“Fine.” Junie hopped down from the wall, bare feet landing silently on the garden stones. “Saturday. But I’m warning you, I have opinions about restaurants.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
She walked past him toward the inn, close enough that he caught her scent—herbs and magic and something uniquely Junie that made the predator inside him press hard against his restraint.
“And Castellan?” She paused at the door, glancing back over her shoulder. “If this is some elaborate scheme to interrogate me about cipher patterns over overpriced appetizers, I will absolutely make a scene.”
“Noted.”
Her laugh followed her inside. Leo stood in the garden, watching the door she’d disappeared through, his lion purring with satisfaction while his human brain cataloged all the ways this could go catastrophically wrong.
Saturday. Three days away.
He could survive three days.
He could not,as it turned out, survive three days with his composure intact.
Every shared meal became charged. Every accidental hallway encounter left him vibrating with awareness. The coffee he left outside her door each morning—a habit he refused to examine too closely—now felt like a declaration. The pastries she left outside his felt like an answer.
Thursday night, he found her in the library again. She was surrounded by papers covered in reconstructed cipher symbols, frustration evident in the tight set of her shoulders. Glimmer was draped across the back of her chair, scales pulsing slowly purple.
Leo meant to pass through. Grab the historical records he needed. Leave.
Instead, he found himself stopping at her table. “The third symbol grouping. Try rotating it ninety degrees.”
Junie looked up, startled. Then annoyed. Then—when she actually tried his suggestion and watched the cipher pattern suddenly click into place—amazed.
“How did you know that?”
“Pattern recognition.” He pulled out the chair across from her. “May I?”
She gestured permission. He sat.
They worked in silence for an hour. Two. Shoulders gradually relaxing. The air between them shifting from charged to easier. More comfortable.
“You’re different when you’re working,” Junie said eventually.
The truth was that puzzles and patterns were the only place he let himself relax, because they had rules that made sense, unlike everything else.
That sitting across from her, working on a shared problem, felt safer than dinner at any restaurant.
“Saturday,” he said instead. “Seven-thirty. Dress for upscale.”
Junie’s smile shifted. Softened. “Way to dodge the question, Castellan.”
Saturday arrivedwith clear skies and a knot in Leo’s stomach that no amount of discipline could untangle.
He dressed carefully. Dark suit—not his most expensive, but well-fitted enough to convey intention. A shirt the color of deep burgundy that his pride’s PR consultant had once claimed “shows you’re capable of warmth.” He wasn’t sure he agreed, but he was willing to experiment.
Junie met him in the inn’s lobby.
She’d abandoned her usual witchy-apothecary aesthetic for a deep green dress that matched her eyes and draped in ways that made the lion inside him growl low. Her hair was swept up, exposing the curve of her neck. She’d even managed makeup without Glimmer’s interference—though the snake was notably absent.
“Glimmer’s sulking in my room.” Junie caught his look. “She doesn’t approve of formal dinners. Or being left behind. Or you, specifically, though I think she’s warming up.”
“Warming up?”
“She only hissed at your coffee cup twice this morning instead of the usual four times.” Junie smoothed her dress—a nervous gesture Leo had never seen from her before. “Is this okay? You said upscale, but I wasn’t sure how upscale. The options in Haven Shores are limited unless you want surf-themed cocktail wear.”
