Annette Blair (4 page)

Was she coming on to him?

“You wouldn’t let just anybody touch
your
—” Her head snapped up.

“Hockey stick?” Okay, so she hadn’t intended a come-on. Given the size of her eyes, she’d only just caught her own meaning. Her chin rose and her freckles disappeared again.

Jason thought it best to deny his fascination over the process and went around her desk to open the top drawer. “Let’s leave the wand here while we go to the meeting, shall we?” He opened his hand again, but to no avail.

The witch went to the opposite side of her desk and faced him over the expanse. “No. I mean it. You can’t touch it. A magic wand is personal. It symbolizes the life-force within the witch to whom it belongs. You could ruin it with negative
energy, bad vibes, bad karma, dark moods, whatever. The damage would be unseen, but devastating. Your very touch could spoil my magic.”

She took a long, slim purple velvet drawstring bag from her blazer pocket, slipped her handy-dandy man-drooper inside, pulled the string tight, and placed the package lovingly in her briefcase. “There, it’s safe, and so are you . . . for now.”

Jason faltered in his walk back her way.

She backed up, and bumped her hip on her desk. “You wouldn’t want a rookie playing with your stick, now, would you?”

He cocked a brow, but she’d turned to her desk. “Someday, after I know you better,” she said, searching her desk, “I might let you touch my wand, but don’t count on it.”

“Ditto,” he said, raising the smoke-scented tension.

She froze, bit her lip, and searched harder.

“I apologize,” he said, and she nodded.

With nothing more to be said—nothing safe to be said—she returned to her cubby, where the window met her computer table, which met her desk. There she sat, showing him her back, and giving her keyboard her full and fast-fingered attention.

Jason entered his office and closed the door between them.

“Ditto?” he repeated incredulously. “Ditto?”

Shaking his head over his idiocy, over his big mouth, both feet inside, he wondered what else Gram had been angling for, and it had better not be a rebound.

He really had given up on women, though he could never prove it by his reaction to this one. Berries, he thought; she smelled of ripe summer berries, and carried a lethal weapon.

Jason didn’t know Gram’s office staff well, but he was reasonably certain that Little Miss “Wither Your Penis” was not his grandmother’s standard choice.

Plus, Gram had never before opened their home to a
foundation employee. Then again, as she had just finished reminding him, the foundation had never been in such dire straits before.

Fine. So Kira Fitzgerald might be able to get them out of this mess. Fine, so he was her boss—the
director
of special events—and she was his subordinate, his
coordinator
. Which meant that they should
not
be playing word games.

He should, without doubt, not have the feel of her breast programmed into his sensual memory banks, and they most categorically should not be about to share an apartment. More to the point, anticipation should not be riding him.

Oh, the apartment was big enough. His own suite on one side, and his parents’, opposite, where the witch now lived, were separated by a good-sized kitchen. Like the red line in the center of the ice, their kitchen could serve as the neutral zone, but there, as here, nothing but doors would stand between them.

Suppose one of them sleepwalked. Yeah, he wished.

Okay, so he had already imagined sifting his fingers through that lush tumble of cinnamon corkscrew curls, of tugging that single tight coil on her brow to see if it would spring back.

He’d already admired the splash of freckles across her tip-tilted nose, so pale, he could only see them up close, in bold contrast to the eloquence in her snapping verdant eyes, visible and deadly at any range.

Jason paced his time-worn oriental rug to work out the kink in his bad knee, and avoid thinking about the atypical sorceress his grandmother had hired. He had a lot of work to accomplish in six short months.

Too bad the witch thought he got this job because Gram was Pickering’s chairman of the board.

“Well, Mizz Fitzgerald, you’re in for a surprise, because I intend to earn my title by working us both until we drop from exhaustion.” She’d hate him by the time his stint at the foundation was up, which would be best for both of them.

It really irked him that he’d been comfortably celibate since his accident, and now in struts Little Miss Freckled Shoulders, who jump-starts his libido with a flick of her wand, never mind that she’s shrinking somebody’s dick at the time.

What a contradiction—small in stature, big on impact. Chic, sassy, bold, hard-hearted, tough as nails, and very much a woman of today. In contrast, she exuded a rather Victorian air, an innocence that had caught his attention.

At first glance she’d appeared wounded and vulnerable, then she’d turned witchy and bone-shriveling. Hot in barely there black, her strappy high-heel sandals topped with crystal butterflies, her ears rife with hoops and studs, she looked at a man in a way that could shrink him or harden him without a wand.

Jason took another awkward turn about his office, wishing he could toss his damned cane out a real window. Fortunately, neither of his windows opened, not the small clear oval in the corner, nor the rare, multipaned Tiffany behind his desk. Damned cane.

Could Kira cast a spell to make him heal? She’d sure cast one to make him ache.

Did she honestly have any true magical power? And could she be as innocent as she seemed?

If he weren’t her boss, he’d try shock tactics to find out, like lowering the top of her strapless dress.

“Don’t go there, Ice Boy.” Jason rubbed the back of his neck and turned to his desk. “Help save the foundation.”

He sat down and went through his papers, and found Kira’s job application.

Impressive.

Maybe
innocent
wasn’t the right word; nor
Victorian
. Kira Fitzgerald was more of a Gilded Age throwback—soft, he remembered well, feminine, sexy, wholesomely endowed, in a cutting-a-man-to-his-knees sort of way, but stiff-spined, determined, and willing to fight for what she believed in, chin high, eye to eye.

He looked up at the portrait above the claret marble mantelpiece. Like the siren in the Gay Nineties ballgown overseeing his office from on high, Kira Fitzgerald could hold a man in thrall and not let him go, until she was ready, and most men would allow it, wallow in it, and beg for more.

Let her try,
Jason thought, denying his instinct to add,
please
.

He cursed. This mansion was getting to him; there was no other explanation. He wished they hadn’t been forced to house the foundation offices here. It felt too personal, like . . . playing house. Not good in the circumstances.

Their offices had obviously been someone’s private suite—his, the sitting room, while his coordinator’s connecting office would have been the bedroom, which explained her private bath, complete with claw-foot tub.

Jason envisioned her using it, cinnamon curls damp and coiled on her head, bubbles to the crown of her round lush breasts.

Like his Gilded-Age mantel Madonna, Kira Fitzgerald, sexiest witch in the East, gave the impression she was waiting to be set free . . . or awakened.

“Shit. That’s the last place you wanna go.”

The clocks in the mansion chimed in sync, a swift but hearty echo, over, above, and around him, and Jason scrambled to put his notes in order. “Great start, Ice Boy; late for your own meeting first day on the job. Way to make a good impression on the witch.”

He heard her hall door shut and her heels clicking away. He gathered his things, opened the door between their offices, and went to her trashcan.

Holding his breath at the stench, he retrieved a barely singed scrap of what she’d been burning . . . an invitation to her wedding . . . yesterday. Son of a . . . Envelope fragments were addressed. Wedding invitations never mailed, ergo, wedding canceled.

Jason wondered why, precisely, but he did know that Charlie’s penis must somehow be the culprit.

No wonder the hard edge, the fight one minute and vulnerability the next.

“Poor wretched little witch . . . just keep your vengeful wand away from me.”

“HE’S
thirty-one, single, and dynamite,” Michaela Dennison said as Kira entered the boardroom.

The development director was, no doubt, talking about America’s best kisser, and,
no doubt,
calculating the ways she could use him as her . . . personal . . . assistant.

“Yes,” Kira said, looking through her folder to be certain she’d brought the Ghost Tour invitation. “But watch out, his people skills su—”

He stepped into the room and skewered her with a look. Talk about eye contact. “His people skills
sure
can’t be beat,” Kira said.

Electric
eye contact. He zapped her with a scowl and a cocked brow. Okay, so he wasn’t buying her save.

She really would need to think about moving out of Cloud Kiss, because she wasn’t even gonna catch a break when she went home tonight. Except she needed a break in rent more than she needed to get away from the wolf.

The Penis had bailed on his half of the nonrefundable wedding expenses, big surprise, and she couldn’t lay the cost at her parents’ faded door;
they
were still putting their sixth through private school.

When the staff was seated at the jade marble boardroom table—Goddard the only male present—Bessie cleared her throat and stood, upstaging him, or so his surprise seemed to indicate. “You all know my grandson,” she said, “but what you don’t know is that besides being the director of special events, he’s the vice-chairman of the board.”

Goddard raised a brow Bessie’s way, his promise of retribution clear, though the old dear simply grinned, and indicated that he should take over.

Kira wished again that Bessie had
said
it was her grandson she was bringing onboard, and when he would arrive, but that was dirty water under a broken bridge.

Goddard took the floor, but he didn’t act like the savior who would rescue the foundation. He failed to mention his star status and connections, and what his famous presence could accomplish.

Score one for the jock.

When he shared his vision for the foundation, Kira saw why Bessie thought he might be the man who could pull Pickering out of its slump.

Jason Goddard spoke with knowledge and determination. He oozed charisma, vowed to work hard, asked for their help, and at least eight of the ten women around the table were drooling, which pretty much left her and his grandmother with the only semblance of sanity in the room.

Except that Kira wasn’t taking any bets on herself.

KIRA
stopped salivating and tried not to give in to her hormone surge.

She reminded herself that Prince Charming was a jock, however jump-my-bones captivating he may appear at this moment. He was a natural seducer, always irresistible, mostly unreliable, a wart-making, lily-pad-sitting, smarmy-type jock.

“Every
mansion
is now more of a liability than an asset,” Goddard said, reclaiming her attitude-adjusted attention. “And we have to turn the equation around. The profit we used to give away, mostly to St. Anthony’s, is being devoured by rising overhead.”

Kira found it difficult to picture him as a toad when he looked so hot and sounded so informed.

“We also need to turn the foundation’s image around,” he said, “because people like to give to a winning organization. I have a few ideas about how and where to begin.”

Ah, here it comes, Kira thought, all the reasons that
would make her want to pin the croaker to a slab of wax and start cutting.

She’d be the one forced to coordinate their way out of his schemes, and if his new ideas were anything like his Rainbow’s Edge ghost fixation, she was gonna need her dissecting kit real soon.

“Basically, work at the Pickering Foundation is going to turn into one big party,” Goddard said, “and what more could we ask of life?”

“Par-tee,” Kira said below her breath.

“What was that?” he asked.

She looked up, surprised. “I . . . get to plan the party.”

“Yes, you do.” He proposed events twice a month at first, weekly down the road. “I was thinking of a Christmas Ball; sleigh rides; a dress-as-your-favorite-lovers Valentine Ball; garden parties; candlelight water tours.”

Yeah, right. “Excuse me,” Kira said, “but how can you see a mansion from a boat by candlelight?”

“Good point,” Goddard said, clearly ticked. “I should have said
moonlight
water tours
to
the mansions.” He took a breath. “We could have scavenger hunts, vintage-car races; hot-air-balloon tours . . .”

“And sweep our donors out to sea; that’ll bring in the bucks.”

Goddard skewered her with a look.

Kira felt the sting. “We’re on the coast,” she said. “I mean, personally, I’ve always wanted to take a ride in a hot-air balloon, but . . .” She shrugged. “Over land would be good.”