Third Time's a Charm Read online

  Third Time’s A Charm

  A Paranormal Women's Fiction Romance Novel

  Michelle M. Pillow

  MichellePillow.com

  Third Time’s A Charm © Copyright 2020 by Michelle M. Pillow

  First Electronic Printing March 26, 2020

  Published by The Raven Books LLC

  ISBN 9781625012432

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  All books copyrighted to the author and may not be resold or given away without written permission from the author, Michelle M. Pillow.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any and all characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence.

  Michelle M. Pillow® is a registered trademark of The Raven Books LLC

  Contents

  About the Book

  Order of Magic Series

  Author Updates

  Author Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  The Fourth Power

  Second Chance Magic

  About Michelle M. Pillow

  Newsletter

  Free Reading Guides

  Please Leave a Review

  About the Book

  Friends don’t let friends séance drunk.

  Vivien Stone lost the love of her life over twenty years ago. Now that she’s in her forties with a string of meaningless relationships under her belt, she can't help but pine for what might have been. It doesn't help that she's somewhat psychic and can pretty much predict where a relationship is heading before it even starts.

  When she and her best friends find a hidden book of séances, Vivien believes it's the perfect opportunity to talk to her lost love. But things don't go as planned and what was meant to be a romantic reunion takes a turn for the bizarre.

  Maybe some things (and people) are better left buried in the past, and what she really needs has been standing in front of her all along.

  Order of Magic Series

  Second Chance Magic

  Third Time's A Charm

  The Fourth Power

  The Fifth Sense

  The Sixth Spell

  Visit MichellePillow.com for details!

  Author Updates

  Join the Reader Club Mailing List to stay informed about new books, sales, contests and preorders!

  http://michellepillow.com/author-updates/

  First, thank you to everyone who helped to get this book out by its scheduled release date during a challenging time in the current global landscape. I’ll be the first to admit, this story almost did not make its release date. I know it has been difficult to concentrate on work with so many worries. You all rock!

  * * *

  To my readers and their families, my heart is with all of you. I hope you are all staying safe and healthy during this global pandemic. I know it’s been hard, and I thank you for your support of my books and me during this time. Your friendships do not go unnoticed.

  Author Note

  Being an author in my 40s, I am thrilled to be a part of this Paranormal Women’s Fiction #PWF project. Older women kick ass. We know things. We’ve been there. We are worthy of our own literature category. We also have our own set of issues that we face—empty nests, widows, divorces, menopause, health concerns, etc—and these issues deserve to be addressed and embraced in fiction.

  Growing older is a real part of life. Women friendships matter. Women matter. Our thoughts and feelings matter.

  If you love this project as much as I do, be sure to spread the word to all your reader friends and let the vendors where you buy your books know you want to see a special category listing on their sites for 40+ heroines in Paranormal Women’s Fiction and Romance.

  Happy Reading!

  Michelle M. Pillow

  Chapter One

  Freewild Cove Hospital

  Sam was the only man she would ever love. Vivien had married him the second she’d turned eighteen. He had been nineteen. They were high school sweethearts and everyone told them they were too young to make such a decision. Yes, they were young, but Vivien had never been surer of anything in her life.

  The moment she’d met Sam, the very moment, a bolt of lightning had zapped through her. Every psychic sense in her body had lit with fire and every vision she had was vibrant. He was her true love. This was the one man in the world who could love and understand her, and accept everything about her without hesitance or doubt, and worship her as she worshiped him.

  Fate.

  Destiny.

  A sign from the gods.

  Whatever you wanted to call it, that was what Vivien had with Sam. He was the other piece of her soul. There would be no one else because there couldn’t be.

  Vivien had spent her childhood hearing stories of the legendary romances of her gifted ancestors, the kind of tales that defied all logic and social expectations. They all ended in one of two ways—happiness or despair. Which you received was as random as the flip of a coin.

  The first way, happiness, was exemplified by her great-grandmother, who had worked at a carnival as a fortune teller. Her specialty had been tarot cards, and one evening she had been asked to read the fortune of an engaged man. The moment she laid eyes on him, she knew he was her true love. She saw the misery in his cards if he continued down the wrong path and warned him. Of course, he’d been angry, but he came back a week later with flowers to apologize. He’d broken things off with his fiancée, after which the woman had confessed to cheating on him. Her great-grandparents had loved each other steadily their entire lives and died in each other’s arms.

  Her great-great-grandmother had not been so lucky. She, too, had known the love of her life the second she met him. Their hands had touched by accident, and that was it. The world had shifted for both of them, and they had never been the same. They had married, and two years later, her great-great-grandfather had been shot in the heart. Her great-great-grandmother had spent the rest of her life alone, covered in a veil of sadness.

  Vivien and Sam had such grand plans. Sam would play his guitar, trying to get gigs at some of the local beach bars. She’d sing, or waitress, or simply stand in the front row dancing. They’d travel the coast in a van, sleeping in the back until they made it big. He was her entire world. He was her heart.

  But she was not one of the lucky ones. Her heart was dying, and all she could do was watch.

  That was the downside of having a soul mate. Sometimes, life took them away too soon, and then there would be only despair, for how could you find happiness if your heart had died? The psychic abilities that ran through the females in her family also cursed them because it took away all doubts, and in doing so, for some, it took away all hope. If the love of her life died, she would never love again, not like this, not so deep or so sure. Nothing would ever compare.

  If ever there were proof that the gods were cruel, this was it. After only four years of marriage—the last one of which had been spent in and out of this hospital—Sam was dying from leukemia. She’d begged the universe for mercy when he was going through the various treatments. The universe did not respond.

  Vivien had watched as he became too weak to hold his guitar. She’d felt the frailty in his cracked lips when kissing her became too painful to endure. Even holding her hand had been unbearable for him, until the morp
hine kicked in. Now he wasn’t even aware she sat next to him, as his mind drifted in a sea of confusion, and he mumbled incoherent things. She had the impression he was desperate to tell her something, but the thoughts never made it past the painkiller haze.

  All she could do was wait.

  Each second dug at her heart.

  The beep of the machine next to the bed kept a steady rhythm. It had become the soundtrack to the last moments. Vivien knew it would be soon. The clarity of that thought made her hate her psychic gifts.

  They had said, “I love you,” a million times. She didn’t need him to repeat it to know. The beeps felt as if they became louder, causing her to jerk slightly with each one.

  “Don’t go, baby. Find a way to stay with me,” she begged in a hushed whisper.

  When she looked at him, she could still see the man she loved hidden in the withered mass of his body. He’d always been so healthy and strong, but cancer had won, and now he was nothing but skin and bones.

  “This isn’t the end of our story. It can’t be,” she insisted.

  Sam’s eyes opened as if he’d heard her. The drugs had given his dark pupils a glassy appearance. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

  Vivien leaned over him, turning her ear toward his mouth to better hear what he tried to say. Her brunette hair fell next to him. She brushed the length over her shoulder to keep it from his face. “What is it? What can I get you?”

  “There is only us,” he whispered.

  Her breath caught, but she managed to answer, “Only our hearts.”

  “I’ll be watching you. Save your heart for me. It’s mine.” The last word was clipped short as a strange gurgle erupted from his lips. She cried out softly as she turned to look at his face. His eyes stared into nothingness.

  The monitor beeped a loud, solid tone. She felt people rushing in around her. Someone pulled her arm to move her out of the way so they could work. Vivien stood near the bed, staring for the peaks of her husband she could see through the commotion.

  She knew the nurses moved partly out of habit, partly out of pity. There was nothing anyone could do to stop death. Even if they could revive him, Sam wouldn’t want that.

  Vivien wanted to scream but instead bottled the sound inside her chest. The pain was unbearable, and she was confident she’d follow him into the afterlife.

  “I’ll be watching you. Save your heart for me. It’s mine.”

  His last words played in her head.

  “I’ll be watching you.”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Viv?” Heather Warrick, her best friend, appeared in the doorway. Tears filled her eyes as she looked from Vivien to Sam. She was one of the only people who could have grounded Vivien in that moment. “Oh, no. No.”

  Heather shook her head as if she could erase what was happening.

  The nurses turned off the monitor alarm, and their movements became less pronounced. Vivien had no words. She might never speak again. Any second, the ground would open up and swallow her whole. She didn’t want to be in this moment.

  Heather rushed to her side and wrapped her arms around her, holding her tight to keep her from falling. “I’m so sorry, Viv. This isn’t fair. I don’t understand why this is happening. This isn’t fair.”

  Vivien pushed away from Heather, stumbled around a nurse, and collapsed on the bed over Sam’s frail form. He was still warm, and if she prayed hard enough, maybe the gods would send him back to her.

  They did not, and the pain held her locked in place.

  “I’ll be watching you. Save your heart for me. It’s mine.”

  Chapter Two

  Freewild Cove, North Carolina

  Twenty Years Later…

  Vivien Stone had always believed in magic, in possibilities, in sturdy friendships over popularity. She believed in those things that couldn’t be seen, the psychic threads that joined everyone and everything. Secrets pulsed through those threads like blood through veins, completely invisible to most. But if you knew how to listen, if you knew how to look, you could hear those secrets whispering. It was her grandmother who had taught her how to listen before she’d died. All the women in her family had the ability to some extent.

  Vivien’s daughter would have had the ability… if she’d ever had a daughter.

  At forty-two, Vivien knew her childbearing ship had sailed. Yes, technically, she had all the baby-making equipment, but that was a door she’d never opened. She liked children, and if life had worked out differently, she might have given motherhood a go.

  She glanced at her surroundings and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. What was it about this posh waiting room that made her thoughts run in that direction? After Sam died, she’d hit the snooze button on her biological clock and had rarely thought about it again.

  Vivien had been in love precisely one time in her life. Sam Stone. He’d been a beautiful man with a heart big enough to love the entire world, and Vivien had been crazy about him. They would stay up all night on the beach with a campfire, Sam playing guitar while she sang. They had made love in the sand—not advisable unless a person enjoyed the feel of sandpaper between the cheeks, but they’d been young and hadn’t cared. He was her one true love. It was unfair how fast cancer had taken him from her, but even death and time had not changed her feelings for him.

  Incidentally, she’d been in love once, but she’d been married twice. Her second husband, Rex Hewitt, had been a marriage of understanding. They’d shared a strong affection between them, but not that mad, passionate, soul-altering love. It made sense at the time. Sam had been dead for six years, and Vivien had been twenty-eight and lonely. Rex had felt he needed a pretty wife to advance his career at the law firm of Jerkface, Expensive, and Spray Tan.

  Johansen, Elliot, and Snyder lived up to her nicknames for them, and they had been Rex’s idols. That probably should have been her first clue the union was doomed from the start. Instead, she’d ignored her psychic alarm bells.

  Vivien knew going into the marriage that Rex was incapable of loving anyone more than himself. In her young and stupid decision-making process, that had been what she’d liked about him. There had been no danger of hurting him.

  Again, she freely admitted her decision-making process in her twenties left a lot to be desired.

  Too bad that hadn’t worked both ways. Rex might not have been her true love, but catching her husband cheating on her with three women at the same time still stung.

  “Viv, so good to see you.” Harry Snyder’s voice drew her from her thoughts. She pushed up from the cushioned black seat and met his extended hand with her own. The orange tint to his skin was beyond unnatural, and she wasn’t sure why a friend hadn’t pulled him aside before now to tell him that carrot wasn’t a flattering human shade.

  As his hand clasped hers, she had her answer. This man didn’t have any real friends. He was incapable.

  Her psychic senses picked up on his energy and she instantly wanted hand sanitizer. It wouldn’t do anything to get rid of the heebie-jeebies, but it would make her feel better. Ever since she’d found a magical ring left to her by her best friend’s grandmother, Vivien’s abilities had been amplified. Things it would normally take concentration to know were flying into her head at a rate she couldn’t control.

  In no reality did she want to know that Harry liked to be humiliated by prostitutes. Or that he secretly liked the sickly-sweet smell of rotting hamburger meat.

  Vivien pulled her hand from his and slowly flexed her fingers. “Rex called and asked me to stop by today. Is he in?”

  The elevators dinged, and Harry automatically stopped their fake pleasantries as he turned to greet the arriving gentleman. “Loren, good to see you, sir. I’ve been meaning to call you to set up a golf game.”

  Vivien had been divorced for seven years, but every time she came to these offices, she felt as if it had been yesterday. Harry hadn’t been so friendly sitting across from her during her divorce. It was only because she’d h
ad pictures of Rex and three highly flexible women that she’d been offered a nice alimony package in exchange for her silence.

  The firm frowned upon public moral embarrassments, but instead of firing Rex, they’d closed ranks around him. Vivien knew for a fact they’d had her followed for months. She couldn’t prove it and had no evidence that would stand up in court, but she knew. Just like she knew the office manager had been keeping tabs on her from the moment she’d walked in, even when she pretended not to be paying attention.

  Vivien glanced at the office manager talking on the phone where the receptionist should have been. Mrs. Cameron worked for the firm since the dawn of time. Her matronly attitude and sharp memory had impressed Vivien until she realized one of Mrs. Cameron’s main duties was balancing wives and mistresses… and she didn’t appear to lose any sleep over it. Like some mob numbers guy with two sets of accounting books, Mrs. Cameron kept two sets of calendars for each lawyer in the firm.

  Vivien slowly went back to her chair. Before she was fully reseated, Harry turned to her.

  “Ready?” Harry asked.

  Vivien pushed up mid-sit and nodded. Her heels were uncomfortable, and she hated that she’d been compelled to wear them, but they matched her trendy business suit. The flowing pants and jacket were more fashionable than practical.