didn’t say I had no experience. I’ve taken architecture courses, I know basic construction methods. Other girls played with dolls. I played with tools. I’m good at fixing things.”
“Taken apart any stoves?” he asked, pointing to the mess in his kitchen.
She nodded.
“Can you fix that?” he inquired mockingly.
She walked into the kitchen and frowned at the appliance. “Do you have a toolbox?” she asked. “I didn’t bring many tools with me.”
What kind of question was that? Every self-respecting man had a toolbox—not that he knew what to do with it. He handed it to her and let her have at it, figuring she couldn’t mess up the appliance any more than it already was.
While she attacked his stove, Michael undid the package he’d received—which was harder than it sounded, since the thing was wrapped in clear tape from one end to the other. It took him ten minutes to get the outside paper off. The one time he shook the package in frustration, he felt that sharp pain in his head again—almost as if the pain was connected to his handling of the package. Finally he got it unwrapped. Inside was a cardboard box advertising what he assumed to be Hungarian washing powder. And inside that was a mass of crumpled newspapers.
Reaching down, his fingers finally made contact with something solid. Something warm. He couldn’t get a good grip on it with all those newspapers, though.
Tossing them aside, he noticed a sheet of white writing paper with the same spidery handwriting as the address label. Taking the sheet, he read:
Oldest Janos son,
It is time for you to know the secret of our family and bahtali—this is magic that is good. But powerful. I am sending to you this box telling you for the legend. I am getting old and have no time or language for story’s beginning, you must speak to parents for such. But know only this charmed box has powerful Rom magic to find love where you look for it. Use carefully and you will have much happiness. Use unwell and you will have trouble.
Michael had to squint to make out the spidery signature and in the end was only able to make out part of it-”Magda.” He hadn’t thought they’d had any relatives left in Hungary, but on second thought he did seem to recall his dad mentioning a Great-Aunt Magda.
He read the strange note once more. “Rom magic”…that meant Gypsy magic, Michael knew that much. His dad had Gypsy blood, but Michael didn’t know anything about any family secrets. It was just his luck that his folks had recently left on a Pacific Rim cruise, so he couldn’t call and ask them what this was all about.
Looking back into the carton, minus the newspaper, he was now able to see something. a box maybe? Picking it up, he saw that it was indeed an intricately engraved metal box, with all kinds of strange markings—half-moons and stars, among other things.
Wondering if there was anything inside, Michael lifted the lid…
“All done!” Brett declared from the kitchen threshold.
Michael’s eyes traveled from the box to Brett. “Wha…at?”
“I said I’m done fixing your stove. It’s as good as new. I put that new bulb in there while I was at it. Hey, are you okay?”
Michael blinked, his head spinning. He felt so strange. Maybe he was coming down with the flu or something. That would explain the heat flashing through his body. It was just his imagination that made him think it was originating from the box he held in his hands. No, it must be the flu. It would be the perfect way to end such a miserable day.
He blinked again, relieved to find that Brett Munro was back in focus once again. She’d taken off her bulky down coat and was wearing a curve-clinging soft sweater the same blue as her eyes. She was backlit by the kitchen ceiling light, which created a strange kind of halo behind the crown of her head. It was just an optical illusion, but it made him catch his breath. So did she. In that moment, she seemed beautiful.
Brett stared back at Michael, captured by the powerful look in his hazel eyes as surely as if he’d clamped a pair of handcuffs around her wrists. She’d seen moments like this in movies, but had never been the recipient of such visual magic herself. This was a first. A momentous first. Something was going on here that would have dramatic consequences; she felt that in the deepest part of her soul. Her heart was pounding in her ears and breathing was all but forgotten.
Then the mysterious box tilted in his shaking hands and the lid flipped shut. The sharp noise punctured the tensely silent air between them the way a pin punctured a balloon.
Seeing Michael swaying, Brett immediately snapped out of her dreamlike state and rushed forward to prop her shoulder under his arm. He was just the right height for her to do that, she noted, feeling a shiver of awareness slip down her spine at his closeness.
“Here, let me take that before you drop it,” she said, taking the box he was holding and setting it on top of his rack stereo system. “You certainly don’t have much furniture here,” she noted as she lowered him into the only piece in the room—a recliner that had seen better days.
“No chintz couches,” he muttered, closing his eyes and leaning back to rest his head against the back of the chair.
Chintz couches? The man sounded delirious, Brett decided. And he looked pale. Sexy as all get-out, but pale. Putting her hand on his forehead, she said, “Have you eaten anything today?”
“You sound like my mother.”
This came as no surprise to Brett. Men usually thought of her as either one of the boys or the protective motherly type. She’d taken enough guys under her maternal wing to man a softball team. In fact, she was honorary manager of a team called Vito’s Market Super-Sluggers. But she wasn’t wife material. “Just answer the question. What have you eaten today?”
“Enough trouble to give a man indigestion.”
“Have any food with your trouble?” she dryly inquired.
“Naw, I had my trouble on the rocks today.”
She tried to hide a smile. So the man had a sense of humor. “You’d probably feel better if you put some food in your stomach,” she noted.
“So my mother always tells me.”
“What will I find if I open your refrigerator?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t get in there much.”
She opted to look in his cupboard instead, where she found a couple of cans of soup. “Which would you prefer,” she called out, “cream of mushroom or hearty vegetable?”
“I’d prefer getting the damn hot-water heater fixed,” he replied, glaring at the ceiling as Mr. and Mrs. Stephanopolis resumed their militant marching routine upstairs.
Looking at the way the kitchen ceiling light swayed beneath the pounding from the floor above, Brett shot him an understanding look. “Sounds like someone up there is unhappy.”
