Magicless witch Vesper's life is completely turned on its side when she asks out the hottie who's been frequenting her work for two weeks.
He's a bodyguard, she's in danger, and her newly incarcerated father is not the simple man Vesper thought him...
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"You heard from your dad yet?"
Dad! The reminder had blood pounding loudly in my ears, almost dizzying me. Two weeks since he'd answered or called me back. The brief thought of leaving a scathing message on his machine hit me. But I couldn't hurt him like that.
I smiled though Chloe couldn't see me; I had no desire to dwell on this. "Mmmhmm." Words would have betrayed me.
Unsurprisingly, my best friend scoffed, "Are you doing that thing again, where you pretend everything's fine when it isn't? You can't let..."
Looking to numb out of the conversation, I looked around the hexagonal room-lovingly called the Hive- that I worked in. Deep red carpeted floors, dark wood shelves radiating from the center, a bridge spanning the open atrium space.
On the bridge an impressive glossy black tower spiked up six stories, echoing the shape of the main room; the magic library. I yearned to see the books within. I'd asked Dad once if he could get me in. But no. You actually had to belong to that world to go in there.
I very much didn't. Being the only non-magic person in his historically magic family was a jug of water dumped on my birthday cake. Which is why Vesper was not a leaf on the Shimizu family tree, not officially anyway.
Eyes landing on the Hive Hottie, my heart leapt. Every single day for two weeks, he'd leant just outside the magic library focused intently on whatever book he held.
Looking. So. Damn. Good.
He was a regular kind of attractive, but also like little effort would put him on billboards and magazine covers with a smoldering smize, selling watches or underwear; he'd probably make a perfect underwear model.
Dropping my phone, I left Chloe scolding herself and walked over to him. "Hi."
His gaze lifted from his book with an unsure smile, "Yeah?"
"So, you're cute, I'm cute, wanna get a coffee?" I was never this forward, but it worked for Chloe so...
Face flushed, he nodded, tucking his book into his back pocket, "Sur-"
"Vesper?" Chloe's voice swam into clarity, alerting me to the fact I'd probably checked out again. She sighed, "Are you even listening to me? Oh! He's there again. Hive Hottie?"
"Mmmhmm." I offloaded books from the return box onto the cart at my side.
"Stop talking about him, and talk to him. Invite him to one of your art things and if he can't even fake being interested in it, then eff him. You don't need another loser who's going to walk all over your easy-going personality."
Crap. The pounding in my ears returning with a vengeance, I slapped books onto the cart with more aggression than necessary. She should have heard it, but was too busy being Saint Chloe.
Suffocating in her forceful love, I mumbled an excuse and hung up on her before I could blow up.
I swallowed down a scream burning inside my throat. It was harder by the day to ignore feeling more like a child than the twenty three year old university educated rare book librarian I was.
