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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The most important rule, the reason I shouldn't have taken the job for Walter Shimizu. The one I'd been ignoring since the first moment I shadowed the little witch.
Don't do a job if you're compromised.
Compromised by the little witch's eyes, mouth, and every juicy curve in my thoughts. Thoughts I was thinking with the wrong head.
The motel had been my solution—her inside, me outside—which she'd terminated with one call to her friend. The hotel we drove to had adjoining rooms. Adequate enough for separation.
Even without a physical distraction, she reminded me of my brother. Like the female Pavie, she did everything possible to erase herself for the people around her. Like she, as she was, was an inconvenience. It broke me, like it had with Pavie.
I should have run, but my stupid need to be a protector made me stay. I needed to shield her as I had tried to with Pavie.
How had he ended up her bodyguard?
"You want to say something." Head rested on the passenger window, eyes watching me through hair, "You should say it."
My attention returned to the road, I kept my mouth shut. The question chipped my resolve so much I clenched my jaw to keep it in.
"Look, I know you just said necessary communication only," voice dropped in an adorably off imitation of me. "But, in all honesty, I bother all my security till they talk to me. You might as well spare yourself the annoyance."
Releasing a breath, sliding a look at her I said, "Pavie. I was just thinking about him."
"Were you close?"
"We used to be. I didn't know he was doing security. I..." words stuck on my tongue, burning with feelings. It hurt.
"Miss him," she said quietly, speaking for me.
Nodding, only allowing that much weakness, I parked the car in front of the hotel. "Out, Minou."
-.-
Keeping the little witch safe was an endless loop of watching and listening. First, for two weeks from the shelves in the library, and now from the other side of a conjoined hotel room. Phone calls, t.v. shows, pens on paper, diatribes about her needing to help her father.
Eight a.m., two days into staying at the hotel and I wanted something—anything—to happen so I could move.
I had wanted the door between our rooms to remain closed, but it was ripped open in the middle of the first night and left that way. She slept with all the lights on.
Too early to check in, no sound came from her side, still sleeping. In the open doorway, crumpled bits of paper; she drew all the time. People mostly, in rings and set over angular lined backgrounds.
