“Well, what to do tonight did come up, but otherwise we were talking about progress at the store.”

“So, that’s what you’re calling it these days,” she said with a wink. She seemed louder and more cheery than normal, probably because of the gray guy.

I was about to reply when she gasped ever so slightly, then gulped. I turned around to see Josh standing at the top of the stairs. “Awkward!” Florence singsonged under her breath.

Chapter Eleven

“Oh, no,” I moaned. Then I noticed Josh acknowledging the gray guy and realized Josh had to be one of the prison guards. He must have been assigned to watch me. No wonder he’d been keen to keep me close. I must have really messed up his assignment.

Josh came toward the counter, and I clutched its edge until my knuckles went white. “Katie,” he said stiffly, then without moving his gaze from me, he said, “Could we get some privacy?”

“Hey, I work here,” Florence sassed back at him.

“Over here,” I said to Josh, moving away from the counter—but not so far that Florence wouldn’t be able to hear if she concentrated hard enough. The gray guy moved with us, and I tried not to look at him. “What is it, Josh?”

“You owe me an explanation,” he said.

I couldn’t say what I really wanted, so I tried to look contrite as I said, “I’m sorry for leaving you in the lurch like that, but I just couldn’t—”

He cut me off. “Couldn’t what? Give me an answer?”

“You mean saying ‘I can’t’ and running off wasn’t answer enough for you? I thought it was pretty clear. But in case you need it more specifically, no. My answer is no.”

“No, you won’t marry me, or no, you don’t want to be with me?” His tone shifted from angry to gentle. “Because we don’t have to get married now. We can take more time to work things out. You not wanting to be engaged doesn’t mean we have to break up.”

“I mean no to all of the above. I knew it wasn’t what I wanted, so I had to get out of there.” It sounded weak, but I wasn’t sure how I should play this scene. In a romantic comedy scenario, the story dictated that I do something big and dramatic instead of talking about it like a normal person would. In the movies, we didn’t get to see Mr. Wrong in the aftermath of the dramatic exit unless something hilariously humiliating that he totally deserved happened to him. We just saw the heroine happy with Mr. Right. Unless …

With a sinking feeling, I realized that this was supposed to be the scene where the heroine reconciled with Mr. Right after making the biggest mistake of her life in ditching him temporarily for Mr. Wrong. If I was still under the spell, I’d realize the error of my ways and apologize, and then we’d have a romantic reunion where all was forgiven. I didn’t think I could pull that off.

Instead, I dredged up every scene I could recall of the heroine explaining herself to Mr. Wrong before rushing off to be with Mr. Right. “It was an epiphany,” I blurted. “I looked at you there with the ring and the sparklers and the music and all that, and although it was everything I thought I wanted, I knew it wasn’t right for me. You were doing the right things, but you just weren’t the right guy. You’re going to make some lucky girl very happy, but you need to be free to find her.” I thought that sounded suitably noble, even if I did have to fight my gag reflex to say it. I didn’t hate him like the prison guard that he was. I was giving him up so he’d have a chance to find happiness.

He made a good show of acting distraught, waving his hands in the air and making a pained expression. “Did I do something wrong, something that made you upset?”

“No, you did everything right. It’s not you. It’s me.” I had to bite the inside of my lip to keep from laughing. I didn’t think anyone ever actually said that.

“There’s someone else, isn’t there? Your boss.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bad sign for us if I could be attracted to anyone else?”

He reached for my hand and grabbed it, holding it too tightly for me to pull free without making a scene, and this wasn’t supposed to be a scene. I felt the tingle of magic grow around me, and my thoughts went hazy. He was putting the whammy on me again. Was it the little whammy to make me like him or the big one to make me forget who I was? Or would the little one not work without the big one? I desperately tried to hold on to any memories I could of my true self. I remembered kissing Owen, being part of magical battles, working in my family’s store back home—all the things that weren’t supposed to be a part of this world. My name was Katie Chandler, I was from Cobb, Texas, and I worked for Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc. I wasn’t part of this world, and I wasn’t in love with Josh, or whatever his real name was.