Margot Early - The Things We Do For Love

Distracted, Jonathan glanced at her. “Oh. Thank you, Mary Anne. When you come back—”

But she was already walking away, leaving the crowd behind.

This was the moment. She carried Jonathan’s glass and her own to the refreshment table. It was unattended, and she carefully found the cabernet and poured another glass, then, with the uncapped vial of potion against her palm, let it run into his glass with the wine.

She poured herself some merlot and took a sip to steady her nerves.

“Ah, thank you, Mary Anne.”

A masculine hand took the second glass from her hand.

Mary Anne did not release it. “No, that’s for—” She gripped the glass tightly.

Appalled, she felt the stem break, the foot come off in her hand.

Graham Corbett looked in astonishment from the piece she held to the one he held. Then in a mock salute, he lifted his part of the glass to his lips and drank deeply.

Dear Reader,

One of life’s most frustrating realities, which most people learn at an early age, is that not all love is returned in equal measure. Most of us learn young that we can fall madly in love with someone who doesn’t know we’re alive. The girl falls in love with the high school football player, but he likes her best friend…and so on.

In the realm of legends, fairy tales and Harry Potter, one of the solutions to this problem has been the love potion. Of course, it’s in no way a foolproof answer. Though all is fair in love and war, we want to be loved without having to resort to witchcraft. And as to enchanted drafts, the wrong people sometimes drink them.

I hope you enjoy reading of love potions in a contemporary context and meeting Mary Anne Drew and Graham Corbett, who can both at least comfort themselves with the thought that love potions don’t work anyway.

Wishing you happiness and all good things always.

Sincerely,

Margot Early

Margot Early has written stories since she was twelve years old. She has published more than twenty books with Harlequin Books; her work has been translated into nine languages and sold in sixteen countries. Ms. Early lives high in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains with two German shepherds and several other pets, including snakes and tarantulas. She enjoys the outdoors, dance and spinning dog hair.

A man who believed me to be a witch once asked me,

quite gravely, if I’d put a spell on him.

I thought it a remarkable question and told him,

“Not on you.”

This book is for him.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

Logan, West Virginia

MARY ANNE DREW was at her desk at The Logan Standard and the Miner when Cameron brought the news. Cameron, who was Mary Anne’s first cousin and best friend, grabbed a chair and straddled it, facing Mary Anne. “They’re engaged.”

Mary Anne did not ask who. She said, “No,” in a way that was sort of like a prayer.

Her face showing that she knew she was causing pain, Cameron said, “Yes. Angie and her friends were drinking martinis at the Face last night and Rhonda waited on them, and she told me that’s the news. She doesn’t have a ring yet, though.”

It couldn’t be true. Mary Anne smothered her feelings in a cascade of repetitions of this thought.

She’d been in love with Jonathan Hale for four years, ever since he’d arrived in Logan from Cincinnati to manage the public radio station, WLGN. She’d never experienced anything like it. At first, she’d thought nothing of the tall dark-haired man with his wire-rimmed glasses and matter-of-fact manner. Yes, she’d been impressed with the time he’d spent working overseas as a correspondent for Reuters. She knew he’d seen dreadful things in war zones, things he didn’t discuss. Then, one day when she’d come in to record an essay, he’d sat listening and watching her with brooding intensity. Afterward, he’d said, “That was good work, Mary Anne. I’m going to try to get it out to as many other stations as I can.”

She’d looked into his blue eyes and she had felt something that was almost like an arrow through the heart. She’d never understood where that image of Eros had come from until that moment; she’d been nailed by the arrows of Aphrodite’s son. The sheer force of the experience convinced her that Jonathan Hale was meant to be hers.

She believed it still.

Cameron asked, “Are you okay?”

“Sure.”

No, she wasn’t okay! She was dying. How could she go through the next five minutes, let alone the rest of her life, knowing that Jonathan Hale planned to wed that tacky and tiny thing, Angie Workman, who was manager of the Blooming Rose, the closest thing Logan had to a boutique. To bolster the notion that this news meant nothing to her, she said, “Aren’t you working?”

Cameron was director of the Logan County Women’s Resource Center, located next door to the newspaper office.

“Coffee break. A client’s mother came in and told her marriage is for life and she’s ashamed that her own daughter should seek a divorce from the fine man who broke three bones in her face last week. She wound up by calling yours truly and our legal-aid attorney godless man-haters. I’m cooling off.” Cameron switched back to Mary Anne’s concerns. “I have a last-chance idea. Just for fun. Not that it will work. But it would be fun to find out if it could work.”

Mary Anne studied her cousin. Like Mary Anne, Cameron was blond—or somewhat blond. They had the same light brown hair, which became lighter in the sun. But there the resemblance ended.

Cameron, to Mary Anne’s envy, was small. In fact, genes had granted her the kind of body that was currently in vogue—boyishly small hips and a pair of tatas that made men stare. She was a natural athlete who never drove if she could walk, run or ride a bike to get where she needed to go. Her idea of a good time on weekends was leading Women of Strength events for the women from the resource center’s shelter. She had a black belt in tae kwon do and was an experienced caver. Mary Anne, on the other hand, knew that her own rear end would benefit from less time in chairs and in the driver’s seat of her car.

Cameron was five foot five. Mary Anne was five foot ten. And Mary Anne lived for haute couture—after all, before settling in Logan she had worked for two different women’s magazines in New York and could swear that everything in The Devil Wears Prada was true. Cameron’s clothes came from thrift shops. Mary Anne indulged in highlights, and Cameron wouldn’t dream of it. Mary Anne was an editor and reporter for The Logan Standard and the Miner; Cameron had the aforementioned challenging job of safeguarding the welfare of women and children.

Being that Cameron had a set of requirements for any man with whom she might be involved, Mary Anne was touched by her cousin’s interest in helping her secure Jonathan Hale’s affection and desire. Jonathan nearly met Cameron’s prerequisite for a man ready for marriage. Though he was employed and wasn’t an alcoholic, Mary Anne doubted he’d ever had therapy, something Cameron insisted all males required. Cameron herself also wanted a man who didn’t need to reproduce, who was willing to adopt. “There are plenty of children in the world,” Cameron would say. “Children who need good homes.”

The truth, Mary Anne knew, was that Cameron had watched her own sister go through an agonizing labor, which concluded with a cesarean section. She had told Mary Anne, “Never. I will never…”

Mary Anne liked the idea of having children. No, she wanted children. This fact had given her dreams about Jonathan an extra edge of desperation. “What’s the last-ditch idea?” she asked Cameron.

Cameron’s brown eyes gleamed, looking almost black. “A love potion.”

This suggestion was soooo Cameron. You would think, Mary Anne often reflected, that a woman who heard heinous stories of domestic abuse, rape and what-have-you every day, would have surgically removed every last romantic cell in her body. Cameron claimed that this was the case. It just wasn’t. And whenever Cameron did become romantic, it was things like this…

The fortune teller at the state fair, who’d told Cameron she would marry a dark-haired brown-eyed man; the astrologer who said Cameron would become united with her soul mate through “unconventional means.” Chain letters with the message, “You will meet the love of your life within five days of sending this to five people. Do not break the chain!” And, no, Mary Anne was not exempt from Cameron’s bizarre schemes.

She forced skepticism to the forefront as she confronted her cousin. “Supposing that such a thing worked—which it won’t. How are you proposing to obtain it?”

“Paul’s mom,” Cameron said simply. “The hippie midwife…?”

Paul was what Cameron had instead of a boyfriend—well, she also had a dog, Mary Anne knew. Paul Cureux was a childhood friend who was totally allergic to the idea of commitment—though Mary Anne had pointed out that he did have dark hair and brown eyes. Since Cameron was hypercritical of nearly every man she met, she and Paul had made some sort of agreement to give other people the impression that they were a couple. Then Cameron wouldn’t have to deal with being pursued by men who’d never had therapy—Paul hadn’t, either—and Paul wouldn’t have to elude women who wanted to marry him and have his children. It was an arrangement Mary Anne had never understood, especially since Paul—who usually had weekend gigs playing guitar and singing folk music that must have made every woman who heard him know she was alive—seemed to enjoy making women fall in love with him. Mary Anne had once asked her cousin, “Do you have a thing for him?”

“I have a thing for no man,” Cameron had replied. “Except the god.”

She did not mean Paul Cureux. Mary Anne did not think the man to whom Cameron referred was even remotely divine—and neither did she think his psychological house was in the immaculate order Cameron believed it to be. Now, she said, “Paul’s mother makes love potions?”

“Yes. Don’t you remember? The radio station did that interview with her.”

Mary Anne didn’t remember. She said, “No,” but she didn’t mean that she didn’t remember. She only meant that she wasn’t ready to try anything so silly.

Cameron shrugged. “Your choice. I don’t see being single as problematic, but you do. And you’ve liked this guy for years, though he’d probably make you miserable.”

Mary Anne resented the last comment. She knew Cameron found Jonathan Hale far less appealing than she did, but she hated Cameron’s insistence that there was a worm in the apple.

Mary Anne simply shook her head. “I have work to do.”

Cameron stood up, shaking back her two long braids. “Back to the mines. If you do stop by the radio station, give my regards to the deity.”

“I don’t speak to that man if I can help it.”