“I don’t even like alpha males,” she whispered, whirling around to face the stove and her pot of Connor’s conversation potion.
“Ha,” Sue said, crowding into Rose at the stove. “That’s what I said when I met your father and next thing I knew, I was pregnant with you.”
“Mom,” Rose hissed, more than a little freaked out. “I so don’t want to hear about your sex life.”
“She was a wild one,” Granny said, suddenly able to hear perfectly for someone who spent a lot of her time yelling “what?” at everyone around her. “I was glad your dad married her before she got knocked up by some wandering poltergeist.”
“Granny!” Astrid shrieked, covering her face with one hand but peeking up at Connor through her fingers and looking intrigued. “Poltergeists can have sex?”
Connor stared wildly around, probably looking for the best way to make a break for it.
Alejandro came down with a sudden coughing fit, and Rose glared at him, realizing perfectly well that he was trying not to laugh his ass off at her crazy family.
“You are never going to be invited over here again if you don’t behave,” Rose told Granny sternly, trying desperately to take charge of the situation.
“Ha! You need a hot man yourself to take the edge of that crankiness,” Granny retorted.
Rose’s gaze involuntarily went to Alejandro, and his eyes darkened with a surge of heat that nearly seared her clothes off. She raised her chin and tried to pretend her knees hadn’t just gone shaky.
“Okay, that’s enough. Everybody out,” Sue ordered, in full-on Mom—or drill sergeant--mode. “Mom, you and Astrid go sit on the couch. Connor, go with them. We’ll bottle up this potion and bring it right out to you. It’s on the house this time. Alejandro, go—go outside and check on your partner.”
While Rose watched in disbelief, everyone did exactly what her mom had told them to do, even Alejandro, who smiled at Sue and touched his forehead in a kind of salute. But when Sue turned to the stove to dish up the potion, Alejandro caught Rose’s arm and pulled her along with him. When they reached the door, he bent his head down to hers, and Rose had to catch her breath at the thought that he meant to kiss her.
“I don’t know what or why or how, but you are singing along my nerves, Querida, and I would be very happy to volunteer to take off any . . . edges . . . that you need me to,” he murmured in her ear.
Rose caught her breath as a shiver traveled up her spine from her hoo-hah. “I don’t . . . I don’t . . .”
“But I do, lovely Rose. I have no idea why, but I do,” he said, but frustration drew his dark eyebrows into a frown, and he glanced down at his watch again. “No magic. How is this possible?”
His accent, which whispered through her like warm honey, deepened, and she had to almost physically slap her unruly hormones to keep herself from falling into his arms. She took a deep breath to dispel the haze of attraction that was fizzing through her brain, but it didn’t do a darn bit of good.
“You’re not the only one who doesn’t understand,” she admitted.
His eyes lit up and he laughed, and if she’d though his voice was sexy before, his laugh was sinful.
“I think I’m in trouble,” she said.
“I am right there with you,” he replied, staring at her mouth. “If I could only--”
But she didn’t get to find out what he was going to say, because Granny shrieked and then moaned; a long, mournful sound that snaked chills through the room.
“Not again,” Rose groaned.
“Oh, crap, she’s having another premonition,” Sue said, grabbing Connor’s vial of potion and rushing out.
Alejandro followed Rose down the hall after Sue. “What is going on?”#p#分页标题#e#
“My grandmother. She’s a Seer. And she evidently picked now to gift us with her latest harbinger of doom,” Rose said, sighing.
“You have quite a family,” Alejandro said, and she almost could have sworn he was laughing again, but she refused to turn around and look at him. Not for the first time in her life, and probably not for the last, Rose briefly wished she’d been born into any other family than hers.
When they got to the living room, Granny was in full bore Seer Mode, which involved her eyes rolling back in her head, her hair floating straight up in the air, and, for some reason they’d never been able to understand, her socks wrapped around her elbows. She was still shrieking and moaning, and Bob was standing on top of the back of the couch hissing at her. Connor, looking terrified, was edging backward behind the cat and the couch.