Sex and the Psychic Witch (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

HOW stupid was he? If he was ever going to stroke out, King thought, this would be the time. When had he
ever
thought of sex as making love? He didn’t even consider the phrase viable.

Good thing the hellcat was pragmatic and comfortable with her sexuality. He might not have gotten away with that slip with another woman. He liked Harmony. Usually, if he liked a woman, he couldn’t have sex with her, or if they had sex, friendship was out of the question. Harmony was different. “You ever have a man friend?” he asked, resurfacing to find her waiting.

“No, I grew up in a convent. What the hell kind of question is that? Of course I’ve had men friends. You thought I was a virgin?”

“See, there you go mixing
sex partner
with
friend
. That’s why men and women can’t be friends. Women don’t have it in them.”

“Whoa. Wait a minute. Are you asking me to be your friend? Because you didn’t blooming say it that way. You asked—”

“I get my mistake,” he said. “Yeah, I think we could be friends.”

“Friends . . . who . . . have sex together?”

“I love the idea! Perfect, isn’t it? No commitments. No dating pressure. No, ‘why didn’t you call?’ We could play it by ear, do lunch, catch a quickie, roust a ghost, fight a jack-in-the-box.”

“Yeah,” she said with a raised brow. “I do those things with all my
friends
.”

“So . . . our friendship would be unique. I can live with that. You?” He pulled himself from the water and sprinted to the bananas.

“King Paxton, don’t you move!”

He froze.

She scoffed. “What do you have on your back?”

He lowered his head. “Busted.”

“You bet, bozo. A mermaid tattoo. No wonder you went overboard about men getting them and not women. Care to explain?”

“My feet are freezing. Can I come back in the water first?”

“Only if you bring the bananas.”

Raising them, he streaked back and jumped in, his arm raised to protect the bananas.

“Black,” he said, surfacing. “I told you.”

“Edible,” she said. “Mermaid?”

King sighed. “We were sailing
The Sea Horse
in the Pacific, anchored near an island, went exploring, got rip-roaring too-stupid-to-live drunk, and we all got tattoos.”

“We being? You, Aiden, and Morgan?”

“Who else?”

“What kind of tattoos did they get?”

King laughed. “Mine is tame compared to theirs. Aiden’s, well, never mind. You’ll never know, because I swore I’d never tell, or die.”

“That bad?”

King shook his head, but he chuckled. “I got a mermaid because I liked her curves.” He skimmed his hand up Harmony’s hip and along the side of a breast as he said it. “Like yours.”

“Speaking of which . . .” She broke off a huge banana, felt him up beneath the water, then she felt up the banana. “See, it just doesn’t measure up.”

“Well, you gave it a pretty hard workout.”

“I mean the banana, dumb ass.”

“Hey, is that a name to call a friend?”

She laughed. What a sound. Like tinkling glass stars. He took a lock of her hair, brought it to his nose, and sniffed. “Peppermint’s gone.”

She reared back. “I’ll wash it again. You smelled the peppermint? You got a nose like a bloodhound, or what?”

“It’s normal enough,” he said. “Like what’s that perfume you use? Makes a man really take notice.”

“I make it myself. It’s patchouli, frangipani, and honey-suckle oils.”

“You should bottle it.”

“I’m sure somebody already has,” she said. “What are the three scents you remember most from your childhood?”

He didn’t have to think long. “Chipped beef, shoe polish, sweat.”

“In the summer?”

“Military camp. Same smells.”

“Some childhood.”

“You’re right. It sucked. But I always got a couple of weeks here on the island.
That
was cool. What three scents do you remember from your childhood?”

“Patchouli oil, smudge sticks, fresh lavender. I was always trying spells to bring my mother back and turn us into a family.”

“You were a baby witch.”

Her laugh charmed the pants off him. No, those were already off. All the better to—

“Like you were a baby soldier. We’re pathetic. No wonder we play well together. We never played as kids.”

“If I knew about spells for families, I probably would have tried a few.”

“Watch and learn.” She took a banana and raised it in the air:

 
“Did you just spell us a family?”

“Not that it ever worked, but yeah. Who knows, maybe one of these days, our absentee parents will land on our respective doorsteps. I assumed yours were absent, with military school and all. Where were they?”

“My mother was/is career army. I lived at home with my dad until he ran off with a hairdresser. Then I lived at school. You?”

“A
woman
hairdresser?” she asked.

He laughed.

“Hey, I like that sound.” Harmony echoed his thoughts of her. “It’s a rusty laugh, but I could get attached. My mother ran before they cut the cord. Flew the nest before Dad came to pick us up from the hospital.”

“That’s why you said you and your sisters raised each other?”

“Yep. Dad was an absentee father even when he was present, usually with a liquor bottle in his hand. Now he’s flown the coop, too. Maybe he found my mother, and they’re lost together.”

“My father wanted a woman who hung around. The hairdresser hung, until he died, actually, but she didn’t want me hanging with them. I know, because I asked.”

Harmony placed her head on his chest and stroked his arm, and King thought her empathy felt almost as good as sex. “It’s hard to ask for family support,” she said. “I’ve done it, too. We found our older sister—from my father’s first marriage—when we needed her most. She didn’t know we existed, but she took us in. Her name’s Vickie. She was our best break ever. The shop was hers. Now we’re partners.”

This was getting too touchy-feely for him. He needed to get them back to earth. “You want a banana for dessert?” he asked.

“No thanks. Maybe we should save a couple for breakfast.” She made curls in his wet chest hair. “We can have each other for dessert.”

King set the bananas by the pool and floated into the kiss. He liked her sexual willingness. Ah, who was he kidding? He liked a lot of things about her. He wanted to make her childhood better. Weird. He lifted her and impaled her as they kissed. She sighed and moved along his shaft. Slick, sweet, and hungry, a seductress, pleasure her only goal. Life didn’t get any better than this.

A cough echoed in the cavern, and Harmony pulled from the kiss. She looked over his shoulder. “Hey, scraggly stud muffin. How come you keep finding us like this? You a Peeping Tom or something?”

“I’m a disappointed rescuer, is what I am. And I’m thinking this doesn’t bode well for our upcoming date.”

“It doesn’t,” King said, turning Aiden’s way, using his body to hide Harmony’s. “You want to turn around so the lady can dress?”

“Sure, but . . .” Aiden picked up the lemon lace panties and bra and inspected them.

“Give me the damned things,” King snapped.

“How about I give them to the lady?” Aiden asked hypothetically, as he gathered the rest of Harmony’s things and put them on the edge of the spring.

King helped her out of the water and watched her dress, well, he guarded her privacy while she dressed. Yeah, right. That’s what he was doing, but he couldn’t find her sea horse tattoo before she gave him his clothes.

Harmony slicked her wet hair back and went to Aiden. “How did you get down here?”

“The same way you did, I presume?” He indicated the ice slide.

“Funny, we didn’t hear you coming.”

“We shouted our heads off. Thought you cracked yours in the fall.”

“I’ll bet we were underwater,” Harmony said.

“Swimming,” Aiden said, “that’s what you were doing?”

“Are they down there?” Morgan called.

“They are.” Aiden tied a rope around Harmony’s waist. “Here comes Harmony. Take care.” He tugged on the rope, and she slid up the slippery slope.

Aiden faced him. “You’re gonna hurt that girl bad when you dump her. I hate to see it happen, because she’s a hell of a lot better than the usual.”

“She and I are friends,” King said, sounding foolish even to himself.

Aiden barked a laugh. “If you’re only friends, then I’m damned well gonna take her out on that date, after all.”

“It’s up to her,” King said, itching again to hit something or someone. He and Harmony must be friends. She made him laugh, the way she was laughing with Morgan above them right now. She asked things he hated talking about, but her, he answered. Who knew you could talk to a woman? They were more than sex partners. He had no hold on her, but as her friend, he’d warn her off Aiden. She wasn’t looking for commitment, but Aiden was tired of roaming, even if
he
didn’t know it yet.

King rode the rope up to the cave and put an arm around Harmony, as if he’d missed her. He thanked Morgan, and Aiden, when he joined them, but he didn’t think Harmony’s thank-you kisses were necessary. “Where are the bicycles?” he asked.

“On their way back to the castle. It’s dark out, you know. Everybody’s been out looking all day. Aiden and I came to work on the dining room and heard the wailing before we hit the dock.”

Harmony adjusted her hoodie to cover her Orgasm Donor shirt. “What made you think to look here?” she asked.

“We didn’t think of it right away,” Aiden said, “but King tried to get in when we were kids. I was with him a couple of times, but his nanny was strict, and she kept him in tow.”

King closed his eyes as Harmony rounded on him. “
You
had a nanny?”

“Don’t go there.”

“But I thought you went to a military summer camp.”

“He did, but even his nanny was military,” Aiden said, “with a regime that could kill a normal kid. King got sentenced to two weeks with her here every summer, but he loved it.”

“Will you shut up?” King snapped. “You gossip worse than a woman.”

“I beg your pardon,” Harmony said. “I’m a woman, and I’ve kept a hell of a lot more secrets than you have.”

“Don’t bet on it, Hellcat.”

“You bared your soul to me down there.”

“Wrong. My soul’s a lot darker than you’ll ever know.”

“So much for friendship.” Harmony walked to the castle in a huff.

“I don’t think you’ve ever kept a female friend so long,” Aiden said, and King decked him.

In the castle kitchen, he found Harmony talking to a teenager who was chewing her hair, staring at the floor, and giving one-word answers.

“What’s going on here?” King asked, and the teen jumped.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Did your boat run aground?”

“I’m looking for somebody,” the kid mumbled.

“Somebody here?”

She nodded.

King rolled his eyes. It had been a long day, his butt cheek ached, and his fuse was short, but Harmony put her hand on his arm, and he calmed. Damn, she was using that peace maneuver again, and he wished to hell he didn’t like it so much.

He sighed and tried to look into the teen’s face. “What’s your name?”

“Reggie,” she said.

“Reggie? That’s no name for a girl—Regina?”

She raised her head just enough to meet his eyes. “Daddy?”

Light-headed, King tried to make sense of the rag-bag teen when a little boy, tiny, dark as Regina, peeked around her torn skirt.

“Are you my grampa?”

Chapter Twenty-four

“TAKE them to the formal parlor so you can talk in private,” Harmony said, becoming his voice of reason. “I’ll ask Gilda to make you a snack.”

“This way,” King told the girl, who picked up the little boy he hadn’t answered yet, because frankly, he didn’t know the answer. He didn’t know what his own daughter looked like. “What happened to your mother?”

“She kicked me out when I came home pregnant.”

“Wait, I need to know your last name.”

She stopped. “Paxton. Reggie—Regina Paxton. Are you my father?”

“Your mother’s full name?”

“Belinda Brewer Paxton,” the girl said, handing him her son’s birth certificate with her name, Regina Paxton, as his mother.

King reeled from the knowledge, which seemed nothing compared to what this girl must have gone through. “Yes,” he said. “I am your father.”

“Why did you stay away?”

He took her arm as they skirted the fallen chandelier. “Before you were born, your mother got a court order to keep me away.”

“Figures.”

The girl—his daughter—sat on the sofa, and the boy climbed into her lap.

King sat opposite them. “What’s the boy’s name?”

“Jake. Jake Paxton.”

“And his father is?”

“A senior in high school this coming fall.”

“Jake is what, two? So you got pregnant around . . . ninth grade?”

The girl shrank into herself.

“I thought Belinda would do a better job.” King got up to pace.

Harmony brought in quartered sandwiches and chocolate cookies.

Regina and Jake looked at him—for permission to eat, King supposed, and his heart about broke. “Eat, eat,” he said. “They need milk.” He turned to Harmony, who was pouring a glass. “Good. Thank you.” He handed it to his daughter.

She gave her son a sip and put the rest aside. He guessed, by her skeletal size, she fed the boy and went without.

Harmony gave him a second glass before he asked. He stood before his daughter. “This one’s for you.”

“Thank you,” she whispered and set it aside.

“Drink it. There’s more where that came from. We won’t run out.”

“Harmony, please stay,” King said when she turned to go.

She sat on the sofa beside Regina and took Jake on her lap.

“Oh, no,” Regina said. “I think he needs changing.” She slipped a bag off her shoulder and took out a plastic diaper thingy, and right there, his baby girl changed her baby boy.

King swallowed the very big lump in his throat and wondered how he’d screwed up so badly. “Where have you been since your mother threw you out?”

“Looking for you.”

As if he’d been struck, King wilted against the chair back. “I didn’t know.”

“For three years?” Harmony asked.

“She crossed the country,” King said. “Belinda lives in Malibu.” A pregnant teen crossing the country looking for her useless father, who could have picked her up in his blasted helicopter in a few hours. “Did you try to call me?”

“Every big city I hit, I’d look you up,” Regina said, “but I didn’t know where you were, and the castle isn’t listed. One of Mom’s former friends took me in until Jake was nearly a year old. She took good care of us, even got a midwife to deliver Jake. She was like a mother to me. A nice lady. But her son came home to live, and well, he wasn’t a nice man, so we left.”

“Smart girl,” King said, an undeserved paternal pride swelling his chest.

“I concentrated on taking care of Jake. Sometimes people took us in. Some good people. Some not. Most of the time, I lied about my age and stayed in shelters. I look older than I am, and I’m very responsible, so nobody questioned me. ‘Who wants more kids in the system anyway?’ I heard somebody say that, once. I think she was talking about me.”

“Maybe the system would have found me for you,” King said.

“Not before it took Jake away from me.” Her son moved back to her lap, proving how wrong that would have been. King hated himself for abandoning his daughter to the mercies of a system, overworked on its best days. “How did you manage?”

“Sometimes I’d wait tables, if I found an owner who didn’t mind Jake in the back room. He was a good baby.” She combed his hair with her fingers. “Always quiet. I think he knew he had to be, didn’t you, pup?”

“I was good so Mama could work,” the boy said.

Regina tapped him on the nose with a finger. “I put every dime into feeding him, keeping him warm and safe. I made good choices and bad, but we made it. I knew about your island because Mom had a thing about the castle. She was really mad she couldn’t take it away from you, by the way. So I headed for the only place you ever called home: Paxton Castle.”

“Your mother threw you out on the street and didn’t call me?”

“Evidently.”

“My company phone number is on every check I send her. You should have asked her for it.”

“I asked. She said she didn’t have it.”

The bitch,
King thought.

Jake got off the sofa and came to stand in front of him, a familiar hungry-for-love look in his eyes. King knew it well. He took the boy on his lap. “You got a question, buddy?”

“
Are
you my grampa?”

“I am.”

Jake looked at Regina. “I don’t have to be afraid of my grampa, right?”

“No, pup. No strangers on the island, just family and friends we haven’t met yet.”

Jake nodded. “Good.”

“How old are you?” King asked him.

“Two.” Jake held up two fingers. “But I’m gonna be free soon. I saw a tractor in your garden. Bunnies live in gardens. My favorite color is blue. I can write my name. Wanna see?”

“No baby, we don’t have any paper right now,” Regina said. “Later maybe.” Her expression questioned his plans for them.

“Oh, you’re
staying
,” King said, emotion forcing him to clear his throat. “We have to get the law on our side, but I’ll take up that fight with gusto and with every resource at my disposal, a considerable arsenal, I might add.”

Ignoring the misty sheen in Harmony’s eyes, King ruffled his grandson’s hair, and when the boy’s little head rested on his chest, something in King broke, and he had to swallow hard. “How come this one’s so smart? I didn’t think kids this small talked like him.” King bounced his . . . grandson—wow, did that put life into perspective. “Have you been home-schooling him on the road, Regina?”

“Reggie. He’s eager to learn. At my last job, they called him Baby Einstein.”

“How old are you, Reggie?” Harmony asked.

“Seventeen. Almost eighteen.”

Harmony turned his way in shock, and King shrugged. “Yep, it runs in the family. I was a junior in high school when Regina was born.”

“Reggie,” she said.

“
That’s
when I changed high schools,” he told Harmony. He didn’t want Regina to know that her imminent arrival had cost him a military school graduation.

His daughter, finally, with him after all these years. He wished he’d hugged her right away. Now he’d missed his chance, and he didn’t know how to get it back. Regret threatened to choke him.

Harmony took Regina’s hand, tugged her off the sofa, and brought her to him, so King got up with Jake and faced her.

Harmony stole Jake with a chocolate cookie, then she shoved Regina his way. King’s arms went around that girl so fast and hard, he was afraid he’d break her, but she didn’t seem to mind, because she held him in a bone crusher. At first she cried silently, then she all-out sobbed in his arms; his little girl, who’d lived though hell while he became a rich playboy with a sailboat and helicopter for toys. He was such a shit.

Through a mist, he watched Harmony carry Jake—his little head on her shoulder—from the formal parlor.

King picked up his daughter and carried her back to the sofa, where he sat with her on his lap, her face in his neck, and he let her cry her heart out. His own tears wet his face, no stopping them. He blamed Harmony for that. But maybe, for Regina’s sake, it was a good thing Harmony had taken a can opener to his ramparts.

He was a first-class jerk. Back when he’d screwed up, he’d been glad Belinda wanted a divorce. Glad to be rid of her. And his daughter? Well, he’d managed to put her out of his mind most of the time, except when he signed the monthly child support checks. Son of a bitch. He’d paid child support for three years while Regina supported herself. Belinda was a shit, too. “You sure didn’t luck out in the parent department,” King said.

“I always imagined sitting on your lap,” Regina said. “I dreamed about it for years, but maybe I’m too old now?”

“Your choice, but we could pretend this is the day you were born, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen you—because it is—and I could hold you for a bit, just for today.”

She stayed where she was. “You never saw me?”

“I went to the hospital the day you were born, but your mother had me arrested before I saw you. Disobeying a no-contact order can do that to a guy. I came back to Salem when I got out of jail.”

“How long were you and mom married?”

“Long enough to give you my name and to give her the right to a great deal of my money. About two weeks.”

“Wow, you got off easy.”

King chuckled. “No kidding.”