Page 12 of Bait N' Witch

He left the girls clearing up and made his way to the basement. He fully expected to find Rowan packing her things. Instead, he discovered her on the couch, feet propped on the coffee table, watching a rerun of an old sitcom.

He paused at the sight of cute, bare toes, tension crawling across his shoulders and up his neck. He rolled his head, trying to ease the muscles. It didn’t help. Because of toes.

Freckles and now toes.

“I don’t appreciate you threatening my children.” Not what he’d planned to say, but he didn’t take it back.

She jerked a little at the sound of his voice only to ease back against the couch, a small smile tipping her lips up on one side. “That wasn’t a threat,” she said. “Did I pass your little test?”

She’d definitely figured it out. “Yes.”

“I don’t appreciate being tested that way.”

He wouldn’t, either, but his children and their needs meant he’d do what he had to. “When did you know?”

“When you didn’t comment on the burned smell or the fact that I’d left the girls in the attic. Do you do this to all your nannies?”

He sat on the coffee table in front of her, mostly to get her to put those toes away. On the floor where they belonged. Only, instead, she shifted on the couch to bend her knees to the side, tucked up like a fastidious kitten, toes still perfectly visible. What would she do if he flipped a pillow over them? Probably question his sanity and quit.

What was her question again? Right, the girls and nannies. “Testing nannies is important. Atleigh, Lachlyn, and Chloe are quite…unusual.”

He caught the way her eyes lit with curiosity. “I’m not permitted to share more than that. But even if they weren’t special, they’re still three girls on the cusp of teenage-hood and coming into their magic, and they need the right person minding them.”

“Delilah sent you duds before?” Her doubt about that came through loud and clear.

“No. I didn’t use Brimstone until now. I thought we could handle this through the witching community. I was wrong.”

Surprise-widened eyes told him he’d caught her off guard with the admission.

Greyson grinned. “Yes, I can be wrong.”

Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and tension filled the spaces inside him like a curtain of electricity. Awareness, impossible to not call it what it was. Rowan snatched her gaze away, and his head cleared enough for the realization to seep in that he hadn’t smiled, truly smiled, since his wife’s death. The thought struck hard, and he rubbed at a spot on his chest as his mind transitioned from turned on, to shock, to aggravated at himself in the space of seconds, left buzzing with emotion either way.

Pulling his own gaze away, he cleared his throat. He shouldn’t be letting his nanny affect him this way. “I should’ve guessed Delilah would send me someone more than capable.”

“I don’t know about that,” she muttered under her breath. “So all of it was a test. The burned dinner?”

Greyson grimaced. “Yes.”

“The girls running away?”

He nodded.

“What about their fight this morning?”

Another grimace. “That was real.”

“And your attitude?”

He frowned. “What attitude?”

She peered at him for a long moment, and Greyson got the uneasy impression she found him wanting somehow.

“Never mind,” she murmured. Was she placating him?

“Are the schedule and the expectations for me the same?” she asked.

“Yes.” What was wrong with his schedule?

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