Page 13 of Bait N' Witch

Her mouth pursed, but she nodded. “Fine.”

“So you’ll stay?” Oddly, Greyson found himself holding his breath for her response. An hour in her company, surrounded by her wildflower and honey scent, and part of him wanted her to stay. So unlike him, he brushed that wayward feeling aside with irritation and waited for her response.

She sighed. “I don’t have a choice.”

The words, or maybe the way she said them, triggered instinct honed over years of being a hunter. “What does that mean?”

A strong emotion flashed in her eyes. If he had to guess, he would’ve said panic, but the expression was gone so quickly he couldn’t be sure.

Then she offered a sweet smile. “It means you clearly need help. So, yes, I’ll stay.”

Greyson levered to his feet. He needed help, did he? “I’ll be in my room if you need me. Good night, Rowan.” Her name felt strange on his lips. Right and wrong at the same time.

“Mr. Masters—” She stopped him at the door, and he swung to face her, eyebrows raised in question.

She didn’t bother to get up. “Don’t test me like that again.”

Or what?

“Remember…observations can go two ways.”

Did she just imply she was observing him? Before he could snap out a question, she stood and turned off the TV. “Good night.”

Greyson headed back upstairs, coming to terms with a rare experience. He’d been effectively dismissed by a woman who happened to be his girls’ nanny. Most women rushed to please him. Rowan practically sprinted in the opposite direction.

Bigger question…why did her contrary reaction turn him on?

Chapter Five

Monday morning dawned early, still dark outside. After almost a week with the Masterses, Rowan had learned the hard way how difficult getting three twelve-year-old girls out of bed could be. Sloths had more speed than those three in the morning. Rowan had been damn tempted to give each a little zap but restrained herself.

How had Greyson been doing this on his own the last few years? After that first one, none of the nannies had lasted long enough to be much help. Given his occupation he had to be gone a lot. Yet while the girls might need a bit more attention, they were still good kids. She had to give the man props for that.

At least the pricklies she’d felt in the woods had been Greyson watching, and not…something else. Someone else.

“Get going, lazy bones,” she said out loud. Then flipped off the covers.

Without the help of magic for once, Rowan managed to feed the girls and get them out the door with Greyson on time. She peered out the window to the backyard where he was about to teleport them to school after muttering something at Rowan about an errand before he returned to work from home.

With a word she couldn’t hear from where she stood inside, in an instant they were gone. A dusting of snow from last night—the first she’d seen since arriving—swirled and flattened in the wake of the whirlwind caused by their departure.

Is that what I look like when I teleport? More than likely her own version came off much less graceful while in her head she was like, “Nailed it!”

Pushing aside the idle thought, Rowan grabbed a feather duster she’d found hanging in the laundry room. The obviously unused thing had, ironically, collected a coating of dust where it hung. So, as she strode with purpose towards Greyson’s office, she whispered an incantation that cleaned it off.

She needed a proper alibi if he discovered her in here.

She paused inside the doorway of his office, taking stock of the room. One of the smallest rooms in the house, she found it cozy with its rustic charm, stacks of books, and big pine desk. The desk had nicks, dings, and scratches all over it, as if it had been well loved through many generations of Masterses. Closing the door behind her, she moved farther inside and ran her hand over the surface of the desk, noting the rough texture of the time-worn wood. A crystal-clear image of Greyson working here came to her. An intimate image, like what a wife might walk in on, and strangely her heart stuttered.

Giving her head a shake, she pushed the seductive image away. “You’ve got a job to do, girl. Get to it,” she muttered.

A quick incantation had the duster going to work on the bookshelves without the aid of human hands. It left a faint trail of glittering sparks as it moved, but they dissipated quickly enough that she wasn’t concerned. Meanwhile, she moved around to sit behind Greyson’s desk.

Getting into his laptop took a little time, as he’d guarded it with magical wards, though not as many as she would’ve expected, given his job. Perhaps he assumed no one would contemplate getting this close to him? Still, the wards he had bothered with, in addition to regular technological security, took some unraveling.

As soon as she breached the computer’s defenses, rather than waste time searching manually, she channeled her energy, pulling from the electricity of the device itself.

“Amaru Kaios.”

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