Page 56 of Thunder with a Chance of Lovestruck

“Good?” I echoed.

She nodded. “Yes. How did it go?”

“Surprisingly well,” I admitted. “So well that we spent the entire afternoon together too, walking around the city, talking, getting to know one another better. He told me about what training to be a Hunter had been like for him.”

“Really?” she asked.

“The highlights, anyway,” I said.

She watched me closely. “And did you tell him about Robin? That you’re planning to move to Grimm Cove with him? That you have a freelance crime journalist job lined up with theNocturnal Journalthere, with the potential to be brought on as a full-time staff writer?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes and no. I mean, he knows about Robin and me and that I was planning to go south with him, but the details beyond that seemed unimportant.”

“Was?” Amice asked. I shouldn’t have been surprised she’d caught that slip of the tongue. “As in, you are no longer planning to move away with Robin?”

I closed my eyes momentarily, ashamed of myself. I didn’t juggle two men. I wasn’t that kind of woman. At least, I hadn’t thought I was. “I don’t know what to do. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Isn’t this something Sherri and LeAnne should discuss with you?” she asked.

“Oh, they made their thoughts pretty clear.” I snorted. “Drest has somehow managed to win them both over.”

“Not hard for him to do,” she said. “He’s very charming when he wants to be.”

My chest tightened.

She gripped my hands tighter. “Rachael, I know he broke your heart. I really considered hexing him for that.”

I laughed through the tears that wanted to come.

When she didn’t laugh too, I gulped.

“You’re serious?” I asked.

Her gaze hardened. “Dead serious. You’re like a sister to me. I’ll drop a hex on him in a heartbeat if heevertoys with your heart again, but I don’t think he will. I think he learned his lesson when it comes to you.”

“My love, do you really need this many bags?” asked Henry from the top of the stairs.

“Lucky for him, Astria can sleep through just about anything.” Amice grinned and turned her head in that direction. “Yes, dear. I do.”

Henry grumbled but came walking down with his arms loaded all the same. He went for the front door and then to the car.

Amice waited until he was outside before speaking again. “I’ve known Robin a very long time.”

She’d never mentioned that to me before. I went to question her, only to have her shake her head.

“The details on that aren’t important,” she said. “What is important is that he’s a good but flawed man. Just like Drest. They have more in common than that, but that isn’t my story to tell. I can’t tell you what to do. All I can do is ask what your heart is telling you to do.”

Henry came back in then and wiped his feet before glancing toward us. He laughed. “How many times has she run through the bedtime routine with you?”

I smiled. “I don’t mind.”

He kept laughing as he hurried up the stairs again. When he was out of earshot, I took a deep breath, thinking harder on what Amice had said about following my heart.

“Robin has been nothing but goodtome and goodforme,” I said, hating myself just a little because I knew I’d end up hurting him in the end. He’d cleaned up the mess the trial had left behind. He’d been there for me day in and day out. And while I did care for him deeply, I didn’t love him. At least not yet. “But there is this strange pull to Drest. I can’t explain it. I understand that we’ve never really been a couple or anything and this can’t go anywhere because of the rules he’s bound by, but—”

Amice’s mouth curved upward. “Your heart is telling you to pick him, isn’t it?”

With a sigh, I nodded.

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