Diablo Lake: Moonstruck by Lauren Dane Read Free Book Online Page B

what I mean. Maybe with a sash. On a sash, yeah, that would be so cute. Right?” Katie Faith made what she figured was the internationally understood movement for sash-type thingamabob.
    Aimee shook her head and snickered. “Bless your heart, Katie Faith.”
    Katie Faith gave her friend another internationally well-known hand signal and went back to work.
    Finally, after several hours of unpacking, hanging pictures and getting the place just right, Aimee paused to give their work a satisfied look. “You got yourself some nice furniture.”
    Katie Faith turned a circle to take it all in. Her view was of mountains and trees and nothing but. Her belongings fit there. She fit there.
    “I was an accountant for a department store. I’d never have been able to afford it all without the discount,” she told Aimee. Her boss had even told her if she ever changed her mind they’d have a job waiting for her.
    She wouldn’t be going back to Chattanooga because she’d accepted what had never been more true. Diablo Lake was her home. Her roots went deep, like the magic there did.
    “I texted Lara to let her know to get her butt on over here with some food. You’re goofy enough as it is. When you get hungry, you’re destructively goofy,” Aimee informed her of their friend whose family owned Salt and Pepper.
    “You’re going to spoil me with all your love talk.”
    “I notice you don’t deny my claims of your goofiness.”
    “I’m too classy to dignify your remarks.” Katie Faith sniffed and then shoved a caramel into her pie hole because she had no pie and she was known to get a bit unruly when she got really hungry.
    On cue, Lara appeared holding several bags. “Burgers, fries, deep fried cherry pies.”
    “We have beer! Perfect.” Katie Faith snuck a french fry and sighed happily. They sat at the small table and looked out the windows, over the fog-shrouded sunset over the mountains and trees in the distance.
    “When’s the coven meeting?” Aimee grinned and Katie Faith groaned.
    “Don’t let Miz Rose hear you call us a coven. She’s a mite testy about that.” They were witches in the sense that they were all born imbued with magical powers of one kind or another. They drew their energy from the earth and met as a group every other Thursday night. But long ago, the Collins family, the strongest of their kind in Diablo Lake, one of the founding families who’d been in charge the longest, decided that Consort was a better word to use for what they were and it stuck.
    “She is kinda scary.” Lara leaned toward the windows. “Holy cow is Damon Dooley a spoonful of yum.”
    “He sure did seem to think the same of you when we were at Salt and Pepper earlier this week,” Katie Faith teased as she took the pickles off her burger.
    “Can’t say I’d mind living here so close to ’em all. Dangerous. Well, not really, which is probably why they’re so hot, but they’re big and manly and they all have those work-with-your hands manly jobs. The Pembrys are sort of soft by comparison.” Aimee stole some fries and sipped her beer.
    “Darrell wasn’t all bad. He just wasn’t good enough either.” He hadn’t been a total loser until the end. There were good times between them. It had taken a year or so before Katie Faith could remember that, but time did heal those wounds.
    “Face it, he was with you for the power and position. Sharon came along, swished her tail at him and he strayed because she offered less power, but more sex.” Lara’s blunt delivery would have depressed Katie Faith had an epiphany not shoved everything else from her head.
    She sat up from where she’d been slumping. “Power and position? What?”
    “Don’t tell me it never occurred to you? You’re a beautiful woman, Katie Faith, but Darrell and his fellow Pembrys aren’t in charge for nothing. They marry for power and position . Or, if they knock a female up. But really, it’s all good for you because you’re free and you’re