Page 106 of Oh No! There's an Incubus in my Hot Spring
Leonard grabs the closing checklist from the reception stand and talks through it with Apollo as they wander down the hall.
Irene grins at me and I shake my head. “What?”
“Nothing,” she says, raising her hands.
“Seriously.”
She rolls her eyes. “You guys are just so fucking cute, that’s all. I’m obsessed with how obsessed he is with you.”
I can’t help the little smile that slips through. “In recent developments, I discovered I’m his mate.”
She raises a critical brow. “His what?”
I motion for her to lean in so we won’t be overheard. “He can only love one person—his mate—and everyone else is just kinda…entertainment. Anyway, I was completely emotionally prepared to be the latter,” I lie. “But it turns out I’m the former. What are the chances, right?”
She smiles kindly. “I don’t think it was chance at all.”
I blow a raspberry and lean back in my chair.
She looks at me like I’m crazy. “You’re kidding, right? Out of billions of people it’s you, and you don’t think it’s fate?”
When she says it like that…
“Listen to Irene. She’s smart,”Charlie adds.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I guess I could believe that the universe may have pulled some strings for him.”
Irene holds up her hand and starts counting on her fingers. “Let’s see, you sold your business for exactly the amount you wanted the same day that the spring property went up for sale, and the bidding closed twenty minutes after you placed the highest bid, and you were conveniently freed up the same night because of a shitty cheating ex, so yeah, I’d say that sounds pretty divined to me.”
“It’s totally possible it’s a string of convenient coincidences,” I say, though I feel less certain.
“Whatever. Deny fate all you want, just don’t cry to me if it comes biting you in the ass for dissing on it,” she says, then disappears into the hall to pull in the signs.
I finish the accounting, then check on the Boogle ads one more time and the social media accounts to see that Gabe’s special finally went up. I save the video to my phone so we can watch it at the distillery, and then shut down the laptop.
I flick off the lights and close the door to the office.
Week one down.
twenty-eight
Worst Song Ever
The Ghost Hunter Gabe special is just as cute, nerdy, and ridiculous as I thought it was going to be. I smirk at Apollo as Leonard goes on about the silly special effects used on the shadow in the corner.
At the end of the ten-minute video, he rated our location ten out of ten ‘ghosties’ for probability of hosting more wandering spirits. He said he could “feel the magic” in our place.
No doubt.
We get our free whisky tasting and my gag reflex triggers immediately as I remember the last night in my New York office. I sip like a lady and decline additional drinks but pay for everyone else to have one more. Apollo wraps his arm around my shoulders as we leave, and I place my hand over the crystal tucked under his shirt to check its power.
He grabs my hand and kisses my fingers. “I’ll be fine, lovely.”
My face heats and it’s not the whisky making me blush. His random endearments are so charming.
The last light of the sun behind the towering mountains winks out as we walk to the karaoke bar, sending the sky into twinkling deep navy. It’s chilly, but the whisky does its work in keeping us all warm—and Apollo’s arm around my shoulder helps.
It’s almost nine when we get to Tipsy Tunes, but I can see through the open door that there’s still a decent-sized crowd for a Sunday. Leonard holds open the already propped-open door with a flourish as if he were letting us into the most expensive restaurant in town, and we laugh.
