Sure, they could say that. The truth was, besides wanting to comfort the dog and maintain some contact with Dante and Cully through caring for her, part of the reason Glinda’s walk had become such a community event was to check on the surrounding neighborhoods and see how much of the strange magic that was threatening their little cul-de-sac was also threatening to take over the entire development.
Every creepy topiary, every bed of bloodred or poisonous-green flowers, every statue that seemed to be morphing into something strange and misshapen, went on their mental list for things that needed to be watched.
“Alex!” Jordan repeated, obviously tired of waiting for Alex to answer.
“What?”
“Are you looking around here?”
“God, I wish I wasn’t!” That one rosebush had been pruned—or pruned itself—to look like a live enactment of the Headless Horseman. The magic forces at work obviously had an English degree and a sense of humor.
“Yeah, well, it scares the shit out of me too!” Jordan told him. “And you know why it hasn’t taken over the entire ten block settlement?”
Alex let out a grunt. He knew this one. “Because one of us was actually upfront about what we said during the spell?” he replied. It was true. Bartholomew, for all his shyness, had the courage to tell everyone what he’d really wanted—Lachlan—as opposed to what he’d written down when they were all formulating their incantations, which was to have his business thrive.
“Three of us,” Kate said, and Jordan looked at her and Josh in surprise.
“Three of us?”
Kate shrugged at the same time Josh let out a cheek-splitting grin. “Yup,” Josh said smugly, and his arm slid around Kate’s waist.
“So, uh, what did two of us actually wish for?” Alex asked. What they’d put down on paper was for their planned wedding to go off without a hitch, but what had come out of their mouths….
“Well,” Josh said, grinning, “it didn’t have a damned thing to do with the wedding.”
Kate giggled. “Well, maybe a little bit to do with the wedding, but seriously, mostly to do with the life we want to build whether or not there’s a wedding.”
Jordan cocked his head. “And that would be…?”
Kate’s giggle turned into a full-blown laugh, and she buried her face against Josh’s enormous bicep while he dropped a kiss on her hair.
“Should we tell them?” she asked.
“They’ll figure it out soon enough,” Josh said, and he sounded so smug, so happy, Alex—who claimed no prescience, clairvoyance, or actual gift whatsoever—suddenly knew.
“Seriously?” he asked, his heart leaping for the two of them.
Josh’s smile was so wide his cheeks probably impaired his vision. “Seriously,” he said.
“But when…?” Jordan flailed.
Kate shrugged. “Well, I’m officially off birth control, so, you know, anytime soon. But that’s what we both said. That big wind whooshed around the room, and I expected Josh to say ‘Elopement,’ and Josh expected me to say ‘Breakup,’ and what came out of both our mouths was ‘Baby.’” She practically danced on her toes. “And we talked—a lot—over the last two weeks, and we realized that we still wanted to have a wedding, but we didn’t want our parents to plan it, and we didn’t want to put our life on hold while we looked for venues and dresses and everything. We’ll get married—we are married—because I can’t even imagine spending a week away from the big goober, much less the rest of our lives. But we want our lives to just… go forward. We want a baby. We’ve wanted a baby since we met. God, look at him. Isn’t that a gene pool that should go down as a legacy?”
Josh gave her a besotted smile. “Only ’cause I was smart enough to make a baby with you.”
Kate grinned at Alex and Jordan again, and Alex found his cheeks were hurting. “I’m gonna be an uncle,” he said.
“So am I!” Jordan told them. “Congratulations!”
There were a few moments of “Congratulations” and “Thank you!” and “Good luck!” and then Jordan and Alex high-fived, because it seemed to call for a show of solidarity. And then Jordan, who was the kind of intense that couldn’t let anything go, turned back to Alex and said, “See? Barty’s been honest. Kate and Josh have been honest. Now it’s just you and me.”
“And Dante and Cully,” Alex added glumly.
Jordan sighed. “Yeah, well, maybe if the rest of us can get our act together, Dante and Cully will have enough strength and light around them to be able to announce their own truths.”
“So, Jordan,” Alex said, narrowing his eyes, “your truth would be—”
“Hard to articulate,” Jordan said, his voice even. “Do you think if I could put together more than just the one word that came out the night of the spell, I wouldn’t have told you already? I don’t even know what that word means right now. But believe me, when it happens, you all will be the first to know.”
Well, that was fair enough. Alex sighed. The topiaries really were getting worse, and some of the rock gardens were starting to resemble mosaics of big birds, and Alex hadn’t wanted to say anything, but there was a rather large garter snake keeping pace with them along the lawns next to their sidewalk.
“Passion,” he said after a few more silent footsteps. “I asked for passion. I….” Oh, this was hard. “I’ve had crushes before, been almost in love a couple of times.” He wanted to add that he’d even almost had sex on more than one occasion. “I’ve just never….” Never wanted someone so badly that his innate guardedness became overrun with desire. “Never been carried away,” he finished weakly. “I… I want to want someone that bad.”
His face was on fire with mortification, but even as he spoke, he watched the garter snake abruptly change course and head for a nice row of hydrangea bushes that lined the driveway of the house they were passing.
“That’s a good wish,” Jordan said, not laughing, not judging. “There’s nothing wrong with that wish. Do you think Simon could be that person? The one you can lose your head with?”
“Probably not,” he muttered dryly, because awkward plus awkward did not usually equal hot, sweaty, tear-up-the-sheets sex, did it?
Unbidden came that one moment, that single, tear-drop-shaped moment, of Simon’s fingers against his throat as he touched Alex’s charm and the way he’d trailed his touch all the way down Alex’s chest.
And Alex had wanted him so badly in that moment he’d almost forgotten all propriety and all common sense and kissed his boss right there at the intersection, then hoped for the best later.
“Maybe,” he added to himself, seeing the hope in Simon’s brown eyes and remembering his rather pitiful story of just wanting to hide during the awkward years and being forced into the spotlight instead.
Yeah, Simon had reminded him that everybody had their scars, their moments, their guarded places. Even someone as beautiful—sleek, stylish, nervy, and brilliant—as Simon Reddick could have places in his soul too abraded by time and misfortune to be perfectly comfortable in his own skin every moment of every day.