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One

It was a safe bet, Justine Hofflumly, that after ninety-nine failed love spells, the hundredth wasn’t going to work any better than the rest

Fine I give up

She was never going to fall in love She would never understand or experience thethat fused one soul to another It was so she’d always suspected deep down, but she had stayed too busy to dwell on it The proble busy, however, was that sooner or later you ran out of things to do, and then the thing you’d been trying so hard not to think about beca you could think about

Justine had wished on stars and birthday candles, thrown coins into fountains, blown the florets of dandelions to whisk the seeds upward on tiny feathered parachutes With every wish, she had whispered a su spell … These words bespeak your fate … have no repose while I await … fate has found you … love has bound you … Come to me

But her soul mate had never appeared

She had pored over every page of the griiven her when she was sixteen But there were no rites or spells for a witch with an e wo as extraordinary, and yet entirely normal, as love

Justine had tried to pretend to everyone, even herself, that she didn’t care She had said she didn’t want to be tied down, didn’t need anyone In her private hours, however, she stared at the little tornado of water at the drain of her bathtub, or the shadows thickening in the corners of her bedrooht, I want to feel

She wanted the kind of love that would take her on the ride of her life She dreaarments, until at last she could surrender all of herself Maybe then the world wouldn’t see Maybe then her only ould be that the night would never end

The hts was interrupted as her cousin Zoë entered the kitchen

“Good ht the book you asked for”

“I don’t need it any up fro her chin on her hand “But thanks anyway”

A Septe breeze had swept inside the inn, the air bitten with ocean salt and a hint of marine diesel froreeable and fa to improve Justine’s hts, and caffeine wasn’ta dent

“No time to read?” Zoë asked sympathetically “Just keep it for a while I’ve read it so many times, I practically have it memorized” Her blond curls swirled on her shoulders as she set the paperback roes were tattered and yelloith age, soold satin goooned languidly across the cover

“Why read so?” Justine asked

“Because a good happily-ever-after is worth reading more than once” Zoë tied on an apron and deftly pulled up her hair with a plastic clip

Justine s that no one deserved happily-ever-after h they were distant cousins and had only seen each other at infrequent intervals during childhood, they had become as close as sisters

It had been more than two years since Justine had asked Zoë, a talented chef, to come work at her Friday Harbor bed-and-breakfast, Artist’s Point Justine handled the business side of things, including the office work, cleaning, and building , and cooking Zoë and her culinary skills had been so essential to the inn’s success that Justine had offered her a share in the ownership

Their partnership was a perfect balance—Justine’s impulsive, outspoken nature was te bond of loyalty, seeing each other at their worst, confiding their dreams and fears and insecurities But the best part of the relationship wasn’t all the things they agreed on—it hen they disagreed, when they helped each other look at things in a neay

Together they had made a success of Artist’s Point, which had becos and private parties, and held s During the island’s tourist season, the inn was at or near full occupancy, and even in the off-seasons they averaged about thirty-five percent

There was no obvious physical resemblance between the cousins—Justine was tall and slender, with brown hair and brown eyes, whereas Zoë was a blond bombshell who caused men to react like the old cartoon characters … the ones whose eyes launched out and tongues dangled and who had steam puffs that came out of their ears Zoë’s voluptuous appeal had always attracted men who had inflicted terrible pickup lines on her, and treated her as if she had the IQ of a houseplant

Nudging the roly, “Just try a few pages You’ll get so caught up in the story, you’ll feel like you’re in another time and place And the hero is wonderful” She paused with a dreah “He takes her on an adventure across the desert, looking for an ancient lost city, and he’s so protective and sexy and brooding…”

“I’ht raise my expectations at a time when I need to lower them”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve never thought your expectations of in with”

“Oh, yes they were In the past, I would only go out with a guy if he had a good personality, a decent body, and a job Now I’d settle for a man who isn’t currently married or incarcerated”

“Reading about fantasy men won’t raise your expectations It’s just a nice escape”

“And of course you need an escape,” Justine said dryly, “from your hideous troll of a fiancé”

Zoë laughed Alex Nolan, a local builder, could be legiti theularly attractive man, dark-haired and lean, with austerely perfect features and glacier-blue eyes

No one would have paired the cynical and hard-drinking Alex with so the process of ree on Dream Lake for Zoë over the su hi deeply in love with her He had stopped drinking and had straightened out his life It was obvious to everyone that Zoë had hie him so sweetly that he didn’t seeed

Although Justine had never experienced real love, she knehen she saw it When Zoë and Alex were together, they tried to be casual, but the emotion was still too new and raw for either of them to be easy with it Their intense awareness of each other was emblazoned in the air no matter how discreet they were Sometimes it was even in their voices, as if love had filled them until they had to remind themselves to breathe

You could feel terribly lonely, being around that kind of love

Snap out of it, Justine told herself sternly You have a great life You have everything you need

Most of the things she had longed for had finally coarden … a front porch with potted i verbena For about a year she’d even had a boyfriend, Duane, a biker with tattoos and big sideburns and an easy laugh

But Duane had broken up with her just a feeeks ago, and nohenever they happened to cross paths, he was distantly friendly, his gaze neverhers They had broken up when she had inadvertently scared the hell out of him