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Tears threatened to come once more, but I fought them back. Instead, I forced a laugh. “Are you for real? Seriously? You may not be ready to give your foster parents the Parent of the Year award, but they seem to have done a pretty good job with you. Please tell me you have some flaws, or are you not really human?”
He kept his attention on the cat as his face turned redder than I’d ever seen it. With him, the man who had an entire repertoire of blushes, that was saying something. “I’m human, with maybe a slight genetic variance. And I have plenty of flaws. For one thing, I’m lousy at talking to people. My house is a mess, too.”
“I like it. It’s cozy.”
He didn’t say anything for a while, and I joined him in petting Loony, who reveled in the attention. She might have adored her owner, but she didn’t seem to see me as the other woman or a threat to her position in the household. I was simply someone else to fuss over her.
Then, just as I was getting comfortable with the silence, he asked again, “What happened tonight? It had to have been pretty bad to have you running out in this weather without a coat.”
I scratched a purring Loony under her chin as I thought about how to respond. There wasn’t an easy way to tell a guy you were in serious danger of falling in love with that you’d just run screaming away from his best friend. I finally said, “Can we table that discussion for later? I’m not ready to talk about it, and I think I need to process it a little more before I’d even know what to say.”
He nodded. “Okay. Take all the time you need. Just know that you’re safe here. You can relax.”
“Thank you. And thank you for coming to my rescue. What were you doing there, anyway? Did you know something was wrong, or did you just happen to be in the neighborhood at the right time?”
“I had a feeling.”
“Your ESP must have a twenty-four-hour Katie channel.”
“Something like that. Maybe I’m attuned to you because we spend so much time together. I’ve never done much study on it. My precognition always seemed too erratic to analyze before.” He looked up at me then, and his eyes softened. “Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that you’re so utterly irresistible,” he added, his voice not much more than a whisper.
My heart skipped a beat as he leaned forward and touched his lips to mine. This wasn’t the hungry, possessive, all-out kiss that had happened between Rod and me, and I didn’t sense any of the tension that had built up between us before that happened. This just felt right, like it was meant to happen.
It was the perfect first kiss, firm enough to be real, but still gentle and sweet. I felt surrounded by a warm, safe glow. At the same time, I wanted to shout for joy. All that time I’d had a crush on him, and it turned out that he’d felt the same way about me. This amazing, wonderful man—who also turned out to be a fantastically talented kisser—liked me in return. It was almost too good to be true.
Then, just as I was really getting into it, he pulled away from me with a gasp, and an expression of utter horror came across his face. “Oh, God,” he breathed. I wanted to grab him and pull him back to me, but he was shaking his head, like he was trying to snap out of something.
“What is it?” I managed to choke.
He frowned as if in deep concentration, then looked down at my feet. Leaning over, he waved a hand over my feet, then turned back to me and said, “It’s your shoes.”
“My-my shoes?” I stammered, my brain still fuzzy from the kiss.
He moved off the sofa to kneel at my feet. “May I?” he asked.
I knew he wasn’t entirely normal, but I’d never figured Owen for a shoe fetishist. Then again, he seemed a lot more worried than turned on, which didn’t say much for my kissing ability. “Sure,” I said, even though I had no idea what he was talking about.
He slid my shoes off my feet, then held one and frowned some more. He looked up at me and said, “Hmm, it seems to be a Cinderella spell.”
“A what?”
He went into business mode, all calm and articulate and like he hadn’t just been kissing me. “You don’t see it often, but it’s a classic. It’s a spell cast on footwear that renders the wearer irresistible and utterly attractive to others. It may also have an effect on the wearer—the spell can be what compels the wearer to purchase the shoes in the first place and can give the wearer a sense of artificial confidence. Of course, that wouldn’t work on you, but it would definitely have an impact on those around you.”
“That explains a lot,” I said with a nod. In fact, it explained more than he realized. No wonder I’d been so quick to whip out my credit card and buy them. My immunity must have already been fading by then.
“Explains what?” he asked. The question seemed innocent enough, and obvious, if he was trying to get to the root of the situation, but a crease had formed between his eyes. Was he jealous? But no, he’d only been kissing me because he was affected by the shoes. Just my luck—the best kiss I’d ever had in my entire life, and it was meaningless.
“Some stupid stuff that’s been happening to me lately. Like last weekend when we went out, I was a lot more popular than I’ve ever been. I had men buying me drinks and asking me to dance all night.” I gave a bitter laugh. “I should have known it couldn’t possibly have been real.”
That should have been his cue to correct me and tell me I didn’t need magical shoes to be irresistible. I wasn’t fishing for compliments, but I would have welcomed one. He was apparently telling the truth about not being good at talking to people, though, for he didn’t even try to say anything to make me feel better. I could feel my hopes deflating. The kiss hadn’t meant anything to him, then.
“I think I can break this spell, but not tonight. I’m still too drained from the teleportation. In the meantime, I’d better put these in a safe place. I mean, a place where we’ll both be safe. Well, they won’t affect you, but, yeah, a place where we’ll both be safe.” Apparently, he’d fallen out of business mode and was back to his usual bashful self. He stood up, holding the shoes out at arm’s length, like he was afraid they’d bite. “And we need to get you out of those wet clothes.” He turned crimson as he realized what he’d said, then hurried to correct himself. “I mean, you need something warmer and drier to wear. Stay there. I’ll be back.”
As rattled as I was, I couldn’t help but smile as he all but ran from the room. He was so adorable when he was flustered. So adorable, and he didn’t like me as anything more than a friend, after all. I wished he’d never kissed me, for now I knew what I was missing. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the touch of his lips on mine, still taste him. I doubted I’d forget it anytime soon.
I heard footsteps on stairs and soon he returned, holding a bundle of clothing. “These are probably too big for you, but they should work,” he said, handing the clothes to me. “The sweatpants have a drawstring waist, and there’s elastic at the ankles, so they may be baggy, but you won’t trip over the hem. There’s a bathroom under the stairs if you want to change and, um, freshen up. While you do that, I’ll make some cocoa.”
I got up from the sofa and followed him into the hallway, where he pointed out the bathroom before heading to the end of the hall, Loony following faithfully at his heels.
