Smitten by Magic

by Erica Ridley

  She fell in beside him. “Where are you going?”

  He glanced over at her, his lips shut tight. He suspected she knew precisely where he was headed. He decided to turn the tables. “Where are you going?”

  “Oh, you know...” She waved her hand in the general direction of nowhere. “Around.”

  That was precious. Did she not want to name a hotel because she worried he might spy on her? She clearly wasn’t from around here. In a town this small, people recognized each other’s chickens on sight. Everyone from the local seamstress to the kid who ran the vegetable stand probably knew where she was staying.

  And her real name.

  He tightened his grip on the heavy sacks and turned the corner toward the dentist’s house. Thinking about vegetable stands had reminded him just how hungry he was—and how there’d be nothing for him to eat. The dentist and his wife would be down at mass. There might be food in their kitchen, but although Javier could replace anything he ate after the supermarket opened the next day, he couldn’t risk inadvertently consuming something his hosts intended to have for their evening meal.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  He thunked the burlap sacks onto the front porch between a hammock and a worn rocking chair. Sarah was two steps behind him—and didn’t appear to be in a hurry to leave.

  “Don’t suppose you know someplace open for dinner?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Uhh...” Her eyelashes fluttered. Not flirtatiously... more like in intense concentration. Or like she was about to have a petit mal seizure. Just when he started to get concerned, her hazel eyes sprang back open. “Sure. I know a place.”

  He narrowed his own eyes to slits. She did not know a place. There was no place to know. He’d just left here three weeks ago—returning home had been surprisingly easy—and he could attest to the complete lack of Sunday evening dining options. But his stomach was growling, he was desperate, and she was certainly intriguing, to say the least. And oddly fetching, despite—or perhaps because of—the jaunty pink cupcake protruding from her hair.

  “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll bite.”

  She took a hurried step back, eyes wide. “Me?”

  He gaped at her, momentarily speechless. Maybe English wasn’t her first language after all. “Not you. ‘I’ll bite’ just means go ahead and show me the restaurant you’re talking about. If it exists, I’ll buy you dinner.”

  Her eyes did the fluttering thing again. Then she said, “Sure.”

  One simple word. Sure. But her expression was unnerving. She beamed at him with an alarming level of Internet-meme-quality enthusiasm. Her smile too wide, her teeth too sparkly, her hazel eyes... unearthly. The back of Javier’s neck tingled.

  He should’ve gone to bed hungry.

  Chapter 2

  Sarah’s fingers trembled as Javier swung open the door to the cozy cement-block house and lugged his heavy sacks inside. Scratch that. Not just her fingers. Her knees trembled, her shoulders trembled, every invisible feather upon her wings trembled.

  He was not supposed to see her. Under any circumstances.

  But what was she supposed to do? He’d known she was there, even before he could see her. He’d run right into her, with enough force to crack the clipboard against her nose. It still stung. But not as badly as her punishment if her superiors ever found out.

  Technically, she’d run into Javier, not the other way around. He had the excuse of not being able to see her. Sarah had the bad habit of looking at her cursed clipboard instead of watching him, as she was contractually obligated to do.

  Not that staring at him was a burden. Javier Rodriguez was divine.

  Well, not divine-divine. He was one hundred percent human, which made him very off-limits. But he was the perfect combination of wavy black hair and warm brown eyes and six feet of lean muscle that, for most of his adult life, had either been gift-wrapped in no-nonsense business suits or dripping with sweat at his private gym.

  So, yeah. Not exactly a big sacrifice to keep her eyes on him at all times.

  And she would’ve, if it hadn’t been for that damn clipboard. Her one vice. Well, second if you counted ogling her client. And maybe third, if you counted saying “damn.”

  She was a guardian angel. Specifically, Javier Rodriguez’s guardian angel. And she would’ve remained his very secret, very invisible heaven-approved bodyguard, if she’d been staring at him instead of at her clipboard.

  Being an angel, she didn’t need clipboards, or mortal crutches of any kind. But it wasn’t about what she needed. She liked lists. Even if every word was already committed to her perfect recall, there was just something satisfying about striking out each completed line item, of gazing at a long tidy row with more tasks complete than incomplete.

  Especially in this case, where she was actively trying to prevent her client from continuing to the next item. His well-being was her responsibility. California was safe. Amazonian rain forests were not.

  But Javier Rodriguez was the most stubborn, ambitious, ruthlessly determined human Sarah had ever dealt with. And although he was driving her to an early grave—or would be, if angels weren’t virtually immortal—she might have an eensy weensy crush on all that strong, focused determination.

  She’d never given her feelings more thought than that. There was no point. He was human, she wasn’t. She was invisible, he wasn’t. Interaction was so not even a remote possibility, as to almost preclude the fantasy.

  Until now.

  Once he’d seen that clipboard—and had a brief glimpse of her true self in the process—she’d had to materialize, to protect his human psyche. It would look extremely unfavorable on her end-of-month review should it come to light she’d inadvertently driven insane the very person she was assigned to protect.

  Now it was just a matter of waiting for an opportune moment to disappear. She’d planned to vanish as soon as he stepped inside the dentist’s house—when he emerged to find her gone, he’d assume she was the lunatic, not him—but all he did was shove the worn sacks inside the door and turn back around with an expectant look on his dangerously handsome face.

  She felt bad about being responsible for the crappy sacks. And the luggage. And the rental cars. And the planes. She’d just wanted him to stay home. Stay safe. But he made it so damn hard.

  The conditions of her employment specifically stated that her magic—pardon, her “miracles,” although Javier might not see them that way—could only affect the assigned party. She’d gone into a gray area when she’d diverted his first plane to Vegas, although she’d ensured that the other passengers had been rebooked on alternate flights. She’d thrown everything at him she could think of to keep him in the world he knew, but Javier Rodriguez hadn’t become the man he was today by being easy to push around.

  And now she owed him dinner.

  He gestured toward the dirt road. “Well?”

  Sarah gulped. He wasn’t smiling at her. He rarely smiled at anyone anymore, which was a huge waste if you asked her. His smile was breathtaking. Right now, though, he was tired and hungry, both of which were her fault.

  “This way.” She hopped off the front stoop and headed toward the road.

  When he didn’t immediately follow, she froze in horror.

  Had she hopped off the stoop? Or had she, maybe, floated off the stoop out of habit? Good Lord, pretending to be human was hard.

  She snuck a glance over her shoulder.

  His eyes were dark, unreadable. But he stepped off the stoop with a shake of his head and fell in beside her.

  “Where are we headed?” he asked. But as soon as they rounded the first corner, awareness registered on his face. “Doña Camila? She’s not open on Sundays.”

  Sarah didn’t answer. Partly because she wasn’t used to answering aloud—conversational skills tended to deteriorate when you spent your life as someone’s invisible shadow—but mostly she didn’t answer because he was right, and he was wrong.


  Doña Camila ran a small restaurant attached to her home. She wasn’t open on Sundays because that was when her son dropped off the grandkids, but he and his wife had miraculously stumbled across a four-pack of tickets to a rodeo they hadn’t even known was scheduled for tonight. Because Sarah had just invented it. Which meant Doña Camila had no particular plans for the evening, outside of fixing dinner for any stray walk-ins who happened to be about.

  Javier’s pace quickened as soon as he caught sight of the older woman sitting out front in her wood-and-leather rocking chair.

  She greeted them with a smile, and bid them to take any seat they chose. The restaurant layout was typical for the area—small, open, nothing more than a simple pitched roof atop rustic wooden columns, with a tiny kitchen tucked in the back, where Doña Camila did all the cooking. The few tables were preset with laminated menus and silverware wrapped in white paper napkins. Since there were no walls, every seat had a great view.

  Javier picked a table up in front, with the best breeze and a splendid vista of the mountains. Sarah eased into the chair across from him, careful to mind her wings. When Doña Camila came to take their order, Javier gestured for Sarah to choose first.

  “You go ahead.” She pushed her menu away. “I already ate.”

  She hadn’t eaten, of course. Ever. In her life. And as much as she’d like to taste human food, now that she was visible and could actually have some, she wasn’t really sure what would happen if she tried. Was human food suitable for angel metabolisms? Did angels even have metabolisms?

  Wait… her boss’s daughter was only half-angel, and she could eat human food without ill-effect. Then again, this wasn’t the moment for Sarah to discover that her belly didn’t react the same way.

  Javier gave her a long, hard look, then ordered his meal in flawless Spanish, right down to the accent.

  Everything he did was flawless. He’d been early to walk, early to read, early to college, and early to become CEO of a multibillion-dollar enterprise. None of which had anything to do with Sarah.

  Her job was limited to keeping him safe, not keeping him rich or powerful or successful. Just safe. How he spent the rest of his life was up to him. It would be so much easier on both sides if he would just stop choosing to spend his time barreling headfirst into reckless, risky adventures.

  Javier’s scheduled coronary wasn’t slated until the week after his seventieth birthday, but it had been tough as hell even getting him halfway there. The man was fearless. He knew no boundaries, no limitations. If he wanted to manipulate a controlling share of the U.S. economy, then so be it. If he wanted to go traipsing through the Amazon, outrunning dengue mosquitos and sloshing knee-deep in nonpotable water, then by God, he would. And Sarah would do her best to keep him safe while he did so. She had to. It was going to be hard enough to lose him when he turned seventy. There was no way she’d let him go early.

  She fidgeted with her napkin and tried not to overtly stare while he enjoyed his meal. Thirty-five years she’d been watching over him. Watching him ride a bicycle, pledge a fraternity, pilot an airplane. She’d seen him through sickness and through health, through the birth of his niece and the death of his father, through a string of unhappy relationships and many lonely nights, closing his eyes in a Parisian or London or Bangkok penthouse between whirlwind meetings. She’d laughed with him, cried with him, wanted to throw people against a wall with him, stood right by his side in every venture he’d ever made...

  And, until now, he’d never even known she existed.

  She set down her napkin and stifled a sigh. Face it. He still didn’t know she existed. Not the real Sarah, the one who squealed over every triumph and wept over every loss, knowing every setback would only make him try harder.

  All Javier saw was a pretend Sarah. An amalgamation of ideal memories, conjured automatically without a microsecond’s thought. She was almost as surprised as he had been at the outcome.

  Her face and hair and eyes and body—all that was the real Sarah. Minus the wings. But she’d wrapped herself beneath the disguise of past happy moments. From his life, of course. Guardian angels didn’t have many moments of their own, so she’d subconsciously appropriated his.

  The jersey was easy to figure out. Javier was a Lakers super-fan. He had front-row season tickets and recorded the games to watch again later. He had the entire franchise memorized. When they became the first team in NBA history to win three thousand regular season games, Javier had bought a round of drinks for the whole stadium. The crowd had gone wild.

  The yoga pants, on the other hand, had nothing to do with the Lakers. Those probably came from a conversation Javier had had with his financial advisor on the private terrace of a trendy Malibu bar. A handful of women had walked by in crop tops and yoga pants, and the men had commented that the government really ought to make a law stating that if you had the body for yoga pants, it was a crime not to wear them. (A similar comment had been made about Brazilian-style bikinis.)

  The stiletto sandals were life-endangering on downhill gravel roads, and Sarah well knew where they came from. She’d been there when Javier had bought them for his ex-girlfriend. Before she was an ex, of course. That day, he’d told her she’d make him the happiest man alive if she wore the stilettos for him that evening in bed. And maybe he was... for a few hours. The happiness ended when he discovered she was on his rival’s payroll, and he had been nothing more than an assignment. Seduce, spy, steal.

  Sarah swallowed. For her, this wasn’t just an assignment. Even though, contractually, that’s what it was supposed to be. But how could anyone spend thirty-five years with someone as amazing as Javier Rodriguez, and not develop feelings?

  That was why she had a fuchsia cupcake fascinator sticking out of her head. He’d bought one for his niece on her first trip to Disneyland, and told the little girl that she was what made it the most magical place on Earth. When she’d giggled delightedly and thrown herself into his arms, Javier had grinned—and held on tight.

  That was eight long months ago, and the last time Sarah had seen him smile. She wished she could give that moment back to him, over and over, for the rest of his life. He deserved some happiness. He was a good man, no matter what he believed. He had a destiny. Sarah’s job was to ensure he lived long enough to fulfill it.

  Right now, he was looking at her as if he believed her to be no better than the original owner of the white-puff stilettos. Perhaps those hadn’t been the wisest choice. His suspicious expression indicated he was already plotting how to force her to give up her secrets. She couldn’t let that happen.

  Which meant she had to end this charade, stat. She couldn’t simply disappear when he wasn’t looking, however. Not now. Javier was too focused, too analytical, too... relentless to let something like that go. Where would a single woman without visible transportation disappear to in the middle of nowhere? Whether he believed her to be a spy, or whether he just hated mysteries, he wouldn’t rest until he found her. Not if he thought it possible she might be in need of rescue.

  And try explaining, “I accidentally became my human assignment’s primary obsession” to the Governing Council of Heavenly Beings. No, thank you. They couldn’t take her wings—she’d been born with them—but they could, and would, take her position away. She’d be demoted from a guardian angel to tooth fairy quicker than she could blink.

  Whatever story she was going to come up with, she had to come up with it fast. He was on his last bite of food. Any second now, he was going to expect... conversation.

  Sarah’s throat dried at the thought. Conversation. With Javier Rodriguez. Alone together in an otherwise empty restaurant, with the Andes mountain range before them and the purple sunset all around. Cozy. Beautiful. Romantic. She swallowed. Was this what it would feel like to be on a date? Her heartbeat sped up. She hadn’t been this nervous since she’d first spread her wings.

  Javier had become incredibly appealing and incredibly awesome and incredibly not even an option.
She’d always acknowledged his toe-curling hotness in much the same way human women acknowledged a half-hearted crush on Idris Elba or Channing Tatum. In an alternate universe where stranger things could happen? Sure. But that wasn’t the universe they lived in.

  At least, it hadn’t been. She’d never become corporeal in front of any of her clients before. Never even dreamed about it, until Javier. And now here they were. In the flesh. Staring at each other across a candlelit table. Like a tongue-tied couple on their first date.

  It’s not a date, Sarah reminded herself fiercely. It’s not a date. It’s not a date.

  Javier laid his fork atop his plate and gazed across the table at her. When he spoke, his voice was low, coaxing. “Tell me something surprising about yourself.”

  Oh, crap.

  It was a date.

  “Tell me something surprising about yourself” was Javier’s standard opening gambit every time he met an interested woman. Which was all of them. If they stared at him blankly or leaned forward to flash cleavage with a confession like “I’m not a real blonde,” they didn’t get a second chance. Javier didn’t do stupid, and he didn’t do boring.

  He also didn’t do guardian angels, but she had to say something. Something other than, “I have invisible wings and I watched you learn how to ride a tricycle when you were two.” Or, “I was born in a realm called Nether-Netherland, where horses can fly and jackalopes work for the government.”

  She settled on, “I travel a lot for work.”

  Not the most exciting revelation, but it was the only thing she could say without lying. This was the first and last time they were ever going to meet like this. Face-to-face. Voice to voice. There was already so much subterfuge between them, she really wanted him to know something true. To exist in his memory as Sarah-the-person, not Sarah-the-mirage.

  Javier leaned forward. “Me, too. Where have you traveled?”

  “Everywhere,” she answered simply. Everywhere he’d traveled, certainly. Thanks to him, she was familiar with every frequent-flier lounge on six continents. But she’d traveled much farther and far longer than that. Since before he was born. To worlds he’d never dreamed existed.