I didn’t curse you? This is just bad luck and has nothing to do with a drunk and brokenhearted teenage witch nearly a decade ago?
Rhys’s smile faded, the moment lost, and Vivi told herself that was a good thing.
And then, to her immense relief, he nodded. “So it seems. Now just to charge the ley lines, and I’m back to Wales.”
“Right, the lines. When?”
He pulled a delicate watch from the pocket of his vest, glancing at it. “The moon rises around seven tonight, so sometime around then?”
Gwyn was still watching them although, thank the goddess, at that moment the door chimed again, meaning customers. When Gwyn learned that Vivi was going to charge the lines with Rhys, she was never going to hear the end of it.
She still wanted to do it, though.
As Gwyn walked toward the door, Vivi nodded at Rhys. “Meet me here at six-thirty.”
Just a few more hours. Then she could see the ley lines, Rhys could do what he needed to do and this could finally be over.
Which was what she wanted.
Absolutely.
Of all the times Vivi had thought about Rhys over the years—and it had been more times than she wanted to admit—she’d never thought about something as basic and boring as having him in her car.
But here he was, leaning back in the passenger seat of her Kia, the seat moved back, his long legs stretched out in front of him, her travel mug, the one with the green sparkles and frogs on it, held in one of his hands as Graves Glen disappeared behind them and they climbed higher into the hills.
Twilight had just started to deepen, turning the sky a soft violet, the rest of the scenery blurring into blue, and Vivi’s fingers flexed on her steering wheel as she tried very, very hard not to think of the night she’d met Rhys.
It hadn’t been exactly like this, of course. It had been June, not mid-October, the air softer and warmer, the colors different, but it had been another magical night, a special one, and she wondered if he was thinking about it, too.
He was uncharacteristically quiet over there in her passenger seat, staring out the window, occasionally taking sips of coffee. Was that part of it? Did he have to center himself or something before he did magic this big?
For the first time, Vivi realized that she might be in a little bit over her head here. Not with Rhys, exactly, but with the magic she was about to witness. She kept her spells small, could go whole weeks without using her powers.
Was she ready for what she was about to see?
“It is truly amazing how much I can hear you thinking.”
Vivi threw him a quick glance before turning her eyes back to the road. “What, literally? Like mind-reading?”
Rhys chuckled and took another sip of his coffee before shaking his head. “No, I don’t have that power, and even if I did, I definitely wouldn’t use it on you. Only so many times a man should hear himself called a bastard, really. I just mean that you get this look when it’s clear you’re concentrating. It’s—”
“If you say ‘cute,’ I’ll throw you out of this car.”
“I would not dare. I was thinking more ‘charming.’”
Vivi couldn’t help but glance over at him again. He was smiling at her, that soft, fond smile she’d completely forgotten about until this moment, and this time it was a little harder to look back at the road.
“I’ll allow that,” she finally said. “And for your information, I wasn’t really thinking about you being a bastard. I mean, that is a default thought in my brain at all times, but I wasn’t actively thinking it.”
“Good to know.”