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At her words, his expression grew stormier. He took a step closer, eyes blazing. They stood mere inches apart as she glared up at him, the space between them charged with tension.

Red splotches appeared on his neck. She could see his pulse racing in his throat.

The clock chimed eleven, and Lucy pushed past him.

“I have work to do,” she snapped. “The door’s that way.”

CHAPTER TWO

Grayson

Grayson Crawley had never in his life met such a madwoman.

And while he realized it might be offensive to think of her as such, she had all but kicked him out of his own grandfather’s shop! Lucy went to prop open the front door, and he watched her with a frown as a chill breezed in, though it wasn’t nearly as cold as her tone had been when she had spoken to him.

Though she was hardly a few inches above five feet (and was wearing slippers, for Christ’s sake), her nose was high in the air as she walked back to the counter. Her hips swayed with each step, and when she walked past him, he caught a whiff of vanilla, the scent strong and warm. He wondered if it was her perfume, or perhaps her shampoo.

Cutting off that train of thought swiftly, Grayson walked over to one of the leather recliners at the side of the store, setting his tweed blazer down. He felt her watching him as he did so, and when he glanced over, she blew a stray strand of hair out of her face. She had wavy black hair, a section of which was held together in a tangle at the top of her head with lord knew what—a rubber band, sheer will, or magic—and tendrils fell haphazardly around her face as she turned on the machine at the front desk.

One lock of hair curled perfectly above her brow, and Grayson was met with the startling urge to pull at the curl and see it bounce back into place. When Lucy caught Grayson looking, she glared, and he was entranced by her massive eyes, which were a shade of brown so dark he suspected they were black (like her soul). She had full cheeks, with even fuller lips (which really were magnificent, when she wasn’t ruining them by talking).

Not that he noticed. Well, he had, but it was purely academic; he was a professor, after all. A professor of English literature, sure, but a professor nonetheless. That meant it was his habit to catalog details and arrive at conclusions.

He had concluded that she was a beautiful woman indeed, which he was professional enough to admit, though her attractiveness was less-ened considerably by how infuriating she was.

So why exactly was he still staring at her, relishing the scent of vanilla she left behind?

Must be the jet lag.

He had flown in at some ungodly hour last night. Time for visitation at the hospital had been over, so he’d gone straight to Charles’s place, using the spare key from under the pot like Charles had instructed him to and going straight to his old bedroom.

His entire body had ached from the travel. Though the flight from Dublin hadn’t been horrendous, the aftermath of getting through the airport, retrieving his baggage, taking the AirTrain, then the railroad, and then a cab, had been bloody awful.

Even so, seeing his old room was worse. Of course the room wasn’t the same at all; the only relic that remained from the one year he had stayed there was the color of the walls, a striking blue the shade of his father’s—and his own—eyes. His mother Claire’s favorite color.

“My beautiful, blue-eyed boys,” she would say, kissing their cheeks at the breakfast table, humming to herself.

Grayson set his jaw, pushing the memory away. There was no use in all that now.

He’d come to the bookstore this morning to make sure its affairs were in order before going off to visit Charles, and that was when he’d seen her.

Glancing down at the little coffee stains on his leather shoes, Grayson scowled. She’d ruined his favorite loafers. He had watched as she’d used her magic to get the stains out of everything else, which she did with ease, yet she hadn’t even offered to clean his shoes. How rude.

He’d never cared much for witches, aside from his mother. He had loved the little magic tricks she’d done in the comfort of their home, and even at a young age, he knew such a thing was their family’s secret.

While Charles and Claire were witches, Grayson’s father’s line didn’t have a witch in sight, so there was always a possibility Grayson wouldn’t inherit powers, and he was far too practical to be bothered when it ended up being true.

“You’re still here?” Lucy asked, passing him on her way to throw wood into the fireplace.

He was still standing stupidly at the side of the store, unsure of where to go or what to do. Things were not going as he had expected. This was not at all as he had planned.

He didn’t know why she bothered him so much; she was only an employee, a worker. She wasn’t important.

“Yes, I’m still here,” he said through gritted teeth. She should come with a warning label attached to her ridiculously oversized sweater: TWICE AS IRRITATING AS SHE IS BEAUTIFUL; PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

Lucy snapped her fingers, and the wood in the fireplace caught aflame. Magic was something he’d thought of fondly before his mother’s death; now, it only bothered him. What a show-off. She turned back, and he strode toward her.

“Have I not made it abundantly clear that I am serious?” he said. “Or are you being willfully obtuse?”