A Wand a Day Read online

  Contents

  A Wand a Day

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  A Wand a Day

  The Reluctant Godmother

  Book 2

  By Grace McGuiness

  Copyright © 2019 by Grace McGuiness

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer or by obtaining written permission from the author.

  Book cover designed by Deranged Doctor Design http://www.derangeddoctordesign.com/

  Proofreading by Kathryn St. John-Shin

  This book is dedicated to

  J.S.M.,

  the real-life Mueller.

  Mostly because he puts up with me.

  I mean, really—it takes a special kind

  of person to be okay with texts at 2am

  that read:

  “What cereal does Mueller eat?”

  Then to respond back with:

  “Basic 4.”

  (Which I had to look up.)

  And then to expound upon the

  character’s obsession with

  letting milk go bad.

  Thanks, pal.

  XOXO

  Chapter 1

  “Sweetie, would you take the cake to the backyard?”

  My mom slid a still-warm chocolate sheet cake drizzled with raspberry sauce into my arms before I answered, moving on to her next task just as quickly. The gorgeous thing weighed about as much as a small toddler and was almost as sticky.

  “Don’t forget to cover it!” Mom yelled after me as I backed carefully through the screen door.

  October sun warmed the backyard of my childhood, dappling it through golden aspen leaves here and shrouding it in deep, pine-scented shadow there. I couldn’t smell the pine today, owing to the contents of a large grill with too-high flames at the edge of the flagstone patio. The hairy man at its helm sang the wrong words to an Eagles song blasting from an old portable cd player on the deck rail while drinking a Diet Coke with Lime.

  I turned as carefully as I had moved through the door, my eyes on the cake to be sure it didn’t tip, and nearly slammed the whole thing into my boyfriend’s chest as he came up the stairs in front of me. Okay, maybe he wasn’t technically my boyfriend. Once you hit thirty, what’s the protocol? Being only four months officially divorced and totally new to dating as an adult, I had no idea. Nor was I ready to ask said potential partner, either.

  Boyfriend or casual date, that chest was a good chest. A well-made, well-exercised chest. I couldn’t see his six-pack through his polo shirt, but I knew it was there. Raspberry sauce drizzled across it sounded mighty tempting…

  “Careful, Tessita!” Bob yelled from the fire hazard. “No wasting the fine vittles before we get a chance to sample ‘em!” My stepdad had taken to using Tessita as my name ever since he’d woken up from his coma almost two months ago. Thankfully, that was the weirdest side effect I’d noticed from the epidemic of sleeping curse that had swept across Trapperstown.

  “Sorry!” I said with what I hoped was a cute grimace. To Nicky, my sexy date, not Bob the Grillbuster.

  Leaning in to take the cake from me, Nicky quietly murmured, “No worries. I can think of worse things than to be covered in chocolate.”

  My eyes shot to his, those warm browns that had always made me a little weak-kneed, even in high school. The suggestion and meaning I found there shot straight to my belly, then rose with a delightful heat to color my cheeks. I glanced away as he descended the short stair to the patio, annoyed at myself for not answering.

  After nearly three months of dating, of kissing and making out like we would have if we’d managed to hook up in high school, I still felt…I don’t know. Nervous, except more than nervous. Awkward, but so much worse than your run-of-the-mill, new-relationship awkward. It had, after all, been about thirteen years since I’d had a relationship with someone other than Kyle, my suddenly-famous ex-husband. I was so rusty, I should be a little pile of orange dirt not even bothering to be shaped like a woman anymore. And full-blown intimacy? Forget it. Kyle had preferred his intimate moments to be shared with bros he’d never met in a heated game of Brothers in Arms, the best-selling first-person shooter on the market. He might now be swanning around a Hollywood mansion with the most beautiful woman in the world (according to every celebrity magazine out there), but our marital issues got packed into my tiny moving truck along with the rest of my belongings. Unlike my decade-old furniture, they weren’t sitting in the garage, gathering dust.

  I followed Nicky’s perfectly-fitting Dockers across the lawn to the picnic table, doing my best to ignore my insecurities. After all, I hadn’t done too badly on the new relationship front. In high school, Nicky had been funny, cute, and boyishly energetic. Now, all grown up, he had filled in, replaced the excess energy with an impressive professional focus, and…well, he was still cute. But years of physical training meant he was also downright hot under that respectably loose polo shirt. And he kissed me like he meant it, which was still kind of new for me.

  The more time I spent with him, the more I wondered why I had spent so long married to a man who didn’t even bother to look at me some days. How screwed up had I been to believe that was normal?

  The past is the past, I reminded myself, and scooped up a bit of icing from the edge of the cake pan when he set it down.

  “Tereza Gabriella!” my mother chided as she carried a pot of sun tea outside. “How old are you?”

  Nicky trotted over to take the heavy container from her as I pursed my lips and asked, “If I say ‘six,’ can I steal a piece of cake?”

  “Absolutely not! I didn’t spend all morning frosting that thing to have you ruin the effect before any of our guests have a chance to see it.”

  I watched my date’s arms flex as he positioned the tea on the picnic table next to the cake. “Nicky’s a guest. He saw it.”

  “Almost wore it,” he added with that adorable, dimpled grin that always made me smile back.

  “Yes, he is,” Mom said politely, “but he’s only one person. I would like Bob to enjoy his birthday with his friends and his intact cake.”

  “He’ll still enjoy it without my one piece. I won’t have another one. Promise!” I gave her a big smile.

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “I said no, Tereza,” she snapped, telling me wi
thout words how much she was stressing.

  “Besides,” Nicky said, his eyes full of laughter, “you’ll ruin your dinner.”

  My mom shot him a look that might have been amusement and might have been amusement covering irritation. I couldn’t tell. “Yes. She will.” As she swept by me to fetch more out of the kitchen, she murmured, “Listen to your level-headed young man. He’s good for you.”

  “Level-headed young man?” I repeated. “How old are you?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me - the same wide-set blues she’d passed to me - but with a twinkle of humor. No trace remained of the drawn woman who had emerged from a week-long coma that almost killed her in July. She was back to her normal, playful (if stressed) self, and that made me happier than I had been in a long time.

  “Make sure Bob doesn’t burn the yard down in his excitement, please,” she said.

  Babysitting my stepdad. Great. “I will if you make him put on pants.”

  Mom glanced at me, then at Bob, then gave me a long-suffering look, one I was pretty sure was directed at me. “He’s wearing pants.”

  “He’s wearing swim trunks. Not nearly the same thing.”

  She squeezed my arm with affection. “Let him be excited. Please?”

  “We don’t even have a pool,” I protested. Then again, Bob could be wearing a muumuu, and I would still be seeing too much of him for my level of comfort. Some things you can’t unsee. Ever.

  “It’s his birthday, Tess. The first party he gets to have with a family. Shouldn’t he get to enjoy that?”

  I toed the edge of the picnic table leg and shrugged. “I guess.” I didn’t want to be that family. But I couldn’t deny that having him around made my mom happy. If she was happy, who was I to argue?

  She kissed my temple. “That cake better be whole when I come back.”

  As Mom vanished into the house again on a new to-do-list item, Bob called, “Hey, Tessita?” He waved the barbecue tongs around like he was drunk, except Bob never imbibed. “Is your other dude coming? You invited him, right?”

  “Yes, I did, and no, he isn’t,” I answered, annoyed that Bob had put my two closest male friends in the same category. Nicky wasn’t supposed to be my ‘dude,’ and the other wasn’t on the potential boyfriend list. “Mueller has to work.”

  “On a Saturday? Bummer.”

  “A new machine came in, so he had to join it.”

  “New product?” Nicky asked, his voice low. A cloud of suspicion crossed his boyishly handsome face.

  I nodded. “More princess stuff, I think. A play horse, maybe, or a kitten with wings? Something that will no doubt be bright pink and glittery.” Everything at the factory was pink and glittery, even the factory itself. No one here would be able to see it - the pity of being a Mundane, forever blinded to the magical world - but the smokestacks puffed pink clouds of glitter that dissipated before they hit the ground. Production days were kind of like walking into a winter wonderland…inside a seven-year-old princess’s imagination.

  “You don’t know?” Ever since his team - or the CDC, I couldn’t ever get a straight answer about which was which - had traced the likely source of the sleeping sickness back to the place that paid my bills, he had been wary of anything having to do with Fairytale Endings. Why the magic hadn’t wiped that particular hindrance away when my first-ever fairytale ending had come together and broken the curse, I didn’t know. My first-ever fairytale ending as a godmother, that is. The closest I had ever gotten to having a fairytale ending was watching me carefully from a couple inches away.

  I kissed his cheek. For some reason, I loved that he was suspicious. Probably because I was too, and it made me feel less insane. “I just file the personnel records, remember? Not a lot of news comes through my dinky little room.”

  “Mueller didn’t tell you?” Was that a touch of jealousy I detected or just professional inquiry?

  Smiling reassuringly, I slipped my hand into his, intertwining our fingers. “He likes things to be a surprise. Preferably a bad one, but he takes what he can get.”

  “I’ll bet he does,” Nicky said wryly.

  “Not like that.” I batted my eyelashes at him, a move I was actually getting good at for the first time in my life. For some reason, Nicky made over-acting flirtation easy without making me feel stupid. It still caught me off-guard whenever I found myself being a little silly. Kyle hadn’t had any room in his life for silliness. “I only have eyes for you.”

  He pulled me into a hug. “You do. But that doesn’t mean he can’t have eyes for you.”

  “Maybe not.” I squeezed him back. I was a thousand times grateful that he was okay easing into the physical side of things with me. I wasn’t sure he understood why it was necessary - I hadn’t explained and he hadn’t asked - but that made his willingness to go slowly all the sweeter. “But you don’t have to worry. He has a code of honor that extends to not stealing another guy’s girl.”

  He pushed a stray hair behind my ear and ran his finger down my neck, making me shiver. “What if I like to worry?”

  “One more thing we have in common,” I murmured, sliding my hand up his chest. For that one moment, I forgot where we were. As I stared into his laughing eyes, his warmth suffusing my skin, the whole world disappeared. Maybe, in a moment like this, I could push through my fear of rejection and humiliation. My heart raced as my lips parted to suggest we sneak away.

  And then, out of nowhere, Bob was standing beside us. “Sausage?” he offered, waving a piece of meat between us.

  Nicky and I both backpedaled, not wanting to take a kielbasa to the face. Moment killed.

  “Maybe later,” I mumbled, blushing furiously. My insides warred between feeling sick with the danger of what I had been about to do and wanting to stuff that dangling, mottled thing in Bob’s mouth for ruining it.

  My date was unperturbed. “Sure, Bob. Sounds great.” He even said it with a smile.

  They fumbled a bit, trying to match up the sausage in Bob’s tongs to the plate and bun he handed Nicky. Then Bob shoved an ice-slicked non-alcoholic beer at him followed quickly by a plate heaped full of beans and coleslaw. Poor Nicky looked like an awkward statue as he stood there, plates balanced liked a harried waiter, trying to figure out how to move without dropping anything. His arms flexed ever so perfectly beneath his blue polo shirt. The calves visible below his khaki shorts and above the navy boat shoes gave evidence of long jogs in the park. His golden curls had lightened in the summer sun. The statue of a beach god, sans beach.

  The war within me ended.

  “Here, Nicky,” Bob said, ladling sauerkraut onto the kielbasa. “You like sauerkraut, right? Real men love the kraut.”

  “I, uh, sure. I guess. And it’s Nick.”

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing. The name thing was my fault. He had gone by Nicky in high school, so that was my default introduction. Poor guy had to keep correcting people to use his more adult, less girly-sounding choice. I should probably have helped, but I found it deliciously adorable every time he said it. I couldn’t even feel bad about his plight. All I could do was keep smiling at him.

  He glanced at me as he fumbled to keep everything balanced, then did a double-take. His smile deepened, bringing out the sexy dimple to the left of his mouth. “Hey. Think you might want to lend a hand here?”

  “I dunno,” I said, holding his gaze. “You kind of brought it on yourself. But I might be persuaded.”

  Before I could make a move, Destiny exploded from the house behind me. The huge ball of white-and-black fur streaked past my legs, bumped into Nicky’s, and then took off to waggle her whole butt in front of Bob’s grill. She broke both Nicky’s concentration and his balance. He teetered, tensed, and I rushed forward to catch his plates.

  Catch them, I did. Right in the boobs.

  There was a moment of silence as everyone in the yard waited to see where my mood would fall. Nicky stared at me with mortification in his eyes.

  “You always did know ho
w to throw a party, Bob-o!” The declaration came from a pair of burly biker-types entering from the side gate, each of them carting a cooler. Their wild beards were split with huge, leery grins.

  As fast as life had paused, it sped back up again.

  Bob burst into lecture at his friends about my being his stepdaughter. Nicky dropped his remaining plates on the table so he could peel the offending plate off me. Baked beans dripped between my breasts to collect in the built-in bra of my tank top. I still stood there in shock, watching his eyes dart down my shirt and back to my eyes. Clearly, he found this a conundrum—try to help clean me up and spend an ungentlemanly amount of time focused on my boobs, or not help at all?

  In spite of the anger that made me want to shave the Old English Sheepdog until she looked like a goat and my sizzling irritation at Bob’s horrible timing, I didn’t yell. I didn’t shout. Instead, I did something I wouldn’t have thought I could while so deeply embarrassed.

  I laughed.

  I laughed so hard, I had to double over to hold my sides. Which helped, really, as it dumped some of the beans and all of the coleslaw on the grass, where Destiny - who evaded all of Mom’s attempts to catch her - made short work of them.

  When I was done, I took a deep breath, wiped away the tears, and gestured at the house. “I’m gonna go get changed.”

  “I’m so sorry, Tessa.” Nicky’s eyes were still wide and his face soft with horror.

  Very quietly, I leaned in, summoned all my courage, and murmured, “If you want my shirt off that badly, you just have to say so.” I left a small but lingering peck on his lips and a spot of sauce on his shirt. “Be right back.”

  I darted into the house, not daring to look back. My heart thudded in my chest. My fingers trembled as I mopped myself up in the bathroom. I had to sit down for a couple minutes to get myself under control. What was wrong with me? It seemed ridiculous that I would be queasy at the idea of increasing intimacy with a sexy guy who treated me well, but here I was. The rumble of irritation I thought of as my stomach gremlin grew louder than the nausea. I didn’t want to be messed up forever. For another week. Another day. And I was pretty sure the only way I was ever going to move on was to actually move on. To accept that relationships and vulnerability were all about risk, and I could either face it or end up a bitter spinster who staged elaborate plays starring her cats.