She snorted again as she returned to her lab. Oh, I so desperately needed to get some solid evidence on this, preferably evidence that Ari wasn’t the one, even if that took me back to square one. I could hear Owen’s voice coming from a lab near his, so I darted into his lab, hung the ornament on his office doorknob, then hurried away. I lingered in the hallway for a while, but it wasn’t as though Ari was going to go out and sabotage something while I waited. Watching her probably wouldn’t work very well. I’d have to find a way to set a trap and catch her red-handed, but you had to be pretty sneaky to catch a thief, and I’d never been that good at being sneaky. I was getting better, what with all the secret keeping I’d been doing lately, but I was still a novice compared with Ari.
By the time Friday rolled around, I was truly looking forward to going out with Rod. As I dressed for the date, I gave myself a stern lecture about not falling under the influence of whatever spell he threw at me. I had no magical defenses, but I retained at least a little bit of common sense, and if I knew there was magic at work, I stood a better chance than your average girl off the street.
For the finishing touch of my outfit, I slipped my feet into the red shoes. I couldn’t hold back a smile as I thought that maybe he’d be the one having to resist me. I once more felt like the girl who’d snagged all the guys at the nightclub the previous weekend. The weather forecast threatened freezing rain and possibly snow, but it wasn’t supposed to start until later that night. This was a simple dinner, so I should be home long before it got nasty. My shoes would be safe from the elements.
The door buzzer sounded, and I hurried to the intercom. “Hi, it’s Rod,” the voice crackled over the speaker.
“I’ll be right down,” I said. I grabbed my coat and my purse and headed out.
“I thought we’d stay more or less in the neighborhood,” he said when I stepped out the front door. “With the weather the way it is, I didn’t think we wanted to rely on cabs to get us home.”
“Good thinking,” I said.
He steered me down a nearby street to a modest, snug little restaurant. “This is one of my favorite places. I hope you like it,” he said as he ushered me inside. So far, he was behaving like a perfect gentleman, as though this truly was a business dinner rather than a romantic date. I didn’t even feel the dizzying effects of his attraction spell. Maybe he’d decided against wasting the energy on someone he didn’t think would be affected and was gentleman enough not to use the spell on other women while he was with me.
Once we’d taken off our coats and settled ourselves with menus at a candlelit table, he smiled at me and said, “By the way, I didn’t tell you how nice you look tonight.”
“Thanks. You look nice, too.” I didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell him how much nicer than normal he looked to me. Or would he feel better knowing I saw him this way? His psyche would take Dr. Phil hours to untangle. If I ever managed to get Owen truly talking, I’d have to ask what it was in Rod’s childhood that had made him so insecure.
“Do you want to get an appetizer? Preferably something warm?”
“Sounds good. Order what you want, and I’m sure I’ll like it.”
The dinner ended up being far more comfortable than I’d anticipated. Somewhere during the appetizer, I managed to forget about the disconnect between what I saw and the Rod I knew, and the man in front of me became just Rod. He was funny, smooth, and charming—the perfect dinner companion. As the waitress cleared our dinner plates, Rod said, “Do you mind if we don’t order dessert? I’ve got something back at my place I thought we’d enjoy.”
Ordinarily, my warning bells would have gone off, but in spite of Rod’s reputation, he’d shown nothing more than a friendly, businesslike interest in me up to that point. If he was using his spell, it was too subtle for me to notice. I hadn’t even once thought about what it would feel like to kiss him.
“That sounds nice,” I said. Of course, the moment I thought about not thinking about kissing him, I couldn’t help but think about kissing him. If that made any sense whatsoever. But it wasn’t like I felt compelled to kiss him, just mildly curious.
“No thanks,” he told the waitress when she brought the dessert menu. He paid the check, then we bundled up to brave the outdoors once more.
The temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees while we were inside. I wished I’d been sensible and worn boots instead of being so vain as to wear a short skirt and the red stilettos. Rod put his arm around me, but I doubted he was making a move on me, and even if he was, I didn’t mind because it made me that much warmer.
We hurried to his building, then both of us breathed a sigh of relief when we got inside the warm lobby. “I’d better not stay too late,” I said, as we waited for an elevator. “It looks like that storm may hit early, and I don’t want to have to go home through the snow.”
“We’ll keep an eye on the window, and on the clock,” he said. An elevator arrived, and he gestured for me to go ahead of him. He lived near the top of the building, so it seemed like it took several minutes before we got to his floor. While we faced each other across the elevator, I felt a strange tension growing between us. It was an entirely different feeling from the ease I’d noticed in the restaurant, and it seemed to have come out of nowhere. Even as I tried to fight the feeling, my breathing grew faster.
I didn’t think it was his attraction spell, though, or else it was affecting him the same way. He was practically panting. Could it be that we were really that attracted to each other? I’d never been the least bit turned on around Rod, except in the past couple of weeks when I’d noticed the effects of his attraction spell. This kind of thing didn’t happen because of one good dinner, did it?
Both of us rushed for the door when the elevator finally came to a stop. The air seemed to have grown very heavy in there. I felt a little more normal once we were out in the hallway. Whatever it was eased up, so I felt almost relaxed again as I waited for him to unlock his apartment door.
He ushered me inside. “Have a seat, and I’ll make some coffee,” he said. I dropped my purse on the floor inside the doorway, then draped my coat across a chair and sat on the sofa. The last time I’d been in his apartment, I’d just been magically mugged. It hadn’t changed much since then—a typical high-end bachelor pad with leather upholstery, blond wood, metal and glass, plus a great view of the city lights. “If you like, you can put on some music,” he called from the kitchen.
I went to his entertainment center and looked through his CDs. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing as I noticed the number of surefire seduction discs in his collection. He seemed to have the complete works of Barry White, as well as a broad collection of mellow jazz. Naturally, he had a recording of Ravel’s Bolero. What Casanova didn’t? I selected the least sultry jazz disc and put it in the player.
He emerged from the kitchen with two mugs of frothy coffee. “I hope this is good,” he said. “I found it at the store and thought it looked interesting.”
“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me,” I said, as he went back to the kitchen, only to return with a packet of cookies.
“You’re worth the trouble. You should know that. But if it makes you feel better, I’m not putting these out on a plate. Just take some from the box.”
“Now, that’s more like it,” I said with a laugh, as I took a couple of cookies out of the box. I felt that ease I’d enjoyed during dinner return. Whatever had happened in the elevator seemed to have dissipated.
“I wanted to thank you again for getting me involved in the morale-boosting effort,” he said. “That’s the main reason I asked you to dinner. For the first time, I feel like I’m really part of what’s going on in the company.”
“Of course I included you. It’s your job.”
“Funny how no one else seems to remember.”
“Like I told you, Merlin doesn’t understand modern stuff like human resources—though he’s probably getting better with all those bus
iness books he’s been reading. And you’re doing a great job. Some of those teams have even made up T-shirts and cheers.”
He laughed. “Yeah, and that’s almost scary. We’ve had great results from the secret Santa program, too. Since it started, productivity has gone almost back to normal, after a serious drop from the time word about the spy got out.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
He raised his cup for a toast, and I clinked mine against it. “To fighting the bad guys with whatever tools we’ve got,” he said.
“Hear, hear!”
All of a sudden, the tension I’d felt in the elevator returned with a vengeance, so forcefully that I almost thought I could hear it rush in. His breath caught, and I knew he could feel it, too. Without a word, he set his cup on the coffee table, took my mug from me, and set it beside his. And then we all but fell on each other.
There was nothing cautious or gentle about this kiss. It was an all-out tongue-tangling lip-lock, like we couldn’t get enough of each other. He bent me back so I was lying on the sofa, my head resting on the sofa arm and him lying on top of me. Things were getting very serious very fast, and I was impatient for more.
He trailed his fingers down my neck to my collarbone, then traced the neckline of my blouse. I felt a button open, then another. And then sanity returned. What on God’s green earth was I doing?
I ducked the next kiss by turning my head aside, then I tried to wriggle out from under him. He responded by kissing my neck and tightening his hold on me. That meant I had to escalate. I put my hands against his chest and pushed with all my strength. When he grabbed my wrists with one hand and pinned them out of the way, I got scared. This wasn’t fun anymore, by any definition of the word. It was serious.
That meant I had to get serious. First, a verbal warning. “Rod, no, please. Let’s not do this,” I gasped, but it didn’t slow him down one bit. So I brought one knee up to hit him in a very sensitive place as hard as I could. That got his attention.
He released me enough that I was able to worm out from under him to land on the floor in front of the sofa, even as I mentally blessed the brother who’d taught me that particular move when a friend of his known for his octopus-like arm action had asked me out.
When Rod recovered from the initial impact, he looked at me in shock and horror. “Oh, God, Katie, I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened,” he said. I knew he had to be pretty stunned, for his illusion dropped entirely.
My head finally cleared enough for me to realize what had to be going on. “It’s a spell,” I said. “It has to be. Someone’s trying to make you do something you would never do otherwise.”
He closed his eyes and groaned. “That would explain it.”
“I have to get out of here,” I said, scuttling away from him. “For both our sakes.” I grabbed my purse in the entryway, made it to my feet, and ran out of the apartment.
I reached the elevator bank and pushed the DOWN button repeatedly, hoping that this one time it defied logic and called an elevator faster. I’d just stepped onto an elevator when Rod came running out of his apartment after me. I hit the door CLOSE button as he shouted, “Katie!”
“I’ll be okay,” I called out between the closing doors. Only when I got outside did I realize I’d left my coat behind. It wouldn’t be safe for either of us if I went back there, though, even if freezing rain was already falling. At least I had my purse, and therefore my keys. It wasn’t that far to my own apartment, and if I ran I’d keep warm. The tears that insisted on spilling out of my eyes didn’t help. It was cold enough that I was afraid they’d freeze on my face. I was in way over my head, and it was my own fault. If only I’d told someone about my loss of immunity so they’d know how vulnerable I was.
But the low point to my evening hadn’t come yet. I felt the tingle of power that meant magic was in use nearby, but of course I couldn’t see anything to know if I was under attack. Great, I was out in freezing rain without a coat, I was shaken up by a case of spell-induced seduction that had almost gone too far, and I was very possibly being attacked while I was too magically blind to know when to duck or get out of the way.
The only thing I could do was run the other way when I felt a buildup of magic and hope I could make it home in time. I put my head down and took off, then veered to the side when I felt the telltale tingle. I wondered if anyone would oblige me by shouting “Polo” if I yelled “Marco,” but I doubted that people who grew up without ready access to swimming pools would know all the kids’ swimming pool games. The tingle increased, and I spun around, swinging out with my purse and feeling a satisfying contact with something solid. Then I ran in the other direction.
I was in the clear for a little while, then felt it again, stronger than before. But before I could get away, something grabbed onto me, and I started to fight my way loose until I realized someone was saying my name over and over again, like he was soothing a troubled child. I looked up into Owen’s concerned blue eyes.
“Katie, what’s wrong?” he asked. “What are you doing out in this weather without a coat?”
I didn’t have time to get into that at the moment. “I think there’s someone after me,” I sobbed as he wrapped me up in his overcoat, pulling me tighter against his chest. At any other time, I would have really enjoyed that, but I had other things to worry about at the moment.
“I think you may be right. We should get out of here,” he said. Then he looked down at me, his eyes very serious. “Katie, do you trust me?”
I started to give him a flippant, lip-service reply, the same way you automatically say “fine” when someone asks you how you’re doing, whether or not you’re really fine. But I got the feeling he needed a real answer for this. “Yes, I trust you,” I said at last.
He nodded. “Okay. This may be a little frightening. I think I can make it work, but I’m going to be more or less magically useless for the rest of the evening. Hold onto me.”
If this was a scheme to get me into a compromising position, I could kill him later, I thought. For now, I just wanted out of the cold. I wanted to be safe. I wrapped my arms around his waist, and he tightened his hold on me. Then there was a lurching feeling, like I’d left my stomach behind at the top of a roller coaster. And then I was suddenly warm, with no cold rain falling on me. Owen held onto me for a second longer, steadying me, then he released me.
“That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” he said, his voice a little rough, as if he’d been truly nervous.
I reluctantly released my death grip on him and stepped away, blinking as I tried to take stock of my surroundings. I was in a dark room, with dim light coming through a window. Owen waved a hand and the lights came on. Another wave of his hand and a fireplace sprang to life. “Okay, I think I’m now officially shot for the evening,” he said, sounding stronger.
I looked around and realized I was in a room that appeared to be a combination living room and study. The study part was near the front window. A large wooden desk faced the window. The walls to either side of the window were covered in bookcases. Directly behind me was an overstuffed sofa in a dark, soft-looking material. Across from it was a marble fireplace, a fire blazing inside and Christmas stockings hanging from the mantel. On the wall at the other end of the room was a television set. A lit, decorated Christmas tree stood in the far corner of the room.
The room had the ornately carved crown moldings and door and window facings of an older building, and the floor was of polished wood with Oriental rugs scattered on it. It was a room where delicate antique furniture would have been entirely at home, but the heavier, more comfortable furnishings made it look cozy and livable, like a home rather than a museum. I didn’t have to ask to know it was Owen’s place. It looked exactly like I would have expected of him.
I finished studying the room and turned back to him, only to find him giving me a funny look and turning pink. “Um, Katie, your, uh,” he said, fiddling with his collar. I looked down and saw that my blouse
was still partially unbuttoned.
“Oh, oops,” I said, hurrying to button up.
He looked intensely relieved. “Here, you should have a seat.” He guided me to the sofa, then took an afghan off the back of the sofa and wrapped it around my shoulders. “You’ll be safe here. This place is heavily warded, as well as physically secure. Now, what was going on that had you running through the streets on a night like this without a coat?”
I was still trying to think of a good answer when a white streak shot into the room. Owen caught it before it could jump up onto the sofa, and I then saw that it was a small white cat with big black spots. “A familiar?” I asked.
He shook his head, a wry grin on his lips. “No, just a pet.” He addressed the cat he held, “Be good, Loony, Katie’s a guest,” then gently dropped the cat onto the sofa, where it proceeded to investigate me.
“You named your cat Loony?” I asked as I scratched it behind the ears and listened to the answering purr.
He slipped out of his overcoat and threw it over a nearby chair. “I named my cat Eluned, after a figure from Welsh mythology. Rod started calling her Loony, and it stuck.”
I tried not to stiffen at the mention of Rod. “She’s sweet,” I said.
He sat beside me on the sofa, and the cat immediately turned from me to snuggle adoringly against him. He absently stroked her as he spoke. “She’s not so bad. I’m not really much of a cat person. We always had dogs when I was growing up. But I found her in a gutter when she was a newborn. It looked like her mother had been hit by a car. I tried to save the whole litter, but she was the only one who made it.”
Tears threatened to come once more, but I fought them back. Instead, I forced a laugh. “Are you for real? Seriously? You may not be ready to give your foster parents the Parent of the Year award, but they seem to have done a pretty good job with you. Please tell me you have some flaws, or are you not really human?”
Once Upon Stilettos Page 27