Page 13 of Luck Be a Genie

But that was before Nick showed up on my flight and crashed my vacation.

Surreptitiously, I glanced down at my suit to make sure that it didn’t look too old or ratty. Nope, it was good, and wouldn’t embarrass me.

Whew.

Nick hopped into his side of the tube with an athletic grace that I grinned and rolled my eyes at.

Show off.

We made it through the whole river once, then twice, lightly chatting and teasing each other—ahem, flirting—so I started to relax even more, thinking I would get a break from my magic and it wouldn’t spaz out on me.

Maybe hanging out with a genie was making my chaos magic behave? I didn’t think that was a thing, but hope sprang eternal.

Nick was completely lounging on his back, while I was sitting up a little bit more upright on mine. Somehow he’d wedged himself so deeply into his doughnut hole that he was able to rest his neck against the tube. His whole body language was languid and relaxed, but his eyes were sharp with intelligence and warmth as he stared at me.

“Can I hold your hand?”

Fully teasing him, and giving him a hard time, I said, “That’s twice in two days. I’m not sure, Nick. That seems awfully fast to me.”

His mouth opened in a comical O of surprise, but when he saw the teasing glint in my eyes, he laughed and lightly splashed my feet. “Cruel woman. I’m putting myself out there, and preparing myself every time for the possibility of getting shot down. The least you could do is not tease me.”

I sobered. “Am I really that scary?”

He looked amused. “You’ve been shooting me down for over a year. Yes, you’re that scary. But, more like a herd of killer bunnies scary. Not a cave of spiders scary.”

I laughed. “Not a fan of spiders?” I mean, I wasn’t either. I was very much a fan of torching my house to the ground when I found them, but instead I’d just taken to trapping them and calling Dice to come rescue me. And bonus, we got to go out to lunch after, so it wasn’t too terrible.

“Is anyone a fan of spiders?”

“Some people are.”

Nick shuddered dramatically. “Crazy people. Probably humans who don’t know any better.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You like sharks. I don’t think you can complain about people who like spiders.”

“Sharks are just misunderstood!”

“No, Nick. Sharks are not misunderstood. They’re predators.”

As if to punctuate my statement, my side of the inner tube let out a fairly loud pop and I started deflating rapidly. Nick’s side was fine, of course. I glared at him as I started trying to quickly bail water.

He grinned at me mischievously. “Lucks, did you know that you’re sinking?”

I glared at him. “Noooo, I had no idea!” I sighed, giving up on the bailing. “How is your side fine? Our tube is connected!”

He smiled and shrugged. “Genies are pretty lucky. Wanna come over and sit with me?” He waggled his eyebrows.

I audibly growled at him as I was finally dumped from my fully deflated tube into the river.

Life was so unfair sometimes.

Nick laughed as he reached over and plucked my soaked and bedraggled self out of the river, then set me beside him, though there wasn’t much room for me there.

“There’s no room here, Nick.”

“You could always sit on my lap.”

“No thank you,” I said primly. “Besides, if you’d just scooch over a little bit, I’ll fit better. Your gargantuan body is taking up too much space.”