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“What about you?”
“I don’t have anyone.”
“Just your gran?”
I let out a long sigh. “Yeah.” Then I shift closer to Zoey. I like being close to her. Her scent is soft, sweet magic. “Have you ever wished you had something so you could just use it to save one small thing?”
“All the time.”
“Like your store, huh?”
“I’d give it up in a heartbeat if it was for the right cause.” She stops, takes a sip of wine and overhead a plane roars about the yells and shouts and traffic below. “Well, I live there, but I’d risk it, for the right reasons. I’d risk it all. I think anyone would.”
“No,” I say, taking her glass and setting it down with mine and the bottle. Then I step in, brushing the hair from her face. “I really don’t think so.”
And then, because I want to, because it just feels right, I lower my mouth to hers.
Chapter Eight
Zoey
Oh my God. Magnus lowers his mouth to mine, his lips, those gorgeous lips that must fuel a thousand female fantasies brush lightly on mine.
It’s a sweet, soft, fleeting kiss, a butterfly touch that makes my blood sing arias. His mouth is warm, everything I imagined and more.
I sway in against him, seeking, wanting…
I don’t care this is someone I just hired. I don’t care I just met him. It’s like magic, a light that whispers in my blood, and then, like a dream, it shatters into reality.
“Magnus?” The shout is shocked and the voice low and male.
“Shit.” He’s not kissing me anymore. Instead, his head jerks up and he glances over my head as the sounds of the city and the light from the door where we stepped through infiltrate my spinning, buzzing head.
I go to turn, but Magnus pulls me to him and looks at me and says, “Give me a minute.”
People have spilled out to the roof and with them in the warmish fall night is another tall man, one who seems to be as tall as Magnus. They’re backlit so I can’t see their faces, just the silhouettes of two fit, lean men. And they’re arguing. Pointing. I start going towards them, because I don’t know why. I just want to help. And I want to be close, and even though it’s wrong, I want to feel the magic of his touch, or even just his presence.
But when I reach him, he drags me off to the stairs and away from whoever he’s talking to. I’m hustled down first, Magnus at my back as the voice follows. “No, honest. Real nice talk, Mag. Loved it. Do it again soon?”
“Asshole,” he says.
We hit the kitchen and he takes my hand, pulling me past Suzanne who says, “Go girl!” And gives me the thumbs up.
It’s not until we’re on the street and cutting through the park that I get my mind back into reality. “Magnus.”
I pull free and stop.
He turns.
“What was that?”
A muscle in his jaw works and a thousand different expressions flit over his face. “Someone I didn’t want to see.”
“It sounded like he knew you.”
For a moment I don’t think he’s going to answer, but a buzzing sound comes from the back pocket of his jeans and he pulls out the latest smartphone that’s just hit the market. I know that’s what it is, because Suzanne has been coveting it since before the release of the quad digit device.
He grimaces and slides it away. “Leftover perk from my old job,” he says by way of explanation, and my cheeks go up in burning flames.
