Read Online It Must Be Magic by Jennifer Skully - Free Book Online Page A

could stumble across a dead man, or worse, the killer who had done the deed. Lili, the little idiot, had knowingly put herself in an extremely dangerous situation. Didn’t she have a jot of common sense?
    Jesus. She was like Karen in so many ways, with outlandish ideas that spelled trouble. If Karen hadn’t been sure she had powerful psychic talents that only needed to be nurtured to come to full potency, if she hadn’t been driving to Sedona to find all that nurturing, if she hadn’t expressly defied his wishes, if she hadn’t…
    “Okay.” Lili’s voice pulled him back from the brink. “Here’s the thing.” She gulped as if she needed to find courage. “I got scared out there and decided that it was dumb to be by myself, so I came back before I started looking for a body.”
    Thank God Lili had
some
sense. “Don’t ever do that again.”
    She scared him half to death even as she made him think about things he’d relegated to a place deep inside that he rarely allowed himself access to. He couldn’t allow it now. What the hell concern was it of his what Lili Goodweather did?
    He was, however, in touch with his inner guy enough to know that if it had been Viola the postal lady he’d seen walking out of the woods, he wouldn’t have gotten angry.
    “Even Einstein told me it was stupid, and she should know since she’s —”
    “Yeah, I know, the reincarnation of the smartest man in history.” He ran a hand through his hair, and his tie felt too tight around his neck.
    “I didn’t go very far,” she added. “Honest.”
    He tapped his foot, and dirt puffed up from the scrubby grass, coating his dress shoe. “How far did you go?”
    “Fifteen minutes, maybe.” But she looked at the sky, and he figured that fifteen minutes had stretched to half an hour.
    She needed a keeper. “That’s too far.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Believe me, I know. I’m not doing
that
again.” Then she looked at him with a hint of mistiness in her eyes. “They were supposed to be
my
woods, and I’ve never been scared out there before. They’ve always been welcoming.”
    “Innocence lost,” he murmured, then admitted the truth to himself. There was an air of innocence about her that called to him. The way she used five sentences to say something that anyone else could have said in one. The way her thoughts rolled off her tongue. The way her fluttery skirts exemplified her personality, light and whimsical. When she wasn’t being idiotic.
    “What did you say?”
    “Nothing.” He wished for a moment that she hadn’t moved in next door. He had a date tonight, and his dates were with levelheaded women who weren’t anything like Lili. Watching the fading sunlight play through her hair, casting it with shades of moonlit-blue and midnight-black, he found himself wanting the women he dated to be more like Lili.
    “Promise you won’t go on walks by yourself looking for bodies.” It was his duty to give her one last reminder. “And you’ll let the police handle it.”
    “I’ll let the police handle it,” she parroted.
    “And you won’t talk to Fluffy again.”
    “I won’t.” She put her hands behind her back.
    “Let me see your fingers. I want to make sure you’re not crossing them.”
    She held up both hands, then zipped her lip. “I won’t say a word to Fluffy. Or Erika. Or Roscoe. Is there anyone else I shouldn’t tell? You’d better get it all out. Maybe I should get a pad of paper and write it down.” Then she covered her mouth. “Oops, I just remembered. I already told my boss.”
    He realized he’d been talking to her as if she were Erika’s age, and condescendingly, too. Instead of getting mad, she was making fun of him. He raised one brow. “And what did he say?”
    “
She
said I needed to use common sense.”
    “My kind of woman.” Sensible.
    Lili didn’t say anything at all to that.
    “Now that we’ve got that settled…” He glanced at his watch. He’d be late, yet an odd reluctance