Witchy Woman Read Free Page A

become after she had inherited the statue. In Morganna Majick’s case, death would have been a kinder fate.
    It was rumored that even casual possession of the statue—holding it, or touching it—could cause badluck. To actually own it invited disaster. And the more one valued the cat, the worse that luck became.
    Tess thought back to the shopkeeper and her broken leg. She would bet her last dollar the accident had occurred after Anne-Louise had acquired the statue. And the cut on Nate Wagner’s finger. No coincidence, that.
    Nate Wagner. A strange warmth flooded her as she rolled his name around in her mind.
    She’d noticed him right away, standing by that window and pretending to look at the dolls when all the while he was eyeing her, and his covert attention had given her a small thrill of feminine delight. After all, how often was it that a tall, dark, and rakishly handsome man looked at her twice? Or rather, how often had she allowed it?
    She had recognized his story about his sister for the subterfuge it was, and had forgiven him for it. Her ego, she supposed, had wanted to paint him as a good guy. It wasn’t any fun to flirt with a slimeball.
    But then there had been that business with the Crimson Cat, and all she’d wanted was to get out of that shop. A part of her—an unfamiliar part—had wanted to linger with the appealing stranger, but raw fear had won out and she’d fled. Only when she’d seen him again outside, in the sunlight, had she admitted that she might have overreacted a bit.
    He was undeniably sexy, even in worn corduroys and an old windbreaker that should have seen the inside of a garbage can years before. He had a lean face with a prominent, almost hawkish nose and warmbrown eyes. His hair, wild and curly and brown like his eyes, blatantly defied conventional styling.
    Of course, when he’d told her and Judy what he was up to, she had realized that his interest in her hadn’t been personal. That hadn’t stopped her from feeling a strange, sensual pull toward him. She shivered with delight at the memory.
    She hoped a cut finger was the worst that would come of his brush with the curse. But as she’d held his business card ever so gingerly, she had felt the aura of danger that surrounded him. She’d given him the best warning she could under the circumstances. Anything stronger, and he would have dismissed her as a nut.
    She wondered if there was any other precaution she could take for his benefit.
    His card was in her purse. Though she seldom deliberately called on her extrasensory abilities, this time she really had no choice. It was her fault that Nate Wagner had touched the cat in the first place. If she hadn’t seen it and stared at it with her mouth gaping open, he wouldn’t even have noticed the statue. She owed him this small bit of effort.
    She plucked the card from her purse and studied it: NATHANIEL WAGNER , FREELANCE WRITER . An address in Cambridge. Next she held the card between her clasped hands, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.
    The first sensations to hit her mind were comfortable ones, like a warm breeze on a languorous summer day, adding to her favorable impression of the man. But, gradually, the comfortable feeling became less so. Warmth turned to heat, languor to need, and thebreeze became a caress, a human caress. She felt his touch against her face, on her neck, her breasts.…
    She wrenched her eyes open and the vision disintegrated. “Good gravy,” she muttered. That sort of information was hardly pertinent. Unfortunately her powers were unpredictable at best. The sensitivity was almost always there, whenever she came into physical contact with a person or thing, but Tess had no control over which vibrations she received when.
    She cleared her mind, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tried again.
    There was a crowd pressing against her from all sides, and a roar reverberating in her ears. A sudden shove, the sensation of falling … panic, a mad