Charm This! Read online

  The moonlight streamed in the window, bathing them both.

  Jack closed his eyes and relaxed into his wolf form.

  Curling his big furry body around her smaller one protectively, he slipped back into a peaceful sleep.

  20

  Rachel

  Rachel took a moment to wipe her hands on her apron and look around the room.

  The Harkness kitchen was not enormous, so they had all wandered over to the octagonal barn behind the house to make gingerbread.

  The barn housed the main store on the first floor, filled with bushels of fruit, wooden toys, jars of canned vegetables and jams, fragrant spices, fresh baked goods in paper boxes, and more.

  The second floor was home to the holiday shop. The high ceilinged space was filled with a variety of Christmas trees, each decorated in a different style and surrounded by felt “snow” giving the whole scene the air of a holiday forest.

  The kitchen was located in the basement. All the pies and cookies and cakes would be baked downstairs, and then carried up to be stocked and sold in the shop.

  Currently, the kitchen was filled with wonderful smells and Harkness siblings.

  Johnny played carols on his guitar, singing them Elvis-style while Neve danced with Ethan Chambers.

  Adrian and Lucy were seated at one of the tables, frosting cookies and whispering to each other.

  Chance and Thea sat with Derek on the other side of the table, talking in an animated way about the latest goings-on in Glacier City.

  Kate and Darcy each used a large fork to beat a metal bowl of dough as Finn added cups of flour and Evangeline cheered them on. Kate’s face was red with effort but her eyes were twinkling. Darcy’s strength seemed to be flagging and she laughed.

  “I still don’t know why they won’t use the mixer extensions I built,” Tess said quietly to Rachel.

  Will’s magical mate was lovely but the contraptions she built when she wasn’t using her magic weren’t known for being very functional. Rachel figured the reason they weren’t using them was that they didn’t wanted to be picking raw gingerbread out of the ceiling fans all night.

  “How’s Will?” Rachel asked, changing the subject.

  Tess’s face broke into a wide grin.

  “He’s great. He’ll be here soon.”

  Will and Jack were the only ones still missing.

  Hedda was gone too, but that was planned.

  Rachel had no idea how, but Jack had convinced her to let Hedda run the shop for just one day so that she could enjoy the family gingerbread bake at the farm with him.

  Hedda used to sell polished stones online and she was a natural lover of minerals and glass and basically everything that could be found in Sticks & Stones. Rachel had agreed to show her around the store, and when she saw Hedda’s reaction to the place, she had to concede that the shop would be in good hands for a day with her.

  But if the point had been to spend time with Jack then it was a bust. He’d dropped her off here and then dashed back out almost immediately.

  Not that it wasn’t entertaining.

  “Rachel,” Johnny yelled to her, his hands still moving on the guitar strings.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Can you please explain to the family how you found out Jack was a shifter?”

  Oh boy.

  “Well, I was in the shop at night and then a giant wolf ran in,” she said. “And it was Jack.”

  “I think you could tell that better,” Tess noted dryly.

  “Weren’t you scared?” Darcy asked. She had stopped mixing and was smiling up at Rachel.

  “Yes,” Rachel said. “He’s lucky I couldn’t reach my grandfather’s sword.”

  Kate threw her head back and laughed. She clearly knew Rachel couldn’t hurt a fly.

  “Oh man,” Finn said with a dazzling grin that almost made Rachel willing to rethink her stance on professional magicians.

  “Are you guys talking about me?” Jack asked as he came down the stairs with Will in tow.

  “Jack,” Rachel said.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” Derek quipped.

  “Derek,” Kate admonished him.

  But Jack only laughed and joined Rachel at the ovens, kissing her on the forehead.

  “Can you come with me for a minute?” he asked.

  “Um, yeah,” she said. “Is that okay, Tess?”

  “I’ve got this,” Tess said, winking at her. “Besides, Will is here to help me.”

  Rachel followed Jack back up the stairs and through the shop, thankful to be relieved of duty before Tess started up her cookie-making contraption.

  Jack led her outside. The cold air was refreshing after the heat of the bakery.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t keep you out here for long.”

  Their feet crunched in the snow as they walked down the drive to the very first sycamore in the long row.

  “This is where my birth mother left me,” Jack told her quietly. “It’s the only place on this farm I’ve ever felt sad.”

  Rachel’s heart constricted. He was such a good-natured man. It was too easy to forget what he had been through.

  “And now I’m standing here feeling happy, so happy,” he told her, stroking her cheek.

  She leaned into his hand, closing her eyes. She felt happy too.

  “I wonder if there is anything that would make this moment better,” he mused. “Anything that might turn this spot into my favorite place on Harkness Farm…”

  “Look, I love you, but I’m not doing it out here in public in broad daylight in the snow,” Rachel told him firmly.

  Jack laughed.

  Then he dropped to one knee.

  “Oh,” Rachel said.

  “Rachel DelGato, woman of my dreams,” Jack said. “Will you marry me so we can make each other’s dreams come true?”

  She tried to memorize the sunlight in his hair, the expression in his hazel eyes as he waited for her answer.

  “Yes,” she said. “I can’t wait.”

  Then he was sliding something out of his pocket, she could barely see it through the haze of tears in her eyes.

  When he held it up, she recognized it instantly.

  “The ring,” she breathed.

  “I couldn’t buy a ring from your competitor,” he said. “Hedda helped me.”

  It was the one.

  The rose-cut diamond she’d never been able to sell. No wonder the antique ring had never felt right on any customer she’d tried it on.

  It was supposed to be hers.

  “You don’t like it,” Jack’s face fell.

  “Jack,” she said, breathless.

  “You can choose a different one,” he said.

  “No,” she said quickly. “I love it. I’ve always had a feeling about this one. I just can’t believe you chose it. I must have three hundred engagement rings in those cases.”

  “And I can’t believe you chose me,” Jack said.

  He slid it onto her finger and she didn’t need magical intuition to know that it was just right.

  She pulled him to his feet and he threw his arms around her, lifting her up, swinging her around under the snowy branches of the sycamores.

  Soon he would put her down and they would go in, bake gingerbread, and tell the others what just happened.

  But a tiny part of them would always be in this place. Dazzled by the beauty of the snowy farm and the joy of their union.

  * * *

  ***

  Thanks for reading Charm This!

  Keep reading for a sample of Burn This!: A 300 Moons Book.

  * * *

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  1

  Burn This! (SAMPLE)

  Johnny Lazarus looked out at the crowd.

  He was a handsome guy, he looked at home on the farm with his shirt off, at home on the tour bus, at home in a fancy restaurant with his long dark hair brushing the sh
oulders of his tux.

  But it was on the stage, with the savage beat reverberating through his body, making his feet feel like they had roots down to the center of the earth, that he felt in his element.

  His band, Somnambulance, was on top of the world, and everyone wanted a piece of Johnny Lazarus. They had always traveled a lot, but this summer’s Outlaws of Rock festival was the longest tour they’d done in ages. It was starting to feel like one long concert, and the drives, hotel rooms and groupies in between were just breaks between the sets.

  Even here in LA, the biggest venue of the whole tour, with thousands of screaming fans, he walked right onstage feeling at home, and unconcerned. He would snap his fingers and the crowd would fall at his feet, no worries. The crew was lean. They had been at this for months and the whole thing ran like clockwork.

  Johnny closed his eyes and breathed in the experience. The huge field laid out before him swam with every scent the human body was capable of producing: sweat and tears, tobacco and booze, arousal and even a hint of fear here and there.

  And the sounds: the shudder and thump of tens of thousands of hearts beating, feet shuffling, howls and sighs and palms slapping, some in perfect time to the old school Metallica cover they were doing, some not.

  Above it all stood the silky smooth feel of the guitar in his hands. Little Ruby, his darling, her strings singing under his fingers. No matter how gritty the concert, little Ruby was always smooth and clean and cool to the touch. She was impervious to the bacchanal. He should have named her Pallas Athena. Except she sang so sweetly when he stroked his fingers against her, it reminded him of something else entirely. So little Ruby was her name.

  He sang into the mic as the crowd screamed along, and who the fuck could blame them? The band was killing it. The song was an old favorite, from back when Metallica was good. And as a bonus, the post-Fifty Shades chicks really got into the master-servant lyrics.

  Johnny had vague memories of his mom listening to this type of music, before… Before the fire, and before everything changed. Before the night she snuck him out and drove all night to the suburbs of Philadelphia to leave him with Kate Harkness.

  “It’s just for a little while, bud, until I can get a job out here and an apartment, okay?” she had assured him.

  Even at age five, madly in love with her big brown eyes and the flowery smell of her shampoo, he had known that wasn’t true.

  And, in fact, she had never come back.

  To her credit, she also hadn’t come back after he got famous. He’d made a point of keeping the name she gave him. So she would know what she had missed.

  The machine gun beat of the drums splattered out and the song ended.

  The whole crowd screamed like crazy, like they never wanted him to stop.

  Well, too bad. It was time for the finale.

  Jazz, the young girl on crew who was in charge of little Ruby during the finale still looked nervous even tonight, the last show. She was probably the only one still feeling the heat, and he couldn’t say he blamed her.

  It was Jazz’s job to grab the guitar out of the air when Johnny tossed her. Then she had to run backstage and protect her until the show was over and Johnny came to snatch little Ruby up fiercely from her arms.

  Johnny had been known to get a little carried away during the final song. And little Ruby was an irreplaceable antique Les Paul.

  Though Jazz seemed barely old enough to be allowed to go on a tour at all, there was a serious look on her soft brown face. Johnny knew instinctively that she would protect his instrument with her life, if necessary, and would never allow herself to get caught up in an some silly prank, egged on by one of the pop princesses or boy band geeks, where she would scare Johnny into thinking something had happened to little Ruby.

  He tossed his beloved tenderly into Jazz’s slender hands and gave the kid a grin when she caught little Ruby as if the guitar had flown into her arms of its own volition. She grinned back and disappeared into the darkness offstage.

  He strode slowly back to the mic, grabbing a bottle of water off one of the amps along the way.

  The air hung hot and wet, like a damp sponge, even though the sun had set two hours ago. Ominous clouds had formed a dome over the field since morning. The kids selling umbrellas and disposable plastic ponchos had been making a killing all day. But it turned out to be an empty threat.

  At least the cloud cover probably cut down on the cases of sun-stroke in the medical tent.

  Johnny sucked down half the water bottle, then poured the other half slowly over his head.

  Screams, mostly female, rang out as the t-shirt went transparent over his lean, muscular frame. He let himself smirk and they got even louder. He tossed the empty bottle out into the crowd and tried not to watch as a sea of people reached for it.

  “You guys havin’ a good time tonight?” he asked mildly into the microphone, scanning the crowd.

  They roared back at him.

  “Me too. Me too. I was hoping we’d get to hang out with you a little longer, but we just got word from the park management that it’s time to shut things down,” he said sadly.

  “Booooooooooo,” they screamed.

  There was no word from anyone, of course. He was teasing them.

  They knew it. And they loved it.

  “They told me if we don’t get off the stage, they’re gonna pull the plug,” he told them with a confidential tilt of his head, like he was spreading a juicy rumor about a neighbor.

  “Booooooooo,” they screamed back.

  “You know what I got to say to that?” he asked, dropping the gossipy tone, and picking up his branded rebellious attitude.

  The crowd began to cheer loudly.

  “I said… You know what I got to say to that?” he asked, taunting them.

  They cheered frantically, louder than before.

  “Fuck that!” he screamed back.

  The whole crowd went nuts.

  Johnny literally couldn’t hear himself think.

  “Fuck that!” he screamed again, instead of trying. He pumped his fist, unsure if any mic in the world would allow them to hear him over their own sounds.

  But they heard him, they always did. They picked up his phrase and began to chant.

  “Fuck that…Fuck that…Fuck that,” their collective voice bounced off the back of the stage and echoed back to him.

  He smiled and stripped off his water and sweat-soaked shirt.

  More high-pitched screams.

  He let them take in his naked torso. He was glad he was built. Chicks went wild for the abs and the biceps. And the dudes seemed to get a kick out of his body too. Like somehow because they connected with his lyrics they felt like they were a part of him, like his body was theirs too, since it expressed their feelings.

  And of course, some of them just wanted to fuck him.

  He basked in it, glorying in sharing his beauty, though he knew from a certain point of view, it would be considered vanity.

  His foster sister, Darcy, for one, would never let him live this sort of thing down.

  But he was merely sharing with others what had been given to him freely - not earned. Shouldn’t he share it with the world, much as he shared his musical talent, which had also been bestowed upon him?

  Of course there was that other gift.

  Best not to think about it.

  He threw his shirt into the crowd and their screams ratcheted up higher. People literally dove to catch it.

  “I say we play one more. Let ‘em try to stop us!” he offered.

  He held up his right hand, and a guitar flew at him from stage right.

  A serviceable, but disposable, Fender Stratocaster.

  He caught it expertly and strapped it on.

  Man, they were smooth tonight. He could have caught it with his eyes closed.

  “Anybody have any requests?” he asked innocently.

  He didn’t really need to ask. There was only one song they hadn’t played.


  One song that all these people paid their hard earned money, or their parents’ money at least, to hear.

  In answer, the crowd lifted their heads up to the clouds and and howled, like wolves baying at the moon.

  Adorable. They were all adorable from up here, their flaws hidden by the distance, their imperfections smoothed out by perspective. So small, crying out to be heard. They were all his babies.

  Johnny drank them in for another moment.

  Who knew when the next tour would be? He’d be back in the renovated attic soon, all by himself, trying to coax little Ruby to sing the songs in his imagination again. Then they’d all be back in the studio, in an antiseptic booth, nothing but his own voice playing back on a loop to tell him whether it was any good or not. He might never write another song that made the world throw their head back and howl, like he was inside their souls.

  He stopped thinking and gave his babies what they wanted.

  He punched out the three notes of the opening riff of “Strength of the Pack.”

  Three…two…one…

  The crowd erupted, stamping their feet on the ground and yelling. The effect from the stage above was like watching a pot of water boiling over.

  Johnny smiled at what he had wrought. This song was his, and they were all here to bask in it.

  His fingers punished the strings of the Strat, jabbing the notes out like they were Morse code.

  Take me. My body, my soul, they are nothing more than a mirror, made to show you yourselves. Look into me unblinking, my heroes, my slaves.

  The riff stopped for a quarter rest before the song kicked in and their hearts pounded with anticipation so fierce that he could hear the throb over their screams.

  He let the energy flow through him, carry him.

  Then the bass and drums led him into the verse and he sang.

  When Johnny had first started playing, he’d tried to copy the bands he idolized. He’d studied the greats and then tried to take from them what he thought the fans would want to hear.

  It turned out the fans were smarter than he thought. They could smell that bullshit a mile away.