walked a few steps behind, scanning the crowd. Johnny’s jokes streamed past her ear. Leigh had hooked her arm through Tori’s as if they were sisters.

  Suddenly Sophie stopped and turned to her father. “Daddy?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “I gotta go potty.”