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In this particular instance, no. Calvin and I were taking things slow, and I told myself I was fine with that. He would be worth the wait.
And I really did love that Viking six-burner stove. It needed some love and attention, since he hardly ever used it himself.
“Well, it’s probably a good bit bigger than your kitchen,” she allowed. “The former owner did a wonderful job of renovating the flat and the store, but she still had to work with the available space.”
“And it’s great,” I assured her. “It’s just that sometimes it’s nice to be able to spread out when you work.”
“Then let’s get back to town,” she said. “I don’t want to keep you.”
I didn’t bother to point out that Calvin wasn’t expecting me until seven, and that we still had plenty of time. As far as I was concerned, my work here was done.
When I got home, I tidied up a bit and changed into one of my pretty summer dresses. As I emerged from the bedroom, Archie sent me a jaundiced look.
“Leaving again?”
Considering what a misanthrope my cursed cat could be, you’d have thought he’d be happy to have the apartment to himself for a few hours. But, even though he didn’t want to come out and admit it, I sensed that Archie wasn’t terribly thrilled about my developing relationship with Calvin Standingbear. Maybe he looked at it as a sort of betrayal.
Or maybe he was just thinking ahead to the inevitable moment when I spent the night at Calvin’s house and didn’t get home in time to give him his breakfast promptly at seven-thirty the way he liked it.
Since Calvin and I hadn’t really progressed beyond some heavy make-out sessions on the couch, I had a feeling that an overnight stay was still off in the future somewhere. I didn’t tell Archie that, though, mostly because I didn’t think it was any of his business.
I still hadn’t said anything about Archie to Calvin, either. He continued to believe Archie was a stray I’d adopted and nothing more. It wasn’t so much that I felt any huge need to keep the secret any longer, only that the right moment hadn’t come up so far.
Because really, it was kind of hard to find the right moment to tell your new boyfriend that your cat wasn’t a cat at all, but an asexual man from the early 1950s who’d had the bad luck to attract a witch’s desire, desire he couldn’t possibly reciprocate, thus earning him a curse that had landed him in a feline body for the past seven decades.
“Yes,” I said coolly. “But I won’t be too late, since both Calvin and I have to be at work tomorrow morning. Don’t throw any wild parties while I’m gone.”
That remark got me a pair of slitted golden eyes, followed by the cat stalking out of the hallway and back into my office, where he usually slept.
Fine. I hadn’t been put here to cater to Archie’s every waking need. Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty as I gathered up my purse from the dining room table and headed out the door. I was coming up on the five-month anniversary of my arrival in Globe — and Archie’s and my first meeting — and I still hadn’t done bupkis in terms of removing that awful curse so he could go back to being a man.
Not that the delay was for a lack of trying. True, I’d been busy with running the store and seeing Calvin on the side, but I’d dutifully ordered all sorts of arcane books from various vendors around the country, hoping that one of them would finally yield the spell I needed to get rid of the curse that ill-meaning witch had cast so many decades ago. So far, none of those books had provided the answers we needed. All I’d gotten out of the process was a shelf full of volumes I’d probably never use, since the magic I practiced wasn’t generally the sort that involved itself with curses and hexes and spells that tried to warp the fabric of reality. I was just fine with doing the quiet rituals that sent out good vibes into the universe, vibes that would return to me with health, prosperity, and love.
And so far, they seemed to be working. I was definitely healthy as a horse, and the money I’d inherited a few months back from Lucien Dumond, leader of the Greater Los Angeles Necromancers’ Guild, after his untimely demise at his younger brother’s hands pretty much guaranteed that I’d certainly never want for anything even if my store had turned out to be a dismal failure. Which it actually wasn’t, to my surprise…and probably the surprise of a good percentage of the population of Globe.
As for love, well, things seemed to be humming along pretty well in that department, too. Sure, neither Calvin nor I had said the fateful words yet, but I knew I was crazy about him, and if the warmth in his night-dark eyes as he looked at me meant anything, then he wasn’t exactly indifferent, either.
I headed east away from Globe’s tiny downtown and along the highway for a few miles before pulling off in San Ramon, the small settlement of the San Ramon Apache tribe. The town itself wasn’t my destination, though, because Calvin’s house was located several miles away, in a spot that felt like the middle of nowhere, even if it was only about five minutes or so from the highway.
That last stretch of the trip always put my poor Volkswagen Beetle to the test; the little convertible definitely hadn’t been designed to bump along dirt roads that had only become progressively more rutted as monsoon season went on and we got hit by downpour after downpour on what was almost a daily basis. In fact, even though we hadn’t gotten any rain that day, as I drove I noticed a few ominous flashes off to the northeast, an indication that something was brewing there.
Well, about all I could do was hope it would stay off in the distance. I really didn’t relish the idea of trying to drive through the kind of blinding rain that often accompanied an Arizona thunderstorm.
Faint thunder met my ears as I got out of the car and made my way to the front door. I hadn’t even raised my hand to knock before the door opened and Calvin smiled down at me. He’d changed out of his uniform and was wearing a black T-shirt, faded jeans, and scuffed cowboy boots, and definitely was the most insanely gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my life.
“Right on time,” he said, and bent to give me a quick kiss in greeting. The caress was almost casual, but it still made a happy little tingle go all through me.
“It’s because of my Neptune in Capricorn,” I told him, doing my best to act cool, and he grinned, a glorious flash of white teeth.
“Of course it is. Come on in.”
I entered the house, glad of the rush of cool air from the home’s swamp cooler. That was another thing I hadn’t been used to before moving here; a lot of the houses in Globe used evaporative cooling rather than air conditioning because the air was so dry, even during monsoon season, but they were surprisingly effective.
“I got everything on your list,” Calvin said as he led me into the kitchen.
He’d insisted on that. It was fine for me to come over and cook for him, but he wasn’t going to let me buy the supplies. I’d wanted to argue that the cost really wasn’t an issue for me. However, I could tell it was a point of pride for him, and so I’d let it go.
That night, I was making London broil with a balsamic marinade, along with scalloped potatoes and salad. As he’d said, he had all the ingredients waiting for me, either set out on the polished concrete counters or sitting in the big stainless-steel refrigerator, so it didn’t take too long for me to get the marinade put together and the potatoes baking in the oven.
