The Fae Book: Hatch and Harmony Novel – My boyfriend, Leo, disappeared to go to the bathroom during the dance, and when he came back, he had his shirt misbuttoned an an ugly shade of lipstick by his ear. Teresa followed a few minutes later, sporting that exact same shade of lipstick. Her hair was a mess and her dress was wrinkled. Wrinkled as if it’d been pushed up in a careless way while someone was drilling her. Once again, when I confronted Leo, he admitted he’d banged Teresa in a janitor’s closet his words, not mine. “Hope you used protection, Leo. Not only is she actively trying to get pregnant, but I’ve heard she has herpes.” I walked away before his deer-in-the-headlights face could finish draining of color. Both lies I’d told him I felt were deserved.
“You look like someone just told you there’s no such things as unicorns,” Daisy said to me as she handed me a latte and a muffin, fresh from her bakery. “Meh, Teresa just left the store. She always puts me in a mood,” I told her, peeling back the paper liner on the still-warm chocolate chip muffin. “She is quite the…witch,” Daisy admitted. “But then, she always has been, even back in middle school. I always dread when she comes into the bakery. She never has anything nice to say.” “Right?” I knew exactly what she was talking about. “She does the same thing when she comes in here. And every time, every single time, she looks around, looks down that superior nose of hers and says there’s nothing here worth buying.
Then — THEN — she has the balls to say she’s not going to bother coming back here anymore, and I want to ask if I can get that in writing and notarized by witnesses. Because she keeps coming back after she said she wouldn’t be returning!” Daisy laughed at my rant. She knew how much I despised Teresa and why. “She threatens me with that all the time. I just can’t with her. I want to tell her OK, then leave. No one’s going to stop you. We’ll hold the door open for you and push you out on your hip. Everything out of her mouth is so nasty, it gets tiresome listening to it. My danishes don’t look right, my cookies aren’t perfectly shaped, the icing color looks off, my cakes look dry…blah blah blah.” I nodded. “Nan always says, if you don’t have anything nice to say, come closer so I can slap you when you say it.” “I love your Nana,” Daisy grinned at me. “She never holds back with anyone.” “Right? I bet Teresa would keep her mouth shut if Nana was in here.” With a nod, Daisy agreed. “Your Nana never liked her, from the moment she moved here in middle school.”
That was true. I knew why, but I couldn’t say why. “Guess she was giving off mean girl vibes even then.” Steer clear of that one, Miss Harmony. She’s trouble times three. I saw it. Nana had been right. Teresa had slept with the two boys I’d dated in high school — Maybe if you’d put out, it’d be more of a challenge to steal them from you, but it really didn’t take any effort at all — and since I wasn’t currently dating anyone, she had to come into my store to cause trouble. The first boy of mine that she went after had been a boy named Ethan when I was sixteen. I’d given him my first smooch at a football game, and then a week later, there was a rumor going around about Teresa and Ethan behind the concession stand during a Friday night football game. When I asked Ethan about the rumors, he admitted he’d had intercourse with her. While I was sitting in the stands wondering why it was taking him so long to get popcorn and hot chocolates, I might add.
So that was the end of Ethan. The next time I saw Teresa, she gave me a nasty smile, held up her index finger to me and said, “That’s one.” I was so hurt, so betrayed, I didn’t trust anyone enough to date again until my senior year. But Leo had kept at me for a couple of months and asked me to homecoming very charmingly, presenting me with a small bouquet of pale pink roses, so I finally caved and said yes to him. I shouldn’t have. He disappeared to go to the bathroom during the dance, and when he came back, he had his shirt misbuttoned an an ugly shade of lipstick by his ear. Teresa followed a few minutes later, sporting that exact same shade of lipstick. She held up two fingers to me and mouthed, “That’s two.” Once again, when I confronted Leo, he admitted he’d banged Teresa in a janitor’s closet — his words, not mine. During our homecoming dance. While I was waiting for him at the refreshment table. Alone. I was so angry at Leo that I got nasty. “Hope you used protection, Leo. Not only is she actively trying to get pregnant, but I’ve heard she has herpes.” I walked away before his deer-in-the-headlights face could finish draining of color. Both lies I’d told him I felt were deserved.
Let the cheater pants sweat it out. Raine pleaded with me to let her punch both Teresa and Leo, but I had to tell her no. “We don’t sink into the muck that the pigs like to play in,” Nana had told me many times. After Leo, I walked away from all of the other high school boys after that. Fortunately, after high school ended, Teresa stayed in Harbor’s Edge and attended the local college, while I went away to a state university — and not one of my boyfriends in college slept with her. Of course, they didn’t sleep with me, either, because I was scared to let myself go all the way with a boy in case I forgot to turn off my gift in the moment or if it suddenly got switched on. Who knows what could happen in the heat of the moment? I found just smooching and other things were hard enough to manage. So I had fun in college, but I didn’t have all the fun I could have.
That would have to wait until I was a little older, a little more sure of my gift, and a lot more sure of my ability to turn it on and off. As I grew up, I hadn’t used my gift often. Most often, I used it when I was practicing the on/off switch. Nana would make my mother come over as the emotional source and I’d put my hand on her arm, and Nan would mutter things like, “Remember that one hoochie neighbor of yours named Tansy?” And I’d shout out “Angry! Mad! Really mad!” and my mom and Nana would look at each other and laugh. Then she would tell me to turn it off and she’d murmur, “Peggy Slater,” but I wouldn’t feel anything from my mom. Mom didn’t have any gifts, and Nana said that was because it skipped a generation and her own mother hadn’t had any, either. So, after I graduated from college with a business degree, my parents gave me a loan and helped me rent a store front on Main Street. I’d hit garage sales and estate sales, searched the For Sale ads and other online sources for items that looked good but were cheap enough that I could mark up and still make a profit on. I had clothing, shoes, furniture, accessories, jewelry, lawn and garden items, electronics, kitchen ware — everything in cute displays in different sections of the store. My store was wildly popular, and I had an online store that helped my business grow tremendously.
Two years after I’d graduated, my store was doing well enough that I was comfortable and able to start paying back the loan from my parents. They hadn’t wanted me to pay back the money, but I felt like I needed to so I could prove their trust in me had been merited. I lived in a tiny apartment above my store so I was independent but still close enough to Mom and Nana that I could drop by their houses whenever I wanted. But the biggest boon to my business came in the form of town newcomer Willow Masen, when she donated about one hundred thousand dollars in designer clothes to my store when she moved to town. Willow had an extremely rich husband who sent her to Harbor’s Edge to live until they could divorce in a few years, and since HE doesn’t have a lot of designer-wear events, and since she was beyond pissed at her husband, she decided a donation was the right move.
Her husband had eventually decided he wanted her back and moved his company headquarters here to Harbor’s Edge so he could be on hand to win her back. Decker Masen being in town meant his bodyguards were in town. You could spot them a mile away and they never even tried to blend in. Maybe that was the point. Be so obvious that you’d deter any crazies from the start. They all looked very similar in their black suits, white shirts and perfectly knotted ties. They sported sunglasses always, even on overcast days, and had those push-to-talk radio earpieces that increased their hot, mysterious vibe by about one thousand percent. And I don’t know who fed those men, but they were all huge and bulky. Their presence in our town had definitely upped the eye candy quotient. As Daisy said…yum-meeeee! What Raine said was a little more X-rated.
Neither one of them was wrong. I became friends with Willow, and she was the first person outside of my family I told about my gift because after I’d touched her husband’s arm, I told her she needed to talk with him. She’d demanded to know why — her trust being a little low after what her husband had done to her –so I reluctantly told her about my abilities and the emotions I’d sensed churning in Decker Masen. As far as I knew, she’d never shared what I’d confided in her. Daisy and Raine may have suspected, but they’d never asked me outright, and I wouldn’t tell them unless I had a reason to. Nan had always told me, from the time I was little, that gifts needn’t be discussed because people didn’t always take kindly to those with gifts. I knew what that meant: keep quiet. I was over at Willow’s one day — the day she went into labor, actually — and that was how I met Lucas “Hatch” Hatcher.
Willow’s water had broken and Decker and Hatch had burst into the house minutes later, Decker a bit crazed with concern for his wife. The minute Hatch walked in right behind him, I sensed something big. Don’t ask me how because I couldn’t tell you. All I know is, I felt as if I’d touched him briefly and I had been nowhere near him. I immediately looked down as I noticed him taking off his sunglasses, just to make sure I couldn’t see Hatch’s eyes. That felt like it would be overwhelming for me. Then Willow tossed me to the wolves by saying I could ride to the hospital with Hatch.
Alone in a car with a man I was desperately trying not to make eye contact with. Gah! Thank you, Willow. But I decided to go along with it, figuring I could avoid his eyes since he’d be driving and he was wearing his sunglasses again. I managed to get into his big SUV without taking the hand he offered, and he closed the door for me like a gentleman. This man had my emotions all in a tizzy, as Nan would say, and I was afraid I would inadvertently flip my switch to on if I touched this man, given the way my feelings had gone crazy the second he walked into Willow’s house.