SPELLSTRUCK by Jaclyn Reding, Excerpt
“Maybe we should try coming up with the perfect recipe for a man over this bottle of Grenache. One who doesn’t use a grandmother’s quilt to paint, and who shows up when he says he will.”
Hallie snickered, then snorted. The wine and the moonlight stealing through the kitchen window made her game for just this sort of mindless fun. “So, the recipe for a perfect man, huh? It would be a challenge. Sort of like revamping what Mother Nature concocted the first time? Actually, this could be fun. What should we include for the first ingredient? Hmm. Irish. Definitely Irish.”
Jenna grabbed pen and paper from the counter by the blender, jotting it down while Hallie thought out loud further.
“And I’m thinking a really big—”
“—heart,” Jenna finished, shooting her sister a reproving glance. “So he can love the woman to whom he gives that heart utterly and completely.”
Jenna drew a fanciful heart in the very center of the page, then penciled in an arrow à la Cupid for good measure.
“Okay, okay,” Hallie agreed. “Add two cups of ‘tall.’ He has to be six feet at least. We don’t want to feel like we should have to minimize ourselves when wearing heels.”
“Right,” Jenna agreed, writing a 6’ beside the heart she’d drawn. “Hair color?”
“Black. No, no,” Hallie corrected. “Blond, and not that dirty beach-sand color either, but gleaming, with a dash of brilliant gold. Like the gods of Olympus.” She sighed as Jenna scribbled on the page. “And his eyes, they just have to be green. Like emeralds. Gold and emeralds… yes, perfect.”
Hallie sighed again as Jenna added to the list. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” Hallie piped in. “Money. A heaping bowlful of it.”
“Okay… fine, he doesn’t have to be a Jeff Bezos in the bankbook,” Jenna specified, “although he should at least have a stable income. But what about his inner qualities? What about responsibility?” Jenna pictured Jack in his tattered ball cap that morning, unkempt hair and cocky grin in place. She frowned. “What about reliability?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hallie agreed. “Responsibility. Blah. Reliability. Blah, blah. But give him good taste, too. No ballgames for dates and he must know the difference between a bottle of good wine and a can of beer.” She took a sip from her glass, then added, “Oh! And he must love the woman of his heart to utter distraction. He cannot sleep or even eat without thinking of her. He sees her in his dreams. Everything he does reminds him of her.”
Jenna laughed, indulging in the ridiculousness of their game. She wrote Hallie’s latest “ingredients” on the page and wondered that she’d ever been that young, that fanciful. She knew she must have been, once long ago, and she wondered fleetingly where that girl had gone.
“But while all this is certainly good, we cannot forget the most important quality of all,” Jenna finished. “Above all else, he must have—”
She was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening down the hall, followed by the staccato clicking of canine claws on the hardwood floor. Mother had apparently returned from her nightly walk around the common with her dog, Ogre, a brindle-colored, growth-challenged terrier who, despite his fearsome name, ran for his life when confronted with the neighbor’s orange tabby cat, Arnold.
The dog scampered into the kitchen a full minute before his matriarch.
“I’m back,” yodeled a deep female voice from down the hall. “Did you see that moon? What a glorious night for a walk!”
The two sisters turned just as Eudora “Nanny” Wren issued forth into the kitchen. She cut a formidable figure, cloaked in black wool with her polished wooden walking stick levered before her. Her hair, once as black as Jenna’s, was now shot through with silver—actual silver and not gray—rendering it a true salt-and-pepper. She refused to allow Jenna to color it, saying she felt no need to hide the strokes of Mother Nature’s paintbrush. When it wasn’t wound up in its usual knot and fastened to her head with the sort of long hair pins used a century earlier, which was rare, it fell nearly to her ample hips. She always wore lipstick, no matter if she were only going to the front door to meet the package delivery man. And she wore spectacles—and yes, that was just what they were—wire-rimmed, round, and looked to have been made around the same time as her hair pins.
Age, two pregnancies, and a fondness for dark chocolate-covered cherries had rounded her once eye-catching figure, but Eudora didn’t care. She’d been a widow since the day her Sam, for whom Jenna’s son was named, had been taken from her, a fisherman lost to the sea in one of the most terrible storms in New England history. A widow she would stay until the day she joined him.
Eudora’s shrewd eyes took in the cloaked expressions of her two daughters, the nearly empty bottle of wine, and the candlelight. She immediately inquired, “What are the two of you up to then?”
Jenna quickly turned over the paper they’d been writing on. Mother would never approve of their undertaking, even if it was only for fun. “Oh, just having a glass of wine and complaining about men. You know, typical girl stuff. Care to join us?”
“I would.” The matriarch sighed, tossing Ogre a bit of cheese from the charcuterie platter the girls had been sharing. “But if I have wine this late at night, I’ll wake with a headache fierce enough to stir the dead.” She nodded to herself then glanced at the clock. “Besides, it’s getting late. You two should be abed as well. I trust Cassie’s already tucked in for the night?”
Jenna nodded. “Hours ago. You must have worn her out with all that baking today. Didn’t even put up a fight.”
Eudora grinned. “She’s a sweet one, that child. And canny as can be. She’ll be a true Wren one day, that’s for certain.”
“Better later than sooner,” Jenna said. She and her mother didn’t quite agree on when the best time was for initiating Cassie into her family legacy. Jenna wanted her to wait till she was at least ten. Eudora, however…
“It comes when it chooses to come, dear. There’s naught you can do to stop it.”
Smiling a mother’s knowing smile, Eudora took up her walking stick and headed for the back door. It opened onto a stone pathway that wandered through Jenna’s garden to her own house on the other side. “Are you coming, Hallie? You’ve work tomorrow, no?”
“A’yea,” Hallie conceded, nodding to her sister. “We’ve got Betsy Berringer’s wedding, with the bridal party staying on till Tuesday. It was a good thing Flora decided to keep Thar Muir open through the winter and stay on with Gavin and the kids a little longer. We’re already booked for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I’ve almost convinced her to host a good, old-fashioned dress-up New Year’s Bash. All in all, I’d say the B-and-B had a triumphant first season.”
Hallie got up, grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair, and whistled for the dog to follow. Ogre started forward but skidded to a stop when he heard Arnold’s distant meow from the shadows that beckoned beyond the safety of the back door. The dog froze and then began to shiver.
“Come on, you coward,” Jenna scooped him up, tucking him under her arm and rubbing his one folded ear. “You can stay here tonight. We’ll protect you from the fearsome Arnold.”
She walked her mother and sister to the door and stood watching as they vanished into the shadows that cloaked the garden between the two houses. She glanced up, caught sight of the moon her mother had remarked upon. It was full and fat and ringed in a mist, hovering over the treetops in what was a typical New England autumn night.
What a moon, indeed…
Jenna closed the door, slid the latch in place, and put Ogre on his pillowed “throne,” an old laundry basket Cassie had done up with cushions and curtains and glued-on ribbons. She took up the wineglasses, washed and rinsed them in the sink, and put them on the dish board to dry. Then, wiping her hands with the towel, she circled the room, checking the windows, extinguishing the candles.
She was drained. It had been a full day at the salon, complete with her confrontation with Jack, and tomorrow showed every sign of being just as hectic. She had Betsy Berringer’s bridal party at eight for hair and makeup. And then Marjorie Cummings was coming in at noon, a treat to herself for her fortieth birthday. Jenna made a mental note to include an extra gift of her “Youth Springs Eternal” vervain and rosemary bath sachet to help ward off any birthday gloominess.
As she reached for the last candle, Jenna remembered the impromptu recipe she and Hallie had been crafting. She remembered, too, that last quality they’d forgotten to write before her mother had returned, the one that would complete their “perfect” recipe.
“Honor,” she whispered out loud to the dancing flame of her candle and smiled a wistful smile. “Above all else, the perfect man must have honor.”
Jenna turned to retrieve the paper, intending to burn it in the candle’s flame. It was never a good idea to leave any spell loose, howsoever makeshift it might be. All spells, she had learned from a very early age, must be kept in a proper grimoire.
But when she looked on the table where she’d last left the paper, turning it facedown she remembered when her mother had come into the room, Jenna saw that it wasn’t there.
It wasn’t on the chair.
It hadn’t fallen to the floor either.
The paper with the spell they’d begun to conjure was, in fact, nowhere to be found.
Copyright © Jaclyn Reding, Oliver Heber Publishing, 2024
Kith and Kin #3
Like generations of Wren women before her, Jenna Wren is a "hedge" witch-in tune with nature and savvy in the healing power of herbs. But even a flourishing hair salon and two wonderful children can't keep her from feeling lonely, and increasingly frustrated with her ex-husband, Jack. Then one night, Jenna and her sister draft a recipe for the "perfect man." It's meant to be a joke...until Jenna's daughter uses it to reunite her parents. But Jenna may have to summon all of her powers of enchantment before she can truly follow her heart.
Romance Small Town | Women's Fiction [Oliver-Heber Books, On Sale: October 1, 2024, e-Book, / ]
Jaclyn Reding’s award-winning, bestselling historical and contemporary romance novels have been translated into nearly a dozen languages. A National Readers’ Choice Awards finalist, and Romance Writers of America RITA Award nominee, she is the proud, proud mom of two grown sons, and willing minion to an elderly cairn terrier and a tuxedo cat. Home is with her family in New England, in an antique farmhouse that she suspects is held together purely by old wallpaper and cobwebs. A lifelong equestrian, she spends her free time in the saddle, going over plotlines and character arcs with her confidant and toughest critic, a very opinionated retired racehorse named Brunello.
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