Genie Knows Best by Judi Fennell Read Free Book Online Page B

Dad’s illness, the house, the staff, the company, and everything else, she’d actually been glad of the reprieve.
    Her hormones, however, apparently hadn’t been and were more than willing to make up for lost time. Now, however, was not that time.
    She shook her head, took two more steps away from Kal, and then turned around. “You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”
    “I do.” Dirham hopped to his feet with his perpetual smile, but then it faltered and he dropped his shoulders. “Lexy just doesn’t know it yet.”
    Kal stared at her, then shook his head. “What makes you ask that, Samantha?”
    She crossed her arms. “Your lantern, for one thing. You have to be a tad snug in there, given its size. I don’t see how another person could fit in it with you.”
    “Lexy says size doesn’t matter,” chirped Dirham.
    No one on the carpet said a word.
    Wayne, on the other hand, shouted a very descriptive expletive from the street that was not only heard, crystal clear, above the din, but also actually had something to do with Dirham’s malapropism.
    Samantha tried to get that whole image out of her head. “And secondly, you obviously don’t have a girlfriend because when a woman says she’d like something, it usually means she wants it.”
    “Ah.” Kal nodded. “So you wish me to conjure up new clothing for you.”
    “If you could.”
    “Of course he can,” said Dirham, bouncing again. “It’s what he does.”
    Kal glanced at Dirham, then winked at Samantha. “As Dir says, it’s what I do.”
    Samantha waited.
    More expletives from Wayne filled the air, but Kal didn’t do the hand-waving thing.
    “Um… so?”
    “So what?”
    “Are you going to”—she swept her hand up and down in front of her djellaba —“you know, replace this?”
    “Is that what you wish, Samantha?”
    “Do I have to say ‘I wish’ any time I want something?”
    Kal nodded. “I can’t do anything to you unless you specifically wish it.”
    “That seems excessive. Why can’t you just go with implied wishes? And aren’t I supposed to only get three?”
    Kal arched an eyebrow. “Don’t believe the mythology. You get a lot more than three, and you should be thankful that you have to make a specific wish because that way, a genie can’t do anything to the master that the master doesn’t want. Just think if the genie didn’t like the master. Or if a genie’s magic got out of control. A lot could happen, so there are rules.”
    “You’re going to have to go over those with me because you gave me food and wine when I hadn’t asked for them.”
    “That’s different. I can conjure up things to give you comfort, but I can’t do something to your person without your express wish.”
    She knew a few things he could do to her person…
    So much for being burned by Albert; being burned by Kal was so much better.
    Samantha cleared her throat and prayed he couldn’t tell her face was burning. “Alrighty then. I wish you’d conjure up an appropriate outfit for me.”
    Kal waved his fingers again, but Samantha didn’t have any sensation of her clothes disappearing or something new showing up on her body. One second she was in the djellaba and the next—
    “Are you kidding me?” She fingered the yellow-green gauzy harem pants and half shirt. Typical guy.
    She brushed the orange glitter away and glared at him—and tried not to notice that he was anything but typical. Heart-stoppingly devastating with the wind blowing through his hair, that same wind tossing the edges of his vest aside as he stood there, hands fisted on his hips, looking like something out of every woman’s fantasy. Definitely a guy but definitely not typical.
    “I wasn’t attempting to be humorous, Samantha.”
    Good thing because she wasn’t laughing.
    No, she was mentally smacking herself upside the head. Leprechauns and gnomes, a dragon who could fry her to a crisp, Albert’s betrayal… and she was obsessing over a good-looking guy? And not