By Magic Alone (2 page)

I unclenched my fist to release the paper clip and reached for a stack of papers sitting to my right. Fanning them out across my desk, I gave a jerky nod. “These are exit interviews from the past several months, and in every one, the client—past client—states their reason for leaving Introductions is that they’ve decided to take their business to Magical Matchups.” I shoved the papers toward Leslie. “Take a look yourself. I’m not overstating my predicament. If anything, I’m understating it.”

“Oh.” Leslie blew out a mouthful of air, deflating her cheeks. “Maybe you should have been clearer from the beginning, because from what I remember, you told us that Introductions was facing a ‘slight decline’ in business, and you wanted us to join Magical Matchups to discover what all the fuss was about.” Her gaze dipped downward. In a softer tone,
she said, “I didn’t realize you’d lost so many clients. Is it really that bad?”

“Why didn’t you tell us this to begin with, Julia?” Kara asked. “We . . . we had no idea you might lose the company.”

Because the thought scared me. Because I’d barely admitted to myself how bad things were, let alone to anyone else. “Yes, things really are that bad,” I said, choosing to answer Leslie over Kara. “And I don’t know how to fix it.”

“I remember when you first opened Introductions. Everything was great you even had testimonials from all the couples you put together. What happened?” Leslie asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But I haven’t been that successful lately, and no one is beating down the door to write anything positive about my services.” I’d given this a lot of thought, wondering if my process had gradually changed, wondering if my current struggles were a result of something I was doing different. I’d even gone through my files, looking for any clue that would help set things right. But from what I could see, my day-to-day operations were the same as they’d been since day one. To my thinking, that meant I had to look elsewhere to find the answer. “But that’s not the point I’m trying to make. I paid for your memberships to my competition so you could gather information. So maybe I could pull Introductions out of the hole. You recall this agreement, right?”

Neither of them answered. The air around us filled with the heavy weight of tension and anxiety. Mostly mine, I’d wager.

Finally, they both nodded.

“Good. So you can see why this”—I swallowed away the words I wanted to say and went with—“information you’ve brought me is less than helpful. You know that fairy godmothers don’t exist, right? And who is this Verda person, anyway? I thought the owner’s name was Chloe Nichols.”

“Oh! Chloe is Verda’s partner, but Verda runs the place.
We’ve never even met Chloe,” Kara explained. “And Verda is a doll. She’s this really sweet elderly lady. She might be a little kooky, but she knows her stuff. You have to believe that, if nothing else.”

Well, yeah. That was fairly obvious. Seeing as her start-up company was kicking my three-year-old company in the butt. “What stuff? How to fill your heads with delusions of magic and fairy godmothers?” Ouch, the snark came back when I wasn’t paying attention.

“Believing in love is not delusional,” Leslie said. “Most people believe in love.”

“Wait! I have a better comparison,” Kara interrupted. “Verda is like a fairy godmother and Pat Benatar all rolled into one.”

I glanced at Leslie. She appeared as perplexed as I felt. “What are you talking about now, Kara?”

“Verda, of course. She’s like Pat Benatar and that song ‘Love is a Battlefield.’” Kara hummed a few bars. “She’s using her magic to search the lean, mean streets of Chicago for us, taking on the battle of love herself so we don’t have to!”

“That doesn’t make sense, and it isn’t even what the song is about.” Oh, God, we were, once again, headed down a path I’d likely regret.

To give Kara credit, she took a moment to think things through. “Okay, I don’t know. I’m trying to find something you can believe in, so you can believe us.”

Leslie reached over and placed her hand on Kara’s shoulder. “Let me try.”

“If you think you can do better, then go ahead.” Kara shrugged. “Everything I say seems to upset her more.”

“Please don’t do that.” I found the paper clip and began twisting and untwisting it again. “Please don’t talk as if I’m not here.”

“Sorry, Julia. We’re . . . well, we’re really excited about
Magical Matchups and we like Verda a lot, so maybe our enthusiasm to explain has gotten the better of us,” Leslie said. “Verda has this way of knowing more about what we need in a man than we do. So the process
feels
magical. With her, I believe I can find true love.”

“Me too,” Kara said in a hushed tone. “I
want
to fall in love. You can understand that, can’t you?”

A look of deep longing crossed Kara’s features. Great. She’d once again been taken in by all of the greeting cards, movies, books, and now the wily Verda, and their promises of everlasting love. My heart broke a little.

I was pissed off, too. “Of course you want to fall in love, sweetie. But that type of love isn’t real. What you need is to find someone who has the same goals for the future as you, someone who likes the same things, someone with whom you can create a future based on these commonalities.”

“But what about sex appeal?” Kara cried, emotion glittering in her eyes. “What about that feeling you get when you see a man and your knees go weak, and all you want to do is eat him up? Why can’t I have both? I’ve been in love before. I want to find that again, and I want it to last.”

“Uh-huh. And where did those relationships lead you? Nowhere!” Irritation at Verda and her false promises drove me onward. “You’ve had your heart stomped on again and again because you keep falling for the wrong type of men. You can’t trust weak knees, Kara. You can’t build a life on wanting to eat someone up.”

How many times had I been there after a guy dumped her? Too many to count. How often had we had this exact same conversation? Tons. I was tired of seeing my friends get hurt. Especially with something that was so easy to avoid.

She blinked but kept her gaze on me. She’d yet to say anything, so I asked, “What are you thinking?”

“That I feel bad for you. That I wish, for one moment, you could feel what I’m talking about. Maybe then you wouldn’t be so quick to write off love as a joke.”

“Love isn’t a joke. I know love is real . . . just like I know magic isn’t.”

“Then why are you so dead set . . .?” Kara’s voice drifted away as her eyes rounded. “Oh my God. This is about Ricky Luca, isn’t it?”

“No! Ricky was forever ago. My God, Kara, you have a memory like a freaking elephant. I was what . . . ten?”

“Twelve,” Kara said. “I remember because we were in seventh grade, and it was your first year at Worthington Academy.” A slight smile crossed her face. “You hated the school uniform.”

“Pleats,” I mumbled. “I hated the pleats.” Kara and I had gone to the same elementary school, but once we hit junior high, I moved on to private education.

“Anyway,” Kara drawled, “you couldn’t stop talking about Ricky.”

“Ricky who?” Leslie interjected. “And why haven’t I ever heard this story?”

“It’s nothing,” I said, desperate to change the topic. “Moving on—”

“We never told you about Ricky?” Kara angled her body toward Leslie. “Ricky was Julia’s first crush. They used to leave each other love notes underneath the bust of Abraham Lincoln in history class.”

“Stop. Please . . .” I hadn’t thought about Ricky for years, and I didn’t particularly want to think about him now.

But Kara was on a roll. “There was a school thing . . . what was it, a science fair or something?”

“The fall carnival,” I said. “It wasn’t a big deal. Ricky and I were supposed to meet there, but I got sidetracked.” Actually, I’d had my fortune told. A waste of time, as I later discovered.
The heavily made-up woman gave me the exact same pretend fortune she gave every other preteen girl who strolled in. “He . . . ah . . . got tired of waiting, I guess.”

“And he spent the day with Celeste Morrigan.” Kara sniffed. “Your other best friend.”

“She wasn’t my best friend.” But we were close. Close enough that her betrayal had stung more than Ricky’s. “They were a better match.” Something Celeste had explained when I’d confronted her. She’d pointed out all the ways that she and Ricky were similar, and all the ways that Ricky and I were not. She was right. Celeste and Ricky remained a couple all through high school. “But this has zip to do with my feelings about love.” Or magic.

“I don’t know,” Leslie murmured. “This explains a lot.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Kara whipped around to face me. “I should have seen this before.”

“Seen what?” I said through pressed-together lips. “What girl hasn’t had her heart broken when she was young?”

“Your mom,” Kara whispered. “When she found out about Ricky . . .”

“Yes. She told me not to trust my heart. But that has
nothing
to do with any of this.” I tried to think of different words for an explanation I’d given many times, but couldn’t. “Our definitions of love are different, that’s all. I believe that love is a slow-building process, something that can take years to happen but will last forever. You believe that love will strike you fast and hot, like a bolt of lightning. My definition will save you pain and heartbreak. Yours will keep leading you to misery, because that isn’t love—it’s physical stuff that has nothing to do with real emotion. Trust me on this.”

“Not necessarily! Sometimes that quick flash leads to the best relationships.” Leslie exhaled in frustration. “So we have different definitions. So what? That doesn’t mean that either
of us is wrong. Most people want both. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“No, there isn’t,” I conceded, pleased to be off the Ricky subject. “It’s just very unlikely you’ll find both. It’s like playing the lottery instead of methodically saving for the future.” I gave Kara and Leslie a hard stare. “Would you bet your retirement on the less-than-minuscule chance of winning the lottery? No! You don’t do that. You save money, you make use of your employer’s 401 (k) plan, and you take the proper steps to ensure your future won’t be penniless! This is no different.”

Kara whispered to Leslie, “She’s getting all worked up again.”

“Yes, I am! Don’t you see? Your chances of securing a successful lifelong partnership increase substantially when you take sex appeal out of the equation.” I instructed myself to calm down. “It’s about brain matter, not body matter. It’s about logic and fact. Not how sexy a man looks in jeans!”

Leslie snickered. “Sexy in jeans is a damn fine trait to have in a man, but that’s not exactly what we’re talking about here. You know that. You’ve delved into your sales pitch for would-be clients, and we’ve heard all of this before.”

“Then what is it about?”

“It’s that electrifying pull you sometimes feel when you look across a room and see some man you’ve never seen before. It’s the way your skin heats up when you think about him touching you, about you touching him. Have you truly never felt this way, Julia?”

Had I? Once or twice, maybe, but that didn’t prove anything. “Those feelings don’t last. They’re not real,” I managed to say. “And they’re certainly not logical. Who bets their future on a feeling?”

“I give up. You can’t see outside of the box you’ve erected around yourself long enough to listen to any opinion different
from yours.” Leslie held her hands up in surrender. “You’re right and I’m wrong. Hell, most of the world is wrong then, too. We should all toss away our hopes and dreams and wishes.”

“So if a guy doesn’t live up to your hot and sexy standards, you don’t want him? I mean, that’s what this really boils down to, isn’t it?” I said.

Leslie reddened. “Not at all. But there should be a spark, something that pulls us together beyond the ‘commonalities’ you talk about.”

“I see.” I didn’t. Not really. But this conversation had veered incredibly off the path, and this time, it was my fault. “I guess I don’t understand where all of this is coming from. I thought we were mostly on the same page here.”

“From a practical standpoint, you make a lot of good sense, and that’s why it’s always been so difficult to argue with you on this topic. But there is
nothing
practical about love. Verda has helped me see that I want it all.
She
makes us believe that love—our definition of love—is possible.” Leslie exhaled another long, drawn-out sigh. “Verda’s method is unique.”

There it was. The lifeline I needed. “See? This is what I need to know.
How
is Verda’s method unique?”

Kara and Leslie exchanged a look.

“Well?” I prompted.

“We . . . um . . . can’t really tell you,” Kara admitted. “So that’s why—”

“We’re paying your money back, so you’re not out anything.” Leslie reached into her purse and pulled out a check, which she slid across the desk toward me. Kara followed suit.

I glanced at the checks. Yep, both were made out to me—Julia Collins—and were in the correct amount. I didn’t want them. “You two are supposed to be on my team.”

“Oh, honey, we are. But we can’t give you any inside
info on Magical Matchups.” Leslie ran her fingers through her hair again. This time I recognized the action as a sign of her nervousness. “We . . . You see, we sort of signed a confidentiality agreement.”

“You ‘sort of’ signed one, or you actually signed one?”

“We signed one. It was the only way—”

Every bit of my composure dissipated. “Uh-huh. Give me a second here.”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten, then twenty, and hoped like hell the panic building in my chest wouldn’t lead to a heart attack. My business was going downhill fast, my investors—okay, my parents—were watching the business’s profit and loss statements with their eagle eyes, and everything I’d worked for was about to disintegrate between my fingers. All because of some company that had seemingly sprung up out of nowhere and had taken the singles of Chicago by storm.

“That vein in her forehead is throbbing,” Kara whispered. “That can’t be a good sign.”

“Shh,” Leslie hissed. “Julia? Do you want me to get you some tea or something?”