Page 4 of Charmed

Hand on the counter, she watched the guy walk out, then leveled her big blue headlights on Riley. Seriously, it was a day's labor to look in her eyes. Crystalline irises that darkened to turquoise around the edges. Poseidon couldn't have scoured the sea and come up with a more potent color.

Her brows arched. "Rude, much?"

"Personal trainer?"

She shrugged. "Close enough. Would you prefer I say you're one of six people chosen to complete fated tasks handed down by a centuries-old witch in order to break a curse or doom two bloodlines to never find true love? Doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily."

Touché. "How about friend? Neighbor? Either would've sufficed. And does that poor kid know you can unhinge your jaw and swallow men whole?"

"Why don't we discuss the real issue? Bend over and I'll remove whatever it is shoved so far up your butt it's making you cranky."

He gnashed his molars. "My mood can be laid at your feet. You lied to me."

"I don't lie." Heat snapped in her eyes as she passed him to weave around the counter. "Ever."

Okay, that was true. She often skirted topics she didn't want to discuss and had distraction down to a specific science, but she never outright lied.

"Eight a.m.," he said, pulling his cell from his pocket and swiping the screen. "Your text reads, and I quote, Don't need you to pick me up. Catching a ride with Brady and Kaida."

"Which I did." She flipped the sign on the door to Closed and clicked the deadbolt into place. "They dropped me off before we opened at nine."

"And I responded, You won't be alone at the shop, will you? To which you said, No. I'll have Violet with me." He waved his arm in a drastic where-is-she move. There was no sign of the crotchety old woman who managed the sisters' store. "I don't see her, Fi."

"She wasn't feeling well." She moved to the large display window facing Puritan Street and switched on a crystal ball positioned on a shallow table, then turned on a mechanism next to it that made it look like a spell book was opening and closing itself. "I sent her home before lunch to rest. She's in her seventies, Riley."

"Fine, she went home. I'm sorry to hear she's sick. But when I texted you later in the day to ask if you were okay, you answered with..." He checked his screen. "No need for insults by putting me and okay in the same sentence. I'm wearing a kickass new dress I look fabulous in. We must work on your adjectives."

"Still not seeing where I lied." She plugged in a strand of lights lining the top of the window that looked like raining stars and pulled down the security gate. Facing him, she waved her hand at herself. "Hello? Am I not fabulous?"

"You're the most stunning creature in all the land." Understatement of the millennium. One glance, and she rendered every Y chromosome-carrying human stupid, him included. Her curves had curves and there wasn't a map invented that could accurately illustrate that kind of detail. Her legs went on for miles and her silky cocoa strands invoked so many fantasies, he couldn't capture them all if he had the rest of his life to jot them down.

And damn it. She was doing it again. He pinched the bridge of his nose and reminded himself throttling her would solve zilch. "My point is, you should've told me you were alone. We all agreed not leave ourselves vulnerable to attack again."

"I'm not helpless." To prove it, she twirled her hand and conjured a cyclone of wind around his body that thrust him onto the settee with an oomph.

Laying his head back, he growled at the ceiling. He was almost to the point where he was used to her wielding her powers in his presence. Almost, being the operative word. Every witch had an element they were tied to, and Fiona's was air. She certainly blew enough of it hot.

"I never implied you were helpless." He lifted his head, tracking her movements as she shut off the wall shelves' under-lighting. "Precautions are necessary. We have no clue where Uncle Greg is or what he's planning." Minister Meath, Uncle Greg. Riley still wasn't sure what the hell they were supposed to call the asshole.

After he'd hurt Kaida months ago, their other sister Ceara had hit the guy with a ball of fire, scorching him to a crisp. He'd bounced right up and run off like he hadn't resembled a B horror flick. Because of the immortality spell cast on him and Mara, he couldn't die until the circle came to pass. He'd heal, or already had, and would come at them again.

Fiona sauntered over to Riley on black heels longer than his arm and that did ungodly things to her toned legs. Pausing, she stared at him, then bent at the waist, giving him a clear shot down the neckline of the torture device she called a dress. Heat furled in his gut and his pulse jacked against his carotid.

She took his hand and dropped something into it.

He stared at the grayish blue stone on his palm, no larger than a nickel. It had navy woven through it, making it resemble a flat marble. "What's this?"

"A blue lace agate crystal. They're good for anxiety. Better than a chill pill, but I'd suggest one of those, too."

He fisted the stone while she, calm-as-you-please, walked to the register. "I wouldn't be so tense if you weren't such a pain in the ass."

"You need to get laid." She set bills from the drawer into a bank bag. "Soon."

"For your information, and not that it's any of your business, I had a date this past weekend." He'd chosen the adorably chubby, brown-eyed blonde because she was the complete opposite of Fiona, who'd been on his mind entirely too often. It had backfired. He hadn't been able to seal the deal with the recent island transplant, the fault entirely on him. She'd offered. He'd walked, just not feeling it. He was going on a three-month dry spell that had Fiona's name all over it. "Time of my life."

One of her eyebrows quirked. "I meant with someone other than your hand."

He almost laughed at the irony. If only the little vixen knew she and she alone had been the particular fantasy wreaking havoc on his libido, the one whose image tripped behind his lids when he was "in hand." He wondered if telling her would wipe that smug expression off her face or if she'd merely eat him alive for being honest. Hard to tell with her.

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