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That's because he had tried so damn hard to shed the dust of Prairie, Illinois, from his feet. Too hard. "Yep. I was the town poor kid who never fit in because we didn't live by the rules of a small farming community. We had a farmhouse but had no acreage. My mother had two kids by two different men without ever being married. She was an eighties hippie, growing our own food and living off welfare. None of those things were particularly acceptable to the locals."
"I can see that." Bree gripped her coffee cup. "I'm sorry, Ian. It doesn't sound like an easy way to grow up."
He shrugged. "It was fine. My mother loved us, and she taught us how to survive on our own. I owe a lot of my success to her lessons in tenacity." He really didn't look back on his childhood negatively, despite the poverty and the disapproval from adults toward his mother. If anything, he had been a cosseted town favorite because people had felt sorry for his lack of a normal life, as they deemed it. Ironically, though, his mother had been a better mother than any of them could have ever grasped. "In fact, in some ways I think I'm still a small-town boy at heart. I've tried to convince myself I love the city, but I get claustro-phobic. I was actually thinking about buying a house in the suburbs and commuting downtown just to have some space to myself."
"I can't imagine not having my own yard or porch. Whenever you want to be outside you have to share it with other people."
Her grimace gave her opinion on that. Ian smiled. "You don't like to share, do you?"
"Not particularly. I like people, I want them around me, but I like the peace and quiet of being outside by myself. I like my big old house and my space. I like this town, in all its quirkiness. And I like that no one thinks anything of a Murphy girl being a witch. It's sort of expected."
Ian wasn't sure he wanted the answer, but he was too curious not to ask. "So what does being a witch mean exactly?"
Bree laughed. "I can hear the skepticism just dripping from your voice. It's kind of funny actually. But the thing is, I'm not professing to be capable of what characters in Harry Potter can do. Witchcraft is just harnessing the magick within all of us via spells . . . it's a nature-based religion that practices goddess worship. I was born with a sixth sense though. I can sense people's feelings and see their auras."
Yeah. He really hadn't wanted this answer. Auras weren't logical. "I'm trying to understand this, Bree, I really am, but I'm struggling. What the hell is an aura exactly, and how can you possibly see it?"
He didn't mean it as a slur, and she didn't take it that way. She just smiled. "I bet your mother knows."
"Probably. But unfortunately, she died two years ago. Cancer." And now there was a lump in his throat, damn it. His mother would have liked Bree, no doubt about that.
"Oh, I'm sorry." Bree reached across the table and put her hand over his. "That must be really difficult for you."
"It was. Is." Ian laced his fingers through hers and squeezed. "But I'm serious . . . what does an aura look like?"
"It's the energy that surrounds everyone. They're in colors, which indicates mood to me. Together with the emotion I can sense from their feelings, I can usually tell what mood someone is in and what they're generally feeling."
"What color is my aura?" Ian resisted the urge to pat the air around him.
"Right now it's white. You're content."
Now that was kind of cool. He was content. Relaxed. Enjoying the moment. "Very true. What was it when you met me?"
> "The first time? In the coffee shop? You were radiating disapproval. You didn't like my nail polish."
Ian couldn't believe she even remembered meeting him, it had been so brief. But so very significant for him, setting off his year of erotic dreams. "That's not exactly accurate. It wasn't disapproval toward you, it was toward me. I was instantly attracted to you, and that didn't fit into my plan, so I was annoyed with myself."
"What was your plan?"
"To focus on my career and date corporate women who know their way around a boardroom and who understand my lifestyle." Now he wasn't even sure why he had thought that was a good idea. It wasn't really even who he was, and the idea of a high-profile romance with chichi dinners and expensive vacations held zero appeal. "You forced me to look at my plan and realize it was never really what I wanted."
"What is it that you want now?"
He wanted to say "you," but he had already said that to her once that day. And it wasn't the true, full picture. "I want to slow down. I want to have a life outside of my career. I want to date a woman whose company I enjoy, who is a friend, who appreciates the small things, and when I'm with her, I don't have to pretend that I grew up upper middle class." He thought Bree fit the bill, and that did crazy-ass things to his insides. "What do you want?"
"What do I want?" Bree held.her coffee in front of her chin and sniffed it. "I want a relationship with a man who respects me as a partner. I want my part-time job at the library to be full-time, because I love working with the kids. I want just enough money to pay my bills but still have enough free time to be with my family, to take care of my house. That's not so much, is it?"
"No. It's not." And listening to her, Ian was having insane lunatic thoughts. Like maybe they could combine their goals and be together.
"Why did you come back to Cuttersville?" she asked. "You didn't really need to give me that offer on the house in person, did you?"
Busted. "No. I wanted to see you, to convince myself that the you in reality couldn't live up to the you in my dreams." Ian stroked her fingers. "I was wrong."
Bree's eyes had darkened. "When I opened the door and you were standing there, I was just about knocked out by the sexual intent rolling off you. I knew you wanted me."
Great. "Was it the erection that gave it away?" he asked ruefully.
She laughed. "No. I didn't look. But there was instant chemistry between us. You can't deny that."
