Damsel Under Stress by Shanna Swendson Read Free Book Online Page A

being escorted to work by a taciturn gargoyle.
    Once I reached the office, I faced my next ordeal: dealing with all the office gossip about Owen and me. If I’d had my choice, I would have preferred to date secretly until our relationship was more secure. But we’d already been pretending to date to help flush out the bad guys, and then we hadn’t dropped the act once the crisis was over. I was pretty sure that, as shy as Owen was, if he’d thought about it, he wouldn’t have kissed me in public the way he had, but parties and excitement have a way of short-circuiting the brain. Plus, it was a very nice kiss and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
    Trix, the fairy who served as receptionist in the executive suite, greeted me with a flutter of her wings and a wink. “Hey, you! How was your weekend?”
    “It was good.”
    “Good? Is that all? I did notice what was going on at the office party, and you didn’t seem to need any mistletoe.”
    “We didn’t run off to Vegas over the weekend, if that’s what you were wondering. We just got together a couple of times. You know Owen, this thing isn’t going to move at light speed.” Then it was my turn to tease. “And anyway, I wasn’t the one who spent a good portion of the party in a broom closet with someone.”
    She immediately looked down at her desk and gave her wings a little flick. “That wasn’t our idea. Ari and that Idris guy put us there.”
    “But you did take advantage of the opportunity.”
    “Hey, I’m no dummy.” My turning the tables seemed to have worked, for she quickly became businesslike. “The boss wants you for a meeting at ten. His office.”
    “Thanks. I’ll be there,” I said before heading to my office.
    “This isn’t over!” she called after me. “You’re going to have to give me the full scoop sometime.”
    I ignored her and settled in at my desk to catch up on messages and e-mail before the meeting. I was the assistant to the boss, who was otherwise known as Ambrose Mervyn, CEO of Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc. If you did all the translation into and out of Welsh, Latin, and probably a few other languages in between, that came out as Merlin. Yes, the Camelot wizard. He’d founded MSI, in a noncorporate form, as a way of fine-tuning and regulating magic way back then, then had gone into a self-imposed magical hibernation until he was needed again. Our current problems with a rogue wizard trying to undercut our efforts to keep magic safe and on the good side of things had brought him back to lead the company.
    Just before ten, I gathered my supplies and headed for Merlin’s office. As I went through the doorway, I almost missed a step even though I was walking on an even surface. Owen was already in there, sitting at the conference table and twirling a pen between his fingers. I wondered if there would ever come a time when seeing him didn’t take my breath away. I should have known he’d be at any executive meeting since he usually represented the research and development department, but I still wasn’t prepared to see him again. He looked very nice dressed for work, as he always did, but he appeared even more tired than he had been the night before.
    “Oh, good, Katie, you’re here,” Merlin said, waving a hand to shut the door behind me. Owen looked up, saw me, gave a half smile, then turned bright red and looked down at the notebook that lay in front of him on the table. It seemed I wasn’t the only one feeling a little taken aback by seeing each other here.
    I took my usual seat at Merlin’s right hand, ready to take notes on the meeting so I could write up a report and note the items for follow-up. A moment later, the office door flew open and Sam the gargoyle soared inside to land on the back of the chair across from Owen. Merlin waved the door shut again. I wrote the date and time of the meeting on the top of my notepad while I waited for the rest of the department heads to arrive, but before I could