A Spell Of Trouble (Silver Hollow Paranormal Cozy Mystery Series Book 1) by Leighann Dobbs, Traci Douglass Page A

in the woods here.” He held out a hand. She accepted it. He pulled her up, and she slipped on a wet leaf, stumbling closer to him, breathing in the scent of clean soap and forbidden relationships. She tugged her hand back and lurched away from him, not wanting to be so close.
    His eyes drifted to the log. “Was that one of those salamanders that Louella had on her camera?”
    “What? That? No, that was a regular plain old fire newt.”
    “ Yip! ” Bella corroborated her statement.
    His brow furrowed, and he cast another glance at the log. “Shouldn’t you be at your shop right now? You seem to take an awful lot of time off to wander around in the woods. How do you manage to make a living?”
    “Yes. As a matter of fact, I should be there. Gotta run.” Issy started back toward her car, turning and walking backward to address him. “I just need a break in the middle of the day. You know, get out and get some exercise. There are a lot of customers this time of day, so I leave one of my assistants in charge so I can take a breather.”
    To her dismay, he jogged up to catch up with her. “Yeah. Me too. I like the outdoors. Is your car over on Varney Road?”
    “Yep. The Toyota truck.” Shoot! Was he going to walk all the way to the truck with her? And what was he doing out here, anyway? Probably the same thing she was—trying to figure out which paranormal was interested in the salamanders. Too bad she was the one he just caught out here.
    “The woods are different out here than they are back home,” Dex said. “Pretty, though.”
    “Where is home?” Issy was annoyingly interested to know more about him.
    “Ohio,” Dex said. “What about you? Did you grow up here in Silver Hollow?”
    “I was born down in Massachusetts. Salem. But my family moved up here when I was little.” Issy looked around the forest. Just off in the distance she could see a tiny section of the sparkling blue lake. The pine trees, the birds, and the lake were a part of her, as if they were etched in her very soul. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”
    “Your whole family moved up? Your cousins and everything?”
    “Yeah. We’re a close family.”
    “Must be nice to have that.”
    The sad tone in Dex’s voice tweaked her heart. Didn’t he have anyone? “You don’t have a big family?”
    “Nah. Only child. My folks are dead now.”
    Issy tried to ignore the tightening in her chest. It wouldn’t do to get too involved in the personal business of Dex Nolan. They were on opposite sides. She decided to turn the conversation back to business.
    “So, are you guys any closer in tracking down the killer? Do you think it has something to do with the rezoning? Because if Louella made it public that there was an endangered species here, they couldn’t very well build a strip mall, right?” Might as well pump him for information, and she couldn’t very well let on that she knew he was really here after paranormals. He must not realize she was one—otherwise he would have taken her into custody already. Wouldn’t he?
    Dex slowed the pace, his eyes drifting off into the woods, his brow slightly furrowed. “Sure seems that way. But we have to be careful—I wouldn’t want the wrong person to get arrested.”
    Issy slid him a look out of the corner of her eye. Was that some kind of warning? “Just so you know, my cousin Gray didn’t have anything to do with it.”
    Dex’s lack of a reply set Issy’s nerves jangling as they walked through a swarm of black flies, swatting them away from their faces, just before they stepped onto the dirt road.
    A navy-blue Crown Victoria was parked behind Issy’s truck. “Is that your car?”
    Dex nodded.
    So he’d seen her car here and knew she was in the woods. He’d come in purposely to see what she was up to. Issy felt a tingle of foreboding. Was she a suspect?
    Dex didn’t head toward his car, though—he followed her to hers and opened the driver’s door. Issy went to slide in