Page 58 of Demon Loved
Most of the time, Brianna avoided the restaurant — not because she didn’t like the food, but because it tended to be even more overrun with tourists than the other places to eat in Jerome. On a Tuesday evening, though, they had a chance of actually finding a place to sit down.
Sounds like fun. What time?
6:30?
Meet you there.
That was all, but it was enough to push away the unease that had been nagging her all afternoon. She couldn’t even say why she’d been feeling so off. It could have been simple worry that Bill really was going to ghost her after all, and yet she still thought something else was going on, even if she couldn’t yet put her finger on it. Her students had all done well, and the one couple who’d come into the gallery had ended up walking out with almost three grand in purchases.
Pretty good for a Tuesday.
But….
She told her brain to shut up and then headed into the bathroom to refresh her lip gloss and brush her hair. No point in changing out of the jeans and striped top she’d been wearing that day, not when the Haunted Hamburger didn’t exactly have a dress code. All the same, she didn’t want to look like an utter mess.
It was already past five-thirty, so she didn’t have a huge amount of time to kill before she needed to walk up the hill to meet Bill at the restaurant. Just as she was about to sit down and pick up the neglected book she’d been reading, however, her phone pinged again.
Was he canceling after all?
The message on her home screen put that paranoid thought immediately to bed.
We bought a house!
Bellamy, of course. She and Marc had been house hunting for the past month, ever since she’d had that massive lottery win. Angela and Connor hadn’t been too thrilled with her about it, mostly because being a MegaMillions winner didn’t exactly fit their idea of lying low and not attracting attention.
But Bellamy had kept her big win anonymous, so it was only the other members of the clan who knew about her windfall.
Because she’d won so much, Bellamy and Marc could have bought pretty much anything they wanted, up to and including some of those gorgeous ranch properties in Sedona that usually were the vacation homes of the rich and famous, since no one else could afford them.
Well, except for the part that nobody of witch-kind was allowed to live there, thanks to the way vortex energy affected their magic.
Where?
In Page Springs. It’s the old Rainbow Canyon winery.
Brianna couldn’t help blinking at that piece of information. Yes, Bellamy had a degree in enology, but she’d said on more than one occasion that she wasn’t interested in making wine necessarily and would rather educate people about it. That was why she’d been so good at working in the tasting rooms.
I thought you didn’t want a winery.
I thought I didn’t, either, but the property is gorgeous, and we’ll hire someone to manage the vines. And I got to thinking and realized it would be kind of fun to have our own private label. Not to sell, but to share with family and friends.
A teeny tiny boutique winery. Yes, that sounded more like Bellamy’s speed.
When do you get to move in?
A couple of weeks. It’s an all-cash purchase so it’ll go fast, but the current owners need time to get their stuff cleared out. After that, though, it’s all ours.
Sounds great. You’ll have to have a housewarming party when the place is ready.
Absolutely! Keep you posted!
Congrats!
Thanks!
That was the end of the convo, and Brianna put down her phone, annoyed with herself at the flare of jealousy that went through her. Here Bellamy was going to have her own winery, and she was living in an apartment above a gallery.
Shut up, Ms. Sour Grapes, she told herself, and that helped a little. No one could deny that Bellamy had been very lucky — a lot luckier than the previous owner of the winning lottery ticket, who’d met a bad end after he tried to murder both her and Marc Trujillo — but she still deserved every speck of happiness that came her way.
