A Charmed Place Read Online Free Page A

Sandy Point .
    She brought out wonderfully beat-up rattan chairs and arranged them around a makeshift table fashioned from an old, round, ironbound shop shingle that she'd found years ago at a yard sale. The shop's name, HMS Bliss, was written in ornate script on a background of hunter green. When she'd first dragged it home to clean it up and attach short legs to it, her father had mocked her scavenging ways. But after she set it up, if the weather was fair, he'd invariably have his lunch on that shop shingle, and he always drank his tea there.
    It was an annual tradition with Maddie to wonder what kind of wares a shop called HMS Bliss would carry. Chocolates? Nautical supplies? No matter. For now, the name fit her mood. And in her bliss, she was extravagant: she cut a huge armful of roses, whacking o ff whole branches of the flori bundas, letting the tightly closed buds on them go to waste.
    No matter. Life was short.
    She was standing at the cedar potting table alongside the house, stripping the roses of their thorns, when Norah Mills roared up in her milk white Mercedes with Joan MacDonald hard on her heels in her dark blue Jeep. They were an hour and a half late, but Maddie didn't mind at all.
    Norah was first out of her car. The mood on her face did not match the mood of her T-shirt, which proclaimed, "Life's a Beach."
    "Maddie! Where the hell were you? We cooled our heels through two cocktails and a salad. Where were you? We called three times!"
    "Really? I guess I didn't hear the phone," Maddie confessed.
    "I guess you didn't want to hear the phone!"
    True enough. " I thought you two were coming here to pick me up."
    "That was Plan A," said Joan, freeing a pale pink rose to slip through her straw hat. She sniffed the rose and smiled, and her joy made her round face pretty. "Plan B was you'd come meet us in your own car, because you didn't want to go antiquing with us this afternoon. Remember?"
    Actually, Maddie had been too upset to remember much of anything yesterday, but she had no intention of admitting it. "I do remember now. Sorry about that. Are you both stuffed, or shall I make you something?"
    No one was stuffed, not on a salad, but Norah would wire her jaw shut with her own hands before she'd eat anything substantial. Thin and rich, that's what got Norah's respect. And Joan—Joan, who was neither thin nor rich—wanted Norah's respect, so she declined Maddie's offer as well.
    "We stopped by to drop off Joannie's Jeep, that's all," said Norah with a queenlike wave of her hand. "We'll come back for it later. Ciao."
    "Oh, but—so soon?" The words fell from Maddie's lips before she had a chance to snatch them back. "We've hardly had a chance to talk."
    "Darling, that's what lunch was for. Two of the dealers are by appointment only, and we're late." Norah blew Maddie a kiss and turned to her sidekick. "Got your Visa?"
    Short, dark-haired Joan patted the place where a six-shooter would hang and said, "Yup. Let's go." She loved shopping, loved it to the point that she'd maxed out her credit cards and had to resort to an equity loan to keep up with Norah.
    Joan joked that shopping was cheaper than gambling as a hobby, and maybe she was right. But what she really wanted—what she'd made no secret of wanting—was a husband, two kids, and a cat. So far, all she had was the cat.
    Maddie stood at the potting table, watching and smiling as the two women prepared to go off on their frivolous mission. She lasted until Norah turned the key to the ignition, and then she yielded to wretched temptation.
    "Wait! You never said what happened at Annie's with Dan Hawke!"
    Did it sound like an afterthought? She hoped so.
    Norah said gaily, " Oh, that? It was a disaster. We went up to him, all polite and properly starry-eyed. I was on my best behavior, swear to God. After exchanging two sentences with us, he said, 'I'm sorry, but I'm having a private and rather important conversation. Would you mind? Thank you so much.' "
    Joan