Charmed: Destiny Romance
Read Charmed: Destiny Romance Online
Authors: Emmie Dark
For Hayley – my first and most loyal fan.
Melanie Cook slumped against the counter. Not even the amethyst crystal on display nearby – one of the purest and largest in the whole of Australia – could counteract the negative mood she was in. Outside, rain battered against the window of the Brunswick Street shop. It scattered into splinters of blue-and-green light, reflections of the neon sign Aunt Gertrude – owner of Crystal Gaze and Mel’s godmother – had insisted on installing. It wasn’t even four o’clock, but the Melbourne winter evening was already closing in.
Mel hated winter. Maybe that’s all this strange mood was all about. Hopefully. Never before had the boundaries of her life felt so restrictive.
Restlessness forced her to move from behind the counter and do
something
.
She headed for the bookshelves on the far side of the store and stared at them for a while. Nope, they were already perfectly alphabetised, courtesy of her slow morning. They’d had hardly any bookings for readings this week, and while Mel didn’t mind helping out in the shop, it was the psychic readings that she was really supposed to be here for.
She loved helping people, and readings were one of her few opportunities to interact with others in a ‘normal’ way. Of course she had to be careful – Aunt Gertrude still scolded her when a particularly dazed-looking customer emerged from one of Mel’s sessions, stunned by her accuracy. Top of her class at the magic academy, recent recipient of the Excellence in Service medal from the Magic Council, Mel was, as Aunt Gertrude liked to put it, ‘a right proper fortune-teller’. So she had to be especially cautious – it was fine for her to have a reputation as a pretty good psychic, but it was
not
fine for it to get out that she could read minds and already knew next week’s TattsLotto numbers.
Mel glanced at the books again. Paulo Coelho, Louise L. Hay and Eckhart Tolle were annoyingly all in the right spots. And the lovely, colourful display of
Eat Mangoes Naked
– one of Mel’s personal favourites – still looked pristine. Pity mangoes weren’t in season.
She guessed she could go into the Other Room and tidy up a little, but that was mostly Gertrude’s domain, and the old lady tended to get irritated if anyone mucked with her incomprehensible classification system. Aunt Gertrude seemed to assume that everyone was as skilled at summoning charms as she was, because for the life of her, Mel could not work out any kind of system behind the arrangement of the books, potion ingredients and grimoires that were stored in the Other Room – hidden there from the non-magical community behind a perception filter.
The chimes over the door tinkled, announcing a customer. Mel bounded over, thrilled to have a purpose again. Busy was always better. Especially with a brain like hers. That was probably the cause of her malaise – she just needed some activity.
She pounced out from behind a display of North American Indian dreamcatchers, and her customer started at her sudden appearance.
‘Welcome to Crystal Gaze,’ Mel announced, probably a little too enthusiastically.
‘Oh! Uh, hi.’ He ran his hands through chin-length chestnut hair, pushing it back from his face and shaking off the rain. He wore boots, jeans and a shirt with a casual canvas jacket that was slightly padded to ward off the chill. And he was tall – Mel was not short, but she had to look up to meet his eyes.
When he smiled, Mel’s mouth went dry. White, even teeth. Warm brown eyes. Late twenties, early thirties, with creases in his forehead that spoke of laughter and a love of the outdoors.
The man was gorgeous. And Mel didn’t think her reaction to him was purely down to the fact that her love life – or at least the series of one-night stands that made up the only kind of love life she was allowed as a psychic-seer – had been seriously lacking lately. If she pulled together an objective survey of ten randomly selected women, she was pretty sure eleven of them would rank this guy as ‘hot’ to ‘seriously hot’.
Water ran in rivulets down his jacket and dripped on the floor, testament to the heavy rain outside. They both looked down at the puddles forming on the shop’s carpet around him.
His mouth quirked up on one side and he shrugged a shoulder in apology. ‘Sorry. I’m really wet.’
A vision slammed into Mel’s head, so vibrant and so technicolour-real, she lost her breath.
She was lying down, this man poised above her. His chest was bare, liberally sprinkled with golden-brown hair that tickled her nipples when he moved against her. He lowered his lips to her jaw, pressing kisses to her face before whispering in her ear, ‘Baby, you’re really wet.’
The vision was so vivid that for a moment she could feel his hard, hot length inside her. Then he moved, a deliciously long slide against her most sensitive flesh, and Mel’s knees buckled.
‘Whoa, are you all right?’
The stranger was clutching her elbow; without his support she knew she’d sink to the floor.
She grabbed weakly at a nearby shelf, making a couple of Tibetan singing bowls chime. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.
That – along with plenty of other things – was one of the problems with being a psychic-seer. The ability to peer through a window into the future required an imagination beyond what might be considered ‘normal’. Mel’s dreams were fully fledged, David O. Selznick-style epics, complete with lighting, costumes and special effects. Even her little flights of fancy, drifting off as she sometimes did when the shop got slow or in the long periods of time she spent alone, would easily win Tropfest.
So when she encountered a man she found vaguely attractive, it wasn’t unusual for her reaction to be a little . . .
extreme
. It wasn’t even the first time she’d had such a visceral reaction to a man. In fact, back when she’d been a teenager and discovered the Backstreet Boys, there had been a full-scale intervention from her parents and the academy.
As it turned out, it had been a critical turning point in Mel’s life. She’d been assigned as Aunt Gertrude’s protégé, for want of a better term, and Aunt Gertrude’s guidance had – most likely – saved her sanity. It had certainly saved her from further embarrassing and humiliating episodes at the academy – not that she had any friends by that stage anyway. Psychic-seers weren’t exactly popular in the magical community – who wanted to be friends with someone who could read your mind? But at least once Aunt Gertrude had stepped in, only her family had been occasionally affected by Mel’s projected feelings of overwhelming love and devotion to Nick Carter, and not the entire school population.
She’d long since learned to control her powers, and the green crystal she wore set into a ring on her left hand helped, too. She rarely took it off.
‘You don’t look fine. Are you going to faint or something?’ the stranger asked. He frowned at her. ‘Or, no, are you having a heart attack? People go pale when they faint, don’t they? You’ve gone all red.’
He gently led her over to the counter and didn’t let go of her until she was settled on the stool there. The loss of his touch was devastating.
‘I’m fine,’ Mel said, forcing herself to wave off his assistance. ‘Thank you,’ she added belatedly. Her entire body throbbed with desire and she fought to regain control.
‘Maybe you should have a drink of water.’
‘I’m fine,’ she repeated. ‘I just got a little overheated.’
‘Yeah, it is pretty hot in here.’ He shrugged out of his jacket and laid it on the counter, revealing a sky-blue checked shirt, open at the collar to show a white T-shirt underneath. It gave him a vaguely cowboy-ish look, and did nothing to help restore Mel’s equilibrium. Nor did his scent of crisp cotton and a woodsy aftershave.
‘How can I help you?’ She tried for her usual, practised smile, but didn’t dare move off the stool just yet. Her legs were trembling, just like they did after sex, and she wasn’t sure they’d bear her weight right now.
‘Oh, uh . . .’
The guy looked around as if surprised to find himself here. His eyes lingered on the wall beside Mel – the wall that held the display of all the
consultants
who worked at Crystal Gaze. Astrologers, tarot-readers, reiki practitioners, psychics. Each profile included a photo and a brief description. Above the profiles, a white board was updated daily with their roster and Aunt Gertrude’s over-enthusiastic exclamation marks.
TODAY!! Tuesday! Mel, psychic, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Clare, tarot, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Bookings essential!!!
Clare had left two hours ago to pick up her daughter from school.
Aunt Gertrude was off . . . doing whatever it was that Aunt Gertrude did when she wasn’t at Crystal Gaze doing readings or getting irritated with Mel. Something to do with the Magic Council. Mel had learned it was better not to ask.
So it was just Mel in the shop. They had no bookings for the day, and Tuesdays were generally pretty quiet, so Aunt Gertrude hadn’t bothered to organise a casual to cover the counter. If Mel got a walk-in, she’d just put up a sign on the door asking customers to come back later. The price of a reading was worth the possibility of turning away a five-dollar crystal sale.
‘Were you interested in a reading?’ Mel prompted her drop-dead stunning customer. She wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted him to say yes or no to that enquiry. If his brain was half as pretty as his face, she’d quite like to take a dip inside and have a look. But she couldn’t shake the image of him looming above her, the sensation of the hairs on his legs rasping against her calves. Yes, she’d had vivid fantasies before, but this one certainly took the cake.
She grabbed a nearby brochure on hypnosis and childbirth and subtly tried to fan herself with it.
He looked a little confused. ‘I was just . . . kinda looking.’ He picked up a pack of angel cards from the counter and peered intently at them.
Such a strong jaw. And broad shoulders. He was tall and built but still somehow graceful. The display of porcelain butterflies with delicately lacy wings behind him didn’t appear to be in any danger from his bulk.
How about a bit of professionalism, dear?
Mel could hear Aunt Gertrude’s words as clearly as if she was standing nearby. Was her godmother astral-travelling to check up on the shop as she sometimes did? Or was Mel simply once again a victim of her own overactive imagination? She straightened up, just in case and smiled at her customer.
‘Angel cards are a lovely option when it comes to finding your way.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ He looked up, a mix of disbelief and something else visible on his face. It was a kind of hopeful longing in his eyes. It was a look she saw often in her clients – the desperate need for good news.
He shifted the sealed pack from one hand to the other. ‘How do they work?’
‘Here.’ Mel grabbed a stack of cards that they kept at the cash register. When customers made a purchase, the staff often fanned out the cards and asked the person to select one. These particular angel cards were all framed as positive messages, so it was a nice way to send the customer back into the world with an optimistic attitude.
She fanned out the cards. ‘Choose one.’
The man hesitated, then shrugged. ‘What the hell.’ He took his time making a selection, finally taking one from the middle of the pack. He flipped it over and laid it face-up on the glass countertop.
‘The Archangel Michael,’ Mel read. Like the tarot, which she wasn’t that fond of, she knew the meanings of all the cards in this deck. She looked down and stroked a finger over the medieval stained-glass image. ‘This is a great card. It’s a message of courage – but also a message of protection. It means that for the difficult situation you’re facing, you have an angel on your shoulder, helping and guiding you. You should feel courageous, because you have all the protection of heaven.’
When she was finished she looked up, surprised to find the stranger smiling broadly. It was a positive card, yes, but it spoke of courage because there were trials that needed to be overcome. He shouldn’t look quite so pleased – people usually didn’t.
‘Okay, you’ve convinced me,’ he said.
‘Convinced you of what?’
He gestured towards the white board roster. ‘The sign says you have to have a booking. I don’t but can you fit me in?’
‘For a psychic reading?’
‘Yeah. I guess. Or whatever’s available. Tarot cards or whatnot.’
Mel’s pulse, having returned to what passed for normal, leapt again. Did she really want to do a reading for this man? The idea of taking him into one of the intimate, candle-lit rooms out the back made her body respond in ways it absolutely should not.
It was probably best not to go there. Best to let someone else see him – Dorothy would be in first thing tomorrow, and she’d be thrilled about a booking with a tall, handsome stranger.
‘Well, we do normally insist on an appointment . . .’ she began.
Then Aunt Gertrude’s voice intruded again. He is a customer! Just because he’s sparked a jolt of lust in your shrivelled-up lady parts, he doesn’t deserve to be treated any differently!
‘I am
not
shrivelled up!’ Mel spat. She was sick of Aunt Gertrude constantly making digs at her non-existent love-life. It was all right for her godmother, but Mel had battled with being an outcast her entire life. Knowing that no one in the magic community wanted to be around her. Knowing that the Magic Council’s rules meant she’d never be allowed a family of her own. There was a point when one-night stands lost their sheen as a person’s only option for romantic interaction – and that point had come for Mel a long time ago. Aunt Gertrude needed to learn when to mind her own business.
‘What?’ The guy looked startled.
Crap
. Mel plastered on her broadest smile. Regardless of everything else, Crystal Gaze was her home and she would do the right thing by a customer. ‘Um, I meant to say, I’m not
booked
up. Would you like a half-hour, or a full-hour reading? Half hour is only sixty dollars, but a whole hour is ninety.’
He quirked an eyebrow. He clearly didn’t believe her correction but wasn’t prepared to question it. ‘Sounds like an hour is better value.’
‘We . . . are able to cover a larger range of topics.’