Page 21 of Flirty Fall Fling

I almost grin. “He had a lot of mistresses. One of them didn’t take it well when he ended things with her.”

Blaire crosses her legs. “Continue.”

“She cursed the firstborn son of his entire bloodline so they’d never find true love.” The words sit heavy between us.

She doesn’t laugh or smile, only blinks a few times and sits back. “Do you feel cursed?”

“At times.” I give her a tired smile.

The expression that I saw when she was reading my coffee cup returns. It’s almost like she’s looking through me instead of at me.

“Well, you are the common denominator.”

“Well aware,” I say.

“Why do you think your relationships end?”

“I didn’t pay for a séance for my personal life. Can we focus on the curse?”

Time slows, and my muscles tense like they used to a half second before I’d take a hit on the ice. I move in front of the fire to warm my hands. Logs are stacked beside the brick, and I place a couple more in. Blaire shrugs off her robe, folds it over the back of the chair, and stands beside me. The heat pushes against my chest, and the woodsmoke mixes with whatever she’s burning in the brass dish on the mantel. It might be rosemary or cedar or sage. I can’t place the scent. I’m surrounded by her, and I’m not complaining. The new wood I added fully catches and crackles.

“Have you ever been in love?” she asks.

I laugh. “Yeah. But I’ve never been with anyone who’s made me want to truly give up everything.”

“When things get hard, you run?” she asks, clocking me.

“It’s not that I run. I just never want to stay.” I’m admitting more than I imagined I would.

Every woman I’ve dated and broken up with filters through my thoughts. It’s the same cycle, where I end things at the thirty-day mark. The shine wears off, or I find a reason why I can’t spend the rest of my life with that person. I fall hard and move on faster—isn’t that what Trena said?

Down the hall, a door bangs shut on its own, hard enough to rattle the window.

“Boyfriend pissed?”

“It’s the spirits,” she says, like she predicted I’d ask. “They’re responding.”

We go quiet, and she allows me to soak in the silence.

“Do you believe you can break a three-hundred-plus-year-old curse?” I ask.

Static from the radio fills the room. It rises and falls like the house is breathing through it. One word comes out of the hiss.

Love.

It’s clear as if someone leaned into a microphone and spoke.

Blaire unplugs the radio, not giving it another chance to say anything else.

“That’s enough,” she says. “You’ve worked them up.”

“Did it say … love?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she tells me.

It was crystal clear, in a deep, scratchy voice.

“Should I be concerned?”