A Wish Upon Jasmine by Laura Florand Read Free Book Online

had been.
    Or maybe it had felt as if she’d found his heart. Dug it out of its secret evil sorcerer hiding place, only she wasn’t on a quest to kill him with a dagger through it, she was holding it in gentle, wondering hands.
    Yeah, right.
    Nobody did that with him. Gave him gentleness or trusted him to have any of his own.
    And it turned out, she hadn’t trusted him with it either. Fuck, maybe that softness was because she’d had a glass too many of champagne and he hadn’t even realized it.
    He stopped in the door of the workshop.
    Jess Bianchi stood on her tiptoes on the very edge of a counter, reaching for the highest shelf, her thumb rubbing away the dust that covered the label on a jar.
    Her legs looked fantastic in that whimsical white sundress, her bare feet arched, the dress clinging to her torso and butt as she stretched, a wobble away from falling and cracking her head.
    He moved under her and had to take a second to enjoy that round, firm butt just above his head before he could bring himself to mess up the view. “Jess.”
    She gave a startled cry, clutched for the bottle as her toe slipped off the edge of the counter, and fell with a scream.
    He caught her, of course, pulling her in hard to his chest. I’ve got you. You’re okay. The dress was a more informal style than the one she had worn that night, but the skirt had that same romantic flow of fabric over his arm, that pale color, as if he’d caught something as young and innocent as a dream.
    Even though it had taken him no effort at all to catch her, the heart he wasn’t supposed to have started to beat too hard. Waking up, hopeful, like a child half asleep but just starting to remember from the scents in the air that it was Christmas.
    And she yanked away from him as hard as she could, putting a good two meters between them, clutching the jar that had fallen with her. “What the hell was the point of that? To scare me? To let me know I’m in your power?”
    He checked a tiny second. Not too long, he didn’t think. He just had to stop his heart beating, had to put that damn organ back away, buried under some great tree in an ancient forest, where she couldn’t get at it. It hurt, putting it back. The hole for it felt dark and small and damp.
    A child being stuffed into a closet when all the other kids were opening their presents.
    He had to press his lips together hard. “I was just—” His gaze got distracted on her hair, a lock pulled free from that loose knot between her shoulders and tangled over her face. He rubbed his thumb over the side of his finger, trying to scrape the sensation of that hair away. “I thought you would fall no matter where I said your name, so it was better I be right under you.”
    She stared at him distrustfully, the dusk of her eyes all dark gray now, no blue.
    His fingers curled into his palm. “I’d hate for you to die when I was on the premises,” he said sardonically. “Even the Rosier name might not get me off for that one.”
    Jesus. Were they actually talking about whether he might murder her? When she…that night…that way she’d seemed to trust him. With everything that was soft and sweet and true.
    Fuck.
    He wanted to hit someone.
    Maybe a mirror of himself.
    “I brought Mace,” she said, and pulled a little bottle out of her pocket.
    He took a step back, in a reflex against actual Mace, and then made out what she held: a small bottle of perfume. A perfumer of her caliber could definitely find oils in this shop that would blind a man or leave him coughing uncontrollably if sprayed into his face.
    Then he recognized the shape of the bottle and laughed before he even realized that laugh was going to happen. It was Spoiled Brat.
    Humor sparkled across her face, this flash of self-satisfaction. She waved the bottle menacingly.
    “You wouldn’t dare.” The joke of it eased something in him like a flash of light. He’d always liked to laugh. He used to do it with his cousins all the time,