forever pushing people back to the quaint little row of shops with their pink and red accents? How did all roads come back to this point?
It was like some unwelcome metaphor for the circular nature his life was taking, bringing him back to the US without him feeling like he’d made any progress at all.
Ronan shook off the ugly—and untrue—thought as he paused and looked for the nearest street sign. Perhaps he’d turned left when he should have turned right. For some reason, he’d decided to leave his phone back in his apartment in a personal mindfulness experiment. He did that a lot. Experimenting on himself, setting challenges to test his hypotheses about various things, was how he kept his mind in good shape.
Although admittedly, he’d conducted smarter tests than wandering around an unfamiliar town without his phone.
Deciding to abandon his plans to find the secondhand bookstore that had initially set him out on this journey, Ronan walked along the strip and took note of the businesses lined up like colorful tin soldiers. The town had all the usual suspects—hairdressers and fruit shops and butchers and restaurants of different cuisines. There was an Irish pub and a pet supply store and a beauty salon and a gift store. He’d counted four bakeries so far, each with a different specialty and increasingly cutesy names.
His personal favorite was All You Need is Loaf.
But there was one store that stood out as being unlike the others. Whereas many shop fronts featured bright paint, artfully designed chalkboards, and welcoming slogans, Game of Stones had an imposing black door and a window shrouded with heavy purple velvet. It appeared to be a new age store with tarot cards and crystals. In other words, a store trading on bullshit, at best.
And fraud, at worst.
He’d conducted an experiment for one of his classes at Cambridge in which he’d asked students to read their horoscope before taking a decision-making test. They hadn’t been real horoscopes, of course, and the variance in tone of these messages—ranging from positive to neutral to negative—had greatly impacted the students’ test results. It frustrated him that smart people would allow themselves to be derailed by something that had absolutely no basis in fact or reality.
While he looked into the window display, eyes narrowed at the hunks of amethyst and the splay of ornate golden cards, he caught sight of something that made him pause. Or, rather, someone.
A woman disappeared from behind a counter, blond hair catching the light. Was that…?
Shaking his head, he wrapped his hand around the handle of the door and pushed it open. A chime sounded above his head, and an older woman looked up from behind the cash register. She had long silvery hair that hung in a heavy braid, and her shoulders were wrapped in a colorful shawl. Her fingers were cluttered with rings.
“Ah,” she said as though she had an idea who Ronan was. He’d put money on this being her thing—tricking people into believing she had some psychic powers when it was nothing more than a keen sense of perception. “You’re the new professor.”
He tried to hide his surprise. Wait, was he wearing elbow patches again? Ronan resisted the urge to look down at his outfit. It would hardly be difficult for her to pick him out—Kissing Creek was a small town, and he was clearly too old to be a student. Especially now that his beard had filled in.
“I’m not looking for anyone to read my fortune,” he quipped.
“No? What can I help you with, Professor Walsh?” Her green eyes danced over him.
She knew his name, too? Still, that could be easily explained, since there was an article about him in the local paper, which touched on the book he would be writing during his visiting position.
“If you tell me my birthday and my mother’s name, then I’ll be impressed.” His gaze flicked over the glass cabinet containing all manner of witchy things—candles and pagan-inspired jewelry; books on herbalism, crystal healing, and birth chart interpretation.
“I’m not psychic,” the woman said with a kind smile. “My niece said ‘oh no, that’s Professor Walsh’ before she darted into the back office.”
There was a sound of frustration from a small doorway behind the counter, and a moment later, Audrey appeared with a tight smile on her face. Her blond hair tumbled down around her shoulders.
“Thanks, Aunt Harriet,” she said through gritted teeth. “Way to have a girl’s back.”
Niece? Interesting. Now that he looked closer, he could see the