Annette Blair (17 page)

“That’s about two hundred and fifty invitations and a potential five hundred attendees,” Kira added, “but Kingston’s grand ballroom opens to an enclosed swimming-pool patio, so we’ll have plenty of room. If everyone we invite attends, which
never
happens, I can still do it.”

Jason was beginning to think she could do anything, though some of the things he imagined her doing could get him into trouble.

“I know this is not your favorite topic, but . . .” Kira distracted him by walking away, so he focused on her fine ass, which she removed from his view by leaning against his desk.

She faced him, crossed her arms, and skewered him with a determined look.

“Uh-oh,” he said.

“You guessed it,” Kira said. “At this point we have no choice but to hold the celebrity bachelor auction on the last Friday night in November at Summerton. So . . . unless you say different, I’m designing the invitations today and getting them to the printer tomorrow afternoon, at the latest. Which means, you need to get on the phone—this afternoon, if not sooner—and get your famous buddies to volunteer their time for a good cause. I’d like to be able to put a couple more hotties on the invite.”

Jason stood. “You think I’m a hottie?”

“That’s not what I said.” Kira’s blush rose, but Jason kept his grin to himself. He wanted her to read his interest as he approached her.

She looked like she might want to run, but his desk at her back, and his hands braced on either side of her, stopped her retreat. The position also allowed him to rise over her, so to speak. “I think you’re hot,” he said, “especially in filmy turquoise boxers.”

She stomped on his foot. “Rabbit hole!”

“Ouch! Right. Sorry. Admit it; you think I’m hot, too.”

“Like hell, you’re hot.”

“Thank you,” he said, warming her ear with his breath. “Hell
is
a pretty hot place.”

Like a shot, she left him with an armful of air. She’d ducked from beneath his arms and stood again at the door to her office. “Get on the phone, Goddard.”

Jason wondered for half a beat which of them was the boss, but he remembered that she’d thrown him a boss-type bone: “unless you say different,” she’d said.

He sighed, straightened, went around his desk with as much dignity as his boner would allow, sat down, and picked up the phone.

“Wait, you need to know that your grandmother said the bachelors can stay at Cloud Kiss, if they’re flying in. Plus
they should know in advance that they have to plan a date, a great date for the following day or evening.”

“Okay. Right.” Jason made notes as she spoke.

“We’ll announce their date plans as we introduce them,” Kira added. “We’ll also send them a questionnaire about their interests for a program bio within the week. They can call me if they have questions.”

Jason had to put the phone down and regather his enthusiasm. Everything she’d just said applied to him as well. Son of a hockey puck, but that woman was a take-charge kind of girl. Then again, he got to plan the date, didn’t he? And since she was a ringer, and would absolutely, without a doubt, win him, he began to think about where he’d like to take her.

But hadn’t she once said
no
dates, and later, hadn’t she mentioned using him as a sex slave? Jason grinned. Okayyyyy!

“Oh, one more thing,” Kira said, sticking her head back into his office. “They should know that this is a black-tie event, though the dates they plan can be as casual or as fancy as they want. And as much as I hate to say it, I think you should take out your little black book and invite some of your bottle-blond babes to come and join in the bidding.”

Kira pulled her head back into her own office, like a turtle retreating into its shell, and left him fantasizing about getting into her shell with her.

Jason started to dial as Billy sauntered into her office, threw his arms around her, and planted a long, hot, familiar kiss on her lips.

“Kira!” Jason shouted, and when she disentangled herself and came in, he blanked.

“What?” she said after a minute.

“Can you read me my rights again?”

She ticked off the auction rules on her fingers, and while she did, her volunteers arrived to give Billy some competition for her attention.

When Kira left, Jason grinned with satisfaction and dialed.

“Hey, Seth,” Jason said. “How’s the Company of Rogues doing, and how would you like to donate yourself and a few of your rogues-for-hire to a good cause?”

While Jason was on the phone with baseball’s famous Santiago the Stealer, he could hear the Court Jester entertaining in Kira’s office, making her volunteers giggle like schoolgirls.

Kira looked in, saw his distraction, and shut the door to cut the noise, but not without a moment of electric eye contact between them.

It was enough . . . for now.

Jason smiled as he continued talking to his best friend.

Kira left work before him that night, didn’t come to Gram’s for dinner, and got to the office before he did the next morning.

He leaned on the door between their offices and watched her deep in concentration. She was wearing black again today, a svelte seventies-looking one-piece jumpsuit, with a sailor-suit collar and a familiar pair of black sandals, but the weather had warmed and cleared, so he didn’t suppose she’d be wearing the Wellies yet anyway.

He already knew that if he spoke before she saw him, she’d jump a foot, so he waited patiently for her concentration to break.

It never did, not in the ten minutes he enjoyed her every expression and facet, so he moved closer to her desk so she could see him in her peripheral vision . . . and she jumped and screamed.

“Well, hell,” he said. “What do I have to do to get your attention without scaring you to death?”

“Sorry, I kinda get into what I’m doing and turn off the world around me.”

“No kidding.”

“What’s up?” she asked.

Wouldn’t you like to know?
“By my calculation, we have
less than two weeks to find that hidden staircase at Rainbow’s Edge, and I want to see how the crew raising that gravestone is faring. The stone is so big, it keeps breaking their equipment. Are you up for a bit of stairway hunting this morning?”

“God, yes, get me out’a here. I’m sick of doing paperwork.”

“You read my mind. Want to come in the Hummer?”

She raised a brow.

He chuckled when he caught the double meaning. “I like the way you think, Fitzgerald.”

“You’d be
shocked
if you knew the way I think.”

“Nothing can shock me. I’m a hockey player.”

“Let’s give your shock-meter a test sometime, shall we?”

“Just say the word.” He grabbed the doorknob.

“The word.”

He stopped, turned, and regarded her, silently asking for an explanation.

She shrugged. “Just making sure you were paying attention. We should travel separately, if we want to end up at home tonight with both vehicles. Hockey practice after school today.”

“You
had
to remind me.”

She took a black all-weather coat from the mission-style coat rack, and he helped her into it. Not that he minded. He appreciated any excuse to touch her and he approved the excuses she used to touch him.

“Sister Margaret says the boys have talked about nothing but you since hockey lessons,” she said, pulling a wealth of curls from the neck of her coat. “Three of them wrote papers about you and several wrote about hockey lessons in their religion journals.”

“What was so religious about the experience? I’m probably going to hell for the things I was thinking that afternoon.”

“You’re an adult who gave them your undivided attention. That matters to those boys. Give yourself a pat on the back.”

“I can’t. I’m still too bruised from the experience. I’ll tell myself that
you
said I did good, and I’ll be satisfied, okay? Where’d you park your broom?”

DID
it matter to Jason, Kira wondered as she drove her Jetta toward Rainbow’s Edge, that she thought he’d done well with the boys? And what was that ear nuzzling in his office yesterday? She shivered and grinned. Could Jason possibly want her as much as she wanted him?

She turned up the heat. If she hadn’t been able to keep the Penis interested, how the hell did she think she could interest the Ice Wolf? Even if she did interest him, for a time, how would she survive when he got tired of her?

She was definitely
not
up for that again.

Jason was waiting for her at Rainbow’s Edge. They headed toward the Winthrop Family cemetery, where six ham-fisted men with shoulders as wide as doors, and arms as thick as tree trunks, stood around talking about why they couldn’t lift Addie’s gravestone.

“They’re efficient,” Kira said as they approached the strapping crew.

One of the bruisers took a drag on his cigarette when he saw them, then he used the coffin nail to direct their gaze toward the recumbent marble giant. “Did you know this sucker’s been facedown for more than eighty years?” Smoke poured from the man’s nose and mouth as he spoke, a derelict dragon with bad breath.

Kira shivered in repulsion.

“Yes,” Jason said. “My grandmother said it’s been like this since she was young.”

“It didn’t budge then,” the guy said, squaring his shoulders and spitting into the grass. “It won’t budge now. End of story. Sorry. No can do.”

“Try again!” Kira snapped. “It’s not rocket science.”

A bird in the tree above them cawed several quick times, like a crone laughing.

The Neanderthal stepped away, said something that made the cretins around him chuckle, and the crew went back to work.

Jason led Kira away.

“What’ll we do if they don’t raise it?” she asked. “Maybe we should call a bigger company?”

“Good idea,” Jason said. “If these guys don’t raise it today, we’ll tell them to forget it. By the way,
that
was a gorilla.”

She snapped her fingers. “Right; now I see the resemblance.”

Jason stopped. “Is that a dig?”

“You think I’m mocking you? Me?”

He stroked the back of her neck with his thumb and forefinger.

“Mmmm.” She hunched her shoulders to trap his hand, so he continued as they walked.

“Promise you won’t pay them, if they fail,” she said.

“I’ll do my damndest not to,” he said, “but if it comes to a showdown, you’re my man.”

“Gee, thanks.” She shrugged his hand away.

“Hey,” he said, “I thought you were gonna bite the guy.”

“I thought about it,” she said, “but I have a strong gag reflex.”

“Remind me not to piss you off.”

“Too late.”

Kira realized, if Jason didn’t, that they had somehow become a team. He needed her, and he didn’t even seem to mind. Her step got lighter. Her new job, and maybe even her new boss, was working out great.

Okay, so he could have any woman he wanted, but he seemed to want her, at least on the job, and that was enough. For now.

“Let’s walk around the perimeter of the house,” he said, “see if we can spot any jogs in the construction that seem odd or big enough to hide a staircase.”

He pointed out each room as they went, and they both
agreed that the outside seemed to conform with the inside. “The stairway must sit in the center of the house,” he said, talking to himself. “It’s possible.”

“Where do we start?” she asked, once they were inside. “Did you find the architectural drawings in the archives?”

“I went through tons, but I never found any on this place. How about we start in the attic and work our way down to the basement?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Kira waved to the chaotic squawking birds in the aviary before heading for the enclosed stairway nearby and making her way up to the attic.

“Those birds are never as noisy as when you’re around; you know that, don’t you?” Jason climbed the stairs behind her.

“Maybe they’re trying to speak to the witch in me,” she said with a trembling voice and fake cackle. She turned, making claws of her hands, to wrap them around his neck.

With her on the step above him, they stood eye to eye, everything meeting as it should, the potential high for a kiss, and then some. Kira allowed herself the sensual pleasure of toying with the curls at his nape.

Jason’s sigh spoke of desire, and as he covered her hands with his, she felt something like a spark rising between them, making her wish again for the touch of his lips against her own.

“Don’t witches always have pets? Special ones?” he asked, eyeing her lips but appearing to seek a distraction at the same time. Conflicting body language. How odd.

“What
do
you call a witch’s special pet?” he asked.

Kira sighed and pushed his hands aside, pulling herself physically away as he’d pulled mentally away. “A familiar.”

“Right. Where’s your familiar?”

“You think I should walk around with a crow on my shoulder like weird old Addie Winthrop?”

“That might bring some notoriety to the foundation.”

“No.” Kira was adamant. “One crow does not bode well for the wearer.”

“Excuse me?”

“One is for sorrow,” she said.

“Seriously,” he said. “No pets?”

“I had a dog, Spooky, but I gave him to Melody’s son, Shane, when I moved to Cloud Kiss. I didn’t even want to ask your grandmother if I could have a pet. Cloud Kiss has ‘no pets’ written all over it. But Shane lets me visit Spooky, because I miss him.”

“I thought witches kept cats.”

“I’d like to have a kitten, someday, but I haven’t found the right one, or maybe I should say, it hasn’t found me. My sister Regan has a cat that needs an exorcist,” Kira said as she searched for the light switch.

“And my brother Aiden has a lizard that looks like it’s wearing a green Breathe Right strip, but it still sounds like an obscene phone call.”

Jason did a double take.

Kira shrugged. “We seem to end up with the pets nobody else would want . . . and it’s not like we go shopping for them.”

“What about your dog, Spooky?”

“He just showed up at my door one day with a bark like an owl on steroids.

“Sounds spooky,” Jason said.