Your Magic or Mine? by Ann Macela Read Free Book Online Page B

growing on her left and the tarragon on her right, and she inhaled deeply.
    How she loved spring here in the middle of Texas—the chartreuse of the new tree leaves, the tender shoots of the vegetables and herbs showing their heads aboveground, the bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush carpeting the fields around the farm, the adult birds bringing their chicks to the feeders for the first time, the new calves and lambs trying out their legs, the sheer promise in the soft air.
    Her magical botanical talent brought her close to the earth, its seasons, its flora and fauna. Her abilities to nurture growing plants, to help them blossom and set their fruits and vegetables, to use them for healing and well-being in people and beasts alike, were an intrinsic part of her. She couldn’t imagine being without them, seeing the world … seeing the world like Marcus Forscher must—in terms of cold, hard numbers instead of intense colors, tastes, and fragrances.
    The thought of the mathematician reminded her of her larger dilemma—her reaction to Daria’s news. She couldn’t decide why he seemed somehow linked to the situation. What was going on in her head to cause these feelings of restlessness, of anticipation, and, at the same time, of sorrow? She’d been fine until Daria’s announcement. Happy the debate was over, happy she wouldn’t have to see her opponent again, and then?
Boom!
One pregnancy in the family and she had to pick herself up off the floor.
    Was she jealous of Daria? That her sister had a husband and soon would have a baby?
    Nah, she knew how love worked among practitioners—especially the soul-mate-phenomenon part. She’d seen it happen with both Daria and Clay, seen them find their mates as all practitioners did, with a little help from the imperative, of course. She didn’t expect to be interested in a man until the right one, her soul mate, came along. In fact, after the experiences of her siblings, she’d wondered off and on when she’d meet him. According to Mother Lulabelle Higgins, who’d predicted the event for all of them, it would be soon. Who would he be?
    What about her reception of the baby idea? She’d never thought much about having kids before, had taken for granted she would, naturally, but she had to find the prospective father first, and there was certainly no suitable man on the horizon. Was she yearning for a child? She’d never “yearned” before.
    Maybe it was simply spring, and her hormones were rising like sap in the trees. Maybe her response was simply her biological clock’s alarm buzzing. She was twenty-nine, after all.
    She slowed and stopped when she reached the T in the road where it branched to different sections of the farm. Her curly tail wagging, Delilah snuffled around the fence posts and investigated a small hole, probably the home of a burrowing animal. Gloriana took a firmer grip on the leash. Basenjis were sight and scent hunters, and she didn’t want the dog to flush a nocturnal creature and take off in pursuit.
    She breathed deeply and looked up at the blanket of stars above her. Whatever the answers to her questions were, she wouldn’t find them there. It was time she took herself to bed. “Come on, Delilah. Race you home.”

CHAPTER
THREE
     
    Four weeks later
    “Let’s take this show on the road, whatta ya say?”
    Gloriana stared at Ed Hearst sitting at the end of the table in a HeatherRidge conference room in Austin on Thursday afternoon. The
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editor was as rumpled as ever but also jubilant.
    Then she glanced across the gleaming mahogany at the man on the other side. Convinced her expression showed her negative reaction to Ed’s outrageous proposal, she wished she could read Marcus Forscher. His face was set in stern lines that betrayed none of his thoughts. It didn’t help that he hadn’t even looked in her direction since they sat down.
    His brown eyes gleaming behind his glasses, Ed rubbed his hands together and kept talking. “Since the journal