Read Page 43

“Anything else you need?”

I felt my cheeks burn as I realized that the body glitter might work as the metallic powder Owen had asked for. “Some of that body glitter would be good,” I said, unable to meet the woman’s eyes.Advertisement

“What color do you want?”

I had no idea. He hadn’t specified. “Oh, I don’t know…”

“I bet gold would look good on you, especially in the candlelight,” she said after giving me a long, appraising stare.

“Um, okay, sure,” I mumbled. Owen would owe me for this, big time.

“Is that all?”

Since I was already there, I thought I might as well see what else I could come up with. “Can I just browse for a while?”

“Sure. Let me know if you need anything. Or if you need any ideas. Trust me, I’ve been married for thirty years. I know how to keep things spicy.”

I was suddenly very glad Owen had made me go on my own. I might survive the mortification, but if he’d been there, I wouldn’t have been able to look him in the eye ever again, assuming he survived the stroke he’d have had. I checked the list. Owen wanted fennel, marigold, rosemary, and peppermint, as well as cloves and anise. I couldn’t imagine finding all that here, but I might as well look. Among the bath products was a package labeled “Bath Herbs for Lovers.” I picked it up and read the ingredient label. It contained fennel, marigold, rosemary, and peppermint, along with a few other things like orange blossom and rose petals. I wondered if that would work and threw the package in my basket.

Owen hadn’t specified what scent air freshener he wanted, so I took a bottle of room spray in “mountain fresh.” Back in the less embarrassing gift shop part of the store, I found some souvenir bowls of potpourri. One shaped like a heart smelled of anise and clove, so I put that in the basket. I also picked up several “Souvenir of the Poconos” ashtrays. At the very back of the shop was the convenience store that I expected to find in a motel, and there I got a couple of plastic salt shakers and a travel-sized tin of aspirin.

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The woman gave a low whistle when I went to check out. “Well, well, well, you’ve got some honeymoon planned, haven’t you?” she said, waggling her eyebrows. “You didn’t need my help, after all. Not that I judge. Whatever floats your boat, I always say. But this is definitely unusual.”

“Yeah, well, we are from New York,” I said with a shrug.

“Oh,” she said, as if that explained everything. “You do know the room is nonsmoking, right? I allow candles, but I draw the line at cigarettes,” she said as she wrapped the ashtrays in paper.

“Those are just souvenirs,” I said. “Gifts for some relatives.”

“Okay, then.” She leaned forward across the counter and gave me a leering wink. “Have fun, and enjoy your honeymoon.”

My face burning as hot as Owen’s fever had been, I fled the store as soon as I had my shopping bags in hand. I stopped by Ethan’s car on the way back to the room, and just as I’d expected, there was a Manhattan map and a Boy Scout compass in the glove compartment. Heck, from what I knew of Ethan, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find most of the rest of the shopping list in his trunk, because he never knew when he might need gold body glitter and a bunch of herbs.

“Wow, that was fast,” Ethan said when I got back to the room.

“I found everything I needed at the motel shop. And before I bring out any of this, I want to make it clear that I don’t want to hear anything about the nature of the items. I had to get creative, and let’s just say the shop goes right along with the theme of this room and leave it at that.” I gathered from the alarmed expressions on all their faces that I’d made my point.

I emptied my shopping bags onto the room’s table and let Owen inspect what I found. “The herbs are all mixed up, but I’m sure we could separate them, if we have to,” I said when I got nervous about the fact that he was taking so long to look at my purchases and hadn’t said anything yet.

“We’ll have to pull the cloves and anise out of this stuff, but all the rest is fine,” he said. He raised an eyebrow at the body glitter and the label on the Lovers’ Bath Herbs, but otherwise kept his mouth shut. I thought I caught Ethan smirking out of the corner of my eye, but he schooled his expression into neutrality before I could turn and look. I could tell that Merlin was dying of curiosity about the uses for these items, but he also said nothing.

Owen put me to work sorting the cloves and anise out into the ashtrays while he and Merlin set up the spell. They pulled the bedspread off the bed and covered the bed with a dropcloth Ethan had in the trunk of his car. Then they spread the map out on the middle of the bed and placed a candle at each corner. Once I was done sorting spices, Owen put a pinch of the herbs into each ashtray, along with the spices, and arranged those around the map. He then sprinkled a fine line of salt on the floor around the edge of the bed. He had the compass in his hand, but I didn’t see that he was doing anything with the aspirin or the air freshener, so I wondered what role they would play. pqdm.com