Page 7 of My Blind Date is a Warlock

I’d tried not to be annoyed by the insult given that he appeared to be under a lot of pressure, so I reassured him that even men liked to use skincare products. And even if they didn’t want to use them, they could just pass them on to their wives or girlfriends. Men tend to like giving women gifts they don’t have to shop for themselves.

I’d never heard the poor man sound like he was at his wit’s end before. It made me wonder who these investors were. It wasn’t like Mystic Cove was hurting for money. The town boasted top-tier mountain and beach resorts and a booming tourism industry both in summer and winter.

After rushing through my shower and watering my plants in the greenhouse, I raced back into town. Even though Gran had asked me to dress up, I threw on a tie-dyed strapless mini dress, gladiator sandals, kept the make-up to a minimum, and called it a day.

The Eat was packed by the time I got there. There wasn’t a single empty stool at the bar, and Rachel, the owner, was whipping up drinks at remarkable speed while keeping up her banter with a group of frat boys. I wondered if one of them was the boy Lucy was partying with last night. Heading over to the bar to get my drink order in before I searched out Gran, I placed the bag with the cursed book in it on the bar with my purse and waited for Rachel to finish up with the frat boys or for her assistant bartender to stop flirting with the blonde jailbait giving him the heart eyes and do his job.

I struggled to pick my grandmother out from the crowd—a first, as she was always the one with the bright pastel-colored hair and tinkling laughter that cut above even the loudest of crowds. I was so focused on looking for her that my gaze skated right over Jacob’s clean-shaven face, but he spotted me. A mischievous smile curled across his stupidly handsome face, followed by a wink, and I knew I’d been played.

“Wow-wee! He’s a handsome fella. Friend of yours?” Rachel popped up from nowhere. Well, not exactly nowhere. I just hadn’t heard her sneak up on me. Last I saw her she was pouring vodka shots for the Ken look-alikes across the counter.

“Heck no. I was supposed to be meeting my grandmother,” I groaned, burying my face in my hands and debating whether I should just leave the journal with Rachel and ask her to take it to him.

“I see,” Rachel laughed. And so did I. No one knew how my grandmother’s matchmaking talent worked, but she was rarely wrong. I’d asked her once and she told me it was just a “knowing” within her that she got after meeting two people she sensed were made for each other. “I was wondering when you’d get caught in one of her traps. This should be interesting.”

“There is no ‘this.’ I just came to drop off his book. Do me a favor and take this to him. I’m gonna bounce.” I pushed the gift bag toward her.

“Too late. Tall, dark, and delicious is already making his way over here, and the man looks ready to devour you whole,” Rachel snickered.

“Well, well, well. I didn’t expect to see you again after you tried to glare me to death earlier today, Miss Sophia Barnes. Where’s your grandmother? We were supposed to have dinner.” He stood beside me, his gaze flickering to the paper bag and then back to me. This close, I got a better look at his extraordinary eyes—and the color was much too unique to be classified simply as blue-green. The swirl around the pupils was a bright sea-glass green that speared outward before morphing into a turquoise color with flecks of hazel, ending with an outer ring of deep blue. Ocean eyes. A rather apt comparison because as calm they appeared on the surface, there was a whole lot more going on beneath their depths. As intoxicating as his eyes were, it was the three beauty spots that I couldn’t look away from. They had a bewitching effect that reminded me of an old Irish folktale about Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, who’d been cursed with a love spot so that any woman who saw it instantly fell for him.

“That’s what I’d like to know. I was supposed to meet her for dinner tonight and give her this.” I picked up the Book of Shadows and handed it to Jacob, glad to be rid of it and the low hum of dark power it had been radiating.

Jacob flinched, the movement so quick and imperceptible that I would have missed it had I not been watching him closely. His olive skin went white, his eyebrows lowering in an intimidating scowl as he pushed the wads of tissue aside to get a peek at the journal. “Wow, it sure packs a punch. The spells written in here must be something else,” he murmured, taking the book out of the bag and turning it this way and that, inspecting the cover. Like me, he opted to keep the barrier of the decorative tissue paper between him and the sheepskin leather. It felt like if you touched it directly, you’d get infected by the hypnotic dark power—or in my case, get blasted halfway across the room. “So, I’m guessing Beverley won’t be showing up, then?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Is that it, then? Your great-great-grandfather's Book of Shadows? Aren’t you going to open it and check for…I don’t know, something?”

“It does say Tiberius Buchanan on the cover, and I trust that neither you nor your grandmother would try to swindle me. Besides, I don’t think I should open it in the middle of a crowded restaurant. I can smell the black magic oozing from between the pages.”

“In that case, my job here is done. Have a wonderful night, Mr. Buchanan.” I turned to grab my purse and say goodbye to Rachel, but I ran into a wall of muscle. Jacob’s hands reached out to grab me by the waist when I swayed from the impact. A small gasp escaped me at the feel of his warm hands, so large they spanned almost the entire length of my waist. The heat of his touch burned through the cotton material of my dress, each finger a brand on my skin that set my blood on fire. I stepped away from his hold before I did something stupid like throw my arms around his shoulders, get on my tiptoes, and kiss him on that lush, pink mouth of his.

“What’s the hurry, love? Since we’re both here, why don’t we go ahead and have that dinner? That’s what you came for, right? It’d be a waste for you to drive all the way here and leave with an empty stomach.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I’d rather not stay.” I tried to sidestep him, but Jacob moved in tandem with me. I moved to the left, he was there. I tried to pass him on the right, he was already there, and his childish behavior was garnering a lot of attention. It was only a matter of time before word got out that this was one of Gran’s infamous matchmaking blind dates. For someone who hated having their private life blasted across the town grapevine, Rachel could gossip with the best of them, and around here word spread faster than wildfire. The last thing I wanted was to have an audience watching my every move and placing their bets on whether this would be the one time when my grandmother was wrong. And they’d be right because I couldn’t see myself ever giving Jacob Buchanan a chance.

“Please, Sophia, you’re the only person I know around here—sort of. I’ve been on the road by myself for so long, searching for this blasted Book of Shadows. Don’t make me spend another night by myself ordering a meal from the hotel room service menu. I could really use the company. You don’t even have to pretend you like me, just…just keep me company for an hour or two and then I’ll be out of your hair. Please?”

CHAPTER 7

The heartfelt emotion in his voice caught me off-guard, as did the hint of vulnerability in his eyes, and I must admit that I found myself getting curious about his great-great-grandfather’s Book of Shadows. It sounded like there was quite a story behind it if he’d gone to such great lengths to find it. And if I was being honest with myself—and mind you, I wasn’t all that ready to admit to myself wholeheartedly either—but more than the journal, it was the man himself who intrigued me more. I was not yet ready to part ways with that something inside me that had woken from its long slumber when he walked into The Book Coven.

A velvety smooth voice crooned in my ear to stay, to find out what it was about this man that aroused feelings of such disquiet and intrigue within me. The more rational part of my brain urged me to run and never look back.

Reluctantly, I gestured for Jacob to lead the way back to his table before it got snatched up and was rewarded with a genuine smile, not the flirty smirks he’d been dishing out ever since we met. Like a gentleman, he helped me into my seat. I was thankful that our table was in the far back, and that I had my back turned toward all the prying eyes. It made me feel less self-conscious.

“I feel like I should point out that even if I had said no, you would not have been hurting for company if you really wanted it. I’ve spotted no less than five women eyeing you since I came in here,” I told him, tucking my seat under the table and helping myself to one of the menu cards placed in the cute little holder at the center of the table. Jacob chuckled, the sound intimate, low and smoky and hitting all the right buttons as my skin pebbled in goosebumps, imagining what that laugh would sound like under the cover of darkness as we engaged in more pleasurable activities.

Unbidden, images cascaded through my head of a shirtless Jacob pinning me to my mattress, a wicked gleam in his eyes as he did things to me that I’d only ever read about in steamy romance novels. I was no innocent, having slept with my fair share of men since I was eighteen—humans, shifters (wolf and bear), and even an old-as-dirt vampire. I’d walked away from each of those encounters satisfied and satiated, but never had the overwhelming urge to repeat them since I’d never experienced those earth-shattering quakes and cataclysmic eruptions the romance novels are always talking about. As to why I thought that Jacob could make me feel any of those things that were just flowery words used to describe really intense pleasure… Well, let’s just forget I ever had that thought, shall we?

“If I were looking to hook up, maybe I would have entertained the offers I see in their eyes, but I’m not looking for that kind of companionship tonight. Not to mention…” He cut himself off abruptly, his eyes flickering down to his lap before looking back up at me again, a sheepish expression on his face and cleared his throat. “Anyway, what do you feel like having tonight?” he asked just as Rachel herself came up to take our orders.

“Since when do you step out from behind the bar?” I asked her, not even trying to disguise the suspicion in my voice. I was onto her. Not even that feigned guileless look on her face could disguise her motives.

“It’s a busy night and one of my waitresses came down with food poisoning. Gotta cover her section,” she chirped. I swiveled, turning the upper half of my body to get a look at the bar, and wouldn’t you know it? Lauren, the waitress I knew was supposed to be catering to our table, was busy mixing up cocktails at the bar. Rachel followed my line of sight and arched her brows in a challenge, daring me to call her out on her obvious fib. She was spying on my non-date and gathering intel to slip to the busybodies of Mystic Cove. She knew that would draw Jacob’s curiosity, and I did not want anyone telling him about my grandmother’s matchmaking tendencies. Rachel, myself, and our tiny circle of friends had been talking about having a girl’s night out soon, and I knew that the warlock seated across from me would be a hot topic.

“So, what’ll you lovely people be having? If you have trouble deciding, I recommend the chef’s special. Greek-style pork spareribs.” She then rattled off a list of side dishes to pair up with the ribs, each more appetizing than the last. Jacob and I both decided to go with her recommendation and he chose a side of baked sweet potato fries and I went with a BLT pasta salad. We also put in our drink orders, and with Rachel gone to get them, our buffer was gone.

“Do I make you nervous, Sophia?” he asked, after silently observing me and making squirm in my seat. My back was starting to hurt from how rigidly I held myself.

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