Page 85

And it might not be the magic that he felt a moment before, but it was more important. It was something.

They climbed down from the tree. Collected their beer bottles and climbed down the ladder.

She had two more steps to go, and he couldn’t help himself. He reached up and grabbed her by the waist and lifted her down. Turned her toward him.

She looked up at him, her eyes glittering, her lips parted.

He wasn’t going to kiss her.

So he just reached out and put his thumb on her chin, traced a line along her jaw and back to the center again. “You’re something else, Bix. Don’t ever forget that.”

After that he took a step back, and turned away from her. Because he had to leave quickly. Before he lost the intention he’d just set.

Tonight had been something different. A little step off the straight and narrow. It had been a little bit magic too.

But magic was for other people.

And Bix was magic entirely.

Chapter Fifteen

The day of the next town hall meeting saw Bix careening around King’s Crest like a windmill. And Daughtry wishing that he could calm down his physical reaction to it. She was...

She was really something.

And he had already made his decisions about her last night. When they had been shrouded in moonlight.

When they had been wrapped in magic, and the kind of need that he had never experienced before. But then he’d found sanity at the end. Maybe.

Because then he had gone back home, and out the back to dig around the yard and find a present just for her. One he wanted to give her today, but not until after she had given the speech.

And now all he could do was sit back and watch her exploding with energy as she breathed new life into this place. Into everything she did.

“Can I help you with anything?” he asked, going into the outbuilding, and bristling when he saw Michael there.

“No,” said Bix. “We’ve got it.”

He didn’t like that. He didn’t want Bix to be beholden to him, but he also wanted to be the only one that helped her. And that was pretty ridiculous behavior.

He didn’t act on it, though, and that was the crucial thing that made him a little bit less of a dick. Maybe.

So he went back to some of the finish work he was doing on the barn, and did his best to pretend he wasn’t mostly watching Bix.

She ran across the parking lot in front of the outbuilding she was using to brew, her skirt flying up and revealing more leg than he imagined she realized.

No, it wasn’t only her physical beauty that held him in thrall. But sometimes, for a moment, it was.

She had great legs. She had great everything.

And he knew that he wasn’t in a great space to put himself in proximity to her today.

But when it was time for them to all go over to the town hall, he found himself claiming Bix as his passenger a little bit more aggressively than necessary.

She was in a dress again, and if he wasn’t mistaken, she had on a little bit of lip gloss and some shimmering eye shadow.

“I got some makeup from your sister,” she said. “I thought that it made me look a little bit more... serious or something.”

She looked glittery. Shiny and far too pretty.