More Than Magic (15 page)

There was a sniff. “I have n-no idea.”

“Hey, I’ve upset you or something. What did I say?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. It’s— I’m just a bit over-tired and I got some good news about a friend and—” Grace leaned back against the counter, wiping her eyes openly now. “And Pops did love a good t-toddy.” She managed a watery smile. “And he didn’t use the m-microwave either.”

All of Nick’s protective instincts roared into full alert and clapped on their armor.

Well, this was
not
going the way he planned at
all
. If she was acting, Hollywood needed to sign her up because she was better at it than he was.

“Right. Your grandfather. Today’s his birthday. I’m sorry.” He put some water in the electric kettle. “But good news, that’s good, right?”

“Very good. A little girl in complete remission from cancer. So this is what you’d call a good cry.”

Nick leaned against the counter, facing her. Part of him didn’t want to keep digging away at her. Part of him was reacting to the word “remission”, and not in a good way. And part of him just wanted to solve this damn puzzle before he was in too deep. “A patient of yours?”

She didn’t go pale or fall apart. She simply crossed her arms. “Jamie.”

“Yes. Jamie’s a big fan and staunch defender of ‘
doctor
-doctor’ Grace.”

She smiled. “I’m not practicing.”

“Doesn’t make you any less a doctor, does it?”

“Jamie talks too much.”

“Ya think?”

Grace laughed.
Damn.
The woman had a really great laugh. He cleared his throat and looked down at his shoes, then went back to finishing the toddies.

“Pooka.” Grace’s voice was firm and Nick heard the hound retreat to his bed.

“Speaking of our Jamie… I’m a bit embarrassed to ask, but is it appropriate to refer to Jamie as a he or a she?” he asked.

She laughed again and the sound sparkled through him like champagne. He was just digging himself deeper with every damn word.

“Well, I think Jamie would say, ‘If you can’t tell, it don’t matter’,” she responded. “Not yet anyway.”

“Seriously?”

“Where
is
our Jamie, by the way?” she asked. “Usually I’d be fighting to keep enough of these for our trick-or-treaters.”

“Out there constructing some unsolvable puzzle for me to ponder tonight.” Nick nodded toward the sunroom.

Jamie’s precious notebook full of puzzles—encrypted messages as well as the ciphers and keys used to create them, from what glimpses he had gotten of it—was a cryptologist’s dream. The guys in D.C. would be ecstatic to get their hands on even a few pages. And if they had been lucky and intercepted the next message, the key might be sitting out there in a notebook that Jamie wouldn’t let him actually touch, unless Grace said it was all right. If Grace was protecting the information in that notebook for some reason, he could only think of one.

Grace closed the space between them. Nick tried hard not to react as she leaned over and her subtle perfume wafted around him, but
every
cell in his body stood at attention. He held his breath, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

“
She
doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed. She thinks girls get a raw deal in school and is determined not to be short-changed,” Grace whispered. “But please don’t let on that you know. You’ll lose any ground you’ve gained with your interest in her as a person, not as a girl.”

She returned to the cookies and Nick willed his body to stand down. He had planned on putting a bit of brandy in his mug, but decided, after that reaction, to keep his head clear tonight. Instead, he poured a substantial amount into hers.

“Well, Jamie won’t let me have the notebook to look at tonight. Won’t even tell me much about how the game’s played or why or who. Says that you have to give your okay.” He doctored the mugs with honey. “That must be some kind of secret game you have going.”

Grace went to the refrigerator and poured a glass of milk, and picked up a plate of cookies on the way back. “Oh, I don’t see any reason you can’t look at them. Jamie’s just being careful because we do put some little gifts and gadgets in the caches from time to time and—” She seemed to stop and think about what she was going to say. “Jamie’s learned some hard lessons about trust lately, so you’re probably getting the short end of
that
particular stick. You can study the puzzles all you like, just don’t slip up and tell
me
any secrets.”

She didn’t notice his mouth drop open as she walked into the sunroom with Pooka in her wake.

What the hell?

Chapter Seven

“So. Exactly what are we doing here? What is this tradition?” Nick sat at the breakfast bar next to Jamie, who was slumped on one of the bar-height chairs painstakingly writing on a colored notepad.

Grace looked up from where she sat on the other side of the counter, putting each cookie into a decorated paper bag and stapling the bag shut with one of Jamie’s notes in place. She’d had a couple of sips of the rather strong toddy Nick had mixed for her, but the rest had gone cool in her mug.

“It’s from our Irish and Scottish ancestors who settled these mountains. It might even be Celtic in origin. Long before there was trick or treating, back in medieval times, children would go door to door begging for these, not candy,” Grace explained.

“But why soul
cake
? They look like cookies to me.”

Grace smiled. “Since there was no written recipe passed along, the Woodruffs created their own. In the spirit of the original, which appears to have had currants on top, we changed it from a cake to a nice fat ginger cookie chock full of raisins.”

“And the soul part?” Nick bent over Jamie’s shoulder to look at what the notes being stapled on each bag actually said.

“Well, for every cake a child received, they were to offer up a good word or a prayer for the souls of the dead relatives of the person handing out the cakes,” Grace said, stapling another bag shut.

“What about the stars? Is that a part of the tradition?”

Grace looked down at the cookie she was holding and traced the bright white star with her finger. “No. That was Pops’s idea. He loved the stars.”

When she looked up, Nick was watching her from behind Jamie with a strange expression, as if she had missed something.

“This looks like it might take a while, and I really want Jamie to finish setting up that puzzle for me. Can I take over here?” He raised his eyebrows at her and looked down at Jamie.

Grace frowned and glanced at Jamie, who didn’t look up at her.

Well, that was just odd.

Grace nodded. “Sure, if—”

Jamie swiveled around without a word and took off toward the sunroom. Grace moved to follow, but Nick raised his hand and quietly pushed two of the notes toward her.

“He must’ve been quite a man, your grandfather,” Nick said.

Jamie’s careful cursive
“Please say a word for The Woodsman this year”
was smeared, and the colorful paper pockmarked with tears.

Grace’s hand flew to her mouth. She went to fill the teakettle with water, but couldn’t see what she was doing. Nick came up beside her holding her mug.

“I’ll freshen yours up and get myself another,” he said in a firm voice.

When he put his hand at the small of her back, pushing her toward the chair, that touch sent heated tendrils twining around her heart. She didn’t so much sit down as melt onto the chair. And then she just sat there numbly, watching him move around in her kitchen, until he pushed the hot mug into her hand.

It was probably far too strong again, but this time she didn’t care and sipped at it until she could breathe easily. She resumed placing the cookies into bags one by one, remembering all the past times when she had done this same duty.

When they were all tucked away except for the extras Jamie would take home, she looked over at Nick. He sat carefully writing the rest of the notes in his own bold script.

You don’t really know him. You just met the man. It’s animal attraction. Biochemistry 101, nothing more.

But Nick had noticed Jamie, the irrepressible chatterbox, going uncharacteristically silent, then had quietly done what needed to be done. Pooka seemed to adore him. He just
did
things without a lot of fanfare—like giving them both room to grieve without getting in the way. And he made her laugh.

And you know the inside is as gorgeous as the outside. You’ve seen it.

Grace was startled when Nick pushed the pile of notes toward her. “I think that should be enough. I’ll go check and see if my puzzle’s ready. We can drive down to the gate and put out the basket for you. That’s how it’s done, right?”

She nodded wordlessly.

That eyebrow of his went up as he looked at her. He seemed satisfied with what he saw. Apparently she wasn’t falling down drunk—yet.

“You think Jamie would be okay with a ride home?”

“I doubt it.” At least her mouth was cooperating, even if the rest of her was feeling warm and fizzy. “I’ve tried, but the ride down to her house is far too much fun. Only the very worst weather keeps Jamie from riding that bike
everywhere
. And even then—” She shrugged.

“Well, don’t you move while we’re gone,” he said in a commanding tone. “Just finish that drink and when I come back, I’ll fix you a meal you won’t forget.” He grinned and went out the door.

I don’t intend to forget any of this.

It took her a moment to get her body to cooperate, but she managed to staple the rest of the bags shut with their notes and place them in the bushel basket, just in time for Jamie to run in, grinning mischievously, and grab the basket. The emotional resilience of children was pretty amazing.

“Mr. Nick thinks he’ll have that puzzle worked out before I come up tomorrow.”

“Well, I hope you gave him an easy one,” Grace responded.

“You’re kidding, right? He knows about the Beale ciphers and the Dorabella and a bunch of others. He’s not half bad.”

Grace tried not to laugh. “No, he’s not bad at all.”

“Oh, and I fed Pooka for you. But I didn’t get to the birdfeeders today. I’ll get ’em tomorrow, after my project,” Jamie said. “You think Mr. Nick might go with me?”

“Well, he has a book to write, so don’t pester him about it,” Grace said firmly. “And thank you for your hard work today, sweetie.”

Jamie dropped the basket and ran across the kitchen floor. Grace barely had time to bend over before the skinny arms wrapped around her neck and a hard kiss was delivered to her cheek.

Then Jamie and the basket were gone and Grace realized Nick had been standing at the door the whole time. The intense look on his face changed back to an easy grin. “You have a wine cellar in this place?”

She pointed to the stairs just beyond the pantry. “The door just behind the bar downstairs in the game room. We usually keep it pretty well stocked for our guests, but it may be down to our personal stuff at this point. Pops was a big advocate of buying local and organic.”

“I’m sure it’ll be just fine for my purposes.”

There was something about his voice and the look he gave her that sent her back to the breakfast bar to gulp down the rest of the toddy and wonder exactly what his “purposes” were, besides the meal he was planning. When she heard the SUV start up in the distance, she shook herself, looked down at her flour-covered shirt, and headed for the stairs.

She managed to pull her hair back into some semblance of a neat twist and apply a bit of makeup before she heard the door open—no mean feat considering how long it had been since she had bothered. By the time Pooka had clambered up the front stairs and found her, she had pulled on her teal blue sweater and was standing in front of the mirror.

“Relax,” she said to the mirror. “So what if you’re a little rusty at this? It isn’t brain surgery.” Pooka cocked his head at her. “Oh, shut up.”

When she came back downstairs, Nick was already exploring the pantry.

“I found a couple of bottles of this red down in your cellar that I want you to taste. Very nice cellar, by the way. Good temperature controls. Did you know that you have—” he turned the corner with an onion in one hand, a potato in the other and a bottle of olive oil under his arm and stopped short, staring at her. “Whoa.”

And here he was planning just to get her a little tipsy and talkative, having tossed the clumsy pass idea out as being totally inappropriate, and she shows up looking like this. If only she hadn’t shoved her hair back into one of those torture devices again.

“Nice,” Nick managed, but it came out just a little hoarse.

Grace smiled at him, but it was a slightly fuzzy smile. Much more relaxed than her usual expression. “So, point me in the direction of this red.”

There’s only one red that interests me at the moment.
Nick looked at her hair for a long moment, then pointed at two bottles on the counter.

He blew out a long breath, but tried not to be too obvious about it as she strolled over to look at the labels. Damn, she had long legs.

“What did I not know that we have?” she asked, opening a drawer to fish out a bottle opener.