Under His Spell

“A cardboard box,” Lainie said. “How clever. Just what everyone needs.”

Gabe tore open the flaps of the box and dug into the pool of packing peanuts inside to pull out—

“A cuckoo clock?” Lainie snorted. “Refined and stylish, my ass.”

“Hey, it’s practical,” he defended as Gabe turned the ornately carved dark walnut clock to and fro. “Besides, it’s handmade. I got it in Bavaria. Anyway, don’t change the subject. You owe me a dance.”

“I do not.”

“Did she, or did she not pull out an extension cord?”

“Well, yes but—”

“No buts.”

“It’s a technicality,” Lainie protested. “It was an accessory, not the gift.”

He shook his head. “Did she or did she not pull out an extension cord?”

“You can be truly annoying sometimes,” she muttered.

J.J. grinned broadly. “And I’m not even trying.”

“Do you live to harass me?”

“No, I live to ski. But harassing you makes the time off the mountain go faster.”

* * *

The pile of gifts had long since been opened and the toasts were over. Champagne fizzed pleasantly in Lainie’s bloodstream as she nodded to the sound of the band. Good thing she was staying with Gabe and Hadley, who lived directly behind the Hotel Mount Jefferson, across the highway. She could hitch a ride with the happy couple, or walk, if need be. The night air would probably do her good.

She finished dancing with Ziffer, shaking her moneymaker to a Dave Matthews cover. It was impossible to be heard over the music or to move much on the crowded dance floor, but she did her best to come up with sign language for “thanks,” and “I’m going to take a break.”

A glass of water, maybe, and a few minutes of sitting would be just fine with her. She stood at the bar nodding to the beat, swaying a little, and then a hand stole around her shoulders. “You owe me a dance, remember?” she heard J.J. say, his breath warm on her ear. Something fluttered inside her.

Fluttering?

It was the champagne, that was all, Lainie told herself. Everybody felt a little giddy when they had champagne. It didn’t have a thing to do with J.J.

Almost certainly not. Still, it made her want to do nothing so much as get away from him, pronto. She knew that look on his face, though, the look that said he was enjoying himself hugely. She could dig in her heels and refuse, and only wind up amusing him even more, or she could just get it over with. After all, it was a dance, three minutes. How bad could it be?

Then the band swung into the Romantics’ “What I Like about You” and she was immediately energized. “I love this song,” she crowed and dove into the crowd on the dance floor without even bothering to see if J.J. followed.

It seemed everybody else had had the same reaction. In seconds, the area before the bandstand had transformed into a mass of surging bodies, driven by the beat. Lainie stopped in a small patch of open floor and the irresistible chorus of the song took her over. With giddy joy, she raised her arms, head whipping back and forth, and stepped and spun in time to the music.

She wasn’t dancing with J.J. really, just in his vicinity. She might just as well be dancing with every person on the floor, just a part of the motion and flow and sound of the crowd surrounding them. Then the music shifted to another dance staple with an irresistible bass hook, and it just became about the beat, nothing else. Jostled by the crowd, they bounced and shook, hot and sweaty and laughing, drawn on by the song, and the song after that. The band played the crowd, knowing that when you have the floor filled you never relent, just keep pushing them with one more irresistible song, and one more.

Finally, when people began filtering off the dance floor in self-defense, the band gave in. “Okay, we’re going to slow it down a little,” the lead singer said.

Breathing hard, Lainie looked at J.J. as the band swung into a slow ballad. “Okay, you got your dance.”

“And then some.” He grinned. “You’re more talented than I realized.”

“I’m so glad you approve,” she said dryly.

“I always approve. In fact, I—”

And just in that moment, a slightly worse-for-wear Bart Ziffer barreled drunkenly back into Lainie, sending her off balance. Sending her into J.J., pressing her up against him for a blinding second, so that his arms went around her reflexively.

Something happened then, something that she didn’t even want to know about. Champagne, Lainie thought, but she was very afraid it wasn’t, because it was the same treacherous thing that always happened every time they got a little too close. Normally she kept her distance. Normally she could laugh him off and get away until her system settled. But this night, with the champagne fizzing in her system, the dancers holding them together, it was too late.

She looked, she couldn’t stop looking, and it was as if some part of her vision widened so that he was all she could see, looking more alive, more real, more there than anything or anyone else in the room. Everything else faded away, and there was just J.J., looking at her first with surprise, then confusion, then some special attention that sent a shiver through her. His hands tightened, pulling her closer rather than releasing her.

She should look away, she knew, but she couldn’t stop staring. And, dammit, she couldn’t stop feeling—the hard lines of his athlete’s body, his arms tightening around her even as they stood, the warmth of him as he leaned just a bit closer…

And utter panic vaulted through her.

Lainie wrenched herself away, turning without another word to flee blindly through the couples dotting the dance floor.

“Wait a minute.” A hand landed on her shoulder, and J.J. spun her around to face him, staring at her with a hint of the same confusion she felt herself. J. J. Cooper, the man with the ego the size of Mount Washington, the man who couldn’t even commit to a facial-hair style for more than a few weeks.

Not to mention a woman.

And it was that that had her turning toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

She barely threw him a dismissive glance. “Sorry, Speed, but my fairy godmother told me to be home at midnight. I’m out of here.”

“Out of here? The party’s just getting started.”

“Clock ticking, got to go.” She definitely had to go, before she got caught up again. Before she threw common sense aside and planted one on him just to find out what it was like.

Before it was too late.

Chapter Three

It made her cranky, pure and simple, Lainie thought as she shepherded a school tour into the main room of the museum. Fourteen years after her brief obsession with J.J., and here she was, once again thinking about him every time she turned around. Only, this time she was twenty-six, not twelve.

It was ridiculous.

So what if they’d had that weird little moment of chemistry at Gabe’s party? He was a lightweight, a good-time guy who was only out for himself and his own fun. Skiing, parties, women. She didn’t know many things conclusively, but one thing she did know was that she’d be better off volunteering as a crash test dummy than starting something with J.J. Cooper. In fact, if she got involved with J.J., she’d be a dummy, of high proportions. He didn’t bear thinking about, not even for a minute.

Realizing that she was, in fact, thinking about him just put her in a bad temper. Better to concentrate on work.

Lainie looked around the throng of avid-faced fourth graders before her, and her mood brightened. “Okay, who knows what a witch looks like?”

The whole crowd of them raised their hands.

“Ugly,” offered one.

“Warts.”

“Flies on a broomstick.”

“Plays Quidditch,” someone shouted. “When does the match start?”

Lainie smiled. “If you want Quidditch, you’ll have to come back Halloween week for the Hogwarts Festival. But let’s talk about witches, okay?”

“Yeah!”

One thing she loved about working at the Witchcraft Museum was that the kids showed up eager and bright eyed with curiosity. They were lured by the promise of witchcraft, the sensationalism of the trials. Instead of a lot of dry display cases to stare into, they saw the story told by the characters. The learning almost sneaked up on them while they were concentrating on other things.

“Who knows where the word witch comes from?” Lainie asked.

A little girl with dark corkscrew hair and red shorts raised her hand. “Wicca,” she announced.

“That’s right—the word witch comes from Wicca, a religion of the earth.”

“Religion happens in churches,” the little girl countered.

“Not always,” Lainie corrected. “Religion happens wherever a person wants it to. There were and are people who worship the earth outdoors. Some of them call themselves Wiccans. Long ago, that word turned into witches. A lot of times they learned how to use herbs to help people feel better. Sometimes people appreciated them for the good they did. And sometimes people persecuted them as being in league with the devil. Sometimes even non-Wiccans were persecuted as witches. Do you know what persecuted means?”

The little girl raised her hand again. “People were mean to them?”

It was the most apt definition she’d heard. “Yes, people were mean. If you got accused of being a witch, there was no real way to prove you weren’t. Lots of times, people accused of being witches were killed.”

“By mean people.”

“No, by ordinary people who just didn’t know any better. That’s what happened here in Salem. But instead of me telling you the story, I’m going to let the people of Salem tell you the story. Look above your heads.”

Lainie pressed the wireless control in her palm. Even as the lights went down, the Wiccan wheel of the year set into the floor began to glow a pulsing red. A little murmur of excitement and alarm passed through the crowd of children. They all backed away from the medallion a little as a basso voice greeted them.

“Witchcraft…possession…trials and hangings. The story you are about to hear really happened here in Salem. The year was 1692. It began with a group of girls…”

On the perimeter of the room, on a level above their heads, a roomlike section grew bright to reveal the figures of three young girls crouched by a fireplace and staring up at the figure of a housekeeper wearing a colorful headkerchief. In the next moment the figures began to move and speak, drawing “aahhs” from the audience, taking them back to the seventeenth century and a time of madness.

One after another the dioramas lit, and bit by bit the tragic dance played out. And Lainie felt the familiar sadness. Fear, ignorance and boredom, a toxic brew under any circumstances. Add a little fanaticism and power lust and you had a destructive force that had spelled the ruin of dozens. It might have happened long before, but the story still touched her every time.

As it touched the people who visited the museum. They came from near and far, young and old, all drawn by the story. And the numbers were rising by the week. Halloween was the high season for a town whose name was synonymous with witchcraft. Ghost walks, festivals and galas, costume parades and reenactments, the events began at the start of October and ran all month long. Of course, the planning started well before that, which was why only a day or two into September, Lainie found herself with barely time to think.

Even as the show went on, she was busy reviewing her to-do list. Her alarmingly long to-do list. Phone calls, e-mails, requisitions, contracts, and no thoughts of J.J.

Specifically no thoughts of J.J.

Finally, the show ended. Lainie pressed her remote to bring the lights back up and bring them all back to reality.

The kids stood around, blinking in the sudden light, looking interested, even sober. It was a lot to absorb, and they were just getting to the age to do so.

“So, what did you think?” Lainie asked.

One of the boys nudged another. “Tituba looks just like Emma.”

The little girl in red scowled. “Does not.”

“Does too!”

“Does not.”

“Emma! Boys!” the teacher said reprovingly.

Lainie stuggled not to smile. “Well, I think Emma looks just like herself, and I don’t think—”

The words died in her throat. Because there, leaning against the wall at the back of the room was J. J. Cooper, a grin on his beach-boy face.

In the first instant of surprise, all she could do was stare, heart thudding in her chest. He didn’t belong there amid the confusion of kids. It was the last place he should have been, and yet somehow, curiously, he looked at home.

Then again, J.J. managed to always look at home, no matter where he was.

There was a cough from the teacher. “Miss?”

Lainie tore her gaze loose from J.J. and cleared her throat. “Sorry. I was going to say, I don’t think Emma’s the type to accuse anyone of giving her fits.”

“Only Cassie, maybe,” Emma grumbled.

“Who’s Cassie?”

“My little sister.”

J.J., Lainie noted, looked amused.

“But witches don’t give people fits, remember?” J.J., on the other hand, was pretty good at it.

“How do you know witches don’t give fits?” one of the little boys demanded. “Are you a witch?”

“Joshua,” the teacher said warningly.

Lainie laughed, relaxing a bit. “It’s all right. No, Joshua, I’m not a witch. I’m not even Wiccan. I’m just a plain old ordinary person, just like Bridget Bishop and the rest.”

“How come you work in the witch museum?”

“Because it’s fun and because I think their story deserves to be told. People need to remember what can happen when they get scared and stop thinking.” She pointed to a case on the back wall that held the figure of a storybook witch, complete with warts, pointed hat and broom. “This isn’t real. The Wizard of Oz is just a movie. Real Wiccans are people just like the rest of us. They don’t do spells, at least not that I know of.”

“There are spells in Harry Potter,” Emma piped up.

“Well, Harry Potter’s something different.”

“I love Harry Potter,” Emma announced.

“So do I,” Lainie said. “The Harry Potter books are great. How many of you have read them?”

Hands shot up all over the room.

“The author of the Harry Potter books has a great imagination,” she continued. “That’s why we read, to get carried away by our imaginations. I like getting carried away. How about you?”

Across the room, J.J. raised an eyebrow. Lainie could feel the flush stain her cheeks. “Getting carried away by your imagination is a good kind of carried away, but you want to watch other kinds of carried away, the kinds of carried away that can hurt people. Like the way the Salem witchcraft trials got carried away.” She paused. “Anyway, if there are no more questions, that’s our tour.”

“What do you say?” the teacher asked.

“Thank you, Ms. Trask,” they chorused obediently.

Lainie smiled. “Thank you for spending the morning with me. The exit’s right through here.”

There was nothing like being the head of a procession of fourth graders to give a person dignity, she thought wryly as she shepherded the tour into the gift shop.

“Lainie, do you have a minute?” a voice called. Lainie turned to see her boss, Caro Lewis. Small, dark, positive, Caro had taught Lainie a tremendous amount in the three and a half years they’d worked together. Somehow in that time, they’d also become fast friends. Because they were both scrupulously careful to do their jobs to the nth degree, it worked.

“What’s up, chief?”

Nearby a pair of little boys menaced each other with goblin heads. Caro watched them, the corners of her mouth curving up. “They look like they found the museum intellectually stimulating. Who do you have today?”

One of the boys crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. Lainie’s lips twitched. “The fourth-grade class of Daniel Dunn Elementary School.”

Caro glanced beyond the boys to where J.J. stood, leafing through books. “Fourth grade, huh?” she said, eyeing him. “My, my, they just get bigger every year. He must take a lot of vitamins.”

Lainie snorted. “He’s just a delinquent.”

Caro laughed so loud that J.J. glanced over. “But a tasty-looking one. Listen, Jim over at the Seven Gables Inn had to reschedule our planning meeting. He wants to know if we can do eleven.”

“Eleven o’clock?” Lainie glanced at her watch and frowned. “That’s only fifteen minutes from now.”

“I know, but the next window he’s got isn’t for another week, and Halloween’s coming for us.”

“I have to print out the schedule and get my laptop.”

“I know. I’ll head over now and get started. You come on as soon as you’re done. Have fun with your fourth-graders.” Caro winked and sashayed away.

Lainie stood at the doorway to the store and eyed J.J. As though he’d felt her look, he glanced up. Definitely too gorgeous for his own good, she thought. The Vandyke had changed to a Fu Manchu, she saw, sharpening his chin, making that mouth of his look far too interesting.

A crash made her jump. She looked around to see a display of wands and spells scattered on the floor, courtesy of the boys with goblin heads.

“Richie, Matt, that’s enough,” the teacher scolded. “Now you go over and help clean that up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lainie said. “I’ll take care of it.” The last thing she wanted was for them to walk away with bad memories of the museum. She knelt down next to the colorful pile of plastic and glitter, righting the magenta canister that had held the wands.

Out of the corner of her eye saw J.J. head over. She glanced up at him.

And it took her breath.

She’d known he was there, she’d watched him walk over. Even so, there was something about the jolt of that blue gaze that sent adrenaline flooding through her system. She frowned at herself. It was one thing to have the heart-thudding thing happen when he’d popped up out of the blue. It shouldn’t be happening now.

He bent down next to her to help, picking up the packets and examining them. “Love potions?” he asked, holding one up.

She took it from him. “What’s the matter, Speed, losing your edge?”

“Not me.”

“What a relief. It would be the end of civilization as we know it. Although I use that term loosely where you’re concerned,” she added, picking up the rest of the wands and rising. “To what do we owe the honor of your presence?”

He grinned. “I’ve got an appointment.”

“In Salem?”

“In Boston.”

She snorted. “I hope you’re better at staying on the piste when you’re racing than you are at following directions. This isn’t Boston.”

“I thought something looked funny,” he replied.

“South. A long way south. The highway’s right out there,” she added helpfully.

He didn’t move. “Trying to get rid of me, Lainie?”

“Why, Speed, whatever would give you that idea?” She reached out to toy with a leaflet that promised step-by-step directions to putting a hex on someone.

“Should I be nervous that you’re holding on to that?”

“No, the time to get nervous is when I go after the voodoo doll.”

He gave her a quick glance. “You wouldn’t, by any chance, have broken one of those out already?” He rubbed his shoulder. “It would explain a lot.”

“No, it’s an inspiration I’ve never had until now. Worth keeping in mind, though,” she added thoughtfully. “Why, are you having problems?” Not that she should care, of course.

J.J. shrugged, a little stiffly, now that she noticed it. “Ah, I screwed up my shoulder back in July.”

“Screwed it up?”

“Dislocated the son of a bitch.”

“What, did you trip over your ego?”

He grinned. “Mountain biking.”

“I am so not surprised.”

Suddenly his eyes seemed darker and he was much closer than he had been. Suddenly she was neatly boxed in between him and the corner shelves. “You know, Lainie, one of these days I will surprise you.”

For an instant she didn’t move; she couldn’t. Then she forced herself to swallow with a throat gone bone dry. “Yeah, well, I’ll be right here holding my breath for when that happens.” She pushed past him, out into the center of the shop.

But he’d gotten to her in that moment, and he knew it. She could tell from the enjoyment flickering in his eyes.

“Gee, it’s been fun, J.J. I’ve got to get to a meeting,” she said briskly.

“Over at the Seven Gables Inn?” At her startled glance, he shrugged. “I heard you talking with your friend.”

“My boss, but yes at the Seven Gables Inn. Anyway, I’m late, I’ve got to go.”

“Nice day for a walk,” he added.

J.J. stood in the museum courtyard, waiting for Lainie. He wasn’t entirely sure what ridiculous impulse had led him to stop in Salem, only that when he had an impulse, he usually found it worthwhile to ride with it. Traffic had cooperated on the drive down from New Hampshire. When he’d glanced at the dash clock and seen that he had a few hours to kill, he hadn’t thought but just gone with the first thing that came to mind.

And in the two days that had passed since the party, Lainie had come to mind a lot.

It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar situation. She’d always had a way of flickering through his thoughts at the most unexpected of times—when he was thousands of miles away, flying down an icy mountain, standing at a party in a room filled with the music of a dozen languages.

And sometimes, unsettlingly, in his dreams. Best not to think of that, he reminded himself. Better to banish those pulse-pounding images to the dark corners of his mind where they belonged. The problem was, this time out of the gate he wasn’t being so successful at the banishing stuff, maybe because he was at loose ends, maybe because he wasn’t involved with anyone.

Or maybe because of that moment at Gabe’s party, that strange little snap of connection that had whipped through his system before he’d been prepared for it.

“You still here?”

It was Lainie, frowning at him, laptop slung over her shoulder. She wasn’t wearing the little skirt and crop top this time but a long summer dress made of some intriguingly fragile-looking fabric that shimmered over the slip beneath and flowed around her calves like water.

It should have looked demure, with its faintly old-fashioned looking pattern of pale blossoms, but all it did was make him itch to unfasten the row of buttons that ran down the front, beginning with the hem and rising to where the fabric dipped down around the slender column of her throat. She wore a necklace with a single bead like a flat pearl, pierced from side to side with a string-thin leather thong so that it sat atop the hollow where her collarbones came together.

“Earth to J.J.”

He’d been staring, he realized.

“I have to go. You shouldn’t have waited.”

And she clearly hadn’t wanted him to, though that didn’t bother him. Not when he saw the faint pulse begin to beat in her throat. “Salem could be a tough town. I owe it to your parents not to let you walk around alone. Although—” he eyed the black bulk of her laptop case “—that thing probably counts as a lethal weapon.”

“Try to remember that,” she advised him.

He reached out and curved his fingers around the black webbing of the strap. Her eyes widened. “Maybe you’d better just give it to me to carry,” he said.

She tugged it back from him. “I thought you had a bad shoulder.”

“It’s the other one, and it’s getting better all the time,” he told her. She finally gave up, and he slung the bag over his shoulder, trying not to look smug. “So, where to?”

She didn’t bother answering, just headed toward the iron gates that led to the street, and the trapezoidal town common beyond.

She could needle him, she could pretend all she liked that she didn’t want him around. He knew better.

He was used to women with quick hungers, women who knew what they wanted. And what they wanted was him. He’d had more memorable times than he could count and none of them were anything as hot as that moment in the gift shop when he’d stood just a little too close to Lainie and seen the flare of desire in her eyes.