Page 24 of Bait N' Witch

“I don’t have a single clue,” he finally said.

Only she didn’t believe him. The lack of trust was showing again. He just didn’t want to voice what he was thinking. Rowan opened her mouth only to close it again. There didn’t seem to be more to say, so she stood. “I’d better get back to bed.”

Again, if her abruptness surprised him, Grey didn’t express it. He walked with her through the dark and quiet house to the door in the kitchen leading to her stairs. There she turned to face him. Except he was too close, like in the woods, the heat of his body surrounded her. She stepped back, bumping the doorframe, pretending not to see the sudden dance of amusement in his gaze that managed to spark her own irritation. “How often do they go out?”

“Sometimes once a week. They can go as long as a month between.”

That often? She frowned. “Since I’ve been here?”

“This was the second time.”

Guilt slowly dripped through her veins. She’d missed them leaving once already. What kind of caregiver did that make her?

And Grey? He got up with them every week like this? Newts eyes and bats wings. He had taken on the role as sole nighttime bodyguard, on top of everything else. If he wasn’t hunting her down, and constantly keeping secrets from her, she might have let herself appreciate him for the good man he seemed to be.

Maybe she could help. She might have no choice but to submarine his investigation into her, but the part of her starting to connect to him and his family couldn’t just look the other way. “Can you expand your alarm to let me know as well?”

He searched her eyes. The woodsy scent of his body, and something more, a manly musk that made her want to bury her face in his neck and inhale, sent the tingling on her wrist to a lick of fire, spreading and sliding over her skin.

“Why would you want that?” he asked slowly.

She did her damndest to ignore the burn. “To help you.” That was way too personal. She cleared her throat and tried again. “As their nanny, it’s my job to watch out for them.” Mostly true, just not the whole story. “If you don’t, I’ll just sleep less, worrying and listening, and follow anyway.”

Hell, she’d set her own alarm.

“All right.” But he didn’t leave her, all traces of earlier amusement gone as his eyes turned penetrating.

“What?” she whispered.

But even she knew the answer to that. Any time they were near each other, like their nightly chats, inexplicable, inadvisable tension sat between them like a wall. One that, up till now, neither of them had tried to scale. Only now that wall swelled between them, pressing against her and around her from every direction.

He didn’t answer for a long moment, giving a small shake of his head, as if telling himself to stop. “What is it about you?”

Panic fluttered against her chest like a trapped bird. She had to defuse this situation. Now. “I talk back.”

Surprised amusement tugged at his lips. “What?”

“I suspect I’m the only woman who’s ever argued with you. Am I right?” She couldn’t help herself. She argued with him about how they dealt with the girls. Or about the use of magic in the house. Or about trips to the grocery store. Or dinner. Hell. Just last night she’d argued with him about mustard versus mayonnaise-based potato salads. The man had had the temerity to judge her mustard-based concoction at dinner, and she’d declared that if he wanted mayonnaise in his potato salad, he could damn well cook it himself.

Now, rather than backing away, he moved closer. “And?”

She shrugged. “Most people naturally want to be accepted.”

“And you don’t accept me?” He was laughing at her now. A chuckle had snuck into his voice, a suspicious quiver hovering about his lips.

Kissable lips. Damnable lips.

Given how rarely he smiled, a contrary part of her wanted to press harder, see if she could really make him laugh.

“I don’t agree with everything you say and do. There’s a difference. So…now that you know I accept you, appreciate you even, you can go back to bed knowing I’m just like every other woman.” She waved toward the hallway.

But he didn’t leave. Instead, he reached out and wrapped a red curl around his finger. “Any other woman of my acquaintance would be begging me to kiss her right now.”

She snorted to cover her rising panic, because dammit, she wanted to. “Arrogant. How do you know that?”

He smiled, completely unrepentant. “And not one of those women makes me want to pull her up against my body every time she speaks.” His voice dropped lower, rasping on her overly sensitized nerves.

“I’m your children’s nanny.” Her resistance was crumbling in a pathetic heap around her feet, a house built on sand, but she had to try to stop this before it got out of hand. “That’s it.”

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