Page 15 of Head Witch in Charge (The Sherwood Witches #2)

Erik…

All the shit they say about my family and me? The blackmail? The extortion? The double-dealing? The underhanded plots? All of it’s true.

Yes, I dognapped our neighbor’s pug (he’s living a much better life with a family in Toledo who doesn’t lock him up in a closet or forget to feed him, but best of all, I don’t have to hear his high-pitched yips anymore while I’m trying to sleep).

The stories about sneaking into the city council’s office and replacing the official cauldron with a rotten pumpkin spelled to look like the real thing?

That was me. (It’s hard to take votes on eliminating city services when your cauldron is a fast-deteriorating squash.

I only did it so my sister, who is always at the local library, would stop ranting about the cuts.

It was ruining my dinner every night because it’s all she would talk about.)

Did I take compromising photos of the CEO of Hex House Inc.

and blackmail him into not buying the historical home of my brother’s favorite alchemist just to bulldoze it down and put up a parking lot?

Yes. And it saved me hours of my brother reciting all of the witch’s accomplishments every morning before I’d even finished my first cup of elderberry tea.

(Fine, I also posted the pics on my WitchyGram alt profile because the guy was a dick and it made me happy to do it. So I’m petty. Big whoop.)

Then there’s the stories about my family.

Selling state secrets for cash. Ransoming people to get the deed of what is now our family seat.

Being double agents who are actually triple agents who are actually quadruple agents in tense state-level negotiations with the real beneficiary being ourselves?

Without a doubt, that’s us. We’ve been like this since the first Svensen witch set foot in the United States and reneged on a peaceful deal with the local tribe already here for a thousand acres of prime coastline.

Why pay for something when you could just steal it? That is the Svensen way.

Well, mostly.

Unlike me, my siblings, Cy and Sigrid, don’t fit the Svensen mold. I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be them and have people look at you and say all the shit they do about your family and know they are wrong when it comes to you.

That question was purely academic for me until Vegas—until LeLe. With her, I was just Erik who made a mean martini, was shit at cards, and knew exactly where to kiss to make her whole body tighten with anticipation.

But now?

Even going seventy miles per hour down the highway, there’s no mistaking that all she sees when she glances in my direction is one of those dirty, rotten, no-good Svensens—not that I care. That’s who I am, and I don’t make any apologies for it.

So there really is no point in breaking LeLe’s impressive two-hour silent marathon as we speed down the two-lane road. She wants a divorce. That’s not going to happen. Marrying her is a vital part of my plan to get rid of dear old Dad.

I relax my hold on the steering wheel because I am not going to let her silence get to me.

I don’t give a shit what she thinks. The time in Vegas with her had me second-guessing my plan, thinking that maybe there was another way when I know damn well there isn’t.

It is what it is, and there’s not one chance in a billion that I’ll change my mind.

Still, I can’t stop sneaking glances at her. LeLe doesn’t rant and rave like my dad. She doesn’t promise retribution. She doesn’t swear to take it out on anyone I care about so I’d suffer by knowing that their pain was my fault.

Instead, she’s back to being the ice princess I’ve met over the years at various Witchingdom events.

The LeLe from Vegas—the one who danced in the hotel lobby, who ate whipped cream straight from the spray can, and who bluffed her way into winning a pot of chips with a pair of fours—doesn’t exist any more than the good guy Erik does.

If she were anything to me beyond a means to an end, that would sting. It might even have haunted me every time I walked by a bakery with a “Hot Donuts” sign or looked in a mirror or even fucking inhaled.

I can assure you it didn’t.

I’ve barely thought about that moment at all.

And the fact that I avoid any dessert with whipped topping is for my own reasons that have nothing to do with LeLe.

All of that is exactly why I keep my mouth shut and drive, why I keep my breathing steady despite the pressure in my chest (to be expected after a long fucking day), and why I’m ignoring the woman in the passenger seat just as hard as she’s ignoring me.

When Bessie drops to a quarter of a tank, I start scanning the side of the highway for gas station signs. However, it’s not a gas station that has me flicking on my blinker a few miles later. It’s a sign for the Strawbery Banke Inn.

LeLe whips around in her seat to face me, annoyance as clear as the line of freckles across her nose. “Why are we turning off?”

“We need to stop for the night.” A good night’s sleep will work out the chest tightness that has crawled up to my shoulders and settled in for what feels like an eternity.

“I can drive,” she says.

I don’t take my eyes off the narrow country road that looks like it was designed by someone who’d had twelve too many pints of mugwort ale.

LeLe, though, is not about to take my silence as an answer, judging by the way she’s glaring at me with her arms crossed and her chin tilted up in the universal position of try-me-asshole.

It’s cute.

Now don’t start chewing my ass, I don’t mean that in a patronizing way. It actually is cute.

Hot.

Sexy.

Fuck. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel and concentrate on keeping my foot on the gas pedal instead of moving it over to the brake so I can pull off to the side of the road and— What?

Kiss her? Oh yeah, she definitely wants to make out with you, Svensen.

It’s written all over her face. Oh wait.

Her expression says fuck you , not fuck me .

I swear to the fates I’m going to get a twitch in my left eye if I can’t get my shit together around her.

This is exactly what happened in Vegas. Every time I was with her for longer than a few minutes, I forgot the mission, the plan, the whole point of being with her.

That can’t happen again, not with only a few weeks until the power transfer ceremony.

“One, you haven’t slept either,” I say as I keep my eyes peeled for anything that goes bump in the night and is hiding in the woods crowding the road, half hoping to see something so I can use it as an outlet for all the annoyance at myself running through my veins.

“Two, no one drives Bessie but me. Three, you don’t know where you’re going. ”

She snorts. “You could tell me.”

“I can’t. In addition to cursing the secret facility so it couldn’t be reached by magic, my ever-trusting great-great-great-grandfather laid a hex down on all future generations that we could never give anyone directions to it.

” The Svensens don’t just distrust anyone outside of the family.

In fact, I’d say we’re most suspicious of those who share our DNA.

She lets out an unhappy harrumph and turns her attention back to the road. “Your family has issues.”

I laugh, but it sounds hollow even to me. “Finally, something we can agree on.”

“Is that your plan this time?” she asks, her tone sharp. “Make me feel bad for you because your entire family is awful so that I get all ooey-gooey and forget about the divorce?”

Yeah, that divorce spell is never going to happen, but I keep my mouth shut about that. No reason to piss off the woman even more than she already is.

“Not everyone in my family is bad,” I say, imagining Cy in his lab, his hair going every which way, and Sigrid curled up with a book, the pages of which are all waved because she’d dropped it reading in the pool. “Just the vast majority of us.”

She rolls her eyes and gives a little snort that doesn’t take a genius to translate as “uh-huh, sure.”

Then she turns her body away from me and stares out at the woods on either side of the road, returning to the silent treatment.

My shoulders cinch up a little more until I swear it feels like they’re about to brush my earlobes. I have got to work her out of my system.

No. Not like that.

At least not this time.

It takes a few more minutes of driving slow down a twisting gravel drive that has me wincing every time a pebble shoots up from the road and pings Bessie’s undercarriage to get to the inn.

I pull into a spot in the small parking lot next to an ancient pickup truck that might be more rust than metal at this point.

I double-check the wards over Bessie’s glove box, where The Liber Umbrarum is stored away, and the Cadillac itself.

Then I’m out and around the front of the car to open her door vampire-quick. I’m a dick, but I do have manners.

LeLe, however, opens her door before I get the chance.

She raises an eyebrow as if to ask what I am going to do about it.

There are a lot of things I’d like to do right now, but absolutely none of them involve fighting about the car door, so I swerve around her and pop the trunk and pull out both of our suitcases.

She struts over and holds out her hand. “I can carry mine.”

I shoot her a wink and a sly smile. “I know.”

“So give it to me,” she says through clenched teeth, obviously annoyed.

Her cheeks are flushed the same shade as when she’s coming down from an orgasm, and there’s a snap, crackle, pop in her one-blue-and-one-green eyes that promises all sorts of trouble.

And that’s the thing.

I like trouble.

“You’re such a jerk,” she says, her gaze dropping to my mouth before jerking back up.

A nice guy would pretend not to have noticed, however, we’ve already established I’m not that guy. “That may be true, but you still want to kiss me.”