THE KITCHEN WITCH.

By Annette Blair.

Chapter One.

Salem, Massachusetts, September 2004.

LOGAN Kilgarven plucked a bright red leaf off the sleek black hearse in his neighbor's driveway. "What if she really is a witch?"

Jessie Harris laughed as she buffed the chrome hood ornament. "Melody Seabright is no more a witch than I am."

"Jess, I only moved into the apartment above her a couple of days ago, and already I've heard that she's flighty, unpredictable, and quite possibly a witch. After all that, you still think I should ask her to baby-sit?"

Jessie straightened, raised a speaking brow, and gazed at him through the top of her bifocals. "What would have happened to you," she asked, "if I had believed what people said about the town bad boy when you stood before me in juvenile court all those years ago?"

"Good point," Logan said, which didn't stop him from wincing at the mention of a past he'd tried for years to bury. Nevertheless, here he stood, back in good old Salem, Massachusetts... though he didn't suppose there was a better town in which to lay old ghosts to rest. He glanced over at his son, playing quietly in their backyard. No, nor a better place to raise a boy, either.

Logan took to studying the straight lines on the sleek sixties hearse Jessie had salvaged and refurbished. That was Jess, always trying to fix junk.

When Logan looked up, she was watching him, and he smiled, touched that she still worried about him after all these years. "If you hadn't given me a break, I'd probably be in jail today," he said, "and we both know it." He shook his head. "Are you going to remind me of that for the rest of my life?"

"I will if I have to."

Logan groaned. "Just don't do it in front of Shane, okay?"

After she finished polishing the hearse, he helped her put champagne and soft drinks in a cooler shaped like a coffin.

Jessie gave him a searching look. "I'll make you a deal. I'll swear off reminding you for about ten years-until after you tell him."

"Gee, thanks."

"I don't know if you'd be in jail right now," she said, considering. "But you might not be the respectable new executive producer at WHCH TV. Have I told you how proud I am of you? How glad I am that you came home?"

"A few times, on both counts," Logan said, shaking his head, but eventually he sighed. "I never intended to come back, you know."

"I know," Jessie said. "But you did want to give Shane a family, plus you thought a grandson would lure your mother into retirement; she knows, by the way."

"Ah yes," Logan said. "And I missed your meddling."

Jessie grinned. "It's not my fault you thought you'd find me baking cookies and waiting for you to need a sitter."

Logan laughed. "When we talked on the phone about the possibility of my moving back and renting the apartment next door, I distinctly remember you saying -"

"That if you ever needed a sitter, I'd be nearby, and I am, but I can't sit tonight."

"Right. Mom made a similar promise, you know. And what do I find the first time I need a sitter, but her working a second job, again, and you..." He lifted the cooler into the back of the hearse and shut the door. "Giving world-class cemetery tours."

"I needed a new profession. Retirement didn't suit, and I wanted to have some fun. I mean, what else is an old judge good for?"

Logan checked his watch. "We were talking about leaving my four-year-old son with a woman who might be a witch. What am I gonna do? I need to be at work in twenty minutes."

"We were talking about leaving Shane for a couple of hours with a woman who loves kids, vintage clothes, and chunky doodle ice cream, in that order."

"Jess, this is serious."

Jessie shook her head. "I'll give you serious. You want someone who can connect with a boy whose mother gave him away? Melody's your girl."

Logan glanced toward Shane, on the jungle gym next door, to make sure he hadn't heard. "What's that supposed to mean?" Logan asked, his voice low.

"It means Melody can relate. Enough said." Jessie wagged her finger at him. "And you didn't hear that from me."

Logan ran a hand through his hair. "Great, just what I need, a baby-sitter with a dysfunctional background."

Jessie laughed outright. "Like yours was normal?" She swiped her hands on her jeans and picked up her car wax and buffing cloth. "Sometimes I think normal is dysfunctional."

"Maybe." Nevertheless, Logan felt the bite of her words with an uncomfortable surge of guilt and regret. "Just for the record, I'm trying to do better by Shane."

Jessie nodded. "I know. Go for it, give Shane a break. He deserves it. You do, too. And so does Melody Seabright."

"Damn it, Jess. You're the one who taught me to think of somebody other than myself, and I do now-I think of my son-so you'll excuse me if I hesitate here."

"Look, I can't sit with Shane tonight, but Melody likely can. Ask her. She's great with kids, a regular nurturer, if you ask me, though she's only ever had me to practice on."

Logan sighed. Did he have a choice? He needed to get to work, and Melody Seabright came with the highest recommendation. "Okay. You win." He kissed her cheek and left her to finish prepping for her four o'clock "Boneyard Tour."

When he hesitated and looked back, Jess shooed him toward his house and the small foyer where Melody Seabright's door shared a landing with the stairs to his apartment above. "Shane," he called on the way. "Go upstairs and wash your hands."

In less than a minute, his son was racing past. Fortunately for both of them, Logan thought as he watched Shane dash up the stairs, Jessie was the best judge of character he'd ever come across. Nevertheless, Logan stopped short, not for the first time, at the sight of that purple door with its sprinkle of stenciled yellow stars.

This time, he knocked anyway.

Bracing himself as a series of clicking footsteps escalated behind the kooky portal, Logan still lost his breath upon sight of the goddess in stilettos who opened it. Hers was the kind of face that jumped out at you from the cover of a fashion magazine, though you knew in real life that she was flawed and imperfect. Except, she wasn't.

She had a body that cut him off at the knees, draped in a black fishnet tunic over red Capri pants and a matching halter top, but her black floor-length cape, lined in red satin, really threw him. Then she tossed her long, lush mane of ebony waves over one shoulder and gave him a hundred-watt smile. "Can I help you?"

The answer that came to Logan's mind had nothing to do with baby-sitting, and everything to do with the bad boy he used to be. Realizing it, shocked by it, Logan blanked. "Uh... nice door."

Her smile was spectacular, and the twinkle in her topaz eyes revealed a kaleidoscope of facets. "Thanks!"

Funny how Jessie had failed to mention that Melody Seabright was exactly the kind of woman who might once have knocked him on his bad-boy ass. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to let Jess and his mother find him an apartment, because his hot new neighbor had "flammable" written all over her.

She must have realized then that all the blood had left his brain and headed south, because she took the initiative and extended her hand. "Melody Seabright."

Logan's smile grew without permission, and as then-hands met, and held, he could have sworn that a surge of pure electricity shot through him. "Logan Kilgarven," he said. "From upstairs."

"Logan. Hello. Welcome to the building. Come in, please-though only for a minute, I'm sorry to say. I've got an appointment at the Castle, and it's clear across town."

"The Castle?" he asked.

"Drak's place. Drak's Castle? You know, one of those grisly spook tours, Salem style. If you haven't been there, you have to go. I'm auditioning tonight as a female vampire for the fall tourist season."

"Thank God. For a minute there, I thought I'd rented in the red-light district."

"Hey!"

"No offense," Logan said, taking in the converted Victorian's original kitchen as he shut the door on the wings of a crisp fall breeze. "But have you looked in a mirror?"

"I don't have one in my bedroom, so I haven't had a chance." She opened a broom closet and regarded herself in the full-length mirror inside the door. She laughed, charming Logan, welcoming him in a way her words had not, as if they were... friends, a notion he dismissed in a quick bid for self-preservation.

"You think I might have a shot?" she asked.

"If you don't, they're nuts."

"Thanks." She sighed in relief and snatched her keys off the table. "Look, I gotta' go. Did you need something?"

MELODY watched the man's killer smile vanish as he stepped farther into her kitchen, despite her cue for him to go. A pity about his smile, though, that he didn't use it much. This was the first time she'd seen him as anything but a stuffed suit with a briefcase, and the view was fine.

He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, as if he'd had plenty of frustrated practice, and let out a long, slow breath, and Melody got this rare image of herself softening his hard edges and relieving his stress by pushing him into an easy chair and draping something warm over him... her. She took a step back and wiped the picture from her mind.

"The thing is," he said, a plea in his look, "I really need somebody to watch my son for a couple of hours. I've been called unexpectedly back to work."

"I wish I could help," Melody said, "but I really need this job. Why don't you try Jessie, next door?"

"She's got a cemetery tour tonight." They shared a smile over their neighbor's new profession, and Melody found herself caught in the hidden depths of a stranger's eyes.

"I would never have asked you," he said, "if Jessie hadn't recommended you so highly."

"I'll have to thank her, but I can't help you tonight. I'm sorry."

"I'd be happy to pay you."

"Look, if a night with your kid's worth a month's rent, you've got a deal." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, honestly, but I've got some serious problems here. My roommate moved out without paying her share, I lost my job, and the owner of this place is a pri-pretty nasty guy who'd throw me out in a blink."

"You wanna talk serious?" An irked glint entered the man's startling blue eyes. "My son's mother decided she'd rather hang with a motorcycle stuntman than raise her son. So I've finally got him-and I couldn't be happier-but I've also got this new job with a boss who either doesn't understand single male parenting or disapproves of it."

"You're kidding?"

Logan slipped his hands into his pockets, jingled the contents, and grimaced. "He didn't come out and say so, but I got his message. Real men don't keep children in the workplace. So company day care is shot to hell-for the moment, at least."

"That's just not right. But didn't Jessie say you were born in Salem? I mean, don't you have any relatives? Someone who could baby-sit?" Melody inched her way toward the door.

"My mother's working tonight, not that she needs to, but that's a problem for another day. No, I'm flat out of good prospects. You're all I've got."

"Gee, thanks."

"Wait a minute," he said, a new spark in his eyes. "If you watch Shane tonight, I'm sure I can find you some kind of job at the station. Wha'd'ya say?"

"I'm sorry, but pumping gas is really not my style."

That fast, his killer smile was back, and so was Melody's lap-warming fantasy.

"Not a gas station," he said. "A TV station."

Melody's keys slipped from her fingers and hit the floor with a tinkling thud.

"What?"

"WHCH, down the street."

"What kind of job are we talking here?"

"I'm only the executive producer, but-"

"Only?"

"Look, TV stations are always looking to hire somebody. Keep Shane, and I'll check tonight, I promise, though I can't guarantee you a position as exalted as a vampire."

Melody raised a disgruntled brow, even as her dishy new neighbor raised a placating hand. "Joke."

She knew for a fact that WHCH was looking for somebody to host a cooking show-their previous chef had been a real yawn. She loved cooking shows, though she'd practically slept through that one. "How long will you be gone?"

Logan checked his watch. "Say yes, and I'll be your slave forever."

Oh, the possibilities. Melody took another step back. His eagerness was as much of a turn-on as his pique. "How long?" she repeated.

"Two hours, three at the most," he said.

Melody mentally calculated the time it would take her to prepare one dynamite dinner, the kind that would make the man beg her to do his cooking show. "Sold, and take your time. I talked to your son out in the yard the day you moved in. Cute as a button, polite, too, but he doesn't smile much. How come?"

"He hasn't been with me long, and we're still getting to know each other."

"Better. You mean, you're getting to know each other better."

Logan ran that impatient hand through his hair again. "Can you baby-sit without the whole rotten story, or not?"

Melody snapped to attention and saluted. "Aye, aye, Sir. Send him down, Sir. I'll make us dinner, Sir, and we can eat when you get back... Sir."

The handsome devil rolled his eyes, turned on his heel, and ran up the stairs, calling for his son to "hop to it."

MELODY got the "whole rotten story" out of Shane with nary a question or thumbscrew in sight. Four-year-old boys sang like canaries with chocolate chip cookies and milk before supper.

Shane talked nonstop, while Melody put a roast in the oven and turned the temperature up high, because the meat was still frozen. Though she watched cooking shows, she'd never had time to put any of the lessons to use. Takeout was quicker, but how hard could cooking be?