Don’t Stop Bewitching_A Happily Everlasting Series World Novel Page 9

  “Ouch!” yelled Curt as Petey bit him in the hand. Curt stared wide-eyed at the man. “I’m going to need to get my shots updated now.”

  “Brake first. Shots later,” said Petey.

  Hugh sat up fast and grabbed Curt’s shoulder roughly. “Stop the van, Curt!”

  Curt slammed on the brakes and Sunshine came to a screeching halt. Suddenly, the inside of the van sounded as if someone had won at the slot machines in Vegas. The clinking of falling coins was loud.

  Curt glanced down at the floor of the van to find the driver-side floor covered in gold coins.

  Petey pointed at them. “Jackpot!”

  Slowly, Curt pulled his gaze from the floor of the van up and out the front window.

  Abruptly, it felt as if someone had dropped a ton of bricks on him instead of a ton of cursed coins.

  The air swooshed from his lungs as he took in the beautiful vision standing in front of the van. Long, dark waves of hair hung down to the woman’s shapely waist. She wore a peasant shirt that was off-white and cut low enough for him to see the tops of her breasts.

  His throat went dry.

  Desperate for something to quench his thirst, he reached out in Petey’s direction. The old man shoved the flask into Curt’s hand. Thankfully, it was empty, or Curt might have been tempted to drink it.

  Huge chocolate brown eyes stared at him from behind thick black lashes. The woman’s skin was tanned and looked as if it might be that way year-round. Her lips were puckered in a way that said she was surprised.

  Curt couldn’t see all of her as the front of the van eclipsed most of her but from what he could see she looked a lot like she’d stepped right out of the sixties and into his sexiest dreams. He’d never before found himself attracted to a woman who wasn’t dressed in a tight, expensive dress and wearing bright red lipstick. And he’d never ever been this attracted to one ever, no matter what she was wearing. The woman in front of the van didn’t look to have on any makeup. The tiniest of freckles dotted the top of her nose and upper cheeks. If one wasn’t staring hard at her, they’d have missed them.

  His entire body lit with need and became very aware of the woman. Gulping, he suddenly wished the van had air conditioning because it seemed to be extra hot in the thing all of a sudden. He tugged at his collared short-sleeved shirt and actually entertained removing it to help cool his body. He wasn’t the type of guy who made a habit of taking his clothes off in public.

  “Is it me or is Warrick about to hump the steering wheel?” asked Hugh.

  “Classy,” snapped Wilber.

  “Just calling it like I see it,” said Hugh.

  Ignoring Hugh, Curt watched as the woman’s brown gaze narrowed and her jaw set. Anger rolled off her in such a way that even Hugh, the king of angry looks, would be impressed. As he realized just how close she was to the front end of the van, his chest tightened. He’d nearly run her over. A line of curses escaped his lips. He shocked himself with them.

  “Someone give him a cookie,” snapped Hugh. “He needs hugs and better word choices.”

  “Being mated has really tamed you, Lupine,” said Petey.

  “The word you’re looking for is neutered,” said Wilber.

  Jake laughed and then shut up fast, evidently realizing he was in the same boat as Hugh.

  Petey laughed. “She looks like she wants to shove her sunflower up his whoops-a-daisy.”

  “I really hope she does,” quipped Wilber.

  “You are all so weird,” added Leo.

  “You get used to it,” interjected Jake.

  Leo sighed. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Petey pointed at the woman. “The look on her face says she’s madder than a wet hen, Warrick.”

  The man was right. She did look good and angry.

  The woman slapped the front of the van and then pointed at Curt. “You went right through the stop sign. You didn’t so much as slow down. You could have killed someone! Are you drinking?”

  Drinking?

  Petey nudged the hand Curt held the flask in. Curt opened his mouth to object, but the woman kept on yelling at him. He just sat there, behind the wheel, holding a flask from which he had not taken a sip, with cursed gold coins littering the floor around him, a broken, possibly world-ending artifact being held together in the seat behind him, and a dumbfounded look upon his face.

  He dropped the flask. That didn’t seem to make any of it better.

  Currently, he was about as far from winning at life as one could get. That being said, he really did feel like he’d won something as he stared at the irate woman. She was a prize indeed. His lion stirred and peeked up, confirming what the man already knew—she was special.

  “Jackpot,” he whispered.

  Petey snorted.

  “Warrick, she looks like she wants to castrate you,” said Hugh.

  “Best kind of woman,” added Petey. “They keep a man on his toes. Hold up. There is something familiar about her.”

  “Well, do you have anything to say for yourself? I’ve got a mind to come up in there and tan your hide,” the woman declared as she looked over the van. A confused expression came over her face. “What in the world are you driving? Ohmygoddess! Run over by flower power? No. Not happening. No way. No how. Absolutely not!”

  She paled.

  Curt just kept staring at her without saying anything. Right now, his brain and his man parts were having issues thinking clearly. Pretty much the only thing his brain was able to come up with was “hot chick.” And that was on loop.

  His lion was pushing at him from within, doing its best to convince him that now would be a great time to let it free to do as it pleased. From its sense of urgency, it wanted the woman before him.

  Mine.

  The thought jarred him.

  The woman slapped the front of the van again. “A curse on mating and a curse on you!”

  Just like that, Curt found a bunch of coins falling on his head, coming out of thin air. They clunked and clanged, pelting him hard enough so that he actually yelped once. They filled his lap, spilled off it and onto the floor around him. He looked and felt like something from a cartoon. At any moment a coyote might happen by with a stick of dynamite or an anvil might fall on his head.

  It was that ludicrous.

  When the coins were done raining down on him, Petey leaned, picked one up and wheezed. “Huh, another one that means death. Wow. Warrick, you really are cursed. But from the looks of you, you already know as much. Boy, you’re sweatin’ like a sinner in church.”

  The temperature in the van rose more as Curt continued to stare at the woman. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like she was getting more and more attractive with each passing minute.

  It took Curt a moment to realize someone was laughing hysterically behind him. He turned around slowly to find Wilber bent forward, hugging the broken artifact to him as he cackled. Curt couldn’t recall a time in his life that he’d ever seen Wilber laugh so hard. It was probably for the best. The man looked downright psychotic.

  Hugh inched away from him on the seat, his eyes wide. “That in no way is disconcerting.”

  Jake snorted. “I told you he was crazy.”

  “You’re just mad he got the jump on you and tied you to a chair,” added Leo.

  Jake snarled softly. “Really love bonding with you, brother-in-law.”

  “Yeah. It’s peachy,” returned Leo.

  Petey rocked back and forth in his seat, looking like an excited child who had just been told they were about to head to a circus. “Penelope and Kelsey were right. This trip has been fun! Curt, try going to the bathroom. I want to see if coins fall out of your…”

  “Petey,” warned Hugh.

  Curt sat fixated on the woman in front of the van. Reaching out, he gripped the wheel, white-knuckling it, wanting to touch her.

  Mine.

  He stiffened.

  “Oh my word, child, are you all right?” asked an older gentleman in a tweed
jacket as he hurried out and into the street and touched the woman’s arm. “I saw the whole thing. He nearly killed you.”

  Curt swallowed hard.

  The woman glared up at Curt. “I’m so mad I could spit.”

  He wasn’t exactly sure how that equaled being mad, but from the sound of her voice, it wasn’t a good thing.

  Petey whistled low and shook his head. “You’ve gone and stepped in it.”

  The woman continued to glare at Curt. “Cat got your tongue?”

  Petey rubbed his temple. “Since you’re a lion-shifter, does that mean the cat has all of you? Not just your tongue?”

  Hugh laughed. “I like her.”

  “Me too,” said Curt, still gripping the wheel, staring dumbfounded out at the woman. He normally had far more game than he was presenting. “Can I keep her?”

  Wilber kicked the back of the driver’s seat. “You’re starting to make Lupine look like a catch.”

  Hugh snorted. “Thanks.”

  Curt’s focus returned to the woman in front of the van. She couldn’t have been more than five-six but the look on her face made her seem like a giant. Curt applied the parking brake and shut off the van before getting out of it slowly. Coins fell out and onto the road as he did. He ignored them and looked at the woman. “I’m so sorry, miss. I was trying to get Petey to stop playing the lion song, then he bit me, and the next I knew, you were there.”

  Her gaze narrowed on him and he realized just how amazing her eyes were. A man could get lost in them. “So you nearly killed me over a song?”

  “No,” he said quickly before thinking harder about it. “Erm, yes.”

  The older gentleman with her looked Curt up and down. “Shifters. The lot of you are impossible to deal with. I can’t believe they give your kind driver’s licenses. I once knew a wolf-shifter who drove a truck straight through…”

  “Ned Flanks? Is that you?” asked Petey, hurrying out of the van.

  The man in the tweed jacket regarded Petey, appearing confused. “Do I know you?”

  Petey licked his palm and tried to smooth the bits of hair sticking out from his knit cap. “It’s me. Captain Peter.”

  Peter?

  Ned jerked back. “Peter, what in Sam Hill happened to you? You were always rough around the edges, but not like this.”

  Curt focused on the woman. “I’m sorry. Really. I am.”

  She glanced briefly at him and then touched Petey’s arm lightly. “Excuse me, sir, but you wouldn’t happen to be Captain Petey, would you?”

  Petey faced her and stilled. “Who is asking? I don’t know your mother, do I? I don’t think I have any children out there, but you never can be too sure at my age and with how good I am with the ladies.”

  Curt groaned.

  The woman surprised him by smiling wide. “You know my grandmother, or Mémé Marie-Claire as she likes to be called.”

  Petey stared at her and then gasped. “Marie-Claire Caillat? I don’t know why I didn’t see it straight away. You look a lot like her. Is she still here in Hedgewitch Cove?”

  “She’s still in town. She’s mentioned you more than once,” said the woman. “Apparently, you’re the one that got away.”

  Petey blushed. “She happy?”

  The woman watched him for a moment. “If you’re asking if she’s still married, the answer is no. I don’t know the details of it all, but I can tell you that my grandfather hasn’t been in the picture since long before I was born. Apparently, there was a falling-out of some sort. My family doesn’t discuss it. So she’s single and, like I said, talks about you a lot.”

  Curt stepped back, sure he’d heard that wrong. There was no way anyone considered Petey the one that got away.

  “Mississippi, are you all right?” asked Ned.

  Mississippi.

  That was certainly an interesting name.

  In an instant Curt remembered what Penelope and Kelsey had told him before he’d left. They’d said the crystal ball had shown them a map of the state of Mississippi when they’d asked it about his mate.

  He gulped.

  No.

  It couldn’t be.

  She wasn’t his mate.

  Was she?

  Chapter Eight

  Hyperventilating seemed like a really good plan. Curt nearly went with it as his mind raced with what Penelope and Kelsey had told him they’d seen in regards to his mate.

  The man in the tweed jacket stayed close to Mississippi. “Did he hit you with the van or just the bike?”

  “I’m fine, no thanks to Mr. Flashy,” she said, glancing at Curt.

  He was at a loss for words.

  “Warrick, I’m holding the fate of the world in my hands and you have a curse on your head!” shouted Wilber from inside the van. “Ask the young lady to dinner and then get your butt back in here. We need to get to Hells Gate.”

  She tipped her head. “Curt Warrick?”

  Curt offered a sexy smile. Now they were getting somewhere. He knew he had more skills with the ladies than were showing. “Yes. Heard about me?”

  She snorted. “Oh yeah. Sigmund talks about you. Says you have more money than you know what to do with and that you’re kind of full of yourself. Just what we needed, another rich guy in town.”

  Hugh opened the van door. “Sig isn’t wrong. Okay, Curt. The nice young woman doesn’t like you and she’s known you thirty seconds. Now that we’ve established she’s a good judge of character, get in here and drive us to Luc’s before Wilber lets go of the doomsday device here and hugging each other is the least of our worries.”

  “Hugging each other?” asked Mississippi.

  Curt licked his lips. “It’s a long story.”

  Petey beamed. “I fed ’em my dirty bathwater and now they won’t stop hanging on each other. Hugh held Warrick all night. I got a picture of it on my phone if you want to see it. Sent it to Hugh’s wife already. Got me a good one of Leo and Jake too. Kelsey has a copy of it now.”

  Mississippi looked downward and then stiffened. Her gaze snapped up and on to him. “You broke Shirley!”

  “Shirley?” he asked, fearing he’d actually hit and killed someone.

  She pointed down.

  Petey bent and yanked on something. He came up with a mangled bicycle. There was a smashed wicker basket on the front of it. “Safe to say Shirley is dead. Warrick is a bike killer. I once knew a serial killer.”

  Ned put his hands on Mississippi’s shoulders. “There, there. It was only a bike. It could have easily been you with how careless that young man was bein’. Shifters.”

  “You keep taking jabs at shifters, Ned, and I’m going to take you out back and show you where a bear goes in the woods,” said Petey, putting up his dukes. “You know I can. I’ve done it to you before. Your hocus-pocus can’t stand up against my raw manliness.”

  Mississippi yelped and pushed between the men.

  Curt rushed forward and did the same, leaving his body pressed close to the woman’s. In an instant his body was responding, leaving no room for interpretation on what he thought of her. He stiffened and hoped she didn’t notice.

  She brushed against the evidence and spun around to face him, her eyes wide, her mouth falling open.

  Crap. She noticed.

  Petey leaned around them. “Ned, I thought we could set old ways aside now that it’s been so long, but it’s plain to see you still think you’re better than everyone else. You’re still sore Marie-Claire only had eyes for me before the dark magic came into play. I bet you had a hand in what them Corduas witches did. There was talk of you being linked to it all.”

  Ned huffed. “I do not have to stand here and be insulted by a vagrant like you. Looks like you rolled out of a gutter. You’ve really let yourself go, Peter. Not that you had far to fall. You never were worth much. Looks as if you proved most of us right.”

  Curt rounded on the man. “Hey. Watch it. That man is like family to me. I don’t care how rough around the edges he is or how
much he smells like fish and whiskey half of the time, he’s good people. Check that tone or I’ll do it for you.”

  “Aww, shucks. Thanks, Warrick. Sorry I bit you,” said Petey. “And sorry one of your ex-girlfriends wants you dead.”

  Mississippi snorted.

  Curt rubbed the back of his neck. “Thanks, Petey.”

  Mississippi put her hand on Ned’s arm. “Mr. Flanks, I’m fine. Really. Thank you for checking. Everything here will be all right. I’m sure you’re very busy this morning. This is getting in the way of your day.”

  The man nodded. Reluctantly, Ned walked off but not without shooting dagger looks back at Petey.

  Petey put his thumbs in his ears, waved his hands, stuck out his tongue, and blew raspberries at the man.

  Curt sighed.

  Mississippi burst into laughter. “Oh, Mémé said you were a card. She wasn’t kidding. Did I hear the other man say y’all are going to Luc’s? Hells Gate Inn is just up the way a bit. I can show y’all the way.”

  “Thank you,” said Petey, putting his arm out for her.

  She took it and then glanced at Curt. “If you’d be so kind as to bring Shirley and not run anyone else over, that would be great.”

  He blushed but smiled all the same. “Okay, but only if you let me take you to dinner.”

  Petey winked at her. “Warrick is an okay boy. Your grandmother will approve of him. Though he’s marked for death so maybe make him prepay for dinner in case ninjas leap out and get him before it’s over.”

  She paused. “Marked for death?”

  Petey nodded. “Got a curse on him. Pretty sure one of his exes put it on him. He makes change because of it. Didn’t you notice all the money around him?”

  Her lip curled. “He’s so rich he drops money everywhere?”

  Petey shook his head and then stopped. “Well, yes, but normally his money isn’t charged with dark magic and death notes.”

  A sheriff’s car pulled to a stop next to Curt. A guy who had to be six foot seven stepped out. He looked to be around the age of forty. His black hair was cut in a messy, wavy style. His deep brown eyes were the same color as Mississippi’s. His skin tone was the same as well. Curt looked between the two and realized they were more than likely related. Curt was hardly a small guy, but the newcomer was so muscular he looked like he might be able to lift Sunshine with one hand.