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I rocked back on my heels. “So welcome to being threatened by vampire relatives . . . super-awkward.” Jed chuckled. “And by the way . . .” I threw myself forward into his arms. He made an uhf sound and wound his arms around me. I wrapped my legs around his waist, much in the same way I’d crawled up his body the day we met. He fell back against the door as I pressed my mouth to his.
“Hi there, Judith.” He laughed as I ran kisses up his throat, right up to the point when I bit his ear. “Ow! Crazy woman!”
“Eh, you bloody well love me,” I told him.
He thought about it for a long moment. “Yep. I do.”
I gave him a sunny smile. “Good.”
He watched me expectantly, and when I didn’t follow up, he jostled me. “Oh, come on. Don’t play it all cool and collected.” I laughed until he threatened, “I’ll start calling you Judith again.”
“I love you, too. Very much. You idiot.”
“Be still, my beatin’ heart.” He sighed, his gaze dropping to my boxes and suitcase. “So you’re really leavin’, huh?”
“I’m sorry. I stuck around here as long as I could. But I have to go. I’ll be able to come in a few . . . months, maybe? I will miss you. A shocking number of people in Kilcairy insist on wearing shirts full-time. Disheartening, really.”
“It’s my fault. It took me a while to explain everything to my family. Fair warning: when you walk into the middle of the family barbecue and announce, ‘Oh, the curse thing was just a witch’s practical joke,’ the reactions are gonna be strong.”
“Are they OK?” I asked.
“Well, the news that they could shift into anything they want, anytime they want, has led to some . . . security issues. All of my uncles are turning themselves into werewolves and giant turtles and frost giants. In broad daylight. Sometimes in the Little Debbie aisle at the Piggly Wiggly. They’re like little kids. My dad is spending a lot of time trying to keep them in line so they don’t blow our cover. Normally, that’s the sort of thing I would help him with, but I told him I had urgent business to get to up here. He said I’ve earned a little time off.”
I arched an eyebrow, a smile playing on my lips. “And what do you plan on doing with that time?”
“Well, I was thinking, and I’m just throwing this out there, that you’ve learned pretty much all you can, and should, about our culture. But I know absolutely nothing about Ireland other than Lucky Charms and Saint Patrick’s Day. And I don’t think that thing about leprechauns is for real.”
“You want to come to Ireland?”
“The Kerrigans helped fast-track my passport application process by way of a goodwill gesture,” he said. “Don’t worry. They used bribery, not magic.”
I gasped, bouncing a little in his hold. “You’ll love it there. If we try hard enough, we might find someone who knows about shifters. And you could meet my family, which isn’t so much a selling point as a disclaimer.”
They would love him, I was sure, because he loved me. And he wasn’t Stephen, which would be enough for Penny.
“It would be nice if we had a more normal ‘meeting’ story to tell them, though. I mean, even when we did meet without all of the paranormal claptrap, there was a possum involved, so that can’t be typical. I’m going to catch hell from my aunts for the possum bit; they’ll laugh for months.”
“You want something normal?”
“I would love a little normal,” I confessed.
He grinned, set me on my feet, and kissed the tip of my nose. “I’ll be right back.”
A few minutes later, he came to the door in a pressed plaid work shirt. He bobbled a foil-wrapped pan and a much bigger spray of hydrangeas while he knocked on the screen.
“Jed, what are you doing?”
“You don’t know me,” he insisted. “We’ve never met before. I’m your new neighbor, and I’m comin’ by to introduce myself.”
“Oh,” I said, a naughty grin spreading across my lips. “Hello, handsome stranger.”
“This isn’t a porn.”
I frowned. “Hello, annoying person I may not want to meet after all.”
“Hello, new neighbor. I’m Jed Trudeau. I live next door, and I wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood with lasagna and flowers.”
“That’s very sweet of you, Mr. Trudeau. I’m Nola Leary. I just moved here to the Hollow with absolutely no agenda whatsoever.”
