Page 24 of Mochas and Minotaurs

Nick furrowed his brows, confused.

“That’s okay, I was expecting him.”

“Ooooh.” Nick waggled his brows at me. I knew he was joking, but he had no idea how close his joke was hitting.

“I might need you to hold down the fort in the morning,” I said, deciding to just rip off the Band-Aid.

Nick took his index fingers and rubbed them together like he thought we were going to do something naughty.

“Nothing like that, unfortunately.” Marcus leaned on the counter. “Gigi has a meeting with some friends to see what we can do about Arcane Development. I’m here just to meet them since we’d be working together.”

It wasn’t the full truth, but it technically wasn’t a lie, either. Marcus knew what information to keep between us and what to share. He must have picked up the fact that I didn’t tell Jules or Alyssa about the wards when they called yesterday.

I appreciated a guy who was perceptive, took notice of the little things, and acted accordingly. Not only did it mean he cared enough to pay attention, but he had a solid brain behind that pretty face.

Marcus settled himself down in one of the chairs, facing away from the doors and the windows, and started doing some work on his phone as Nick and I got ready to open up. Nina arrived a few minutes later with the cookies and pastries, and Marcus helped bring them in, his hood pulled down over his face.

Five minutes from opening, there was another knock again at the door. It was Lily. Right behind her, Penny and her incubus were climbing out of her BMW.

My bitches were here!

Chapter 12

Marcus

The incubus stared medown like he was trying to intimidate his younger sister’s boyfriend. “You look familiar.”

That was because he’d been there at Delirium the night I met Gigi. But I decided to play dumb. “Most minotaurs look similar,” I said. “It’s the horns.”

Gigi introduced me to Prax, the incubus in question. He was Penny’s mate, and Penny was Gigi’s friend from college. So wasLily. The three witches had been housemates, and had formed their tiny little coven way back when, almost as a joke. They’d ended up as lifelong friends.

Penny had dark eyes and dark hair, with two blue streaks that framed her face. And while that particular detail wasn’t familiar, her face was.

Now it was my turn to say, “You look familiar. And I don’t mean because we met at Delirium.”

Penny sighed. “It’s because I’m Senator Davis’s daughter.”

Oh! Now I remembered! There was this fiasco a while ago about some senator’s daughter being left at the altar. Shortly after images of the groom partying in Vegas with several women in his arms turned up, the jilted bride was seen at The Curio Collectors’ Dinner & Auction, a prestigious auction held at the Darlington Museum, with an unknown collector of rare artifacts.

Was that Prax? The timeline seemed to fit. An incubus who was into history? Well, I’d seen weirder.

Lily wore thick plastic cat-eye glasses, and her highlighted hair was pulled back in a messy bun. She gave off a slightly nerdy vibe, but also the kind you didn’t want to fuck with.

With my little witch safe with her tiny coven, I wrapped the scarf back around my face and pulled the hood close before starting back out the door. After yesterday, I was even more behind with setting up my gym. At this rate we’d have to push the grand opening back.

Once inside, I locked up and got to work. Declan wouldn't be here until after lunch today, which meant the mirrors had to wait again. Trying to put up mirrors alone was a recipe for disaster; ask me how I knew. Mirrors weren’t cheap, either. These had already taken longer than expected to get here.

I decided to paint the office instead. I’d had the contractor install a sizeable one-way mirror so Declan and I could have some privacy and still see what was going on in the gym. The rest of the gym would need to wait until the mirrors were in for the first coat of paint and the bullseye mural I planned on painting on it.

I’d just finished the second coat when I decided to check my email. I found about a dozen images, the top picks from yesterday’s impromptu photo shoot, waiting for me in my inbox. They looked good and would all work to advertise the business. The next step was to choose one lucky winner for the prize.

There was also a message from the photographer, who was an existing member of our gym, thanking me for offering him a year’s basic membership for lugging his equipment over at a moment's notice. Ah, so that was how Declan had convinced him to do it. We’d been lucky it was a weekday and there were no events or weddings to shoot.

I quickly drafted a social media post, putting all the top picks up so our followers could vote on the winner. Then I wrote an email thanking everyone who showed up, telling them to check our latest post and remember to send the link out to friends and family so they could vote. Like most things in life, the winner wouldn’t be the one with the best photos, but the one with the most friends.

On a whim, I decided to flip through some of the pictures the gym had been tagged in. We’d had a big bash before leaving the old location. Seeing the connections and friendships people made at the gym was the best part of owning the business. They weren’t kidding when they said that men tended to be much lonelier than women.

Many of our members have told me that before they found my gym, they didn’t have any friends, only coworkers who they couldn’t really speak to. I was glad to be able to give them a second home, a place where they knew they could come by if they needed to complain about their asshole bosses. The relief was in having someone to talk to, disguised as the serotonin of a cathartic workout.

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