Fluffy(26)

And now he’s ending the call.

The downtown headquarters of The Lotham Group turns out to be in a former yoga studio. Brass elephants line a very high shelf that runs a few feet below the tall ceilings in a room painted in purple and mustard tones that make my trigeminal nerve do the samba. The place is clearly not finished, giving off the feel of an office in limbo. They've either just moved in or are preparing to move out.

I close my eyes. I let the feeling find me. There it is. The space tells me.

Moving in.

“Who is your, um, interior designer?” I ask him, nervous, needing distraction as he approaches me, his eyes hard to read.

“My mother.”

“She’s in the field?”

“No. She just has opinions.” He looks up, eyes scanning as he takes off the reading glasses and tucks them in a case, a wry grin making his dimples appear.

“So do I.”

“And? What do you think of the color scheme?”

“I think your mother loves you and wants you to be in a warm, productive environment.”

He smiles wider and looks around.

“Which is why this entire office needs to be remodeled.”

His fingertips rub his left eyebrow. “That’s not what I hired you for.”

“Oh, I know. But I can’t come into a room that almost seems designed to suck energy out of its inhabitants and not say something.”

“Are you going to be like this in every single physical setting?”

“Yes.”

“Then I need to set some limits with you.”

“Such as?”

“Don’t tell me every single room in my business office needs to be remodeled. I don’t have a budget for that. We're straddling two locations right now as we migrate into this space. All my employees are still in the old offices until next week.”

“I can tell you what you need to know. Once you know, you can prioritize.”

“Remodeling is not a priority.”

“You don’t care about productivity?” I ask, giving him a hard stare.

His double take is so gratifying. “Of course I care about productivity.”

“How about profits?”

“I care even more about profits.” Will goes from mild annoyance to interested attentiveness. I like being the focus of his attention.

Like it a little too much.

“Then you’d better let me remodel every inch of this place,” I declare in a haughty tone that covers my nervousness.

“First of all, no. Second–why would you need to remodel every inch?”

“Intuition.”

“I didn’t hire you for your intuition. I hired you to reorganize the space and feel of my properties to help them sell. Starting with my parents' house.”

“Which means you hired me for my intuition.”

“I hired you for your skill.”

“Skill plus gut feelings equals intuition. I have a sixth sense when it comes to space.”

His attention becomes derision. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who believes in woo.”

“Woo?”

Will eyes my purse. “You don’t have a smudge stick in there?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“It's in my car. I pull that out at the end, after we’ve cleared the energy blocks.” I give him a big smile.

“Jesus Christ.”

“If you want him involved, you need an ordained minister or priest. I don’t specialize in that kind of energy clearance.”

“You were the valedictorian of our graduating class, and now you burn sage for a living?”

“I do way more than burn sage, buddy.”

“Don’t tell me you use crystals?”

“Crystals? Do I look like an amateur?”

He cracks a grin.

“I do spells,” I inform him. It’s hard not to smile back when someone so deliciously hot is grinning at me, but I do not. I am resolute.

“Spells?”

“Witchcraft.”

“You do not.” His chuckle is low and throaty, and it makes me tingle.

“I’m distantly related to Rebecca Nourse, you know. The famous accused witch.” We’ve grown up a short drive from Salem. Every schoolkid in New England knows who Rebecca Nourse is. It must be written into the history curriculum that proper education includes having the crap scared out of you in fifth grade by going to the Salem witchcraft museums.

“We’re all distantly related to people from 1690s New England,” he shoots back. “Confess, oh, witch, that ye be a liar, ye seductress o’ the night.”

“You sound like a pirate. Not a Puritan.” Oh, how his mouth revels in the word seductress.

“Both start with p. Close enough.” He laughs easily, with a confidence I remember all too well. Not arrogance. A surety that who he is, how he is in the world, is enough.

“Fine,” I admit. “I don’t do spells.” My voice is breathy. Ethereal. He makes me feel like I’m floating away, barely here, turning into stardust.

Wet, thrumming stardust.

He walks across the room to an unoccupied desk and gestures for me to sit behind it. He takes the visitor's chair.