Page 12 of Charmed and Alarmed

How do I make her smile?

Without warning, she looks around, and—fuck me—my heart stalls. Almost instantly, my emotionally stunted mind goes into denial, looking for other explanations for the questionable cardiovascular activity, but the damned organ knows the truth. It’s her.

We’re closer than we’ve been since she came to work at E&V, close enough to see a tiny smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose and tiny flecks of green in her eyes. Things I didn’t notice on New Year’s—or couldn’t in the dark—somehow manage to add new layers of beauty to this woman who I shouldn’t think of in that context at all.

Beautiful doesn’t seem like a good enough word to describe how this woman looks right now. I’ve seen beautiful and there’s no damn comparison to be made. Lenora Vogel is more. At this moment, sitting beside me in my old truck, with the sun shining down on both of us and nowhere we have to be, I know I’m in this so much deeper than I thought.

I never want to stop looking at her.

At my side, my hand balls into a fist, a necessity to stop myself from reaching out and tracing the plump curve of her lips.

“Holden?”

I swallow, knowing I need to look away, yet as a wide, effortless smile blooms on Leni’s face, I can’t muster up the will to manage it. “Yes?”

“The light is green.”

Sure enough, no sooner has she spoken than a car behind us honks and I whip back around, heart thundering as we turn onto the interstate. I still have no idea where we’re going, but I can drive north for a while, pull off somewhere to get gas, and“see an email”saying the entire thing was canceled, can’t I?

“Where is this groundbreaking, exactly?” Leni asks, her voice rising above the rumble of the old engine. “Do you need me to put it in the GPS?”

I clear my throat, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. “I know where it is.”

Seconds later, I feel my pulse quickening yet again as she crosses her legs, that deadly weapon of a skirt riding a few more inches up her thighs. By now, I’ve watched every video I can find online of her dancing. Even in a line of other dancers, all perfect and beautiful in their own right, my eyes went right to the dark-haired woman with the bright eyes. It’s been on my mind a lot lately, the question of whether it’s just me, or did she have that magnetic effect on everyone who watched her perform?

“Can I ask you something?”

As if in answer to my own mentally posed question, it takes an inordinate amount of effort not to look at her. “You just did.”

“Ha.” Leni scoffs. “I was just curious why you wanted me to keep working at E&V. That first day, I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the whole thing, and you didn’t seem super into it when Dad brought me up. I kind of thought you’d be pleased when I fucked off.”

She doesn’t miss a damn thing.

I swallow, keeping my eyes on the road. “It means a lot to Bram. That you’re there,” I respond at last, settling for a partial truth.

This was a mistake.

I need to find a reason to turn around and get both of us back to work. Nowhere in my impulsive chain of decision-making did I consider the dangers of being alone in a confined space with a highly observant, intelligent woman who I shouldn’t want to fuck but do. Desperately. This whole day has been a confusing, illogical mess, and it isn’t difficult to find the cause.

For months, I’ve been thinking about her, obsessing about her to the point of jerking off to videos of her in a fucking tutu. Now, she’s under my nose eight hours a day, five days a week, and I can no longer pretend my attraction to her is the only cause of this raging obsession.

“I need to make a call,” I tell her, careful to keep my expression impassive. Up ahead, there is a snack shack, already busy with the early lunch crowd, and I pull in, not meeting Leni’s eye as I shove my keys and phone in my pockets before stepping out onto the asphalt.

Her gaze feels heavy on the back of my neck as I push the door closed and round the hood, striding around the side of the building toward the sign markedRestrooms. Nearly the moment I’ve turned the corner and disappeared from Leni’s field of vision, I collapse back against the aging brick, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes, hard enough for white spots to appear in the center of my vision.

This is fucking ridiculous. I’m a grown man, being brought to my knees by my business partner’s twenty-two-year-old daughter. The way I feel about her, the things she’s making me want… It’s all brand-new. All of it. And I have no goddamn idea what to do with that other than fuck her.

I could love her.

The thought comes out of nowhere, temporarily halting my panicked spiral. Love her? No. I certainly couldn’t love her. I don’t want to. Falling in love isn’t an involuntary reaction. If it were, surely my depraved ass would have ended up endlessly devoted to someone other than Lenora Vogel long ago. As I haven’t yet been struck by that particular affliction, it seems to confirm that I have some control over the matter.

I never wanted love, and I haven’t gotten it. At this point, the odds seem stacked against me being capable of that shit at all. Ergo, loving Leni is not possible. This is just… I don’t know what this is, but it isn’tthat.

Rattled, I allow my hands to drop back to my sides as I stare unseeingly at the cars flashing by. Enough of this. Making this woman happy isn’t my problem. She made it clear she doesn’t want to fuck me on New Year’s, and despite numerous other faults, I do know how to take no for an answer. I need to get a grip, walk back out there to tell her the nonexistent reason for our field trip was canceled, and head back to work.

When I finally will myself to move, rounding the other side of the brick building, my steps falter at the sight of the passenger seat of my truck. Leni isn’t where I left her, but I don’t have to look far to find where she’s gone. My heart is lodged in my throat as I move through the parking lot, rounding the back of the vehicle to see her clearly.

Leni is perched on the tailgate, knees dangling over the edge, and that fucking skirt bunched indecently high on her thighs. In one hand is a small dish of soft ice cream, and as her eyes meet mine, she brings the spoon to her plump lips, wrapping them around the white plastic.

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