LITMIR.BIZ

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her. Nothing more. But he swore that with one more spark, the atmosphere between them would burst into flames. Could she not feel it? He was going to have to concentrate on baseball and his sister’s upcoming visit just to get through the day in such close quarters with Violet.

      “Did that mug do something to piss you off?” Violet asked in startled amusement. Doyle was scouring the thing as if it had been dipped in toxic waste.

      Doyle’s hands stilled beneath the stream of hot water and he gave Violet an abashed look. “Sorry, I guess I was daydreaming.”

      “About what, dismembering someone?” Violet laughed as she pulled the immaculate mug from his grip and nudged him out of the way. “You cooked; I’ll clean.”

      She took over, brooking no argument. He grinned at her back as she swayed between the sink and the dish rack, her movements graceful and efficient. His eye was drawn lower to the lush curve of her bottom, enticingly molded by the thin, soft material of her shorts.

      He turned abruptly and made himself go check on his drying clothes.

      ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

      Violet found she didn’t have to worry about cold showers after all. She put Doyle to work moving boxes out to the garage. Then she gave him the job of packing up the kitchen, the dishes and cookware and such, while she performed the more personal task of wrapping and boxing the various knickknacks and photos on display throughout the villa.

      Doyle continued to transfer packed items into the garage and spent some time making new boxes out of flattened stacks of folded cardboard. When he had finished everything he could think to do on his own, he went in search of Violet again and found her in a small office, tucked away in the rear corner of the villa.

      It was a neat jumble of bookshelves and filing cabinets. A computer desk faced a window that looked out onto the vibrant splashes of color tumbling across the backyard garden. Violet was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her mauve-painted toes peeking from beneath her knees, amidst scattered stacks of what appeared to be old mail.

      “What next, boss?” he asked softly.

      Her eyes lifted from the paper she was reading, blank and startled for a moment, before her face melted into a smile. She sat up and raised her arms in a back-popping stretch, groaning the stiffness away.

      Doyle stifled his own groan at the way her shirt clung to the ripe fullness of her breasts.

      “Sorry. I was just going through these credit card statements. Can you believe my parents were spending over $3000.00 a month on gas? I thought it was a mistake at first. After all, the woody can’t be that bad on gas mileage. But then I realized it must have been for their boat. I know that boats use a lot of fuel, and gas prices have almost doubled, but isn’t that a bit excessive?”

      Doyle shrugged and picked his way past the litter of papers to drop into a creaking office chair. “It depends. Manny and I take the Ocean Magic out five days a week, to the reefs and back, up to five times a day. And you don’t even want to know how much we average per month on gas. Just suffice it to say that we go well over $3000.00 on a slow month. What kind of boat did your parents have?”

      Violet’s lips curled in a little moue. “I don’t really know. It couldn’t have been very big though, maybe thirty feet? I think my dad said it had an ‘outboard motor’.”

      Doyle snorted. “Either it had a fuel leak, or they must have been taking it out every day,” he replied, lifting one golden-brown eyebrow.

      Violet shook her head as if trying to wrap it around the idea. “Well, they were retired. And they loved being out on the ocean. So I guess it’s not all that strange.”

      She shrugged and added the statement to a pile she’d already been through. “You’re ready for your next assignment?” she asked with an impish grin.

      Doyle gave her a sideways smile. “I don’t know. What’s my reward?”

      Her rosy lips formed an ‘O’ of feigned shock. “I thought you were helping me out of the kindness of your heart.”

      “I am.” His eyes sparkled with laughter. “But I thought kind deeds were meant to be rewarded.”

      “Hmm,” she sounded, biting her lip thoughtfully. “What sort of reward were you expecting?”

      Stark heat flared in his expression. “I hadn’t quite decided yet,” he said huskily.

      She let out a soft chuckle and pointed to a bookshelf. “Well start packing up those books, would you, and let me know when you decide what you want.” She dropped her head and began reviewing her paperwork once more.

      Doyle stared at the top of her head, a slow smile spreading across his face. His little school teacher was starting to flirt back. He went to retrieve some empty boxes for the books, trailing his fingertips lightly over her hair as he passed.

      Violet hid her smile, a surge of exhilaration coursing through her. He’d made another of his flustering, charged comments, and she’d given it right back this time. Now there was just one enthralling problem…what would he expect for his reward?

      ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

      There were four floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the office. Doyle started on the one farthest from Violet so as not to disturb her paper piles. He glanced over its contents—all reference books, mostly consisting of a bulky old set of encyclopedias, which made for the heaviest work so far as he carried them back to the garage.

      The next bookshelf contained a massive collection of dog-eared paperbacks, which were lighter once packed, but took longer to box up because there were more of them. They ranged from classic fiction, to romance, to mysteries, to true crime. He even noticed a few fantasy and horror titles mixed in.

      Violet began transferring the papers on the floor into a corner filing cabinet, and Doyle moved to the opposite wall and the third bookshelf. These were all teaching tomes, ranging from books on education, to student textbooks and workbooks for assorted subjects and grades.

      At last he reached the final, and most interesting, bookcase. His eyes traveled over multi-colored volumes of varying height and thickness. Some of the jackets were fashioned from cloth or hide as opposed to paper. A few of the titles had faded into illegibility, their spines so brittle they looked as if they might disintegrate on contact.

      Here he noted an impressive range of mythology from different cultures throughout the world, alongside folktales, faerie tales, books on mysticism and witchcraft, and even spell grimoires. He opened a rather dusty volume on Celtic legends, with a green cloth cover stenciled in gold lettering, and grinned to find a surprisingly accurate chapter dedicated to his own people, the sidhe.

      It was always a bit bizarre when he came across a true account of the faerie realm that the humans had relegated to the category of fiction. It hadn’t always been that way. Many years ago, before he was born, contact between the realms had been far more common. The humans had been more in tune with the earth and the ways of magic. They had believed.

      But as the generations went on they had been taught to ignore his kind, and a veil had fallen over their eyes. As a result, many of the denizens of the faerie realm who could not pass for mortal creatures, such as the sprites, had become invisible to humans.

      The Seelie Court, who worked to maintain the eternal balance between good and evil, had been forced to put measures in place to uphold the separation between the realms. They feared mass chaos would erupt if the humans were suddenly confronted with the fact that a realm of immortal beings coexisted alongside their own. Doyle understood, but he thought it was a shame.

      The two realms had so much they could learn from each other.

      “How do you expect to earn your reward if you keep slacking off?”

      Violet’s teasing voice interrupted Doyle’s musings, and he realized he was staring into space, still holding the book on Celtic legends. He smiled to find her looking up at him from amidst a new

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