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Kay stopped speaking to let Laura place a bowl of bread in front of them. “We have three choices tonight,” the woman said. “There’s a raisin with caraway, black olive bread and traditional sourdough.” Laura looked at Kay. “And there’s plenty more where this came from, so please, indulge yourself.”
“I will,” Kay reached for a slice of the raisin caraway, and she smeared a hefty portion of creamy butter on it. She looked at Damon, whose brow was slightly furrowed, and she said, “I’m sorry I brought up your mother. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“No. You didn’t. It was nice hearing your stories about her.” He sighed and took a bite of bread. The two chewed for a moment, and after he swallowed down his mouthful he said, “I believe my mother was mildly bipolar. She was undiagnosed and I can’t be sure, but those wonderful crazy highs she had were matched with some dark lows.”
“Oh, Damon. I had no idea.”
“Almost nobody did. She was very good at hiding her lows by claiming she was ill, or too immersed in spell work to go places. But unless her spell work was done from her bed… Well.” He lifted his drink to take a sip.
Kay reached over and placed a hand on his. “That must have been hard.”
He gave her a wry smile. “I feel as if I said too much.”
“No. You didn’t.”
He shook his head. “Kay Knight, I don’t trust easily, yet I’ve just trusted you, our arch enemy,” he teased, “with a whopper of a secret.”
“I promise to keep it close,” she said, but as Kay thought about it, she suspected her mother already knew.
She took the hand of Damon’s she was holding and lifted it to thread her fingers through his. “Trust is hard for me, too.”
“I know, but if we both go out on a limb and promise to believe the other is being sincere, I think we have a shot at something amazing.”
Kay smiled as the same knowledge filled her. “We do.” A warm glow had blossomed in her heart, and as she gazed into Damon’s eyes Kay realized she was letting herself fall in love without a parachute. And it was exhilarating.
Dinner was a delicious oxtail soup that was thick and savory like a stew, and the meal was finished off with a light, mixed berry sorbet. After Damon drove them back to the island, he made a pit stop at the beach.
The two ventured out onto the sand in the chilly night air, kept warm by the comfort of a blanket he had brought. As they stood together wrapped in the warmth of wool Kay gazed up at Damon. “I had a wonderful time tonight. Thank you for taking me to out of the way places where it was all about us.”
Damon turned so that he was facing her. “When I’m with you, that’s all I want it to be. I love my career in many ways, but what started off as a strong desire to be seen and appreciated has changed. I still love being a little bit famous most days, but I don’t need it the way I thought I did. What I need is much less, but so much more. What I really crave is for one special person to see the real me and love me anyway.”
She gazed into his eyes and saw his need, but she also saw a man who had a great capacity to love. He already loved her, and Kay felt that love fill her with the desire to do more than find a way to trust Damon. She wanted to love him the way he deserved as well. She smiled and draped her arms over his shoulders. “Isn’t that what most of us want?”
Waves crashed against the rocks nearby, and he leaned his head down to press his forehead to hers. “Yes, I suppose so, but not everyone wants it with witches like us.”
She chuckled. “Then lucky me, because I managed to find one of the only witches around.”
“Me too,” he said as he leaned in and kissed her.
The moment Damon’s lips touched hers, Kay felt a zing of electricity that rushed all the way to her toes. Maybe it was their magic, but she was too caught up in the way his soft lips nibbled at hers and the way she wanted to be kissing him forever to give it much thought. But when they broke apart the air around them sizzled with something Kay had never experienced before, and as scary as it was, she knew Damon was going to be her Knight one day soon.
15
Kay
Her cell phonedinged with another text and Kay let out a moan. She seriously regretted having given Jeannie her phone number a couple weeks ago. Not that she’d had a choice, because the woman would have extracted the information from any number of people who had it if Kay hadn’t succumbed. She wiped her hand on her apron and opened up the notification to read the message.
“For the love of chickens!” She cried out.
“Another haunting?” Corinne asked as she peered over her sister’s shoulder.
“Yes. The third one this week.”
“That woman is working overtime.” Corinne let out a little squeal. “Halloween is going to be so much fun this year!”
“Is it?” Kay asked, but she didn’t mean the skepticism. Sure, she might be cranky about having to rid another home of a meddlesome but harmless ghost who was having fun, but she was excited for Halloween, too. In fact, most of the island’s residents were as well. They were enjoying the bit fame Damon’s show was bringing to Night Meadow Island. Like Kay had suspected, Nancy Edmonds’ haunting had inspired Jeannie to spread the word about the island ghosts coming out to play, and new hauntings had popped up all over the island.
Many of the residents who had been affected by spiritual hoodlums were excited about their moment in the spotlight, while those who hadn’t been affected yet were waiting for their chance as if they might win the lottery. The two hair salons in town had never been busier, and Delilah’s, the local clothing store, had hired two new sales clerks and had opened up the storage shed in the back as a pop-up haberdashery to accommodate the men of the town.
