Page 31 of Fairy Godmothers Aren't Cheap

He nodded. “We didn’t get really serious until university, though.”

His romance was kind of like Tamara and Kade’s—started in high school, but again, the real world had proved that their so-called love wasn’t enough. Was it ever?

“How about you?” he asked.

“No. Never engaged.”

“Want kids?”

“Sure. If it happens. But I don’t really see myself getting married.”

James blinked, as if I’d suddenly switched to speaking a foreign language.

“What? I can’t imagine it.” I tucked my hands deeper into my jacket’s sleeves.

“Can’t imagine it or don’t want it?”

“I never said I don’t want it.”

“So you do want it? Kids and a husband?”

I could feel heat tracking its way up to my cheeks, my imagination dishing up delectable images of what it might be like to have a man as steady and sure as James in my life. “Sure. Of course. Assuming I find the right person.” I gave him a sly smile. “And he likes me back. I’m not into brainwashing and kidnapping.”

He let out a guffaw. “Good to know.”

“So what was your ex-fiancée like?”

“Nice.”

“Yeah, but…like, what’s your type?” When he didn’t reply immediately, I suggested, “Skinny, Swedish. Smart. All the things.” He and his type would make beautiful babies. That, I could see. She’d have her life together, but would also book last-minute vacations to exotic locales off the beaten path as well as know how to cook killer meals from any nationality. And maybe speak a few languages to boot.

“Actually, no.”

“Then what’s your type?”

He stared at me long enough my heart thundered in my ears. It felt like he was suggesting I was his type. And we all knew that couldn’t possibly be true.

CHAPTER9

~ Char ~

An hour later, back in my apartment, with my milkshake long gone and my mood much improved thanks to some time with James, I sat in the living room trying to sort out my thoughts.

Was I really James’s type? Did he actually want more serendipity in his life and not a routine-driven, stable, cozy marriage I’d assumed?

Felipe was a horrible listener, chattering at me until I showed him I had no more lunch leftovers, then abandoning me with my unfinished thoughts about Estelle to go curl up in his shoebox nest under my bed. I sat in the dark living room, wishing my roommates were home—at least one of them—so I wouldn’t be alone with the endless whirling of thoughts about James and fairy godmothers.

Fairy godmothers. Was I going to believe in the possibility or not?

Had my evening been real? Could it be that I was experiencing an intense fever and was hallucinating, or had slipped a mental cog and was now delusional? It would explain the way James had looked at me when he’d said the word ‘beautiful’ and also when he’d given me that meaningfully look when saying that skinny Swedish babes weren’t his type.

I’d already tried walking the line of grout in the tiled bathroom and hadn’t run into anything other than out of tile lines to test myself on. Now I placed a palm to my forehead. It felt about the right temperature. I covered one eye, then the other, to check my sight. That all seemed fine, too. Not very scientific testing, but nothing major was jumping out as a possible explanation. Therefore, my experience at Your Fairy Godmother’s offices was likely to have been real. But if I accepted the reality of Estelle and her magical, glitter-shooting world, I also had to accept that I was massively in debt. And that made me feel a bit nauseous.

Everything on that detailed invoice was too accurate to discard as a mere coincidence. She knew things I’d wished upon that I didn’t even want to admit to myself.

I sighed and dropped my head into my hands, doubting reality.

My phone beeped with a text.

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