The two of them sat there on the floor, staring at the candles, and finally Vivi said, “So this is dumb.”
Gwyn glanced up. “Which part? Him coming? Us finding out he’s coming? You feeling weird about him coming? How many times I’ve said the word ‘coming’？”
“All of the above,” Vivi said, rising to her feet and sliding her skirt back into place. “Look, this was always bound to happen. His family founded this town and the college, the college where, let me add, I happen to work. He’s part of this place. I knew that when I got involved with him. And!” She lifted a finger in the air. “I have had many boyfriends since him!”
“To be fair, you’ve had three.”
“Which is more than two, which is ‘a couple,’ so therefore is many, Gwyn, whose side are you on?”
“Yours,” Gwyn hastily acknowledged. “One hundred percent.”
“It’s no big deal,” Vivi went on as she searched for her shoes near Gwyn’s bed. “He’ll come, he’ll do his whole Founder’s Day ‘Ooh, Look at Me I’m Fancy’ thing, and stuff will go back to how it was. I can continue to live a Penhallow-free life.”
“Except for the part where there’s a statue to his ancestor downtown and also your workplace is literally named after his house.”
“Except for that.”
“Remember when we pretended to curse him?” Gwyn asked, grinning as she shuffled her cards, and Vivi snorted.
“Something about his dimples and never being able to find a clitoris again.”
“Which,” Gwyn said, tilting her head to one side, “now that I think about it was actually more a curse against any women he dated, and I kind of regret that. For the sisterhood.”
Laughing, Vivi shook her head. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I may have done the occasional light social media stalking, and he seems . . . fine.”
Better than fine, really. He was still handsome, apparently ran some super chic travel business that took groups all over the world to do various glam things and probably still knew exactly where the clitoris was. She and Gwyn had just been two silly, drunk witches, joking around and lucky that no actual magic had been employed. Whatever had happened with that candle had been a fluke, clearly.
Vivi had just reached down to slip on her boots when Gwyn’s bedroom door flew open.
“Mom!” Gwyn yelped, leaping to her feet. “Did the Daniel Spencer Incident teach you nothing?”
Elaine just waved a hand at that even as Sir Purrcival lurched into the room, meowing balefully at all of them. “Well?” she asked, and Vivi walked over to Gwyn’s desk, leaning against it.
“Cards say yes,” she said, and Elaine looked briefly at the ceiling, muttering something under her breath.
“But,” Vivi said, pointing with her empty wineglass, “as I was just telling Gwyn, it’s actually not that big of a deal. We’re all grown-ups here, and it’s not like he’ll stay long. I’m telling you, I bet I won’t even see him.”
Chapter 5
Rhys wasn’t sure what he’d done to the universe to deserve this day.
First there’d been the flight. That had gone well enough, but it had been long, and getting a rental car in Atlanta had been frustrating, though no more so than navigating Atlanta traffic to make his way north had been. There had been one point, feeling profoundly discombobulated on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road, staring at the back of a semitruck in front of him, that Rhys had nearly broken and called his father to grudgingly ask for a Traveling Stone for his return journey.
He hadn’t ended up sacrificing his pride on that particular altar and had survived the drive to Graves Glen with his sanity intact, but once he’d gotten into the town, it had been one clusterfuck after another.