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She held up her empty hands. There was something to be said for a woman who didn’t bother with a purse, J.J. thought. It showed a certain independence of spirit. He grinned at Ziffer. “Catch up with me when you’ve got a pen and I’m all over it,” he said, “but right now I need to talk to Lainie for a minute.” He caught her arm, ignoring her suitor’s crestfallen look, and began leading her away.
“That happened to be someone I’ve known since junior high.” She pulled loose from him.
“You’ve known me since way before junior high.”
“I know, and I never have figured out what I did to deserve it. So what, exactly, did you need to talk with me about?”
“Something important,” he told her, trying to figure out just why he’d been compelled to get her to himself.
She crossed her arms. “Oh, really?”
“They did a nice job with the lodge, huh?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m waiting.”
“So, uh, what are you doing with yourself these days? Still working at the witch museum?”
“Yeah. So?” She tapped her fingers, but he noticed she was in no hurry to go back.
“Just wondering. Still living in Salem?”
“It’s as good as anywhere else.”
“What ever happened to New York and Europe and all that? Or do you just like small towns?”
Her chin came up at that. “Salem’s not a small town,” she retorted, ignoring his snort. “And I’ll move on when I’m ready.”
“I guess that means you never did take that trip to Vienna and Prague you were talking about.”
“I will at some point. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Look, Gabe and Hadley are starting to open their gifts,”J.J. said hastily, stepping back to lean against a nearby wall.
With a glower, Lainie subsided to lean next to him.
J.J. watched Hadley exclaim over a set of dish towels. “Now there’s an exciting gift.”
“It is if you’ve got dishes to dry,” she said.
“I suppose orange and yellow stripes will be easy to find in the dark.”
Lainie shook her head as Hadley tore open another package. “Okay, a magenta and gold lava lamp. Now that one’s worse.”
“Not necessarily. I think it’s got style.”
She looked at him as though he’d sprouted another head.
“Style? You want look at those two people out there and tell me that’s their definition of style?”
J.J. glanced over at Gabe and Hadley and pursed his lips. “Maybe.”
“Oh, wait, don’t tell me. That was your gift.”
“Nope, but it’s not a bad choice.”
She just snorted.
“Well, what did you get them, anyway? Since you’ve got such great taste,” he added.
She opened her mouth and stopped. “None of your business.”
“It’s not a state secret. Yours is in the on-deck circle anyway, unless I miss my guess. Come on, Lainie, spill it.” When she only stared at him mutinously, he tilted his head. “Okay, then I’ll guess. I’m thinking you didn’t get them anything they registered for. ‘That’s for people with no imagination,’” he mimicked, doing his best imitation of her.
Lainie looked at him, startled.
“Nope, I’m thinking you didn’t even go to a store for house stuff. I’m guessing you either went for the Trump factor and got them a statue of Venus or something at an art gallery or got something off-the-wall like a set of wrenches or an extension cord. Am I right?”
She set her mouth and glared.
“Let’s make a little bet. If I’m wrong—”
“You leave me alone the rest of the night.”
“I leave you alone the rest of the night.” His eyes gleamed in enjoyment. “If I’m right, you dance with me later.”
“Does the phrase ‘a cold day in hell’ mean anything to you?”
He just crossed his arms and leaned against the wall with an easy smile. “This is the north country. Gets cold early around here. Look.” He pointed. “You’re up.”
Gabe set the red-and-silver-striped box on the table in front of Hadley. She peered at the tag. “Oh, this one’s from Lainie.”
Lainie gave her a halfhearted wave from across the room as Hadley began tearing off the paper eagerly. She opened the box inside…
And pulled out an extension cord.
“Yes!” J.J. crowed and pumped his fist. “Now who’s got who down?”
“It’s not an extension cord,” Lainie protested.
“What’s that orange snaky thing she’s holding there, witch lady? That would be an extension cord. Score one to the gentleman in blue.”
“The present isn’t an extension cord,” Lainie repeated as Hadley dug into the box. “It’s a—”
“Mosquito zapper?” J.J. fell against the wall laughing. “Oh, Lainie, Lainie, Lainie, you are priceless.”
Her cheeks tinted. “What? They have a lot of mosquitoes here.”
“I’m sure they do,” he said, wiping his eyes.
“It’s practical,” she muttered. “Stop laughing.” She thumped him in the stomach. “Anyway, what did you get them? Something goofy that you picked up on your travels, I’m betting.”
He looked down his nose at her. “Something refined and stylish. Something that didn’t come from a hardware store, and don’t tell me yours didn’t because I recognize that orange sticker on the side.”
In the center of the room, Hadley read a tag. “The next present comes from J.J., our host.”
“Let’s go get a drink,” J.J. said quickly.
Lainie gave him a look. “Not a chance, Speed. I want to see this.”
Hadley tore away the paper to reveal a large carton.
“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
