Fire and Magic (The Jadori Book 1)

Chapter 6: You Were in a Panic for Nothing

My mouth dropped open. "What? What are you talking about?"

His scowl deepened. "You're such a hypocrite."

"What?"

"I'm the worst in the world for talking to you and making you look delusional, but then you deliberately talk to his grandma right in front of him!"

"She wasn't going to let me ignore her when there was the chance her money was going to be lost."

He rubbed a hand down his face. "So that makes it alright? I can't believe this." He took a deep breath in through his nose. "So basically, I ruined your life and she saved it by doing the exact same thing."

"This was diff—"

"How? It's exactly the sa—"

"No! She was able to give me evidence to prove to him that I can really see ghosts. Private things that only she would know. You couldn't do that."

He stepped forward as I looked up into those gorgeous brown eyes that were glaring daggers at me. The wind picked up around us, but I barely noticed.

He leaned down and I resisted the urge to step back. "You treated me like crap for nothing."

I squared my shoulders. "No, I didn't. You did ruin everything. I was set to stay in here for the rest of my life. Now I might have a chance to get out."

"What if it doesn't work?"

My heart clenched. "Then I'll be back where I started. Where you put me. Doomed to stay here forever."

Tears stung my eyes thinking about that, but I would not cry in front of him.

Mrs C stood and stepped between us. "Bickering like this is not going to help anyone. You both need to calm down."

Some of the wind went out of my sails. She was right. I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. The wind died down and I cringed. I had to be more careful about doing that, but he'd had me so riled up that I couldn't think straight.

Mr Newbie ran a hand through his messy dark curls and stalked off into the trees at the bottom of the garden.

Relief settled over my shoulders as I watched him disappear. And I was totally not checking out his broad shoulders. Or his butt.

Mrs C had a strange expression on her face when I turned back around and my face heated. "What?"

She smiled knowingly. "He's a handsome one, isn't he?"

Yes, but... "He's okay, but he's a jerk."

Her smile grew and she nodded as if she were saying, "Yeah, you keep telling yourself that."

I think my face must have been as red as my hair.

It always seemed to be that the good-looking guys knew they were man-candy and acted like jerks.

Mr J stood and stretched his legs. "So, what happens now?"

The change of subject threw me. "Uh, we wait till tomorrow and see what the doc says."

I sighed. I hated waiting.

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Despite the activities that the staff always had planned, time dragged on and it was hard to concentrate on anything.

I'd immersed myself in a couple of movies the night before, but the morning was hard to deal with.

We'd played some card games, but no one wanted to follow that with a long, drawn-out game of Monopoly, so we'd gone outside for a walk in the sunshine. Then we'd played Charades. I wasn't very good at it, but it was fun seeing how ridiculous we looked while trying to act out the clues.