by Nicole Hall
After a while, the room closed in on her, and she had to get outside.
The back garden had boasted tall, old trees when she’d moved in, but in the last year, she’d added plants to every open space she could fit them. She’d found flagstones to make a path to the back fence, and an old table to make a little retreat. Keely, her former roomie, had strung fairy lights in the branches around the table, and it officially became Dru’s favorite spot.
She tried to spend some time with the plants each day. They liked it when she told them stories, and her collection of rescued houseplants continued to grow. The humidity in July made her hair a mess, but her plant buddies loved it.
As the sun set, she’d intended to sit at her table, sip some wine, maybe read one of her man-chest books, and enjoy the praise she’d gotten at her presentation earlier. Instead, she spent the evening moving dirt. One of her larger pots had broken, and the tall fern living inside it had demanded a new home.
Not literally. The plants hadn’t started talking back to her, yet, but Dru knew what it meant when the leaves hung listlessly and the new growth came slower than it should.
She repotted the fern, repositioned it, and stood staring at the broken remains of the previous pot when the back door squeaked open. Dru turned, expecting to see Samantha with another glass of wine, but Oren appeared instead. He looked around at the lush vegetation, then smiled at her.
“You can’t even tell you’re in the city anymore.”
Dru had hoped her reaction to him came from the adrenaline of a near-death experience, but her pulse raced all the same. “I love the convenience and the pace, but there’s not enough green.”
He came down the path, and Dru turned away to move her tools off the table. It was one thing to ogle him on a street full of strangers, but now he walked through the heart of her. Samantha knew to keep guests away from the backyard, yet somehow Oren had made it past her. Dru took a deep breath and shook out her hands.
She had no reason to be nervous, but this meeting felt different.
“You have a handprint on your ass.”
Dru twisted to look at the back of her shorts, and sure enough, a dark brown handprint smeared across the grey fabric. An occupational hazard when she worked in the garden. She raised her eyes to meet his, much closer than she’d anticipated. A shock of awareness shivered up her back.
She lifted a brow. “Is that what you came here to talk about? My ass?”
He took another long look. “I like your shape, but no, that’s not why I’m here.”
Too bad. Dru banished the thought and sank into one of the chairs. She waved at the other one. “Have a seat.”
He sat next to her and leaned forward on his elbows, putting him right at eye-level. “How much do you know about your heritage?”
Dru frowned, a sinking suspicion ruining all the fun naughty thoughts she’d been toying with. “I’d rather talk about my ass.”
“We can do that too, if you like, but I should tell you that Luc brought me to that café this morning looking for Samantha.”
“That’s not entirely a surprise considering most of her office knew where we went. Why drag you along if he planned to torture Samantha?”
“Because we were looking for you. I was looking for you.”
Dru leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms, trying valiantly to hold on to her earlier zen. “I have to admit, this is getting creepier by the second.”
He smiled. “I recognize that, but I promise I mean you no harm.”
“That’s what they all say before they try to turn you into a fetching coat.” Why wasn’t she running? Or calling the cops? She should at least be yelling for Samantha. He had all the signs of an everyday weirdo, but the zing she’d felt when they’d collided hadn’t been only attraction. He had magic, and she purposefully lived in an area that magical people avoided.
Oren cocked his head. “You don’t seem afraid.”
“Yeah, I’m trying to work up to it.”
“Before you get all the way there, I’m here because I need your help.”
Dru narrowed her eyes. “With what?”
“I need access to the dryad homeland.”
Sheer, suffocating panic froze her for a second, but she’d been expecting something like that. A magical hottie showed up at the same time that her birth mother became more insistent in her messages? Probably not a coincidence.
“I fucking knew it.” Dru got up to pace back and forth on the far side of the table from him. “She sent you, didn’t she?”
“Who?”
“Don’t play dumb. You’ve already given away you have a nice brain to go with that pretty face.”
“Now who’s being creepy?”
She stopped to jab a finger in his direction. “Well you can tell her good try, but I’m not leaving here.” If Hollis had started sending actual people to harass her, the situation had gotten worse faster than she’d anticipated.
A terrible thought struck her, and she glared at Oren. “Were you the one who shoved me?”
He jerked back as if she’d slapped him. “I’d never put you in danger.”
“Well you were pretty quick on the trigger to save me. Maybe you didn’t consider it dangerous since you planned to yank me right back.”
He shook his head and a muscle in his jaw ticked. “I don’t know who shoved you, but I’d love to find them and have a talk about keeping their hands to themselves.”
Dru slowed and took a closer look at him. He’d been calm before, patient in the face of her accusations, but now he’d crossed over to anger. His eyes burned with blue fire, and she reconsidered her knee-jerk question. This was Oren in intimidation mode, and watching his massive shoulders tense at the thought of defending her made her stupid body want to plop down in his lap.
Her reaction couldn’t possibly be healthy. Maybe Keely had a point about all the books Dru had been reading.
Dru felt herself softening, but she only had his word. This would have been a great time for her magic power to actually be useful. Some way to discern the truth, maybe? Unless she planned to encase him in vines, she had to deal like a normal human.
A normal human who couldn’t risk going to Vethr—the dryad homeland—without losing her freedom, not even if she wanted to help a pretty savior. The safest option involved staying away from him until she had more information. Dru usually hated the safe option.
Oren must have sensed her wavering. “What do your rules say about a man pleading with a beautiful woman for her help?”
“They say he should probably be on his knees.” The snarky comment slipped out unintentionally, as they often did. Dru didn’t put a lot of effort into filtering what she had to say. To her surprise, and the detriment of her resolve to stay away from him, he lowered himself to his knees in front of her.
“Please, kalia.”
Also by Nicole Hall
Modern Magic
Accidental Magic
Insidious Magic
Treacherous Magic
Impulsive Magic
Rebellious Magic
Chaotic Magic
IMPULSIVE MAGIC
Copyright © 2020 Nicole Hall
All rights reserved.
No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead
, is unintentional and co-incidental.
Cover designed by Germancreative
Edited by Jolene Perry, Waypoint Author Academy
About the Author
Nicole Hall is a smart-ass with a Ph.D. and a potty mouth. She writes stories that have magic, sass, and romance because she believes that everyone deserves a little happiness. Coffee makes her happy, messes make her stabby, and she’d sell one of her children for a second season of Firefly. Her paranormal romance series, Modern Magic, is available now.
Let Nicole know what you thought about her sassy, magical world because she really does love hearing from readers. Find her at www.nicolehallbooks.com or Muse Interrupted Romance on Facebook!
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