Totally Spellbound (40 page)

“To talk to all 500 of his other
daughters to see if they’re as angry as we are,” Crystal
said.

“Most of them are angrier,” Tiffany
said, and then she leaned back through the door. “Next
week?”

She must have gotten a response
because she nodded at her sisters, and then all three of them
disappeared.

Megan hadn’t come out of the room, and
Rob wasn’t going to let her banish him any longer. He didn’t care
what she said.

He was going in.

And nothing she could say would stop
him.

Megan sat in her chair, feeling more
drained than she’d ever felt in her life. At least they hadn’t
killed each other. At least Zeus had listened.

He’d actually looked
crushed.

Apparently, he had always thought he
was a good parent.

What a surprise to discover he was one
of the worst in recorded time.

She ran a hand over her face. Voices
echoed from the waiting room, but she couldn’t place them. A little
sleep would be nice. A little sleep and some
reevaluation—

A hand touched her arm. She lifted her
head. Rob crouched before her. He looked shaken.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded. She couldn’t tell him much
about the therapy session. Confidentiality and all.

“I don’t know if you realize that
you’ve just changed the entire magical system in this world. You’ve
only known about it for twenty-four hours, and you’ve united the
Faeries and Mages, dethroned Zeus, and helped the Fates take their
jobs back, saving true love.”

Megan smiled. “I didn’t do
that.”

“You did.” Rob took her hand in his.
“You took on Zeus. You weren’t afraid of him at all.”

“I think he was ready to change,”
Megan said. “He’s the one who brought me here. You can’t help
people who don’t want to be helped.”

“Megan,” Rob said gently, “I’m trying
to tell you that you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever
met.”

“Yeah, right,” she said.

“You are,” he said. “No one has ever
taken on Zeus and won.”

She raised her gaze to
his. Then she frowned. It hadn’t felt like she was taking on Zeus,
although admittedly, she had yelled at him. He was just such a
bully.

She wasn’t very fond of
bullies.

“And,” Rob said with a soft smile, “no
one’s ever told me to stuff it when I came to rescue
them.”

“I was working,” Megan
said.

“I know.” He went down on one knee,
extended the other hand, and a box appeared in it.

Megan frowned.

Then he let go of her
hand, touched his face, and cursed. “I look like—what would Kyle
call it?—a dweeb.”

He blinked, and all that
magic that Zoe had done vanished, leaving him the Rob that Megan
had met in the middle of the Nevada desert, one day and a million
years ago.

She had driven into a magical bubble
and was going to stay there for the rest of her life. She’d already
made a follow-up appointment with Zeus and the Interim Fates, who
had resigned their job.

Apparently, she wasn’t
closing down her practice after all. She was just switching it to a
newer—and needier—clientele.

Then Rob took her hand
again.

“Megan,” he said, and he sounded
serious.

“What?” she asked.

“I know we haven’t known each other
very long, but I also know you know how I feel, and that I’ve never
felt this way before—not for anyone.”

She nodded, not quite sure where he
was taking this.

“When I thought that Zeus had you and
I was never going to see you again,” Rob said, “I panicked like I
never had before. I couldn’t lose you, not after just finding
you.”

“You didn’t lose me,” Megan
said.

He smiled. “I know. You were
working.”

Her face warmed. “I’m sorry. You know
what I meant—”

“Yes,” he said, “but what I mean is
this.”

He flipped open the box
with his left thumb. Inside, a large and somehow not gaudy
jewel-encrusted ring caught the light.

“Will you marry me?” he
asked.

“Me?” she said, stunned. Why would
someone like Robin Hood want her?

He smiled. “Do you see anyone else in
the room?”

“Just you,” she said, and her voice
shook. The perfect man. That’s what she thought when she first met
him. He looked perfect.

“Just me,” he said, “and
just me would like to spend the rest of his long, unnatural life
with you.”

“But I won’t live as long,” she said.
“You’ll get a mortal again.”

“You’re going to live just as long,”
he said, “if not longer. Not that it matters. I want to spend my
life—and yours—together. So, let me repeat. Will you marry
me?”

She flung her arms around his neck,
crushing the ring between them. A joy like none she’d ever felt
filled her.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Of course, yes.
Yes.”

And then he kissed her,
and the kiss built like their first kiss had, and the passion rose,
and it wasn’t until John peeked his head in the door that Rob
raised a hand, closing the door with a bit of magic.

Then he picked up Megan and carried
her to the couch. In the past, she wouldn’t have let anything like
this happen in her safest room.

But this was the man she was going to
marry, the best person she’d ever met, and besides, the couch was
right here, long and soft and inviting, and he was right
there.

She reached up and pulled him down
beside her.

“Lock the door,” she
whispered.

“Already done,” he said, and then he
kissed her, and he kept kissing her, and she kissed him back,
realizing, for the very first time, how lucky she was—how lucky the
world was—that he and his modern band of Merry Men had helped her
and her family save true love.

About the Author

Called “The Reigning
Queen of Paranormal Romance” by Best Reviews, bestselling writer
Kristine Grayson has made a name for herself publishing light,
slightly off-skew romance novels about Greek Gods, fairy tale
characters, and the modern world. Her novel
Utterly Charming
, which Sourcebooks
reissued in October of 2011, won the 2001
Romantic Times
Reviewer’s Choice
Award. Her most recent novel,
Wickedly
Charming
, appeared in May of 2011 from
Sourcebooks.
Charming
Blue
, her next novel from Sourcebooks,
will appear in September 2012.

If you liked
Totally Spellbound
, you
might like these works by Kristine Grayson.

Absolutely
Captivated

Completely
Smitten

Geek Romance: Stories of
Love Amidst the Oddballs

Simply
Irresistible

Utterly
Charming

Wickedly
Charming