If it were any other guy under the age of thirty-five, she’d think he was checking her left hand for a wedding ring. But she suspected he was actually looking at her multitude of sterling silver rings and her black fingernails. That disapproval floated off him again, like a noxious cloud.
Pretentious jerk. She would have him know that Onyx was the hottest nail color of the season. Witches and nonwitches alike were wearing it.
“Yes. Children’s librarian and tarot card reader.” Deal with it. “Be home by midnight, Abby, I’m serious. I’ll see you all later.”
She had a spell to cast.
CHARLOTTE LOOKED AT ALL THE BAGS THAT BREE WAS DIGGING through in bewilderment. “What is all this stuff?”
“It’s camouflage mostly. You said Will doesn’t really have any decorations. So I bought a butt-load of Christmas decorations. It’s unreal how much tacky stuff they have on the market. So I bought a bunch of stuff and you can take it over to Will’s and decorate his apartment. That way he won’t think anything of you hanging up mistletoe.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Charlotte had followed the plan until the mistletoe bit, than she had realized the plan was crap. “I’m going to look like a desperate dork if I hang mistletoe in Will’s apartment.”
Flinging herself down onto the microfiber faux suede sofa she had in her office in a soothing plum color, Charlotte bit her lip. “I can’t do it, Bree. He’s going to know.”
“Isn’t that sort of the point?” Bree emerged with a sprig of mistletoe from a florist’s box.
“That looks real.”
“Well, duh. Fake isn’t going to work. It’s the live mistletoe that holds sexual energy.”
“It’s a plant. What is sexual about that?” Yet Charlotte found herself pulling back a little when Bree waved it in her face.
Bree laughed. “It’s not going to make you spontaneously aroused or anything. You can touch it.”
She was already aroused, and had been essentially every day since the very first minute she’d met Will on her twenty-first birthday, when he’d shown up at the Rampant Lion bar with his buddies, and caught her when she’d tripped getting off her stool, the embarrassing result of alcohol consumption and a poor choice of high heels.
“I don’t need to touch it. Just tell me what to do. This whole thing is way too out there for me.” Way too out there.
“Well, the mistletoe is associated with fertility, protection, friendship, good luck, and uninhibited sexual activity.”
Hello. “Wow. Impressive little green twig. I just thought it was an excuse people used to make out.”
“That, too.” Bree pulled some ribbon out of another bag and started tying it around one of the branches. “But originally Druids used mistletoe to ward off evil spirits and to increase fertility because it stays green all winter long, even when the oak tree it grows on is dormant. Green is the color of growth and fertility.”
Good grief. “I’m not looking to be fertile!” They needed to take things one step at a time.
“It’s also the color of love and sex.”
That she’d take. Both of them. In large quantities, please.
“Which is why I bought you a green sweater to wear.” Bree finished tying off the red ribbon and pulled a cable-knit sweater out of another bag. “It’s plain and boring, just the way you like your clothes.”
How thoughtful. Charlotte rolled her eyes. Her clothes were not boring. They were classic, made from quality materials and designed to flatter her decidedly average figure. She was of average height, average weight, average backside, slightly above average bra size. She looked best in form-fitting sweaters with crisp cotton blouses underneath and a good old pair of cords or khakis and some boots with a kicky heel. Most of her sweaters were in pastels since she was blond, or occasionally when she was dressing up, she went with red. She never wore the emerald green Bree was shoving at her.
“This is furthering my conviction that I’m going to make an idiot out of myself.”
“Why? It’s not like I just gave you a push-up bra, a thong, and thigh-high stockings and told you to go for it. It’s a cable-knit sweater, loser.”
Charlotte yanked it from her sister’s hand. “You’re not being very nice to me.”
Bree stopped pawing through yet another bag and looked at her. “Hey. I just want you to be happy,” she said softly.
Shoot. Sister guilt. “I know. But you’re freaking me out with all this stuff. And I really, really think Will is going to have a heart attack, run screaming, and never speak to me again if I try to drag him under mistletoe and chant his clothes off of him.”
“No chanting in front of him—that would be a bad idea. We’re just going to load this mistletoe with a nice little hexen-symbol for lust. Then you can just pull it out and hang it up anywhere in his apartment and you’ll be good to go. He will rip his clothes off all by himself, no chanting required.”
Bree opened a pack of markers. “Now choose your symbols. Do you want sex, love, dominance, serenity, thrusting?”
Thrusting? The image of that both in actuality and how it might appear on paper rose up in Charlotte’s mind. She reached up and redid her hair knot, mouth dry. “How many can I pick?”
“As many as you want.”
“Then I’ll take them all except for the dominance.” Her friendship with Will was very balanced, and if they went beyond a platonic relationship, she wanted that aspect to remain the same. Then she added, before she totally lost her nerve, “And give me three of the thrusting ones.”
“Dang, girl,” was Bree’s opinion of that. “You got it.”
Charlotte could only sincerely hope that she would in fact be getting it before the night was over.
Four
WILL DRIED HIMSELF OFF WITH A TOWEL AND DEBATED calling Bree and asking her what the hell she had meant earlier when she’d sworn to take care of things between him and Charlotte. He’d been worrying about that promise just about every minute since, and had concluded there was really only one thing he could do.
He needed to tell Charlotte the truth about his feelings before Bree did. He was twenty-nine years old. It would be lame as hell if the woman he loved found that little fact out from her sister. Jesus, the only thing worse would be a note folded up and passed across the room.
Charlotte deserved better. She deserved him looking her straight in the eye and telling her he loved her.
Which was why he’d taken a shower in anticipation of her coming over to put up his Christmas tree. He figured a guy ought to smell good when professing love, and if Bree was at all right—which he had to admit, he was hoping she was—then maybe, just maybe, they’d wind up naked before the night was out.
In fact, he was determined they were going to get naked. If she felt the same way about him, then he wasn’t going to dance around the issue anymore. He was going to dust off his dormant seduction skills and show Charlotte where she really belonged, which was with him, in his life, in his bed. Forever.
Damn it.
He was a cop. He’d taken a bullet in the shoulder in a robbery a few years back. Why had he been such a freaking wimp when it came to Charlotte?
Because he hadn’t wanted to lose her altogether. Having half of Charlotte, as a friend, was better than not at all, so he’d settled all those years. But no more. He wanted all of her.
His hair was bristle short, so it only required a quick rub for drying then he was done with it. Pulling on his boxer briefs, he opened the bathroom door to let out the steam and heard the phone ringing.
“Crap.” If that was Charlotte canceling, he was not going to be a happy man. Or worse, the police station calling him in. He loved his job, but at the moment, he had a woman to seduce.