Once Upon Stilettos (Enchanted Inc #2) (36 page)

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?”

He kept his attention on the cat as his face turned redder than I’d ever seen it. With him, the man who had an entire repertoire of blushes, that was saying something. “I’m human, with maybe a slight genetic variance. And I have plenty of flaws. For one thing, I’m lousy at talking to people. My house is a mess, too.”

“I like it. It’s cozy.”

He didn’t say anything for a while, and I joined him in petting Loony, who reveled in the attention. She might have adored her owner, but she didn’t seem to see me as the other woman or a threat to her position in the household. I was simply someone else to fuss over her.

Then, just as I was getting comfortable with the silence, he asked again, “What happened tonight? It had to have been pretty bad to have you running out in this weather without a coat.”

I scratched a purring Loony under her chin as I thought about how to respond. There wasn’t an easy way to tell a guy you were in serious danger of falling in love with that you’d just run screaming away from his best friend. I finally said, “Can we table that discussion for later? I’m not ready to talk about it, and I think I need to process it a little more before I’d even know what to say.”

He nodded. “Okay. Take all the time you need. Just know that you’re safe here. You can relax.”

“Thank you. And thank you for coming to my rescue. What were you doing there, anyway? Did you know something was wrong, or did you just happen to be in the neighborhood at the right time?”

“I had a feeling.”

“Your ESP must have a twenty-four-hour Katie channel.”

“Something like that. Maybe I’m attuned to you because we spend so much time together. I’ve never done much study on it. My precognition always seemed too erratic to analyze before.” He looked up at me then, and his eyes softened. “Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that you’re so utterly irresistible,” he added, his voice not much more than a whisper.

My heart skipped a beat as he leaned forward and touched his lips to mine. This wasn’t the hungry, possessive, all-out kiss that had happened between Rod and me, and I didn’t sense any of the tension that had built up between us before that happened. This just felt right, like it was meant to happen.

It was the perfect first kiss, firm enough to be real, but still gentle and sweet. I felt surrounded by a warm, safe glow. At the same time, I wanted to shout for joy. All that time I’d had a crush on him, and it turned out that he’d felt the same way about me. This amazing, wonderful man—who also turned out to be a fantastically talented kisser—liked me in return. It was almost too good to be true.

Then, just as I was really getting into it, he pulled away from me with a gasp, and an expression of utter horror came across his face. “Oh, God,” he breathed. I wanted to grab him and pull him back to me, but he was shaking his head, like he was trying to snap out of something.

“What is it?” I managed to choke.

He frowned as if in deep concentration, then looked down at my feet. Leaning over, he waved a hand over my feet, then turned back to me and said, “It’s your shoes.”

“M
y-my shoes?” I stammered, my brain still fuzzy from the kiss.

He moved off the sofa to kneel at my feet. “May I?” he asked.

I knew he wasn’t entirely normal, but I’d never figured Owen for a shoe fetishist. Then again, he seemed a lot more worried than turned on, which didn’t say much for my kissing ability. “Sure,” I said, even though I had no idea what he was talking about.

He slid my shoes off my feet, then held one and frowned some more. He looked up at me and said, “Hmm, it seems to be a Cinderella spell.”

“A what?”

He went into business mode, all calm and articulate and like he hadn’t just been kissing me. “You don’t see it often, but it’s a classic. It’s a spell cast on footwear that renders the wearer irresistible and utterly attractive to others. It may also have an effect on the wearer—the spell can be what compels the wearer to purchase the shoes in the first place and can give the wearer a sense of artificial confidence. Of course, that wouldn’t work on you, but it would definitely have an impact on those around you.”

“That explains a lot,” I said with a nod. In fact, it explained more than he realized. No wonder I’d been so quick to whip out my credit card and buy them. My immunity must have already been fading by then.

“Explains what?” he asked. The question seemed innocent enough, and obvious, if he was trying to get to the root of the situation, but a crease had formed between his eyes. Was he jealous? But no, he’d only been kissing me because he was affected by the shoes. Just my luck—the best kiss I’d ever had in my entire life, and it was meaningless.

“Some stupid stuff that’s been happening to me lately. Like last weekend when we went out, I was a lot more popular than I’ve ever been. I had men buying me drinks and asking me to dance all night.” I gave a bitter laugh. “I should have known it couldn’t possibly have been real.”

That should have been his cue to correct me and tell me I didn’t need magical shoes to be irresistible. I wasn’t fishing for compliments, but I would have welcomed one. He was apparently telling the truth about not being good at talking to people, though, for he didn’t even try to say anything to make me feel better. I could feel my hopes deflating. The kiss hadn’t meant anything to him, then.

“I think I can break this spell, but not tonight. I’m still too drained from the teleportation. In the meantime, I’d better put these in a safe place. I mean, a place where we’ll both be safe. Well, they won’t affect you, but, yeah, a place where we’ll both be safe.” Apparently, he’d fallen out of business mode and was back to his usual bashful self. He stood up, holding the shoes out at arm’s length, like he was afraid they’d bite. “And we need to get you out of those wet clothes.” He turned crimson as he realized what he’d said, then hurried to correct himself. “I mean, you need something warmer and drier to wear. Stay there. I’ll be back.”

As rattled as I was, I couldn’t help but smile as he all but ran from the room. He was so adorable when he was flustered. So adorable, and he didn’t like me as anything more than a friend, after all. I wished he’d never kissed me, for now I knew what I was missing. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the touch of his lips on mine, still taste him. I doubted I’d forget it anytime soon.

I heard footsteps on stairs and soon he returned, holding a bundle of clothing. “These are probably too big for you, but they should work,” he said, handing the clothes to me. “The sweatpants have a drawstring waist, and there’s elastic at the ankles, so they may be baggy, but you won’t trip over the hem. There’s a bathroom under the stairs if you want to change and, um, freshen up. While you do that, I’ll make some cocoa.”

I got up from the sofa and followed him into the hallway, where he pointed out the bathroom before heading to the end of the hall, Loony following faithfully at his heels.

Safely locked inside the small half bathroom, I finally let myself break down and cry. This night had been one disaster after another, from the surprisingly fun date with Rod that had disintegrated into a nightmare to the miraculous kiss with Owen that turned out to have been nothing more than the result of a spell.

When I got myself under control, I washed my face, then got out of my wet clothes and put on the sweat suit he’d brought me. He was right about the pants being baggy, but they didn’t fit much worse than any I might have worn at home, and I only had to push up the sleeves of the sweatshirt a little bit. It was an old, faded blue sweatshirt that said
YALE
on the front in cracked lettering that looked like it had been washed hundreds of times over the years. He’d also given me a pair of thick socks to warm my feet. I found a ponytail holder in my purse and pulled my hair back, then put on a little lip balm and almost felt human again when I left the bathroom.

The first doorway off the hall led to the living room, where we’d been. The next one opened into a formal dining room that didn’t appear to be used often for its intended purpose, given the piles of books and papers on the dining table. The last door turned out to be the kitchen, where Owen stood at the stove, stirring something in a pot, Loony sitting at his feet and staring up at him in all-out worship. I couldn’t much blame her. He really was remarkable.

It was a typically small New York kitchen, but compared with mine it could have been a catering kitchen designed to feed thousands. He had actual counter space, as well as a nook for a small table for two. “I think I have kitchen envy,” I said.

He turned around from the stove and gave me a shaky smile. “How did the sweats work out for you?” he asked.

“Fine. Thank you.” I gestured toward the stove. “You’re making real cocoa? I’m impressed.”

I bit my lip to keep myself from smiling as the expected faint pink stain spread over his cheekbones. The poor guy had the bad luck to be so bashful and yet so fair-skinned. He kept his attention on the pot he was stirring as he said, “Gloria does not believe in shortcuts of any kind. Besides, I didn’t have any mix handy.”

He poured the cocoa into two mugs, then opened a cabinet over the stove and took out a bottle, from which he splashed a little liquid into each mug, then gave a stir. “I thought we could probably both use a dram of something extra,” he explained, as he brought the mugs over to the table, his cat following him.

“Good idea,” I said as I took a mug from him. We both sat at the table, and I suddenly felt self-conscious around him. Sleet rattling against the window punctuated the silence between us. I hoped the memory of that kiss faded quickly, for it would be hard to stay just friends with him when all I could think of when I looked at him was that kiss. On the other hand, though, I never wanted to forget such a perfect kiss.

“Sorry about, um, earlier,” he said.

“It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.” I pondered whether or not I should tell him I’d actually kind of enjoyed it, but decided that would probably send him over the edge. “And, uh, you weren’t the only one affected tonight.”

“Is that what you were running from?”

I nodded and took a sip of cocoa. Whatever he’d added to it was pretty strong. It seemed to start a fire in my stomach that spread throughout my body, dispelling the last traces of cold and fear. Taking another sip of cocoa to steel myself, I said, “I went out to dinner with Rod tonight.”

His eyes widened. “You did?”

“It wasn’t a romantic date. He made that clear up front. I think he mostly felt sorry for me about the thing with Ethan, and I’ll admit that was the main reason I accepted. He asked Trix out.”

“Rod?”

“No, Ethan. Sorry. But anyway, Rod said he wanted to talk about some of those morale-building programs we’ve been working on, and that was what we did talk about at dinner. It was nice. And then he suggested we go to his place for dessert.”

He shook his head with a smile that managed to be fond and disgusted at the same time. “Bad idea when you’re with Rod.”