One More Taste (One and Only Texas #2)(105)
Skye had heard that argument before, but she knew better. If her mom’s old world magic actually worked, then her dad would be pain-free and back at work. If the old magic worked, then maybe Skye’s marriage would have, too, along with everything else that went wrong during those fleeting months. Her arms, working of their own accord, wrapped around her belly. “Mom, there’s no one.”
Her mom grabbed a water bottle from the trolley and set it on Kimberly’s nightstand. Then she squared up to Skye and took her hands. “Let me help you find someone to love.”
Annika mopped around their shoes. “Yessica helped me last year when Mitch wouldn’t commit. She gave me this magic coin that I stuffed in my bra and—bam—he proposed.”
Skye’s resolve started to crack. She took a long, hard look at Kimberly, slack-jawed and drooling, and going to bed alone—the perfect embodiment of Skye’s wild, rebellious, drama-addicted, terminally single past. Not a very pretty picture. Not at all. “Okay, Mom. I give up. Let’s do this your way.”
Even if it didn’t work—which it wouldn’t, she was certain—then at least her mom would stop needling her about trying such ridiculous, old-fashioned methods. Then she could get back to her equally ineffective, often ridiculous modern day methods of online dating and ill-advised blind dates arranged by eighty-year-old Bingo players. The thought nearly made her wince.
Annika gave a quiet golf clap at Skye’s agreement, while Skye’s mom straightened up, an impish gleam in her eyes that reminded Skye of her fondest memories of her abuela, the two of them sneaking cookies in the kitchen for breakfast while her mother was in the bedroom ironing.
Without warning, she plucked a hair from Skye’s head.
“Ow!”
Impervious to Skye’s shock, her mom dropped the hair into a mug lifted from the coffee caddy near the television. “This is going to be great, mija. You’ll see.”
Skye rubbed the tender spot on her scalp and gathered around the coffee maker along with Annika to watch. With Kimberly’s snores as their soundtrack, Skye’s mom brewed a cup of coffee right into the same mug that contained Skye’s hair. Then, from the housekeeping trolley’s mini bar replenishment kit, she pulled a bottle of bourbon and poured it in while chanting under her breath in Spanish, the words said too low and quick for Skye to understand them. Then she pinched silver glitter from the bathroom counter and sprinkled it over the magic brew.
“Glitter?” Skye hissed, because Really? The bourbon and hair, she could see, but glitter? Oh, please.
With eyes closed, her mom waved the cross pendant on her necklace over the mug. “No questions.”
Skye darted a look at Annika, who only shrugged.
After another minute more of chanting, her mom’s eyes flew open. “The rest of the ingredients, we need from the day spa.”
All right. That sounded totally legit—not. Because what old world magic didn’t require volumizing shampoos and nail polish?
Still, she and Annika followed her mom from the room like eager students. After stowing the housekeeping trolley in a housekeeping closet near the ice machine, they descended in the elevator to the ground level. They’d only taken a few steps into the lobby when they were stopped in their tracks by none other than Granny June, five foot nothing and sitting astride her hot pink riding scooter, dressed in an emerald jogging suit and with a lowball glass of liquor in her hand.
Skye’s mom put her hand on her hip. “Aren’t you up a little late for an old woman?” The teasing line was said with a heavy dose of affection borne from forty years of familiarity.
Granny June hoisted her drink, the ice clinking merrily. “I can sleep when I’m dead. What are you kids up to? Skye, shouldn’t you be out with Pearl’s son right now?”
“Vince Biaggi is a dud. No more dating advice from you,” Skye said with a wag of her finger.
Granny June replied, “But his Facebook picture is so handsome!”
“She’s listening to me now, June. We’re doing this my way, and I have just the spell to help her find the perfect man. All we need a few final ingredients and we’re off to get those now.”
Granny June stood from her riding scooter with a spryness that belied her age and extricated a knobby wooden walking cane with a bejeweled handle from behind the scooter’s seat. “I’m in. Let’s go.”
What a motley crew they made, marching through the lobby, past wedding revelers and clusters of hotel guests, then down a flight of stairs to the basement level where the resort’s day spa was located. Skye’s mom waved her master key fob at the spa’s main door, then led the way into the darkened spa, flipping on lights as she blazed a trail through the hair salon room and into the corridor of private massage rooms.
In the first massage room, her mom went straight for the row of aromatherapy vials on the counter. “A drop of lavender. Two drops of cedar. And, finally, the secret ingredient…” She hunched away from the group, but Skye swore she saw her spit into the mug.
Gross. But Skye couldn’t find it in her heart to mind. She was having a blast connecting with this side of her mom that seldom made its appearance anymore.
Then her mom was facing them again. “Skye, get a coin from your purse.”
Skye dug through her purse and found a quarter loose in the bottom of it. She held the coin out, but her mom shook her head. “Kiss it first.”