Men-On-Pause; A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Bells and Spells Book 2) Read online

  On the other side of the front door; Marilyn took a deep breath and noted the chill in the breeze, autumn was coming, and as the season changed, she wondered what surprises life would bring. She hated to say it; but it looked like she was getting just what she’d been thinking about for a while – excitement in a dull existence – but now, like everyone who thought the grass was greener on the other side but hadn’t thought it through, she wasn’t sure that she wanted it.

  A ghost, the vampire, shifters, and – whatever came next. Perhaps it was time to wish for a normal life again?

  Marilyn noted the movement out of the corner of her eye, and Neal waved at her again. The big beaming smile on his lips was enough to make her want to kill something, or at least make that something feel bad for a while.

  Marilyn drew on her magic and aimed it at the vampire. When he did a backflip over the stone wall, she couldn’t help but smile. “Garden gnome,” she muttered and chuckled.

  “Not funny,” Neal called as she walked back to her house with a skip in her step.

  “Tell that to my sense of humour; I don’t think it agrees with you,” she called back and offered him her middle finger.

  Men-on-pause, she told herself – it was that or go bat-poop crazy.

  ~

  Marilyn had her foot on the first stair towards the sanctuary and sanity of her bedroom when the doorbell rang and caused her to pause in her efforts. “Seriously?” she sighed. She guessed her mother hadn’t used her magic on the broom after all and she was destined for company or at least a small imposition on her time.

  With a strange sense of foreboding; Marilyn turned and headed for the door. She pulled it open with gusto, eager to end the encounter before it had begun, as she half-expected Neal to be standing there; grinning and demanding an apology for the whole backflip thing – she’d do it without thought or hesitation if it was guaranteed to get rid of him.

  How wrong could one witch be?

  What she encountered was a thousand times worse than finding a vampire on your doorstep. “Oh, for the love of everything and anything that will make it, so you are not standing there!” she said and dropped her head forward and her face into her hands.

  Men-on-pause – what couldn’t people understand?

  “Hello, Marilyn,” he said, the smooth, deep tone of his voice piercing her sanity like a poison arrow.

  Claudia rushed down the stairs and hit the brakes when she saw who was at the door. “Holy crap! Who invited Satan?”

  “Not me!” Marilyn snapped, lifting her head and eyeing the unwelcome visitor with a death glare.

  “I was hoping for a better reception than that,” he said.

  “Then I suggest you go and knock on a different door,” Marilyn said and tossed the door closed in his face. She made a slow turn towards Claudia and offered her a stern glare.

  Claudia lifted her hands to her chest in mock surrender. “That was nothing to do with me,” she said and pointed a finger at the door. “That mistake is all you.”

  “I’m going to my room,” Marilyn said, walking towards the stairs with her shoulders so tense that they were practically hunched up over her ears, a scowl was etched on her face, and there was a dark glare for Claudia as she stomped by.

  “Aren’t you even remotely curious as to why…?”

  “No!” Marilyn barked back over her shoulder. “Curiosity killed the cat, and the only person I want dead is standing on my doorstep.”

  “That’s a little harsh…” Claudia stopped talking the moment Marilyn’s head whipped around like the possessed teenager in the Exorcist. “If you start speaking in tongues, I’m outta here. I got enough with the ghost.”

  “Kindly dispose of that person on my doorstep,” Marilyn said and continued up the stairs.

  “Can I kill him?” Claudia asked with glee.

  “No, he is still the father of my children,” Marilyn snapped. “Un-bloody-fortunately, and yuck, just thinking about sex with that man is enough to put me off for life.”

  “That’s why you’re so…” Claudia stopped talking when Marilyn stopped at the turn and eyed her. “It explains a lot.” She got a grunt back before Marilyn disappeared in a mutter of curse words.

  Claudia didn’t waste another second, she raced to the front door and yanked it open, just as Jake had given up hope that it was going to open again and had turned to leave. “Claudia,” he said with surprise.

  “I might not be able to kill you, apparently, being a father gets you one free pass, but I guarantee I can curse you with everything from pus-filled boils to erectile dysfunction for the rest of your miserable life,” she informed him. “Choose your next words carefully.”

  “It’s good to see you,” he said, looking equal amounts of sheepishly worried, and hopeful.

  Claudia snorted her contempt for him. “No cheerleader?” she asked, deliberately looking around behind him for the younger model that had replaced Marilyn.

  “We – separated,” Jake said, and Claudia snapped to attention.

  “Ha! So, she took you for a bundle and kicked your middle-aged butt to the roadside – I’m shocked – no, not really shocked,” she said with glee.

  “I think maybe this was a mistake,” Jake said and started to turn away.

  “You bet your ass it was a mistake.”

  “I just wanted…” Jake shook his head. Then he sighed. “I wanted to apologise to Marilyn.”

  “You don’t say,” Claudia raised just the one eyebrow.

  “I’ve experienced her pain…”

  “You got dumped…?”

  “Exactly,” Jake said. “It’s – unpleasant…”

  “Off you go, and when you get to where you’re going – hopefully, the edge of a really high cliff – off you go a bit more,” Claudia said and hand-mimed his fall. “Splat-o!”

  “I can’t expect you to understand.”

  “Be careful…”

  Jake seemed oblivious to the tightrope he was walking. “You’ve never been there…”

  “Don’t go there,” she warned again. “I can’t kill you for Marilyn, but I have absolutely no moral dilemma when it comes to doing it for me.”

  “You don’t have relationships, you have – long dates,” Jake said, and then his eyebrows shot up his forehead the moment her magic hit him right in the balls. He made a little squeaking sound as the air left his lungs and turned a satisfying shade of red.

  Claudia tossed the door closed in his face, brushed off her hands, and heard an even more satisfying thud against the door and imagined him on his knees gasping from breath and grasping his balls. “Muppet!” she said and strolled away.

  Of course, he wasn’t wrong about her – relationships, but that was her business, not his, and she didn’t need to be reminded of her issues. She was careful where she gave her trust, and she kept her heart locked behind an invincible steel enforced brick wall.

  No man was ever getting through that sucker, and Jake Walker was the prime example of why.

  Men, you couldn’t live with them, and it was against the law to bump them off when they stabbed you in the back – how was life fair?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ~

  “Talk about a blast from the past,” Claudia said, walking into Marilyn’s bedroom and discovering her friend yanking new clothes from the bags she’d neatly arranged on the floor.

  “One I could do without when I’m on my men-on-pause,” Marilyn replied, finding a pair of pants to go with the low cut wraparound blouse that she’d fallen in love with the moment she had seen it. She took off for the bathroom on fast feet.

  “Are you getting dressed for any occasion I should be aware of?” Claudia called after her.

  “I’m going to town to warn Amber her father is about. I know she won’t be happy so a heads up would be a good thing,” Marilyn called back, stripping off at record speed.

  “You know he got dumped?”

  Marilyn’s head and shoulders appeared around the corner. “B
y the cheerleader?” she looked surprised. “Huh!”

  “Poetic justice,” Claudia said.

  Marilyn disappeared again. “It doesn’t mean he needs to come sniffing around here.”

  “Said he wanted to apologise,” Claudia called and waited for Marilyn to appear again, like clockwork she did.

  “For what, being a jerk?”

  “The pain he caused you; he said he knew how it felt…”

  “Ha! He can take his apology and shove it,” Marilyn grumbled, wiggling and bouncing around as she shimmied into her clothes.

  “You’re not doing very well on your men-on-pause. You now have two men to my none…”

  “I don’t have two anything,” Marilyn said, darting out of the bathroom and stopping when Claudia folded her arms and tapped a finger against her lips as she looked Marilyn up and down.

  “What? No good?” Marilyn asked, looking down at her outfit. The blouse was a little lower than she’d like it to be, but her girls did look perky as they gazed up at her with the extra cleavage she was showing.

  “It’s perfect,” Claudia said. “I have such good taste that I should go into personal shopping.”

  Marilyn turned to the full-length mirror and was shocked by the woman looking back at her. There was her face, but she looked – younger. She turned from one side to the other and noticed the cut of the pants were slimming, and the blouse did make her girls look good. “I don’t think you’ll get many clients in Clearview, but I like it.”

  “Then when you get back from town you can stop being such a pain and empty the damn bags,” Claudia scolded her. “I did a nice thing – a good thing, and I want praise and adoration for it,” she whined.

  Marilyn turned on a chuckle. “I thought doing a nice, and good thing meant forgoing praise and adoration for it,” she teased. “But I promise to look, and thank you, I love it,” she said.

  “And now you’ll have both men drooling…”

  “There will be no drooling and no men…”

  “Too late. I think this is what they call a love triangle,” Claudia shot back, grinning.

  “No, this is what they call bad timing that two annoying men from my past show up together wanting something…”

  “Ah, but what?”

  Marilyn yanked a pair of flats from the shelf. Claudia swooped on her and snatched them out of her hand. She tossed them back on the shelf and grabbed a pair of heels. She turned and handed them to Marilyn; who promptly turned her nose up at them. “But, I’m going to town, not a night out…”

  “Who knows, maybe town will lead to a night out, after all, you have two…”

  “I’m not listening,” Marilyn said and covered her ears with her hands. Unfortunately, she was holding a shoe in each hand.

  “You look like a startled dog with its ears up.” Claudia reached out and yanked her arms down. “I can shout, but I don’t think you’d want the gnome in the garden to hear me.”

  “You’re as bad as my mother,” Marilyn berated her.

  “That’s harsh and uncalled for language, young lady,” Claudia replied with a mock frown and a finger wag.

  “She calls Neal a gnome too.”

  “Great minds think alike.”

  “See, Louann the second,” Marilyn said as she lifted her leg and slipped on the first shoe.

  “At least I’m not some hussy with two men on the go…”

  “I do not have two men…”

  “Just the vampire then?” Claudia said, grinning with victory.

  Marilyn almost fell sideways as she attempted to put the other shoe on, but she stomped her foot down and caught herself before trying again. “Will you stop about the vampire?”

  “Not a chance, I’m like Lottie, I have to live vicariously through your love life.”

  “Then you’ll be dead from wanting,” Marilyn said. “Because I don’t have a love life, and don’t intend on getting one, no matter how you plot.”

  Claudia slapped her hands against her chest and offered her a mock look of surprise. “Me? Plot? Never!”

  “Yeah, right!” Marilyn bit out. “How do I look?” She said, standing to attention.

  “I think you’ll knock ‘em both dead,” Claudia grinned, and Marilyn offered her a hard stare. “Even the undead one.”

  “Do not do anything to encourage Neal,” she warned.

  Claudia screwed up her face. “You want me to encourage Jake?”

  “God, no!” Marilyn said, heading for the hallway. “Just – don’t be you…”

  “Oh, who do I get to be?” Claudia asked, following on her heels down the hallway.

  “You…”

  “But you just said…”

  “A muted version of you without the need to interfere in my love life,” Marilyn tossed back as she started down the stairs.

  “Ah-ha! So you admit to having a love life?” Claudia said with enthusiasm.

  Marilyn couldn’t help but groan. “I did not say that.”

  “You certainly did, sort of.”

  Marilyn headed for the front door and remembered Jake. She stopped at the side window and peeked out – all clear. She snatched up her keys and bag and yanked open the front door.

  “You look a million dollars,” Neal said, standing there, casually leaning against the wall like he’d been there forever – if he had, she’d have seen him through the window.

  Marilyn groaned, but her heart leapt. “Out of my way,” she demanded, and Neal looked over her shoulder to Claudia.

  “Are we going somewhere?” he asked.

  Marilyn rolled her eyes. “I am…”

  “We – we are,” Claudia said.

  “We – are going somewhere, you’re not invited,” Marilyn informed him.

  Neal leaned in towards her as if he was about to share a secret that she was going to like. “I was already invited in…”

  “Don’t make me regret that,” Marilyn snapped back. “Don’t you have a home to go to?” Then she smacked her forehead with her palm. “Please tell me that my mother didn’t lock you out again,” she groaned.

  If Louann had been messing around again, then it would explain a lot; like why he was hanging around like a bad smell.

  “Not yet, but there’s always that to look forward to,” Neal said with an easy smile.

  “Oh!” Claudia said, remembering something. “There’s an old friend of yours upstairs.”

  Neal wasn’t sure he liked the accusing look in her eyes or her tone, “Do tell.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “Marsh Weathers.”

  “Who?” Neal was lost.

  “The guy you killed,” Marilyn said, joining in with the accusing look.

  Neal didn’t like the sound of that. He hadn’t given anyone his blood in a while, and he certainly hadn’t turned anyone. “I’m going to need a little more by way of…”

  “How many have you – no, scrub that; I don’t want to know.” Marilyn fixed him with the same look she would have given a puppy that had just pooped in her favourite shoes. “The ghost of the man you killed behind the bar…”

  “Ghost?” Neal grimaced. Now he really didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Ghost,” Marilyn replied. “Why don’t you go say hi, shoot the breeze?”

  Neal looked from one witch to the other. “I’d really rather not,” he said. He’d never run into a ghost before, and he had no idea what they were capable of, but he didn’t want to find out either.

  “Me either, but he appeared in my bedroom,” Claudia said, raising her eyebrows at him.

  “And I assume that’s not good for you,” Neal shot back.

  “Ya think?” Claudia replied.

  “It’s certainly the day for unwanted – guests,” Marilyn said and pushed by Neal.

  “Was that aimed at me?” he asked, and Claudia slammed the front door behind her, elbowing him on her way by just because she could and not because he was in her way.

  “You’re a big boy, I’m sure you can figu
re that one out,” Marilyn said, climbing into her car.

  “You know,” he said, standing in front of the door like he owned the place, and he folded his arms. “I’m not getting that warm and fuzzy feeling today, and I know it’s nothing I’ve done.”

  “Sure,” Claudia tossed back. “How like a guy; not taking responsibility for your mistakes.”

  Neal never got to answer as Marilyn hit the accelerator and sped down the drive. “Hmm, note to self – saving a witch’s life is apparently a mistake – got it.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  ~

  “I need a tiger’s eye,” Claudia announced as she walked into Amber’s store, and the bell over her head rang out and gave her only a momentary start. She almost turned and zapped it. “Maybe an Odin stone – or three?”

  Amber pointed to the collection of stones displayed on the far wall as she continued to ring up Mrs Beaton’s purchases. The older woman wasn’t a witch by blood, but she liked to think she was and she regularly came in for supplies and to ask advice on a spell she’d found on the internet.

  Most of Mrs Beaton’s spells were harmless, but Amber had worried about the vanishing spell for an unwanted neighbour until she’d seen the list of ingredients required – the only thing she was going to make vanish with that concoction was a bad smell in the air.

  When her mother walked in; Amber did a double-take. Her outfit was stunning, and she looked great, if not a little harassed, but her new look suited her and took years off.

  Amber had to wonder what Claudia was up to now. “Cash or card?” Amber asked and was handed a wad of notes.

  If only all of her customers were Mrs Beaton clones, then she’d be raking in the cash and wouldn’t need to worry about paying the bills for the shop each month, and that would take a load off her mind. She knew that there was a little witch in every woman waiting to get out, but some had to work extra hard at the craft to find that inner witch, and some just denied it was there at all.