Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(35)
Tilda lets out a gasp. “So you’re saying being an outré will be good for once?”
“What I’m saying is that each of you have a unique set of skills that will be needed to pull off this heist, and the first thing that needs to happen is you need to get us invites to that exhibit.”
I keep my mouth shut about the other four hundred and sixty-eight things we have to make happen to pull this heist off. The most difficult of which is to get a pain-in-the-ass unicorn to join in—unless, of course, I count the fact that I can’t stop thinking about Tilda in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with this mission. But I am not counting that. And neither should you.
Agree?
Good.
Chapter Seventeen
Tilda . . .
Gil keeps watching me—not like in a creepy way, but in an I-really-want-to-know-what-you’re-thinking way. I wanna say that I don’t like it, but you and I both know that would be a lie. Usually most people do everything they can to avoid making direct eye contact, let alone actually wonder what might be happening in my head because, really, what can an outré add to the conversation?
Nope.
Stop.
I am not going to sink into the stew of all that negativity right now. I can’t when I’m about to make a call that could save my family or at least get the ball rolling on making that happen. Oh toad warts, there is no way this is going to go well.
The Svensens and the Sherwoods have been enemies since both of our families made it to these shores—us in Virginia and the Svensens in Massachusetts, specifically Salem. Since the 1600s, it has been nothing but distrust, disgruntlement, and dislike between what are really the two most powerful families in the Witchingdom. In other words, barely concealed loathing and feuding. Those who were on these shores before our families were the smart ones; they’d taken one look at us arriving on our ships, negotiated a land sale in their favor for a narrow strip along the East Coast, and lived in prosperity and peace spread out across the rest of the continent without having to deal on the daily with any of our bullshit.
Now here I am almost five hundred years later going through my mom’s contact lists to find a phone number for Erik Svensen, my best hope at getting four tickets to the exhibition. Family rumor has it that he and Leona had a thing back when they were both at university, but my sister won’t even hint at what it was. Hate fucking? Star-crossed lovers? Unrequited romance full of hot glances and secret kisses in the library stacks? Leona won’t say, but whatever it was, she still blushes every time his name gets mentioned. It doesn’t take a level twenty witch to know she still has a thing for him.
Gil stops in the doorway of my mom’s office off the kitchen, and my pulse kicks into gear like a jackrabbit being chased by a werelion. It’s not just that he practically fills up the whole doorway with his broad shoulders, or the way my fingers itch to brush back the lock of dark hair that hangs down in front of his forehead, or even the way his thick muscular thighs look in his not-a-lie ironed jeans (really, do you know how hard it is to look hot in ironed jeans????) that has me ready to fan myself. I know lust, she and I are very good friends. This isn’t just wanting to yank someone into the nearest closet and go to town though. There’s more to this. It’s like a dark red velvet ribbon that winds around us, and if I pull, it’s going to unravel and I’m not sure what will be left of me.
Overdramatic?
Me?
My whole family is frozen because of my fuckery, I think I’m allowed to have a bit of a breakdown here—and that’s what this is, not some superpowered attraction to the guy my sister is destined to marry.
“Find it?” Gil asks.
I pluck the card labeled Svensen from my mom’s ancient Rolodex. “Yeah.”
When I don’t move—because I am having thoughts, people, bad thoughts that you do not need to know about because I do not need witnesses to the lewd depravity in my head all centered around the absolutely worst man ever, who keeps starring in my own personal never-ending fantasies—Gil steps into the room and crosses over to Mom’s massive oak desk. He looks me up and down, not in a judgy or a creepy way, but as if he just needs to reassure himself that I’m okay.
That shouldn’t make me feel just a smidge better.
It does anyway.
Fuck me, I am so screwed.
“Are you gonna call?” he asks when he stops on the opposite side of the desk.
I just stare at the three-by-five card with Mom’s distinctive swirly handwriting, because looking at him is not an option with all these thoughts in my head wondering how dexterous he is with his fingers. “Yeah.”
He picks up the cell phone off Mom’s desk and holds it out. “That usually means tapping the screen.”
“I do know how to use a phone,” I grumble as I take the phone, moving very carefully so as not to touch his fingers.
“Which works in our favor.”
He punctuates the declaration with a smile that has just enough let’s-take-the-bastards-down in it to make my heart skitter from one side of my chest to the other. Fine. It doesn’t literally do that, but whatever is going on with me whenever I’m around him sure makes it feel like it could, the undisputed facts of witch anatomy be damned. And does that make me bat my eyelashes and do some sexy pout thing?