Dream Lake (36 page)

Authors: Lisa Kleypas

BOOK: Dream Lake

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“Dozens?” Justine repeated with a slight smile. “Why read something over and over when you already know the ending?”

“Because a good happily-ever-after is worth reading more than once.”

Justine gave her a mock-pitying glance. “Well, maybe someday a handsome duke in a puffy shirt will ride up to your doorstep on his steed and sweep you away.”

“I hope not,” Zoë said gravely, her blue eyes twinkling. “Alex would probably shoot him.”

Zoë had just become engaged to Alex Nolan, a local builder who had remodeled a cottage on Dream Lake for her over the summer. No one would have paired the cynical and hard-drinking Alex with someone as gentle-natured as Zoë. Even Alex had known he was all wrong for her. But now the former foul-mouthed degenerate was doing something no one would ever have expected of him: behaving like a man in love. Zoë had him wrapped around her finger. She could manage him so sweetly that he didn’t seem to notice—or care—that he was being managed.

“I’ll send the duke to your doorstep instead,” Zoë told her. “I’m sure you’ll know what to do with him.”

Ordinarily the comment would have made Justine laugh. But all she could manage was a glum forgery of a smile.

Snap out of it
, she told herself sternly.
You have a great life.
To start with, she owned a bed-and-breakfast on San Juan Island, one of the most beautiful places on earth. About four years earlier she had bought the inn, a former hilltop mansion, at a bargain-basement price. After renaming it Artist’s Point, Justine had spent six months renovating and decorating. Each room—ten in all—paid homage to a different artist, such as Van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, or Renoir.

After a difficult first year, Justine had offered a job and a share in the ownership to Zoë, who was a talented chef, and business had picked up dramatically. They had begun to book weddings and private events, and they held monthly events like cooking classes and wine tastings. During the island’s tourist season, they were at or near full occupancy, and even in the off-seasons they averaged no less than sixty-five percent.

Many of the things Justine had always longed for had finally come to her. Caring friends, a home, a garden, a front porch with potted impatiens and trailing verbena. For a while she’d even had a boyfriend, Duane, a biker with tattoos and big sideburns and an easy laugh.

But Duane had broken up with her just a few weeks ago. And as loneliness hollowed out the nighttime hours, Justine had been forced to confront the fact that she was never going to fall in love. She would never understand or experience the mysterious thing that fused one soul to another. It was something she’d always suspected deep down, but she had kept herself too busy to dwell on it. The problem with staying busy, however, was that sooner or later you ran out of things to do, and then the thing you’d been trying so hard not to think about became the
only
thing you could think about.

Justine had wished on stars and birthday candles, thrown coins into fountains, blown the florets of dandelions to send the seeds whisking upward on tiny feathered parachutes. With every wish, she had whispered a summoning spell …
These words bespeak your fate … have no repose while I await … fate has found you … love has bound you … Come to me.

But her soul mate had never appeared. Justine had tried to pretend to everyone, even herself, that she didn’t care. She had said she was a free spirit, didn’t want to be tied down, didn’t need anyone. But in her private hours she stared at the little tornado of water at the drain of her bathtub, or the shadows thickening in the corner of her bedroom, and she thought,
I want to feel
.

She wanted a man who could break into her locked-up heart. A man who would take away her defenses, pull them from her like silk garments, until at last she could surrender all of herself. Maybe then the world wouldn’t seem so small, or the nights so long. Maybe then her main wish would be that the night would never end.

Her gaze lowered to the romance novel’s cover. She nudged the book a few inches away, like a sated diner refusing an extra piece of cake.

“Thanks for bringing that,” she said, while Zoë turned on the ovens and went to pour herself some coffee. “But as it turns out, I don’t need it anymore.”

“Just try a few pages before you decide,” Zoë coaxed.

“I wasn’t going to read it in the first place.”

Zoë cast a quizzical glance over her shoulder. “What were you planning to do with it?”

A hint of self-derisive amusement twitched the corner of Justine’s mouth as she admitted, “Burn it and buy you a new copy.”

Zoë fumbled with a spoon as she stirred cream into her coffee. Turning to Justine, she asked blankly, “Why were you going to burn my romance novel?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to burn the whole thing. Just a page.” Seeing her cousin’s confusion, Justine shrugged sheepishly. “I was planning to sort of … well, cast a spell. And it called for setting fire to ‘words of love scripted on parchment.’ So I thought a page from a romance novel would do the trick.”

“Who were you going to put a spell on?”

“Me.” Justine had turned to the grimoire for help, trying to find anything—any kind of spell or potion or invocation—that would repair the faulty mechanism of her heart. She’d found a spell that seemed worth a try, and had texted Zoë with a request for a romance novel. But after a broken sleep that had felt like a roller-coaster ride, she had woken up to acknowledge that the spell wasn’t going to be any more effective than all the others she had tried.

Judging from Zoë’s expression, an inquisition was about to start. “You’ve got some cooking to do,” Justine said hastily, “and I need to roll out the coffee cart to the lobby—”

“The coffee cart can wait” came the gentle but inflexible reply.

Justine sighed and settled back in her chair. Silently she reflected that although she was known as the outspoken and somewhat bossy half of their business partnership, Zoë was the one who got her way more often. She just happened to be quieter about it.

“You’ve mentioned this stuff about spells before,” Zoë said. “And I remember that grimy old book you got out when I was having problems with Alex, and you offered to put a curse on him. I thought you were joking, trying to make me feel better. But now I’m getting the impression that you weren’t kidding.”

“Can we forget this whole thing?” Justine asked, rubbing her tired eyes. “Because you don’t believe in this stuff, and if I try to explain, I’m only going to end up sounding crazy.”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe. What matters is that you believe in it.” Zoë’s tone turned coaxing. “Tell me what kind of spell you wanted to cast on yourself.”

Justine scowled and swung one of her feet, then muttered something under her breath.

“What?” Zoë asked.

Justine repeated it, more clearly this time. “A love spell.” She darted a glance at her cousin, half-expecting derision or amusement. But this was Zoë. She only looked kind and concerned.

“Is this because of the breakup with Duane?” Zoë asked gently.

“Not really. It’s more … oh, I don’t know. It’s just that now Lucy’s together with Sam, and you’re engaged to Alex, and … I’ve never been in love.”

“It takes longer for some people,” Zoë said. “You’re still a year younger than me, you know. Maybe by next summer—”

“Zoë, every relationship I’ve ever had with a guy has been like a lump of Crisco and a cup of sugar trying like hell to turn into a Twinkie.”

“And you think that means there’s something wrong with you?”

“No, I
know
there’s something wrong with me. The problem isn’t that I haven’t fallen in love. The problem is that I
can’t
.”

“I don’t agree. I think when the right man comes along, you’ll know.”

Justine glanced at the romance novel in Zoë’s hands. “What’s your favorite part of that book? The page you’d tell me to use in a spell.”

Zoë shook her head, beginning to flip through the book. “You’re going to make fun of me.”

“I’m not going to make fun of you.”

The page was located with an ease that belied many repeated readings. Zoë handed the open book to her, her cheeks turning pink. “Don’t read it out loud.”

“I won’t even move my lips,” Justine said with a quick grin.

Her gaze swept down a page of impassioned dialogue, in which a man declared his love for a young woman who was some kind of invalid. “Was she hurt in an accident or something?”

“Scarlet fever.” Zoë busied herself at one of the counters, measuring ingredients into a mixing bowl.

Justine read silently, her brows lifting.

“All the fires of hell could burn for a thousand years and it wouldn’t equal what I feel for you in one minute of the day
,” the hero declared.
“I love you so much there is no pleasure in it. Nothing but torment. Because if I could dilute what I feel for you to the millionth part, it would still be enough to kill you. And even if it drives me mad, I would rather see you live in the arms of that cold, soulless bastard than die in mine.”

A passionate kiss went on for pages afterward. It was the kind of florid prose that Justine might have been inclined to tease Zoë about in the past. But not now. Because she longed, at least once in her life, to have someone feel that way about her. Everyone wanted that. Anyone who claimed not to was either a Tibetan Buddhist monk, or lying.

“I’ve always wondered …” Justine said earnestly. “Is any of this really possible? It’s all hyperbole. I mean, even though you love Alex …” She gestured with the book. “… it’s not like
this
, right?”

Zoë’s face turned pink as she replied. “Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s even better, because it’s not just there in the big moments, but in all the little things. The way he touches your face, or covers you with a blanket when you’re taking a nap, or puts a Post-it note on the fridge to remind you about your dentist appointment. I think those things glue a relationship together even more than the nights of great sex.”

“It’s a good thing I love you so much,” Justine muttered, “or I’d think you were absolutely insufferable.”

A grin curled Zoë’s lips. “You just haven’t met the right man yet. But you will.”

“I may have already,” Justine said. “I may have already met and lost him without ever knowing.”

Zoë’s smile faded. “I’ve never seen you like this,” she said. “I never realized it mattered to you so much. You’ve never seemed to care whether you fell in love or not.”

“I’ve tried to make myself believe it wasn’t important.” Justine dropped her forehead to her folded arms. “Zo,” she asked in a muffled voice, “if you could add ten years to your life, but the price was that you could never have that kind of love with someone, would you do it?”

Zoë’s reply was unhesitating. “No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s like trying to describe a new flavor or color. Words can’t make you understand what that kind of love is like. But it’s worth anything.”

Justine was silent for a long moment. Lifting her head, she swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “I’ll never have that,” she said huskily, “unless I do something.”

“Like what?”

Justine shook her head, unable to answer. Because the idea that had just come to her was stupid, and dangerous as hell. She tried to unthink it, and clear her mind.

But the tiny copper key, worn on a chain around her neck, seemed to thrum with the resonance of her heartbeat. Somehow she could feel the grimoire calling to her.
I’ll help you
, it seemed to say.
I’ll show you how.