Bedspell

An eve of sexy revelry

With a man I call Garrity

And if we should be good in bed

I beseech ye, we should wed

And now that this has all been said

I give this handkerchief of red.”

Turning, she dropped the handkerchief into the boiling water, then had the strangest falling sensation, as if a rug had been jerked from beneath her feet. Her breath caught as it went under the bubbling surface of the water, the pointed tail of it swirling once before it was lost.

Surely it was nothing—just fanciful thinking, as if the spell might work—nevertheless, the hairs at her nape were prickling her warm skin when she exited the circle. The feeling lingered as Diane cast a spell to make her business, Wacky Weekends, thrive, and as C.C. angled for another promotion. Only when the women began stripping and running into the lake did the feeling start to dissipate.

As C.C. pulled a sundress over her head and weighted it down with a rock, Signe said, “wouldn’t it be kind of creepy if these spells really worked?”

Mara was wiggling out of her shorts. “Creepy?”

Signe shook her head. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Back there, I got this…weird feeling. Like it was real. Like it’s going to work.”

“And you’re going to marry Gorgeous Garrity?” asked Diane.

“Or just sleep with him?” asked C.C.

“You wish,” chimed Mara. “C’mon, get undressed.”

That changed the subject. “I’m not swimming in that lake.”

Mara shot her a long look. “Why, may I ask?”

Signe laughed. “Because when I free-associate, lakes make me think of words such as rocks, fish and slime.”

“No excuse,” declared C.C. “If I can do this, you can.”

“What the heck,” Signe said on a sigh, stripping off her shorts and panties, and glancing around as she downed the last gulp from her pewter mug. “What if someone sees us?”

“There’s nobody out here,” assured Diane.

C.C., wearing her bra and panties, grabbed her friends’ empty mugs and said, “I’m getting us all refills before I get in.”

The stuff was definitely tasty. Usually, Signe didn’t indulge much, but her friends were right. This was a girls’ night. No men were in the woods. And the lake really was beautiful, the crests of its softly lapping dark waters glinting with light from the glowing full moon. If Gorgeous Garrity really did show, he probably wouldn’t mind if Signe was just a little tipsy….

The alcohol seemed to be making her quite bold.

“Make mine a double, C.C.,” she suddenly called.

And then she pulled off her panties and, tired of the other women teasing her for being relatively body conscious, she made a point of throwing the scrap of silk to the night breeze. As a gust of wind caught her underwear, Signe ran for the water.

Which meant her back was turned when C.C. returned with the drinks and pulled the age-old camp joke of hiding the rest of Signe’s clothes.

2

“WICCANS,” JAMES MUTTERED derisively. They’d kept him awake half the night. The park ranger yanked the sheet toward his bare shoulders. Every month, he braced himself for another full moon—and their meetings. Half the women were man-haters who tried to place curses on men they’d once loved, and the other half were determined to charm men to the altar, the one place James had vowed never to go.

Even worse, this month the women had arrived right on the heels of James’s Wildcat Capture Team certification test, and he’d wanted to spend tonight celebrating. Alone. With only Mother Nature for company. He’d meant to work on the mystery novel he was writing, too, but that had turned out to be a no-go, because of the noise outside.

At least he’d passed the wildcat test. Cats had become a real problem in the park lately, and if you didn’t know what you were doing, you could get hurt capturing them. One ranger nearly had his eyes clawed out; another got cat-scratch fever, which James had never thought was a real illness until now. As it turned out, it was caused by bacteria transmitted by cats. Yes, indeed. You definitely had to watch out for felines.

Just this morning, James had caught a mama with six kittens and hauled them down to the animal-habitat people who would find homes for them. Over the past few weeks he’d wound up keeping two that had gotten into fights in the woods. Both of them looked domesticated, and James hated the fact that their owners had brought them to the park to dump them. Why he had such a soft spot for strays, he’d never know, but maybe it was because he was a black sheep in his own family.

As the orange tabby jumped onto the bed, James blew out a perturbed sigh. Even in the dark, he could tell by how its paws hit the sheets that it wasn’t the smaller black kitty. “Show some mercy,” he muttered, even though there was clearly no hope tonight where sleep was concerned.

The wiccans were still out there, hooting and hollering, which meant he was going to have a real cleanup job tomorrow. The items these women left after they’d cast spells on their poor, unsuspecting targets was enough to chill any man’s blood. Wrist-watches. Money clips. Television-remote channel changers. Once he’d even found a Swiss Army knife, which, given his attachment to the one he’d carried since his teen years, had seemed like an unusually low blow. Wasn’t anything sacred to these women? he wondered.

Every month, as he cleaned the park, he would count his lucky stars that he’d never gotten married. On that score, fate had been most kind.

Sex, of course, was another matter. A man could never get enough sex. And James had to admit that the wiccan women always looked tempting when they got loopy on the herbal-root beverage they made every month, and then jumped into the lake naked. Suddenly, he squinted. Speaking of the lake, had he just heard something drip? It sounded like…

Water? Stifling a groan, he pressed his face farther into the pillow, deciding it was just his imagination. Or the night breeze. Maybe it was starting to rain.

Then he heard it again, just a faint plip-plop. Tilting his head, he glanced in the direction of the sound. It was definitely water. Had one of the cats gotten into the kitchen sink? Maybe. They kept trying to drink from the tub faucet. Rolling, James tried to see into the room. There was a full moon outside—a haunting, romantic full moon of the sort that might conjure werewolves and vampires for the Halloween night—but the curtains were closed against it, and the blinds drawn, so the room was pitch black.

His voice was husky with sleep. “Is somebody there?”

All at once, the plip-plop sounds ceased. The night turned silent except for the sounds of the woods that he loved, the whir of insects and the rushing breeze. He heard an owl hoot.

And then somebody hiccoughed.

“Uh…” He blinked. “Who’s that?” He hadn’t heard the door to his cabin open. Was one of the wiccans lost? A Cheshire grin made his mouth broaden. Ah. Maybe it was his lucky night, and the blonde who’d stopped earlier, asking for directions…

A sexy, singsong voice called out, “Hello, gorgeous.”

Yep. It was definitely the blonde. He listened as Ms. Plip-Plop neared, heading toward the bed. And him. As her steps stilled and her body made contact with the mattress, he sensed, rather than saw, that she was naked. He had no idea how he knew that was true. She just sounded naked. He listened more carefully as her bare skin brushed against the sheets.

“Uh…are you lost?” he asked in a sleepy croak.

No answer. Something metallic hit the wood of the bedside table. Had she removed a ring? If so, she probably hadn’t come here for idle chitchat. Good. His breath caught as anticipatory heat tunneled through his veins. No doubt, this really was the blonde who’d stopped by the ranger station earlier, asking for directions. He could swear he’d just caught a whiff of that enticing musky perfume she’d been wearing. The woman had been driving a refurbished Mustang, and while she’d been coy about not divulging her name, she’d flirted with him for a full half hour before heading to the parking area designated for the wiccans.

Still blinking sleep from his eyes, James scratched his chest. “Since you’re up,” he murmured throatily, “why don’t you switch on the light? It’s by the door.” He’d love to get a look at her.

There was a long silence. For a second, he could almost imagine that the woman had disappeared. Or that he’d been dreaming, after all. But no…she giggled again. Just the sound was enough to make him smile. It was a giddy, high-pitched schoolgirl’s giggle, and it didn’t take a state trooper with a Breathalyzer to figure out that she’d imbibed plenty of herbal-root punch.

“I like the dark,” she whispered.

“The dark’s good,” he conceded. Yeah. It had to be the blonde. Who else would come into his cabin this way?

“And it is very, very dark in here,” she slurred. When her voice hitched with excitement, it seemed clear that having sex with him was high on her list of priorities, which was fine with him. There was nothing James loved more than being on a woman’s “to-do” list.