“Excuse me,” she said, as she slipped past him in the narrow space between her sink and the center island. She couldn’t help but brush against him, though, and she gasped when the zing of electricity from the touch of his chest against her shoulder went straight to her nipples.
She involuntarily looked up and realized that she hadn’t been the only one affected. His dark, liquid brown eyes had darkened, and his oh-so-male broad chest expanded as he took in a deep breath, almost as if he were inhaling her scent.
“You smell like sunshine, too,” he said, so quietly she almost didn’t hear him.
Rose inhaled sharply and took a step back. Back away from the crazy man who talked about how she smelled. Who looked like a fierce warrior and dressed like one of the Men in Black.
The dark, conservative suit seemed like a disguise meant to mask the predator wearing it. He moved with lethal grace, but his face had the hard lines and angles of a soldier. Everything she’d never wanted anywhere near her, in other words. So why were her thighs clenching against a rush of sensation?
Right now, those deliciously dark eyes were staring at her with a heat that had nothing to do with anger, and a sense of awareness deep within her went on high alert.
“I can fix him,” she said, dropping her gaze; taking the coward’s way out of the moment. “I just need another vial of this restorative potion.”
She ducked past him to the refrigerator, not sure whether she was relieved or disappointed when he moved back to let her pass.
“That pink stuff will bring Mac back?” His eyebrows shot up. “The sparkly pink liquid in that tiny vial is enough to counteract a basilisk’s stare?”
“Well, no, it will probably take at least two,” she said, mentally crossing her fingers. Actually, she wasn’t as certain as she pretended. Two vials had barely brought the paperboy back. It had taken too long, too, and she’d breathed a deep sigh of relief when he’d finally reanimated.
Mac was a full-grown man. On second thought, she grabbed a third, then fourth vial. Bob still needed to be restored, after all. Her eyes widened when she realized that Alejandro’s closeness had driven all thought out of her mind, even her concern for her cat.
Gritting her teeth, Rose berated herself for letting a man mess with her mind like that. She was the reasonable one of the Cardinal witches, after all.
Rose the Rational. The only one in the family with any common sense.
As she brushed past Alejandro again and inhaled his exotic scent of spice and something else—something purely masculine—she resented it all, though. Just once, she’d like to be the wild child. The one who threw caution out the window and ran straight at whatever she wanted, both arms open wide to grab it.
She almost laughed, imagining what Alejandro’s expression would be if she dropped the vials and jumped him. The poor man would probably run for his helmet and witch-proof vest.
Still grinning, she knelt down next to Bob and carefully put three of the vials on the floor next to her and uncapped the fourth.
“You’re going to help your cat before Mac?” Alejandro’s voice held an ocean of disbelief.
“Bob has been frozen longer,” she replied evenly.
Holding her breath, Rose offered up a silent prayer and carefully poured the sparkling liquid on Bob’s head and then rocked back on her heels to wait.
“Aren’t you going to say something?”
Alejandro had moved closer, so the fabric of his pants leg was almost touching Rose’s shoulder. She turned toward him to answer, which brought her face just about level with the fascinating bulge in his pants.
She froze, and one of them, possibly her, gasped, and Alejandro quickly took a step back. Rose whipped her head away so she faced her cat, and so Alejandro wouldn’t see the blush flaming its way up her neck to her cheeks.
“Be my guest,” she snapped. “Try abracadabra. That’s always a crowd pleaser.”
“Look, I didn’t--”
But the Bob statue finally began to show some movement. At first a shudder worked its way through the stone, and then it slowly dissolved, until only one perfectly furry and very cranky cat remained. Bob hissed at Alejandro and then leapt down from the window seat and stalked away down the hall, head and tail held high to show his disdain for the entire ordeal.
“That took a little longer than I’d like,” Rose said, biting her lip. “Will you please grab one more vial out of the fridge?”
She didn’t wait for his response, but ran outside, and by the time she began to uncap the first vial, Alejandro joined her. Mac stood, solid and imposing, exactly where she’d left him. Not that she’d expected anything else, but Rose’s stomach clenched at the sight of what must be hundreds of pounds of stone.