It was then that Faye noticed that Grandmother’s old hagstone charm – nine pebbles with natural holes in them, held together with string – was missing from where it usually hung by the door. Puzzled, she wondered where it was.
‘Welcome,’ she added with a smile, to reassure him –it wasn’t unusual for visitors to the area to be a little unsure about the shop.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
Tall.That was her first thought. He must have been six foot five or more, because he had to stoop his head to come through the doorway. She watched him as he walked in with long, easy strides and the air of a king inspecting his realm.
Faye’s second thought was that he was beautiful. She was absolutely sure that she hadn’t seen this man before. Handsome was a poor relation to the kind of heavenly perfection of his face, which was slightly long and high-cheekboned but perfectly proportioned. His blue-green eyes transfixed her; and when he spoke, his mouth had a slight sulky fullness. Lips that wanted to be kissed; a bottom lip that deserved biting. His eyelashes were long, and his manner was languid but purposeful. Faye had the impression of strength kept in reserve, just under the surface, coiled and ready under his slightly cat-like demeanour.
He had said something, and she had no idea what it was.
‘I’m sorry?’ she asked, befuddled.
‘I said, nice shop you’ve got here.’ His voice was slightly accented; she half frowned, trying to place it.
‘Oh. Thanks.’ She smiled, her heart racing. Faye was suddenly very aware of her own breathing.
‘How long has it been here?’ He smiled at her again, and his eyes lit up with an odd glow when he did. They were strange, luminous: exactly like the sea on a cloudy day, when the sun came through the clouds and the colour of the sea changed from grey-green to jewelled blue.
‘Oh. It opened in the seventies. It’s always been our house, though. Belonging to my family, that is.’ Faye took a deep breath while pretending to take a sip of coffee. ‘You’re not local. What brings you here?’ she managed to ask over the rim of her mug.
‘Adventure.’ The stranger ran two long fingers along the glass counter, looking down at the pendants and rings showcased underneath. Faye stared; he was rough-shaven, and his clipped beard was a dark blonde like his shoulder-length dark blonde hair. He leaned in closer to her. He didn’t have the air of a young man – he was too centred, too present for that. Yet, he had few lines on his face; no grey hair that she could see.
‘This one is beautiful.’ His voice was low, and his face was inches from hers. Ordinarily, it would have been an invasion of personal space, but the idea didn’t even cross her mind; she was spellbound.
He looked up, and time seemed to slow. Faye felt his gaze on hers, and it was as though a mist descended, obscuring the shop, leaving only her and the stranger in the middle, like the eye of a storm, the quiet inside a tornado. She felt a sense of shifting, as if she was not secure on the ground at all but instead had her feet in wet sand as the tide washed in and out, pulling her in, burying her feet deeper and deeper. Dimly she remembered a similar sensation after the love spell, when the door had flown open in the wind. But while that had been fear and disorientation, this was a kind of pleasant fugue.
She didn’t know what he was pointing to; she couldn’t look away from his eyes. It was exactly how she’d felt before, in the seconds before kissing someone for the first time: a sweet anticipation, a sense of an incredible longing filling the tiny inch of air between their lips.
How would it feel to kiss that full-lipped mouth? The hint of a smile played at its corner; Faye’s own soft lips parted involuntarily. She had never felt this kind of sweet, hot crackling energy as there was between them, making her light-headed. A heat that lit her up from the tips of her toes to her forehead.
She noticed a tattoo on his tanned neck, half hidden by the collar on his T-shirt. It was blue and looked like an animal head. Her gaze dropped to his well-muscled chest which was obvious even under his T-shirt. He was rangy but strong, like he spent a lot of time outdoors.
Without meaning to, Faye sighed. Somehow, the introduction of her breath into the small space between them blew away the mist that had hidden the rest of the world. Her return to the mundane was hard and unwelcome, like a sudden change in the temperature.
Faye fumbled with her cup and dropped it, spilling coffee over her laptop which was open on the counter. She had been meaning to start the quarterly accounts but hadn’t been able to bring herself to focus on it yet.
‘Oh, no. Oh god. Sorry. I…’ Hurriedly, she picked up the mug and looked around for a rag to soak up the coffee from the computer. ‘No, no, no!’ she muttered. Not finding anything to hand, she tore off her green long-sleeved T-shirt, thankful she had a short, tight yoga top on underneath, and used it to dab the laptop.
Faye was glad Annie wasn’t here. She’d take great pleasure in teasing her about this for years to come.Faye, remember when that gorgeous blonde guy came in? Ye can’t be trusted with ahot drink. Faye, we’re gonna need to get ye oven gloves for when the fellas are around!
‘Don’t apologise. Accidents happen.’ He smiled, watching her: he didn’t seem to share her panic over the spilled coffee.
‘Oh…you must think I’m such an idiot…’ she muttered as she tried to soak up all the coffee from the keyboard. The laptop made a fizzing noise, and the screen went black. ‘Oh no!’ she wailed. ‘No, no, no!’ Faye held down the ON button, but nothing happened. She swore under her breath. She couldn’t afford a new laptop right now; takings were steady, but Mistress of Magic wasn’t exactly a multimillion-pound business.
‘Is it all right?’ He leaned over, looking at the screen.
‘I think it’s gone…’ She stopped mid-sentence as the tall stranger reached over and touched the keyboard gently. ‘Oh, no, please…’
‘It’ll be all right. Give it a minute,’ the man said, moving around the counter. Faye was vividly aware of his presence next to her. She found herself gauging where her head would rest perfectly on his chest if she lay next to him, or if she melted into his lean body in an embrace…
In the strange way that happens in times of misfortune, she felt in that moment that, somehow, they had already moved on from being strangers to something more. But later, when she looked back at their first meeting, she would know that it was in fact something else entirely that had made her feel that way.
The man touched the laptop again, and Faye thought for a second that she saw a spark of electricity between his finger and the computer. And then the laptop screen flashed blue, and the usual start-up screen appeared.
‘Oh, thank god,’ she breathed as the spreadsheet reappeared, apparently unharmed.
‘There you are. The way they make these things now, it’s hard to break them,’ he said, that twinkle in his eyes again. Sheknew that was absolutely wrong, but she smiled along with him, nonetheless.
