Chapter 8

"What?"Lily stared up at Braxton, her eyes wide. "What curse?"

Braxton rubbed his hands over his face and grimaced. The rain finally started to fall, and it felt all too fitting considering the grim news he had to share. "It's kind of a long story. Let's go back to the inn, and I'll explain the best I can."

"All right."

Braxton ached to reach for her hand, but he forced himself to keep his distance. He shouldn't have been dancing with her and he sure as hell shouldn't have kissed her again, but the draw had just been too overwhelming. His attraction to her was unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. The only way he was going to be able to resist her was with her help. Once she knew the stakes, he was certain she'd be the one to end whatever was sparking between them.

Lily inched closer to him as they started walking and then slipped her arm through his, huddling closer to him as the wind whipped past them.

He automatically put his arm around her shoulders, trying to shield her from the cold. Everything in him screamed that this was right. His soul was somehow aligned with hers, and he had no doubt that, given half a chance, he'd happily spend the rest of his life with her. The thought sent warmth through his chest, but then pain stabbed him just as quickly when he acknowledged that there wouldn't ever be a happily-ever-after in his future.

The rain started to fall harder, and then suddenly there was a crack of lightning followed by a bone-rattling boom of thunder.

Lily jumped and grabbed onto him tighter. He sped up, quickly sweeping her into the inn. Water dripped from their soaked clothes onto the wooden floor, and Braxton gave Rita an apologetic look. "Sorry about that. We got caught in the rain."

Rita waved an unconcerned hand. "Don't worry about it at all. I'll clean this up and then bring you some extra towels."

"Thank you."

Lily started to shiver.

"Is there a possibility of tea?" he asked. "I know the power's still out, but?—"

"We have a gas stove. I'll get a kettle going and bring it up as soon as possible," Rita said.

"You're an angel." Braxton smiled gratefully at her before ushering Lily to the stairs.

Once they were back in the room, Braxton activated the flashlight app on his cell phone and led Lily toward the bathroom. She stood just inside the door with her arms wrapped around herself, muttering, "Cold."

"I know." He turned on the shower and was relieved to feel hot water come out of the tap. "Get in the shower and warm up. We'll hang up our clothes so that they can dry."

"What about you?" she asked, the rain still glistening on her eyelashes.

"I'll towel off. It'll be fine." He closed the door behind him and was grateful when Rita knocked on the door a moment later with a fresh stack of towels.

"Tea will be up in a few minutes. Is there anything else I can do for you?" she asked.

"Are there robes somewhere?" he asked, wondering what he'd do if they had to sit around in towels all night.

"Yes, check the armoire. They should be folded up on the middle shelf. There should also be candles in the bottom drawer and battery-operated lights on the nightstands."

"You're a lifesaver." Braxton walked over and pulled the armoire door open. Sure enough, there were two very plush, luxurious-looking robes waiting for him. "Perfect. Thank you very much."

"My pleasure, Mr. Kirkwood." Rita closed the door behind her, leaving Braxton alone in the dark room.

After finding and lighting a half dozen candles, he quickly stripped off his soaked clothes and toweled off before slipping into the larger of the two robes. The soft material felt like heaven after his wet jeans and thin cotton shirt. After hanging his clothes in the empty closet, he grabbed the extra blanket from the top shelf and took a seat in the chair, waiting for Lily.

When the water stopped, he walked over to the bathroom door and knocked softly. "I have a robe for you."

Lily opened the door just a crack and poked her hand out, taking the robe.

Ten minutes later, the tea had arrived and Lily walked out of the bathroom, her cheeks pink and her wet hair fanned over her shoulders. She was so lovely that she nearly took Braxton's breath away. The intimacy of the moment took him by surprise, and he had to look away, feeling as if he were intruding on a private moment.

"Thank goodness Rita was thoughtful enough to stock the bathroom with battery lanterns, otherwise I'd have been fumbling around in the dark." She scanned the candlelit room. "Isn't this romantic?"

"Practical," he said, ignoring the fact that he could have just turned on the battery lights. Was he a glutton for punishment? It appeared so. "Are you done in the bathroom?"

"Sure am. Thank you. I feel a million times better."

"Good. The tea is on the desk." He disappeared into the bathroom, took his own quick shower, and reemerged to find Lily sitting cross-legged on the bed with both hands wrapped around her teacup.

Lily patted the bed beside her. "Okay, we're both cleaned up and warm again. Come over here and tell me about that curse."

He eyed the bed and then looked at the chair. It would definitely be safer to keep his distance.

"Oh, come on, Brax. I'm not going to jump you," she said as she rolled her eyes. "We're friends, right?"

He nodded, though he wasn't worried about her jumping him. He was the one who'd kissed her, all three times. There was no doubt he was the one with impulse control problems.

"Then come over here and tell me what's going on."

How could he say no to that? Braxton grabbed his own cup of tea and then settled on the bed beside her.

Lily placed a light hand on his arm. "I just want you to know that whatever is going on, I'll help in any way I can."

If only.He sucked in a deep breath and said, "Thank you. I appreciate that, but I don't think you can."

She frowned. "I'm sure with the help of my grandmother, we can figure out something."

"Trust me, if you witches have any ideas, I'm all ears. This isn't me being stubborn. But before you start offering help, you'd better hear all the facts."

Lily pulled her hand back, and Braxton instantly felt the loss. It had been a long time since he'd had the comfort of another person's touch. But it wasn't just that he wanted someone's hand on him; he wanted hers. She turned, giving him her full attention, and said, "Okay, I'm listening."

"I don't even know where to start," Braxton said with a slight shake of his head.

She gave him a small smile. "From the beginning?"

"I suppose you're right." He glanced down at his teacup. "My family isn't like yours."

"Who's is?" she asked with a laugh. "Three sisters, all witches, and a powerful matriarch witch who's in everyone's business all under the guise of looking out for everyone? I swear, my grandmother is the busiest busybody in the entire town, and everyone just accepts it because she acts like she's royalty or something just because our family were the first witches who came ashore a few centuries ago."

"She might be a little overbearing, but I bet that's mostly felt only by you and your sisters. The rest of us appreciate how much she cares about the town," Braxton said gently.

She shrugged and let out a self-deprecating laugh. "I suppose you're right. I guess it's true that everyone, even the best of families, have some issues."

"Some issues." He let out a huff. "I'd take some issues over"—he waved a hand—"this."

Lily gave him her full attention, and there was no more room for stalling.

"I guess the first thing you should know is that I come from a family of grifters." Braxton watched her carefully to see how she reacted to his confession. When her expression didn't change, he plowed forward. "I grew up in the Florida Keys. Marathon, actually, in a trailer park. My parents were big on scamming rich tourists down in Key West with their snake oil concoctions."

"They sold potions?" Lily asked.

He nodded and ignored the churning in his gut that was always present when he spoke about his family. "Yes. When I was a kid, they made me believe they were all harmless. There were excuses about how it was all just a tourist experience, or people should pay more attention to what they were buying, but later I learned that the potions actually made them more susceptible to suggestion. And my parents were fleecing them."

"Wow, that's terrible."

"It's not even the half of it. When I was eight, my father chose a rich widow as a target and made her believe he was in love with her. He left me and my mother and went off and married her. After only a few months, he managed to gain access to all her assets. Cleaned her out and fled the country. We haven't seen or heard from him since."

Sympathy shone in Lily's eyes as she reached for him again, covering his hand with hers. "I'm sorry, Braxton. I don't know how people can be so incredibly selfish."

"When I was younger, it bothered me a lot," he said honestly. "But now? I wish my mother would have gone with him, and I'd have been free from both of them."

"You're still in contact with your mom?" There was no judgment, just curiosity.

"Unfortunately." He ground his teeth together. There was nothing he wanted more than to change the subject, but Lily deserved to know the truth. "Mom kept up with her potion scams, but when I was a teenager, she got involved with another witch. This one was seriously bad news. He taught her the world of curses. She was a natural, and soon she was a legend in South Florida. People sought her out for all kinds of terrible spells. At first, they were jilted first wives or scorned mistresses. They wanted their exes to be cursed with bad luck in money, love, and especially sex. The amount of erectile dysfunction curses she handed out must have increased the pharmaceutical prescriptions for that little blue pill tenfold."

"It might serve them right," Lily said, though she didn't look amused.

"If only she'd stopped there," Braxton said as he closed his eyes and tried to block out the images of his mother ranting about his father and how if he ever showed his face again she'd find a way to make his life a living hell. "After the man who taught her how to cast all those curses left one day without even a note, she completely lost it. She kept saying she was determined to have just the right spell to punish any man who wronged her in the future. When she wasn't out selling her revenge curses, she spent hours on end in her bunker, testing awful spells. I was in high school by then and stayed away as much as possible."

"I would have too," Lily said quietly.

"The moment I graduated, I was out of there. She went out to scam someone or sell them a curse and I just packed a duffle bag and left. No note. No warning. I just left."

Lily bit down on her bottom lip. "I bet that didn't go over well."

"At first it was great. She had no idea where I was. I'd ditched my phone and got a new one. I was free for about six months, until my college sent something to Dante's house. It was the address I used when I applied. His mom didn't know that I wasn't speaking to my mother, and she dropped it off. That's how my mother found me. Then she showed up at my college and sweet-talked a couple of my friends into letting her into our apartment. I found her sitting in my room, seething. She was angry that I'd left just like my father and told me if I ever cut her off again she'd make sure my life was a living hell. Knowing what I knew about her, I believed her. From that point on, I took her phone calls but did my best to remain as distant as possible."

"I'm sure she didn't make that easy for you," Lily guessed.

"Absolutely not. But I managed to navigate her BS for a while. I saw her when she blew into town. Did my best to keep her out of my life. But when I started dating, she made a point of getting close to my girlfriend, Lucy. My mom would call her, send gifts, and took a general interest in her. I never told Lucy about my troubled past with my parents, but I did warn her that my mother wasn't always on the right side of the law and tried to discourage the relationship. But because she lost her mother to a car accident when she was young, Lucy latched onto my mother and the two became close."

Shaking her head, Lily climbed off the bed and refilled her teacup. "All I see are a ton of red flags. Did she just not care when you warned her about your mother?"

"I'm not sure she really believed me. My mother can be very charming when she wants to be." Braxton rolled his shoulders. "When they started planning a wedding I never agreed to, I broke up with Lucy."

"She didn't take it well, I'm guessing."

"Neither of them did," Braxton confirmed. "My mother was furious. I thought she was just mad because she was losing the daughter she never had, but when everything finally came out, I learned that she had recruited Lucy into her grift. And once we were married, she was going to try to rope me into the scheme, too. Her plan was to use Lucy to get to me. When I learned Lucy was scamming people with those influencer potions, I sent a tip to the Magical Task Force."

Lily's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open into a shocked O.

"Yeah. Exactly. Neither of them expected that. Lucy barely escaped a raid and went running back to my mother. The two of them decided I needed to learn a lesson, and that's when Lucy asked my own mother for a curse to bind me to her. Mom was mad that her newest recruit had been burned and could no longer run her scams in our college town, and she agreed to make it for her."

"Your own mother not only allowed her to curse you, but also sold the potion to her, too?" Lily climbed back onto the bed and moved to sit right next to Braxton. "Tell me that she changed her mind. That she didn't do that to her own son."

"Can't. She did it. The curse dooms any relationship I try to have with any woman other than Lucy. Anytime I try to date anyone, terrible things start to happen to them. It's one incident of bad luck after another until I'm out of the picture. The minute I break it off, their lives go back to a normal existence."

Lily narrowed her eyes. "What kind of bad luck? Are we talking acne breakouts or house-burning-down bad luck?"

Braxton lifted his hands, indicating that anything was possible. "The first girlfriend I had after that suffered the most because I didn't know what was happening. She tripped over a neighbor's cat and broke her arm. A day later, she was rear-ended by a garbage truck and her car was totaled. She was the only one out of ten people at her office who got food poisoning at a weekend retreat and spent three days in the bathroom. Her microwave blew up from a supposed power surge that no one else experienced. But the worst was when a sink hole opened up in her front yard, swallowing her and her dog. She emerged with a sprained ankle and a dog who is to this day riddled with anxiety over the event. It was then that Lucy spilled the beans. My girlfriend bolted, and suddenly her bad luck vanished."

"That's horrible."

"Right," Braxton agreed. "And that's why I can't date you, Lily. I won't let my curse affect you that way."

She pursed her lips and studied him. "How together do you have to be with someone for the curse to kick in?"

He shook his head. "I don't really know. Usually all it takes is some flirting and mutual interest for small things to start happening. Bigger stuff usually happens after a few dates. Hard to say. I think it really depends on how much we like each other."

"I see." She placed her hand on his cheek, caressing his five o'clock shadow.

"Lily," he breathed and covered her hand with his. "This really isn't a good idea."

"I think it is. Here's the thing, Brax. I've been into you ever since you kissed me back at the Witches Ball. But so far, I haven't seen even a hint of bad luck. Not unless you count the weather catching up to us and forcing us to stay overnight here on the island. But I have to say, I don't think that was bad luck at all."

"It wasn't," he agreed as he focused on her plump red lips, desperate to taste them again.

"So… What are we waiting for? I'm willing to find out the limits if you are."

He wanted to say yes. He was desperate to throw out all his reservations and pretend he didn't have the curse hanging over his head, but he couldn't. He wouldn't. If anything serious happened to her, he would never forgive himself. Braxton gently pulled away, letting her hand fall to the bed. "I can't. I'm sorry, Lily. I won't risk it."

She let out a long sigh. "I suppose I understand." Sitting back on her heels, she studied him. "You know, it's about time you shed this curse. When we get back to Befana Bay, I'm going to study some of my grandmother's texts and see what we can do about neutralizing it." There was a glint in her eye when she added, "Then we'll see where this thing goes."

Braxton grimaced, hating what he had to say next. "The last person I was interested in tried to do just that, and when she cast her spell, the curse rebounded on her. And now she's in the same boat I am. As much as I'd love to be free of this, it's too risky. I can't let you do that."

"I refuse to believe there's nothing we can do," Lily said stubbornly.

Braxton's eyes started to sting with fatigue, and he laid down on the bed. Staring up at the ceiling, he said, "I appreciate your willingness to help, Lily. But the fact is that I've tried and witnessed the consequences." He rolled over on his side and ran his hand down her arm. "I care about you and your family too much to let you get involved."

Lily looked like she wanted to argue. Instead, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. When she opened them, she let out a small sigh and then snuggled up next to him, her head on his shoulder. "I hear you, but just so you know, you're not going to stop me from researching this type of curse and any potential cures or reversals."

"I'm not going to change your mind, am I?"

"Nope." She placed her arm over his chest, getting even more comfortable.

Braxton couldn't help it. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the top of her head. "Research all you want. Just promise me you won't cast any spells."

"I promise I won't cast any spells without talking to you about it first," she amended and then yawned.

It wasn't the answer he'd expected, but it would do… for now.