Of Mates & Magic by Maggie Francis

Author:Maggie Francis [Francis, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Maggie Francis

Chapter 18

Seb

“Hey man, are you listening?” Tate calls to me from the other side of the workroom.

“Huh?” I respond distractedly. I’m definitely not listening. At all.

I’m picturing Cora yesterday in the shop.

We had spent the whole day together working on something she called “merchandising”, which looks a lot like moving things around and stepping back to stare at it. Then moving something else and then adding a plant.

It is still baffling to me, but she was humming with happiness while we did it, and that had made my Wolf happy, so I’m not complaining. After our charged moments before lunch, we had spent the rest of the day comfortably together. Neither of us able or willing to break the spell between us.

We had talked about a lot of nothing, but in the spaces between the words we spoke, we told each other a lot more about ourselves than we ever had before. I now know that she has a sharp eye and a sharper tongue. She is funny and sarcastic and has an almost encyclopedic memory for herbs. She fiercely loves her shop and Desi and her intensely outlandish and eccentric mother who had walked in at one point to pick something up from the back room.

After bursting through the front door like a stylish and self-possessed Cosmo Kramer, Alma had swirled into the shop and taken me in with her shrewd gaze in a heartbeat. She kissed Cora’s cheek before stalking over to where I was standing near the check-out desk and asked me to reach something from a shelf above us. When I brought it down, she grabbed my shirt in her fists and pulled me in close to her face in a surprisingly strong grip, and warned me, hissing low,

“If I find out that you have broken her heart at any time, there will be no body to find, Darling.”

I blinked at her, nodded and mumbled a respectful “Ma’am” at her. She is a tiny woman and positively terrifying, even my Wolf recognized her authority and curled up inside me, getting as much space as he could. After searching my eyes for what felt like an uncomfortably long time, she seemed satisfied and nodded her head once.

Then she smoothed out my shirt and swirled away from me.

“Cora, My Treasure, have you run your hands over that brute’s chest? His brawn is positively scrumptious!” She trilled as she swept towards the front door.

“MOM!” Cora had shrieked.

Cora’s cheeks were beet red and she quickly covered her face in her hands, muttering something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like “Jesus h fuck.”

I chuckled and watched her as she dragged her hands down her face while rolling her eyes back in her head dramatically.

“Language, Cora dear!” Her mother practically sang over her shoulder as she flourished a scarf over her shoulder and left the shop as quickly as she had arrived.

“Uuuuugh for fuck’s sakes.” Cora sighed once the door had clicked behind her mother.

“She seems… nice?” I said and Cora huffed a strangled laugh.

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