The Trouble with Magic (Loveswept) Read Online Free PDF Page A

long.”
    He stopped his inspection of the paneled walls and the thick soft carpeting on the floor to look at her. “Run that by me again?”
    “I was afraid of the dark, you see,” she admitted, feeling unreasonably foolish. She hadn’t seen any boogie-boys in the dark for quite some time, and childhood fears were nothing to be ashamed of, but still ... “My parents would leave my door open, turn on this hall light and leave their door open, in case I got scared. That way they could hear me, I could hear them, and we didn’t disturb anyone.” She tossed her black braid over her shoulder and pushed her glasses closer to her face in one continuous motion. “I was afraid of the dark for a long time and when no more children came along, the nursery just stayed mine.”
    “What about sex?” he asked.
    Sex? “I’m sorry?” she said. Sex?
    “What about sex?”
    “Well, what about it?” she asked, a bit frazzled. Sex was good. Sex was delightful. What else did he want to know about it?
    “What did your parents do about sex, with you roaming around all night?”
    Her features went blank. “I don’t know,” she said, reflecting on the past. “When I was young, I suppose they simply stopped whatever they were doing and let me crawl into bed with them. Later, we knocked before entering one another’s room. It was the polite thing to do. Considerate. I never caught them at it, and I never really gave it much thought,” she said, looking at him as if she considered his thoughts to be off track.
    They were, of course. He shouldn’t have asked her about it. He should have left it all in the past where it belonged. Still, there was a child in him somewhere that envied her the hall light and open doors.
    “Clever idea, this,” he said, his gaze roving about, avoiding her inquisitive stare. “Did someone name it? Like the Bride’s Garden? My guess is the Wailing Hall.”
    “That’s very good,” she said, laughing, turning to leave. “But, no. It’s just the hall to the nursery.”
    She took him to a door on the walkway that opened onto a stairwell. She stepped in and proceeded to the top. The third floor had at one time been servants’ quarters and was now used for storage.
    “Did you live here year round?”
    “No. I grew up in Harford.”
    “New Hampshire? Massachusetts? Maine?”
    “New York,” she said, taking the servants’ stairs all the way to the kitchen on the main floor. “Between Binghamton and Ithaca. My father was an apple farmer.”
    “Was an apple farmer?”
    “Mm. He passed away a while back,” she said.
    He wished he could see her face. There was nothing in her voice to indicate that her father’s passing had had any effect on her, but if he could have seen her face. ...
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “Thank you,” she said, still without emotion. “The kitchen, as you can see, is completely modern. Oh. Did you want to see the attic?”
    “Does it leak?”
    “Certainly not.”
    “I didn’t think so,” he said. “I think we can skip it this time.”
    “There’s a cellar too,” she said uneasily. “It has rock walls so it sometimes gets a little damp, usually during long periods of steady rain. But it doesn’t really leak.”
    “Harriet. Harriet.” He shook his head. “You’re doing it all wrong,” he said, throwing his head back as if he couldn’t take the agony of it any longer. “You’re supposed to point out the flaws in the house and conceal the assets. You’re talking this place up like a commission-hungry realtor.”
    “But ... there are no flaws. A couple of the doors need oiling, and that faucet upstairs needs a new washer but other—”
    “You’d better make up a couple more then—a couple of big ones—if you don’t want me to snatch this place out from under you,” he said, hardly believing his own ears. “Could I bother you for a drink?”
    Bewildered, she nodded. “Coffee, tea, juice? Something stronger?”
    “Coffee, if it’s no