Page 24 of A Lullaby for Witches

But Leo was already waving her off. “Are you kidding me? You’d be doing me a favor—that drive bores me to tears.”

“Okay, then,” she said, and found that she was grinning. “That sounds good.”

Leo took another sip of the coffee and nearly gagged. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do this. I’m going to go get an iced coffee with two creams and two sugars, the way it was intended to be consumed.”

“Quitter.”

“Ouch,” he replied, but he was smiling. “Be right back.”

She watched him order and then stuff a dollar into the tip jar. He looked so urbane in his posture, so confident. In another life she could see herself falling hard for him, a life where she wasn’t with Chris. A life where she wasn’t painfully shy and unsure of herself. The barista was leaning her elbows on the counter, clearly flirting with Leo as the coffee brewed, but either he was oblivious, or uninterested. He must have been used to it.

“Much better,” he said with an exaggerated sigh as he sat back down.

They sipped their drinks, and Augusta suddenly found herself tongue-tied again. She desperately wanted to have an easy conversation with him, but couldn’t think of something to say. “So, do you think you’ll stay at Harlowe for a while?” she finally asked him, hoping that her voice didn’t betray the extent of her interest in his answer.

“Oh, yeah, I’m not going anywhere. The Harlowe Trust is probably one of the better gigs out there in terms of funding, plus you can’t beat the benefits. What about you?”

Augusta nodded. “I really like it here so far, and honestly I didn’t think I’d be able to find a job like this for years yet.”

“Glad you’ll be sticking around for a while,” he said. Was it her imagination or did his knee brush hers more deliberately when he said that?

She felt a smile tugging at her lips and she forced herself to bury her face in her cup. It was getting harder to convince herself that the looks he kept stealing in her direction didn’t mean anything, but she couldn’t bring herself to mention that she had a boyfriend. She didn’t even know if he was single, for goodness’ sake. Besides, she didn’t reallyknowLeo; he could just be a really friendly, nice guy. But something told her that there was more there, if only she were free to look.

13

Augusta

They took their time walking back to work, occasionally stopping so Leo could point out some of his favorite spots in town. Aside from the day of her interview, Augusta hadn’t spent much time exploring Tynemouth, and she liked discovering it with Leo as her guide. He seemed to know a lot about the town for someone who only came up from Boston a couple of days a week.

“Are you from here?” she asked him. They had stopped on the promenade that ran alongside the beach to wait for the drawbridge to go back down. A parade of small fishing and pleasure boats were headed out into the harbor, and pedestrians had stopped to wave at them as they passed under the bridge. With the sun sparkling on the water and a salty, fresh breeze, it felt like an exotic vacation, not a workday lunch hour.

“No, but it reminds me of the little town in Maine where I grew up. What about you?”

“Salem,” she told him. “I still live there.”

“Oh, yeah? I bet it’s nuts on Halloween.”

She rolled her eyes. “All the locals get out of there before the Halloween madness descends on the city. If you go early, it’s usually just families and people dressing up for fun, but sometimes it gets out of control. Last year a guy dressed as the Joker got really drunk and smashed a bunch of gravestones in the historic cemetery.”

“Yikes. Well, the people-watching alone would be worth it, I bet. I’d like to see it one year.” He grinned at her and she found herself grinning back.

The drawbridge had lowered, so they continued their leisurely walk. They were just about at Harlowe House when Augusta stopped dead in her tracks. Ahead of them, right in front of the house, Chris was leaning against his car. What was he doing here? She went from walking on air to feeling like a lead weight had been tied to her ankles. She automatically took a step away from Leo to put some more space between them.

Leo noticed, and followed her gaze. “Everything all right? Do you know him?”

She swallowed. “That’s my boyfriend.” Shouldn’t she have been excited? Proud to show him off to her coworker? But all she felt was a vague sense of disappointment mingled with apprehension.

She thought she caught a flicker of surprise across Leo’s face. “Well, I better get back to work,” he said. “I’ll catch you later.”

Before she could say anything, Leo was heading inside. Maybe it was the coffee, but she felt jittery, unsettled as she walked over to meet Chris.

“Hey, fancy seeing you here,” she said, trying for a light tone.

Chris didn’t look at her; he was watching Leo disappear into the house. “Who was that guy?”

She shrugged. “Just a guy who works here. We were having a meeting.”

“Must have been a pretty long meeting,” he said. “I came to surprise you for lunch half an hour ago and your boss said you were out. You didn’t answer your phone either.”

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