Read Online Spells & Stitches by Barbara Bretton - Free Book Online Page B

be?”
    “Depends on what you’re afraid of.”
    Spiders. Snakes. Spending another long dark night alone.
    She knew the answer he wanted to hear.
    “You,” she said and suddenly she wasn’t lying. “I’m afraid of you.”
    “Good,” he said. “That’s a start.”

CHLOE
     
    “Maybe this wasn’t such a bright idea after all,” I muttered a few mornings later as I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and an enormous glass of orange juice.
    Bettina Weaver Leonides was watching the shop so I had until two o’clock to sit around in my maternity sweatpants and Luke’s old shirt. I had a basket of yarn samples to swatch, designs to format and convert to pdf’s, and enough paperwork to keep me busy until the baby arrived, but the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Indie dyers, a shepherdess from Brunswick, Luke’s mother.
    “Hope I’m not calling too early, honey,” Bunny MacKenzie said briskly, “but I wanted to get you before you started work.”
    “Not too early at all,” I said, glancing at the clock and wincing at the hour. “Actually I’m not going into the shop until this afternoon.”
    “No problems, I hope.”
    “Only if you consider paperwork a problem,” I said with a laugh. “Sometimes I get so busy with knitters at the store I can’t get anything else done.”
    “You work too hard,” she said with maternal certainty. “I saw you bustling around that shop.”
    “More like waddling around the shop.”
    “You’re carrying beautifully, honey. I wish I’d carried like you, but I blew up like a hot-air balloon every time.”
    We chitchatted pregnancy for a few minutes, then she got down to the reason for her call.
    “I lost the name of the restaurant we’re meeting at on Sunday.”
    “Carole’s Lakeside Inn.” I spelled out the name of the town. “North shore of Lake Winnipesaukee.”
    We chatted a few seconds more, then I hung up, feeling very smug. That wasn’t hard at all.
    Ten minutes later she phoned again. This time it was to find out if children under twelve were welcome at the buffet.
    Five minutes after that it was to tell me Luke wasn’t answering his cell phone and would I please tell him to phone home immediately.
    After the third “tell Luke” call I turned off the ringer and let Bunny roll into voice mail. It had to be done.
    “And what have I been telling you, missy.” Elspeth, our unwanted houseguest, suddenly appeared by my side, a three-foot doughnut of a woman with hair the color of a yellow cab. “Nothing good comes from truck with humans. All those foolish contraptions ringing and buzzing day and night just so they can keep an eye on each other’s business. Best to keep them at a distance, I say.”
    “I’m half human,” I reminded her, studiously ignoring the fact that Elspeth lived to spy on everyone’s business. “My baby will be three-quarters human. I want to meet her family.” I wanted her to know her family.
    “There will be a time for that.” She had a way of making a simple statement sound darkly threatening. “This weren’t it.”
    Grammar aside, even I had to admit that traipsing two hours away from home in the last few weeks of pregnancy probably wasn’t my brightest idea, but I had checked with Brianne, the Quebec healer who would help deliver my baby, and she had okayed the plan so long as we did it this week.
    “There be too many of them,” Elspeth said as she peered over my shoulder at the computer screen. “I’ve seen rabbits with smaller litters.”
    “Don’t you have anything that needs doing?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder at her. “You’re in my space.”
    She made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a Bronx cheer, then disappeared. I was about to send up a cheer of my own when she reappeared, doll sized, on my touch pad.
    “Hey!” I yelped as the cursor danced across the page.
    “’Tis Samuel’s fault plain and simple,” she said, stomping across the keyboard. “I am here to see your child safely