Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance (20 page)

Chatter, unimpressed by the lack of attention, twined between my legs. A wiggling blade of grass distracted her, and before I could free myself, she leapt across the sidewalk, constricting my legs in a knot with the leash. I tripped into Ari. She caught me reflexively—one hand firmly planted on my breast, the other between my legs holding the leash.

“Oof!” I straightened.

A man stared unabashedly at us from the nearby porch.

“Beautiful cat,” he said, never once looking in Chatter’s direction.

“Morning, Nathan,” Ari called from the vicinity of my crotch as she unwound the leash from my legs.

I gave Nathan a weak wave and twisted to help Ari. “Pervert,” I muttered. “Chatter, attack.”

Chatter abandoned the limp piece of grass and pounced on my shoelace.

“I was hoping to have some good news for you,” Ari said, “but the responses I got from a few East Coast acquaintances this morning have been curt. No one knows where Jenny is and no one cares. She didn’t make any friends while at college.”

“I guess we stick with the plan, then.”

“Don’t worry, Eva, it’ll all work out. And in the meantime, you’re forced to hang around with a sexy man who is fabulous in bed.”

“And now
you’re
psychic?”

“It doesn’t take supernatural powers to interpret that silly grin you’ve had on your face this whole time.”

I felt my cheeks with both hands and realized she was right.

“Are you going to flaunt that afterglow in front of Antonio?”

“No, no. You’re right. That’d be crass.” Antonio and I may not hold a candle for each other, but it seemed rude to show up at my friend-with-benefits’ house with a post-sex glow
and
the man responsible.

I tried to relax my face. Ari snorted.

When we tromped inside Antonio and Ari’s house, she slid the harness off Chatter, and the cat tore around the room like her tail was on fire, ending her circuit at her scratching post and ripping off shreds.

“I’ll reschedule everyone at least two weeks out,” Ari said. She took my sticky note and waved it at me. “You know I don’t need these. I’ve got everything on my computer.”

“Two weeks? We should be done with this by the end of today.”

“Which is what you said yesterday. I’ll clear this week, to be safe, and we’ll see how it goes after that.”

I toed off my shoes and flopped onto the couch. I couldn’t afford to go without work for long; I needed my good reputation and the money—now more than ever, thanks to Jenny. Being pissed off at Jenny was becoming my new normal.

A loud knock on the front door brought Antonio out of the dining room. “Hey, Eva,” he said before checking the peephole. He unlocked the door and swung it wide open. “Hudson, my man, are those donuts in your hand or are you just happy to see me?”

“Oh, you went to Bee’s,” Ari said, pushing her brother aside to take the box from Hudson. “I haven’t had their donuts in forever.”

Antonio and Hudson shook hands. Hudson had dressed in jeans again, but he’d paired them with a button-up short-sleeve white shirt that made his skin look golden. I tried to quell the flutter in my stomach at the sight of him. We’d been apart thirty-odd minutes. I was acting like a teenager, because it felt like I’d missed him. I gave up my attempt to appear reserved when Hudson pulled me to him and kissed me. These stupid, out-of-proportion feelings were the whole purpose of dating.

The kiss demolished any control I’d had over my afterglow good cheer. When we pulled apart, I shot Antonio a guilty glance. A hand-size tornado slid back and forth through his torso. On anyone else, I might have been alarmed by the divination, but on Antonio, it represented his optimistic outlook: Things could be worse. I appreciated his goodwill and tried to express it with a smile. Antonio shrugged.

“He brought donuts. That’s all that matters,” Antonio said.

Ari rolled her eyes even as a rust-colored hen materialized on her head.

Judging by the reappearance of divinations, my ping-ponging emotions had drained a chunk of electricity from Ari and Antonio’s house. Surreptitiously, I moved the gathering to the dining room, taking a moment to check out Hudson. The cowboy boots were back, along with a new divination: a windup key twisting in his stomach. It didn’t look comfortable, and I hoped it had nothing to do with me.

I surveyed the open donut box. “You found a coffee cake donut?”

“It seemed like your favorite flavor,” Hudson said. A furry white patch dotted his forehead and the other divinations disappeared.

Those silly bubbly feelings came back full throttle.

It didn’t take long for the four of us to demolish a dozen donuts. Hudson borrowed Ari’s phone to make several calls and announced after the last one that a truck and trailer would meet us at Sofie’s.

“Why chance moving her?” Ari asked.

“I want Sofie and Kyoko somewhere safe, in case Jenny’s involved in something dangerous,” I said. It’d do Ari no good to worry her about Jenny’s cousins or the skip tracer on Jenny’s tail. My gut twinged when Ari accepted my reasoning without question.

“I’ll call your softball buddies to tell them you’re sitting tomorrow’s game out,” Ari said as we left. “I really wish you could call Greta yourself, though. She’s not going to be happy you’re canceling last minute on tonight’s Bunco.”

“Tell her I’ll make it up to her next time; I’ll bring the fixings for Slippery Nipples.”

“She’s still going to yell. I hate it when little old women are mad at me. It’s like inviting bad luck.”

“What’s Bunco?” Hudson asked as we walked down the block.

“A card game, but really more an excuse to socialize.”

“And Greta is . . . your grandma?”

I snorted. The only similarity between Greta and Nana Nevie was their status as grandmothers. Greta and the other Bunco women were all members of the same senior citizen synchronized swim team that met at my gym. I’d been allowed into their club because I’d helped them out a few times with new moves for their underwater dances. In their minds, I think we were all the same age. “Greta is more like a sister trapped in a body sixty years older than me,” I said.

Hudson stopped beside a shiny gray car and pressed a fob. The car chirped.

“What happened to the bike?”

“It’s getting looked at before I let you on it again,” he said. “It seemed to run fine this morning, but I want to make sure it’s safe.”

I swallowed my guilt and disappointment.
This is better,
I told myself. I’d been pushing my luck with one motorcycle ride. Twice would have been stupid, and it would have endangered Hudson’s life, too.

The car’s interior was leather and cozy. The engine purred. I didn’t know makes and models of cars by sight, but I could tell when I sat in a high-end model.

“I’m going to take a convoluted route,” Hudson said as he pulled away from the curb. “If we’ve got a tail—this retrievalist—I want to shake him. I don’t want to lead him straight to Sofie’s door.”

“The skip tracer’s after Jenny, not us.” A convoluted route would not work with my curse.

“I thought the kidnappers said he’s after Kyoko, the elephantini.”

“True, but—”

“If Jenny thought you needed to be warned, she must suspect this retrievalist knows
you
have Kyoko.”

A chilling thought, and one that, between being handcuffed, kidnapped, and some hot sex last night, had completely slipped my mind.

I monitored the side-view mirror for anyone following us, all the while repeating the mantra,
I am a still pond. I am a calm pool.
I sat next to a man who made my blood heat just looking at him, and I worried about what I’d gotten my aunt—and myself—into; calming mantras could do only so much to control my emotions.

I wasn’t the least bit surprised when the car hiccupped to its death seventeen minutes later.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“What the hell!” Hudson slammed a new burner phone against the steering wheel. “It’s like I’ve got a curse on me that says, ‘Break anything useful!’ This car has run perfectly for the last two years, and
now
it breaks. Along with
another
phone?” He jerked out of the car, his back covered by a huge weird plastic city divination large enough for Chatter to play in. A silver terrier the size of a Great Dane coasted behind him on Baltic Avenue. Rapid-fire cussing echoed against the underside of the hood; then Hudson slammed it closed. I got out and slung my bag over my shoulder.

“There’s nothing,
nothing
wrong with it. Just like that damn Suburban. Just like my bike.” He dropped his head back to glare at the hazy blue sky. “What’d I do wrong?” he shouted. A cluster of people at the nearby bus stop turned to stare.

“Should we call a tow truck?” I asked, hoping to speed up his breakdown and get back on the road to Sofie’s.

“And then what?”

“We could take the bus.”

“The bus.” He ran his hand through his hair and stomped back and forth in front of me. “The bus.” He kicked a tire.

“I doubt the retrievalist would think to follow us on a bus.”

Hudson opened and closed his mouth a few times, then threw his hands into the air. “Fine.”

While Hudson talked the nearby Rite Aid manager into letting him use the store’s phone to call a tow truck, I purchased water. I left Hudson alone while we waited for the tow truck. He needed space to fume; I needed space to release my guilt. There was nothing wrong with his car that time and space away from me wouldn’t fix. I wasn’t going to be able to convince Hudson to wait it out, though. I hoped he had a good mechanic, one who wouldn’t charge him for doing nothing.

When we filed onto the bus, Hudson flopped into the seat next to me, arms crossed, a scowl on his face. After the tow truck left, he’d clammed up in a full-body sulk. I eyed the five-foot marble cherub flying at his back, gliding in and out of the bus’s wall. It had a bow with an arrow notched, and its wings spanned an additional five feet. A creepy, beatific smile never altered on its enormous baby face. I couldn’t make any logical leap between Hudson’s obvious frustration and this child-warrior angel creature, and it was hard not to stare.

Since the bus traversed the city in a route almost as convoluted as Hudson’s but twice as slow, I pulled out the long-distance consultation I had in my bag. Feng shui leveled my emotions and helped me maintain barriers around my curse, both of which were necessary if the bus was going to last the trip. If anything could take my mind off worrying about Sofie, the skip tracer on our trail, and Jenny’s blackmail threat or being generally pissed at my curse and the limitations it forced upon my life, it was feng shui.

I caught sight of my white-knuckled grip on my ballpoint pen and forced my hand to relax. Tugging a notebook from my bag, I fanned my client’s photos of each room in her home and layered them roughly into the shape of her house across my lap. When Lindsey Little had filled out my online questionnaire, she’d stated she wanted a family, but it never seemed like the right time, and she never felt financially stable enough. I wasn’t surprised. The house’s floor plan laid out a challenge: A huge courtyard gap carved out the children and creativity section plus pieces of her family and health section.

In addition, like a lot of people, the Little family had a lovely home to look at, but one that subtly undermined their goals. Too much water element drowned the fame section, too much wood element blockaded the career section, and too many square objects boxed in the helpful people and travel section.

I glanced up when the bus jerked to a halt, shocked to see we were almost to our stop. I’d filled two pages with notes for Ari to type up. Hudson scowled out the window, fingers drumming on his leg. He had good features for a scowl. Thick eyebrows, bright eyes. His crossed arms accentuated his excellent posture and popped out the muscles in his biceps. I leaned into him, ignoring the cherub that circled wide to stare at me, and kissed him on the cheek.

Hudson turned to me, surprised, and I kissed him on the lips, steadying myself with one hand braced on his arm. The bus rocked into motion, and my breast rubbed against his forearm. I pulled back and smiled. I kept the kiss shallow, purposely dampening my lust. Plus, we were in public, something Hudson had made hard to remember when he’d slid his tongue across my lips.

Hudson’s arms slowly unfolded and the cherub vanished. A star shot from Hudson’s chest, fast and bright. No, not a star. A dandelion puff. Just as quickly, it disappeared. The silver terrier appeared, complete with Marvin Gardens under its feet. It rode in a child’s red wagon. A moment later, a navy poncho draped Hudson’s chest. Judging by the sheer number of divinations, I needed off this bus pronto if it hoped to finish its route.

Hudson helped me pack up my project, then wove his fingers through mine and rested our joined hands on his leg. I closed my eyes and savored the peaceful moment. We were doing things out of order: handcuffs first, then kissing; sex first, then holding hands. However, I’d never been much for order in my love affairs. I liked my relationships hot and intense—and limited to a manageable length. This had all the signs of fitting my ideal relationship.