Damsel Under Stress (27 page)

“She and my dad would really get along. He’s all about learning big life lessons.”

He slid out of his suit coat and threw it over the arm of the sofa, then took off his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “I hope this establishment doesn’t require neckties,” he said, quirking an eyebrow at me.

“I’ll make an exception in this case.” I kept seeing him in situations where I thought he’d never looked better, and then he managed to top himself. At the moment, he probably looked sexier than I’d ever seen him, with his hair tousled, the slightest hint of five-o’clock shadow on his jaw, and his white dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck.

“Remind me to tip you extra.” He picked up a remote control and turned on the television. “I guess we ought to start watching TV so we can make it worth your while to go through the immunity loss. Let’s hope he’s got an ad on tonight.”

While we watched the first commercial break, Loony came in from the kitchen to join us, jumping up between us on the sofa. I scratched the back of her neck while Owen changed channels. “It was on one of the local channels, if that helps narrow it down,” I said. There weren’t any Spellworks ads during the next commercial break we found, either. “Maybe he’s only advertising during prime time. That would mean we wouldn’t see anything until eight.”

“Let’s hope there’s something on that isn’t too painful to watch—none of those reality TV dating shows or movie stars trying to dance, or anything like that.”

I felt a surge of warmth at the realization we had that much in common. “I hate those kinds of shows, too.” It was funny, I thought I knew him fairly well by now, but there was so much I didn’t know about him, like what he watched on TV.

The buzzer sounded from downstairs, and he jumped up. “There’s dinner, and fortunately, it didn’t come during the commercials.” He paused before leaving the living room. “I never thought I’d say that.”

While he was gone, I kicked off my shoes and tucked my feet under me, grateful that I’d worn a fuller skirt that made it easy to sit comfortably. Loony rolled over onto her back and waved a paw at me in a fairly obvious command to rub her belly, so I obliged. “How do you think it’s going so far?” I asked her in a whisper.

Owen returned with a couple of paper bags that had translucent grease spots forming on the sides—a sure sign our burgers hadn’t been magically transformed into more highbrow food worthy of a romantic date. “Any commercials?” he asked.

“No, you only missed a story on the newscast.”

“Good. Normally I’d suggest we eat at the table, but we do have a TV-watching mission tonight, so what do you say to a living room picnic?”

“I say it sounds great.”

“I’ll get us something to sit on if you’ll go grab us some drinks. There should be some sodas in the refrigerator. Take whatever you want and grab something for me. There’s nothing in there that I don’t like.”

When I returned with a couple of canned drinks, he had a red-and-white-checked blanket spread picnic style on the living room floor in front of the fireplace and television. I hadn’t felt anything in my necklace, so that meant he must have had a picnic blanket handy. Interesting. He flattened the paper bags the food had come in and then laid the burgers and fries out on them. I handed him his drink before I sat down.

“This is more like it,” he said after taking a bite of burger. “Much better than the other night.” He suddenly looked concerned. “Isn’t it? Or am I incorrectly assuming? You said you had fun.”

“I had fun because I was with you. I’m not sure I’d have had fun with the kind of guy who’d have deliberately taken me to that kind of place. Burgers on the living room floor are much more my style.” And, I realized, this indoor picnic in front of the fireplace was a lot more romantic than the limo ride and the fancy restaurant, with or without the weird disruption we’d had.

“Good. And I guess I didn’t realize how little I know about you. I feel like I know the kind of person you are because we have been through some pretty extreme stuff together, but I honestly don’t know what you like or what you do enjoy.”

“It’s hard to carry on a good conversation when every time you’re together, you’re escaping from a fire, falling through ice, fighting off dragons, working, fending off a mob, or anything else we’ve done together.”

“I had to enchant that necklace to know what to give you for Christmas.”

“I bought you a scarf. I think that’s lamer.”

“So, tell me, what would have been a good gift for me to give you?”

“I like the one you gave me. The necklace really has been useful.”

“Okay, then, let’s try this another way. You already know my favorite childhood movie was
Robin Hood.
What was yours?”

“Hmm. Let’s see, I think I was partial to
Sleeping Beauty.
They re-released it in theaters when I was about five or six, and we made a special trip to the city to see it. Afterward, I thought that going to live in the forest with a group of wacky fairies seemed like a pretty good life. As an adult, I must admit to being drawn to the dashing prince who fights a dragon.”

“Now, I would have got that one wrong. I saw you as more of a
Cinderella
girl. You don’t lie around waiting for other people to take care of the situation. You pull yourself together and head out to the ball to get what you want.”

“Yeah, I guess that does make sense, but I still liked Sleeping Beauty’s prince better, and let’s face it, the prince is the part we really like in those movies. It’s your turn now. Let’s see, what can I ask you? Favorite movie now?”

“I haven’t been to the movies in so long that I couldn’t begin to say.”

“Okay, then, how about favorite grown-up movie?”

He worried his lower lip in his teeth while he thought, then said, “A lot of it depends on the mood I’m in. But
Casablanca
is a consistent favorite.”

“Oh, so you’re a romantic.”

“Well, that’s not the main thing,” he said, even as he turned slightly pink. “I like the idea of knowing you’re part of something bigger than you are, and at the same time, no matter how epic the scope of a situation is, it’s still about people. Plus, Humphrey Bogart was incredibly cool, and he always knew just what to say in a situation. I’d love to be able to toss out smooth lines like that instead of thinking of them hours later or not having the nerve to say them even if I do think of them at the right time.”

“Yeah, you’re a romantic. And worse, you’re an idealistic romantic. You’d totally make the grand, sacrificial gesture for the greater good and then stride off into the fog.”

He slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me against him. “Well, maybe I am a bit of a romantic. Enough so that I deliberately ordered our burgers without onions.”

“And you think you’re not smooth,” I said just before he kissed me. It was even better than our very first kiss, which had been magically influenced. We’d kissed a few times since then, but not with the same kind of intensity. As in almost every other thing he did, he was thorough, meticulous, and quite skilled. Fortunately, this time he didn’t withdraw in horror, like he had once before after realizing he was under magical influence. Instead, he kept kissing me, and I let myself relax enough to really kiss him back. After all our struggles of the past weeks, once we got over the initial awkwardness, it felt so very right between us.

Then just as I was getting into it, my necklace began vibrating furiously.

Sixteen

I
should have known it was too good to last. “Um, Owen?” I said between kisses.

“Mmm hmm?”

“Unless you’re working some serious mojo on me, there’s magic going on.”

He pulled away, keeping his arm around me, and we both turned to look at the television. “What do you see?” he asked.

“I was right. It’s a mattress commercial.”

“That’s not what I’m seeing. But I don’t think it’s any better than the mattress commercial in production values.”

“Yep, that would be the ad I saw the other night.”

“And there’s no indication that there’s anything unusual about the ad you’re seeing?”

“No. It’s not even a new ad, just that same annoying mattress ad that’s always on. It makes you wonder if he actually bought the airtime, or if he’s hijacking it and the station thinks they’re showing the same old ads.”

“He still had to produce the ad and somehow get it on the air, since we know that there really is an ad there. It isn’t an illusion.” The ad ended and he picked up the remote to turn the TV off. “I guess that’s mission accomplished for the night,” he said. “Now, where were we?” He bent to kiss my temple, then my cheek, and then my neck.

I leaned back against him with a sigh of contentment. “I still feel like there’s something we’re missing. There’s a connection we haven’t seen yet between the funding and the person who seems to be running things. Like maybe why they’re doing this when it doesn’t look too profitable. And where did all this come from, anyway?”

“All what?”

I turned to face him. “You. For the last couple of weeks, you’ve barely touched me, even though we were supposedly dating, and now, well, wow. We’re not under enchantment again, are we?”

He tapped the locket where it rested in the hollow of my throat. “What does this tell you?”

“That there’s nothing magical going on nearby right now.”

“So?”

“So, excuse me if my head is spinning.”

“You said it yourself, there was Ari’s escape, the fire that wasn’t a fire, the ice, my family, the crisis of the day, the dragons, the messed-up dinner plans. This is the first time in a long time it’s been just us with nothing crazy going on, and I was determined to make the most of it instead of panicking, getting nervous, or chickening out.”

“You were channeling your inner Bogie,” I said, resting my hand against his cheek. “I get it now. I like it.”

He wrapped both arms around me and pulled me against him in a warm embrace. “Sometimes I wish we could forget about magic and saving the world and all of that and just be us for a while.”

“But without the weirdness, would it still be us?”

“Good point. I guess we’re stuck with it.”

“I don’t mind all that much.” I rested my head on his chest and could hear his heart beating. “Now we know that all we have to do to have a successful relationship is never go out again.”

“That sounds like one of your better plans.”

But we did have to go out again, since the rest of the world was still spinning and we had things to do. After another hour or so of quality snuggling mixed with a kind of twenty questions quiz as we swapped lists of our favorite things, he walked me home and arranged to meet me the next morning to head over to Times Square. This time, I got my good-night kiss on the front steps. Things were definitely looking up.

I got home in time to catch my roommates in the middle of planning their costumes for the party. “Ooh, someone’s all aglow,” Gemma said when I walked into the bedroom. “We could turn out the lights in here and still find our way around, thanks to Miss Radiance USA.”

“I take it you had a good date,” Marcia said, raising one eyebrow.

“Yeah. Good date.”

“What did you do?” Gemma asked, flipping through a carton of masks.

“We ate dinner on his living room floor and talked.”

“Talked, huh?” She held up a black mask shaped like cat’s-eye glasses frames. “What do you think of this one?”

“Very sexy,” I said. “And, well, there might have been a little more than talking going on.”

“Then you’re home awfully early,” Gemma remarked.

“It wasn’t
that
much more than talking,” I said.

Marcia came over and patted me on the head. “Our Katie is an old-fashioned girl. And a smart one. Better to be sure of the situation before you get in too deep.”

Gemma rolled her eyes.” Just don’t be so smart you miss the fun. Now, any costume plans for you?”

I shrugged. “I was thinking of using those red shoes, maybe doing a Dorothy outfit, assuming I can find a blue gingham pinafore.”

Gemma and Marcia looked at each other. “Tell me she didn’t just mention dressing as Dorothy,” Gemma said. She then turned to me. “This is not a Halloween carnival. It’s a New Year’s Eve masked ball. You will not do anything cute or sweet. You’re going to have one of the hottest guys there. You must do sexy. But good idea to use the red shoes. Let’s see what else we can do with them. Oh, I have an idea.”

She disappeared to the back of the closet. There were times when I wondered if our closet had a spell on it to expand it from within. It shouldn’t have been able to hold Gemma’s extensive wardrobe, let alone Marcia’s and my clothes. Gemma returned with a red satin dress and one of my red shoes. “The reds aren’t a perfect match, but it’s not too bad.” When she held the dress up against herself, I saw that it had a pointy tail coming off the back of it. “The horns that go with this should be in the accessories box over there.”

“But if that’s your dress, it won’t fit me,” I said. Gemma was taller than I was, and although she was slimmer, she also had more curves. It really wasn’t fair.

“Try it on,” she ordered.

It turned out to be good that I was several inches shorter than she was, for the dress came to mid-thigh on me. On Gemma it must have been indecently short. It was rather formfitting on me, except in the chest area, where there was extra fabric. “That’s okay,” Gemma said. “That’s why they make Wonderbras.” She stuck a horned headband on me and turned me to face the full-length mirror that hung on the back of the bedroom door. “And voilà, a she-devil. I can’t decide if you should wear fishnets or seamed stockings. Maybe seamed fishnets. We’ll have to see what we can find. You’re gonna knock your guy’s socks off.”

As I twirled my tail and looked at myself in the mirror, I was almost looking forward to the party even though I was starting to have a nagging suspicion that it was a recipe for disaster.