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I really didn’t want to like the kid, but she was starting to grow on me. Like fungus. She was like the mold that grew in the walls no amount of bleach could get rid of so it just never went away and you breathed it in and hoped like hell it didn’t kill you. Or something like that.
Maybe I was going crazy.
“What’s this?” one of the men asked. “A female witch? I always thought that the very few still alive were locked away for their own safety and obsessively protected by their covens.”
I closed my eyes and prayed for patience. I had been stupid in showing off. I’d known it was stupid, and I’d still done it anyway.
Quinton was going to be so mad at me when this nonsense got back to him. I could already hear the lecture and just knew it would give me a headache and a bad attitude. And I’d have no one to blame but myself, like usual.
Did everyone think female witches were locked up little princesses? How obnoxious. I mean, it might have been right for most of them, but not for this girl right here, and a lot of those women might not have been given a choice in the matter.
“Jesus Christ,” the purple-haired woman muttered irately under her breath. Then louder, she said, “Hi. I’m Clover. That’s my daughter, Rose, but we call her Rosie. These three idiots are my mates. They mean no disrespect, I swear. Sometimes men are just dumb. I think it’s a requirement for having a cock.”
She rolled her eyes skyward, and a bubble of laughter burst out of me. This chick was preaching to the choir.
I raised my eyebrow at her and shared, “I have seven boyfriends and two permanent bodyguards.” I tossed my hands out at my sides, indicating the two men standing beside me. “Meet the bodyguards, Trenton and Simon. The boyfriends aren’t here at the moment, but don’t be surprised if one or more of them show up. They like to be where the action is, and that’s usually wherever I’m at.”
I shrugged like this whole thing wasn’t weird and uncomfortable for whatever reason.
She whistled and looked impressed. Her mates were looking at me like maybe they thought I was a liar, but they’d learned their lesson and were keeping their mouths shut, and the kid’s eyes were huge. Maybe I shouldn’t have shared so openly about my relationship. Seven did sound like a rather large number. Nine if you included the bodyguards.
I’d long since gotten over people thinking it made me a whore. Fuck what other people thought, the only people whose opinions mattered to me anymore were my family’s.
“I was actually hoping to see two guys who worked here before. Maybe you know them. They are witches too. Heck, maybe they are even part of your harem.”
Now, see, this I didn’t much care for at all. We had plenty of repeat customers who came back just for the boys, and I swear I hated every single one of them. I had a wholegrin and bear itthing going on with it, but I wasn’t doing that with this chick. She clearly had enough dicks of her own, and she didn’t need to be here trying to moon over any of mine.
When I didn’t respond, Trenton did the adult thing for me. “Who are you looking for exactly? I’m sure we can help you out. We know everyone who works here, we’re all family.”
Simon glared at his brother as he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me into his side. I couldn’t be sure if he was trying to contain me or comfort me, but I appreciated the effort either way. I also appreciated him looking at his brother as if he thought he were the devil himself.
I pretended like I couldn’t feel the heat coming off of his body or the way it made my nipples harden.
God fucking dammit. What was the matter with me? There were lines I should never think about crossing that I thought about crossing almost every single day. I had a problem, and I needed to get over it and myself really quick before everything went sideways because I was too damn stupid.
“They are twins, but they are weird. Identical except for their hair and eye color.”
My eyelid twitched.
“The salt and pepper twins,” I said in an empty voice that reminded me too much of Rain sometimes. “Addison and Abel.”
“Yes!” Clover said as she smiled brightly at me. “The salt and pepper twins is a perfect description for them, really. I wanted to thank them. Are they around?”
They weren’t, but they could be here in ten minutes with a simple phone call.
Trenton pulled his cell out of the back pocket of his jeans and started hitting some buttons on the screen. “You got this?” he asked his brother without looking up from his phone.
Simon snorted in reply, and his brother wandered away while pressing his phone to his ear. Huh. I guessed he deemed the shifters nonthreatening, otherwise there was no way he’d ever walk away from me with them being so close.
I cleared my throat. “They aren’t here, but they will be in like ten minutes. Why don’t you look around, shop, and hit up the coffee cart while you wait? Make yourselves comfortable. There are some chairs toward the back with a table. If you get coffee, you’re welcome to go sit back there and chill while you wait. Just don’t touch any cards if they are on the table.”
I had a special deck of tarot cards that I never brought to work with me. I always kept them at home and used them on the guys to practice with. Not that I needed to practice anymore at this point, I had it down, but I still didn’t give out readings here at the shop. I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t comfortable with it. I did enjoy watching the guys do it though.
What I didn’t always enjoy were the reactions of the people getting their readings. People could be serious assholes when they paid for something and they weren’t given exactly what they wanted. The guys always handled it well, but it made me angry, and I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut when it happened. I wasn’t about to put myself in that situation.
So I didn’t do readings, and sometimes people got nasty with me when I said no. But that was what bodyguards were for, and once Trenton and Simon inserted themselves into the thick of things, people usually backed off and tried not to shit their pants.
I didn’t like the way two of these shifters were eyeing me up when I mentioned cards. I didn’t want them getting any sort of ideas, because I didn’t want to deal with them when I told them no.
