Page 75 of Strike It Witch

I stacked the wet dishes on a wooden board I placed atop the range. My makeshift drying rack. “Tomorrow night.”

“What time? Where? Here?”

I dragged my teeth over my lower lip as I strategized about how much to tell him. This was going to be tricky enough without a bunch of wolves underfoot.

“We need to be there, Betty,” Ronan said. “It’ll benefit you, too. We’ll be able to protect you.”

The look I gave him made him sigh. “Oh yeah, Ronan, because when I think about Alpha Floyd the wordprotectioncomes directly to mind.”

“What about when you think about me?”

“You?”

“Yeah.” His grin matched his tone. Low, warm, and sexy. “What word comes to mind when you think about me?”

I hoped the man did not have the ability to read minds, because not one answer that popped into my head was below an R-rating.

Ronan slid down the bench seat and rose, coming up behind me. His fingers grazed my outer thigh as he reached around me for a dish towel. A bead of sweat formed between my shoulder blades and trickled slowly down my spine.

He picked up a glass and dried it. “Well?”

“Wolf,” I said, quickly. “Friend.” I tried that one on for size, and it didn’t feel genuine, so I added, “Trustedfriend.”

“You trust me?” His voice tickled my ear. I didn’t even try to hide my shiver.

“As much as I trust anyone from the pack,” I said, without thinking.

Winter blew into his expression, frosting his words. “I am more than my pack.”

Although I regretted the temperature change in the room, I hadn’t been lying. “Your first responsibility will always be to the Pallás wolves. Just as if I were part of a coven, I’d be expected to give my first allegiance to them. It is what it is.”

He didn’t say I was wrong, but he didn’t outright agree, either. “Is that why you don’t join the coven here? You don’t want to commit to any—thing?”

Had he been about to say anyone?

Our gazes connected and, for a second, I caught a glimpse of the man I’d met a couple of years ago in his pub. A man I’d instantly liked during a time when I’d hated the whole world except for Ida and Fennel.

He broke the stare first, returning his focus to drying the other iced tea glass.

“I don’t join the coven here for two reasons.” I scrubbed the peanut butter knife until it was shiny clean. “One, I don’t plan to make this place my permanent home. Locking myself into a coven would complicate my eventual exit.”

He didn’t speak for a long moment. Finally, he asked, “No luck finding a buyer?”

“There haven’t been a ton of offers, which isn’t surprising. It’d take a very specific sort of magical to want to run a senior paranormal trailer park in a small town smack in the middle of the sweltering low desert in Nowhere, California,” I drawled.

“Hey, we’re not nowhere. We’re somewhere. Just somewhere excruciatingly hot from late May to October. Once you’re clear of those months, it’s nice here.”

“Well, sure. If you don’t count the last half of spring up until the middle of fall, we’re great,” I said, and we both laughed. “On the subject, though, a mage who found my contact information at Beau’s called yesterday to set up a time to take a look at the place. If he resonates with the soil well enough, it might work. We’ll see.”

“Beau’s Oddities? The head shop on Main? You posted an ad onStoner Beau’sbulletin board?”

“Yeah. The shop’s more than bongs and rolling paper, you know. Beau’s got his fingers in a lot of pies.”

Ronan grimaced. “I’m going to go ahead and not think about Stoner Beau’s fingers in pies, if it’s all the same to you.”

I would’ve corrected Ronan on the nickname, but I’d heard Beau refer to himself as Stoner Beau a few times, so it must nothave bothered him. Knowing Beau, he’d purposely cultivated the image of himself as a clueless pothead. People would discount “Stoner Beau the head shop owner,” where they might take a closer look at “Beau Glazier, dealer in rare paranormal books and artifacts.”

“Resonates with the soil,” Ronan said, circling back to what I’d said before. “Why is that important?”

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