Read Online Sorcery and the Single Girl by Mindy Klasky - Free Book Online Page A

mean, it was one thing for the man to know Prospero’s line from The Tempest; the play was performed all the time. But Merchant of Venice? And then, to temper the knowledge of Shakespeare by mentioning my childhood favorite, sagging old Eeyore…My heart swelled inside my chest.
    I was spared the need for a witty Elizabethan rejoinder because the basset hound returned with the dessert cart. We were treated to a desultory explanation of the treats—almond cake, baba au rhum, chocolate éclairs, a towering croquembouche, triplets of tiny fruit tarts, crème caramel, napoleons, Strasbourg cake, St. Tropez cake, profiteroles…I gained five pounds just listening to the list.
    When the waiter finished his recitation, Graeme waved an inviting hand toward the cart. “What pleases you?” he asked.
    Oh so many things, I thought.
    Melissa had a long set of rules about foods to eat on dates. I needed to avoid anything that would squirt onto my clothes, anything that would leave seeds in my teeth, anything that would be difficult to cut on a slippery plate with the small fork that would likely be my only utensil. What did that leave? And what could I choose that wouldn’t make me feel that I had betrayed Cake Walk?
    Charmingly, Graeme misread my indecision. He said to the waiter, “Why don’t you bring us a few things. The almond cake, and the chocolate éclair, profiteroles, and…?”
    He quirked an eyebrow toward me. How did he maintain his quarterback physique, eating multiple desserts? I hadn’t had any dinner, though, so I could splurge. Throwing Melissa’s cautions to the winds, I said, “The fruit tarts!” They were likely to slip about when I tried to cut them into bites, and the berries posed a threat to my otherwise gleaming smile, but I was willing to live life dangerously.
    “And the fruit tarts,” Graeme told the hound. “And a decaffeinated coffee for me, with a Grand Marnier. Jane?”
    “Decaf, also.” The waiter nodded and started to wheel his cart away. “And a Baileys!” I called, abandoning the last of my common sense. He nodded and sighed, as if I had just sentenced his youngest child to a lifetime banishment in the barbarian wilds outside the city walls. I settled back in the booth. “Mmm,” I said. “This is so decadent!”
    “You see? Hardly the act of a barrister.”
    “That’s right. But your card said ‘Acquisitions.’ What, exactly, do you acquire?”
    “Whatever people need.” He smiled easily. “It’s like this. Say you read a magazine article, and it mentions a davenport owned by the Countess of Wessex. You decide that you can’t live without that very furniture in your own parlor. I’m the man to find the piece for you. And I won’t even tell the members of your bridge club where I found it. None of them will ever get the same piece.”
    I laughed, trying to picture myself bidding trump or half-trump or no-trump or whatever it is that bridge mavens bid. “I’m not exactly the bridge sort.” I wasn’t about to say that I had two sofas, instead of davenports, and I had a living room instead of a parlor.
    “What, then? Your book club? Is that what all the librarians go in for these days?”
    “I don’t know about all the librarians, but I’ve been in a book club or two.”
    “So you could hire me to find a lamp, say, so that you could read great world literature in style. Or a tall-case clock, or whatnot.”
    “Acquisitions,” I said, as if it made all the sense in the world.
    “At your service.” Graeme’s smile blinded me.
    The waiter chose that moment to return with our buffet of desserts. He put a large coffee press on the table and shook his head sadly before finding the energy to tamp down our decaffeinated grounds. He poured two cups and set our alcoholic chasers to one side. “Will there be anything else?” he said, and he sighed so deeply that I worried our profiteroles might blow onto the floor.
    “Not at present,” Graeme said, and then we were