LITMIR.BIZ

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she wouldn’t fit into chic clothes nearly as well, assuming she ever wore anything more chic than the leggings and baggy shirt she had on at the moment. He didn’t care. Naked she’d be gorgeous, and naked was how he wanted her.

      Brittany’s straight, blond hair fell with flawless precision around her face.

      Annabelle’s hair looked as though it had escaped from an unclipped standard poodle, taken root on her head, and kept growing until it reached her shoulder blades. He longed to run his fingers into it and feel it curl, bury his face in all that extravagance.

      This wasn’t love. It was lust. Lust he could handle.

      Annabelle didn’t seem to care much about her looks. At the moment she’d eaten off her lipstick, her nose was shiny, and she had a smudge of blue pattern pencil along her jaw. But then, she’d been working all day. Hard, physical labor. Ben remembered that much. Sewing might look easy, but it knotted the shoulders and wounded the hands. As he had wounded her hand—and more. God, how could he have been so stupid and clumsy! His remark must have cut her deeply.

      Now, Brittany was something else. She was in public relations. She never met a stranger. She smiled easily. She could schmooze anyone.

      So how come Brittany suddenly seemed to him as unformed as a lump of Play-Doh? How come her blond good looks now seemed as bland as cornstarch? And this wild woman made him want to leap on her out of his tree and drag her off to his lair to be his mate for life?

      He groaned, threw up his hand to hit himself in the forehead, and overbalanced.

      “Hey!” he yelped as his feet lost their purchase. He grabbed for the limb over his head just as the one he sat on gave way under his weight.

      He fell. He grabbed at a couple of branches to slow his progress, wrenched his shoulder, and managed to catch himself eight feet from the ground, where he hung for a moment before he dropped ingloriously onto the grass.

      Annabelle stared at him openmouthed.

      “I can explain.” He stood up and held his hands in front of him, palms up.

      She took a deep breath. “Are you all right? You look a mess.”

      “I’m fine.”

      “What on earth were you doing in that tree?”

      She took a few steps toward him, and reached out to brush the lapel of his jacket.

      “I can explain,” he said again.

      It took all his willpower not to grab her wrist and drag her into his arms. The touch of her fingertips raised the hair at the nape of his neck, and several other portions of his anatomy that hadn’t been this out of control since he’d turned thirteen.

      “So?” she said with her eyes on the shoulder of his jacket where she brushed off leaves and twigs.

      “So what?” He stared down at her. That blue smudge was adorable.

      “You said you could explain.”

      “Oh.”

      He closed his eyes as she continued her progress around his body, brushing him off lightly. She grabbed the shoulders of his jacket and wrenched it back into place, then walked around in front of him again with her eyes just above his belt buckle.

      “You can take care of the rest of you.”

      Thank God. If she’d tried to brush off his chinos, she’d have been in for one hell of a surprise.

      “And your hair. You’re wearing a crown of leaves like Pan.”

      He swept his hair back from his forehead and brushed down the front of his trousers.

      “Well? I’m waiting.” She stepped away from him with her hands on his hips. Now, finally, she looked into his eyes.

      “I, uh. Look, come sit in the gazebo a minute.”

      She shook her head. “I’ve still got an hour’s work to do cleaning up the mess upstairs.”

      “You came outside.”

      “To keep from screaming in frustration, actually. And then you fall out of the skies practically on top of me.”

      He shoved his hands into the pockets of his chinos. “Okay. I made such a jackass of myself in there, I came out here and climbed into the tree to calm down and think up some way to apologize. Then, when you came out, I lost my balance.”

      “You could have announced your presence.”

      “I know. Sorry.”

      “Spies do not thrill me.”

      “I was not spying on you, Annabelle,” he lied. “I was thinking that I am not usually a social nitwit. I’m sorry.”

      “Apology accepted.” She turned to go back into the house.

      Suddenly the day seemed dark. “Wait!” He reached for her forearm. “How about dinner?”

      “What?”

      “Dinner. Me, you, tonight.”

      “Now I know you’re crazy.” She pointed toward the house. “I think you already have a date, Mr. District Attorney. And I suspect she’s wondering where the heck you’ve gotten to.”

      He let her go, and leaned back against the trunk of the tree. This could not be happening. Not to Ben Jackson. His mother had slipped a love potion into his tea while they were waiting for Brittany.

      He had a brain tumor, or an aneurysm that had burst suddenly. There had to be some rational explanation.

      He closed his eyes. Whatever had occurred, he had to fix it, exorcise it, reverse the spell, before it devoured him, his career plans, his goals and the rest of his life in a hapless, fruitless pursuit of a woman who not only was unsuitable in every respect, but who obviously didn’t even like him.

      “WHAT HAVE YOU been up to?” Elizabeth Langley said to her son. “You’re a mess.”

      “I—uh—I tripped on the patio. The bricks were slick.”

      “Really.” His mother accepted the explanation readily enough, or so it seemed to Ben. “Brittany and I have designed her dress for the ball. Period enough to work for the Steamboat’s 1880 theme, but modern enough to wear to the symphony or one of the secret-society parties during carnival.”

      “Can I see the design?”

      Brittany laughed. The sound, which had enchanted him only hours before, now sounded as raucous as a crow’s. “No, you cannot, you naughty thing. It’s bad luck!” She stretched back on the couch as his mother picked up her sketch pad and notebooks and went to put them back into the armoire in the corner.

      “Actually, that only applies to wedding dresses,” his mother said.

      Brittany giggled. Ben decided he must have been drugged to be able to change his opinion about a woman this beautiful so quickly and so totally.

      He blinked, opened his eyes and hoped against hope that the Brittany he had liked would be back.

      No such luck. He could still appreciate her beauty, but she no longer moved him any more than if she’d been carved out of marble.

      “Now, children, off to dinner you go,” Elizabeth said. “I have my own plans.”

      Ben tried desperately to think of some way to get out of his date, but he’d been raised better than that, and Brittany hadn’t done one thing wrong. The responsibility was his alone, his and his witch mother, who had set him up and cast a spell on him.

      Maybe it was like the twenty-four-hour flu. He’d wake up tomorrow morning cured of Annabelle Langley.

      He heard the two women making leaving sounds without registering the words. He followed them to the door, and held it while they air kissed.

      “Coming, sweetie?”

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