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PENTHOUSE ONE
For the next few days, Bethany followed Math around the casino, working her magic, cleaning up parts of the main rooms, and preparing the property for the big meeting with the angel investors, one month hence.
She flitted around behind him, keeping up as he strode through the main floor and the upper high-rollers’ area, covering ridiculous amounts of ground with each step of his long legs. She tried not to watch him move as he walked, but he tended to remove his suit jacket and drape it across the back of a chair and then forget it. When he rolled up his shirt sleeves to his elbows, she couldn’t help but notice the strong sinews that wrapped his forearms. She suspected that the way his arms and chest strained the white cotton of his shirt meant that the rest of him was heavily muscled, too. Even his neck was strong and thick above his clean collar. The outline of his broad shoulders was more than apparent under his clothes.
The one time that he yanked off his tie and unbuttoned his collar, the heavy, smooth rounds of his pectoral muscles swelled near his throat. His skin was golden bronze, as if he’d had pale skin but was thoroughly suntanned.
One afternoon about a week later, Bethany had conjured an army of leaping ferrets that scurried around one of the penthouse suites, gathering up all the litter and belly-sliding across the furniture to polish it. Barn swallows held the corners of bedsheets with their beaks, draping the wide fabric over the king-size bed, while other ferrets busily tucked the sheets in at the corners. They tugged the pillows into pillowcases and wrestled them into place.
Math leaned against the wall, his arms crossed across his wide chest and his legs crossed at the ankle, as he watched Bethany’s sparkling apparitions perform perfectly.
As a matter of fact, all of Bethany’s spells had performed perfectly for days. Every swish of her brushes and inks across her incantation paper had been sure and confident, and her magical helpers bustled about efficiently and finished each job ahead of schedule.
This was her best streak of spellcasting since she was eight, and if just three more spells didn’t backfire, she would break her all-time record of nineteen spells in a row that did not turn into disasters.
Something horrible was going to happen any second now.
And Math was standing right back there, watching. When the disaster happened, he would have a front-row seat to the chaos.
Oh, how she hated chaos.
A green, glittery ferret careened across the top of the dresser on its tummy, its little paws spread and a gleeful grin on its pointy face. Bethany flicked her fingers, and the ferret somersaulted to the next part of the wood, wiggled its little butt in the air, and dusted the next row of the furniture. She turned her attention to the bed, where two large sidewinders rolled from the middle toward the edges, perfectly smoothing the duvet.
With another flick of her fingers, two Peregrine Falcons swooped and snagged two hamsters in their claws, a fuchsia one and a chartreuse one. They carried the fluffballs up to the ornate crown molding where the rodents scurried, clinging to the wood with their tiny claws, leaving perfectly clean, dust-free trim in their wakes.
Wow, Bethany’s magic was performing perfectly.
The magnitude of what was going to go wrong when this streak broke terrified her.
A few minutes later, the bedroom was perfectly clean and ready for occupancy. The ferret apparitions condensed into anteaters, which perambulated around the perimeter of the room, sucking up the last bit of dust around the edges.
Math rubbed his hands together, grinning. “This looks great. I’ll have my things brought up here right away.”
Bethany set her fists on the small of her back and stretched. She’d never done this much spellwork within so few days. “I thought this suite was for the angel investors’ dog and pony show.”
“It will be. We’ll need a few of these penthouse suites ready for them to look at, but I’ve been crashing in some of the economy rooms on the fourth floor because they were the only ones that had sheets and stuff.”
“I guess the Chief Financial Officer can stay in the penthouse, if he wants to.”
Math walked over and tested the firmness of the mattress, pressing on it with his fingertips. “My feet were hanging off the end of the bed in that room. I think I’ll sleep better here, and you bet, commandeering the penthouse is one of the perks of the job.”
Bethany was having a hard time keeping herself from imagining Math’s muscled body stretched out on the sheets that her magic had lain on the bed. He might sleep in just a pair of athletic shorts, without a shirt, maybe. The few times he’d unbuttoned his collar, she hadn’t seen any chest hair peeking through the vee of his shirt. His skin seemed to be smooth, and the way his shirt’s closely fitting fabric clung to his tight waist when he twisted suggested that there wasn’t much room for any sort of insulation between his hard flesh and the fabric.
Not that she had noticed.
Not that she had observed that every time he moved, he seemed sinewy, strong, and muscular.
Not that she had imagined that his bronze skin might be satiny over his rippled abdominals, burly chest, and his shoulder muscles.
Bethany shook her head, but the images persisted of Math, half-naked or fully naked, sprawled on the bed with a sheet barely covering his man-parts but leaving one of his long, strong thighs and calves bare.
She needed a new thought.
She needed a new thoughtright then.
“Well, even one of the cheap rooms in the casino has to be better than living in a cave, right?” she asked.
Math looked at her, one dark eyebrow lifting. “Why would I live in a cave?”
