Free Simply Irresistible by Kristine Grayson

backroom.
    He needed a little privacy for this spell, and he didn’t want to think about what he was going to do until he got back there, since he seemed to be shouting every thought.
    The backroom was crowded with unloaded boxes of Science Diet and lams cat food, books on all the various fish, and some aquariums ordered by a new restaurant but not yet picked up. He hadn’t put an office back here, preferring to work out front, but there was an area for animals that he didn’t want to sell, an area that dated from the time when he really took pets.
    Directly in front of him was the outside door. He double-checked the deadbolt and pushed on the steel just to make certain it was closed tightly. Then he closed the door to the tiny bathroom as well.
    Precautions, precautions. He hadn’t used magic this powerful in the store in years.
    Then he clenched his fists, trying to hold in all the anger he was feeling. He would save that until he saw those harpies face-to-face.
    “To the Fates,” he said, and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
     
    Chapter Six
     
    The headache was getting worse. It felt like someone was pounding on the inside of Vivian’s mind. Or maybe on the outside of her mind, and it was echoing inside. Or maybe the entire percussion staff of every marching band in the country had decided to rehearse in her head.
    Vivian plucked little Marco Polo off her lap and set him on the floor. The movement made her dizzy. She put a hand to her head and waited for the room to stop spinning.
    Just her luck to meet the handsomest man she had ever seen when she had the worst headache of her life. She wasn’t even certain she had been speaking English—and then when he seemed not to know about the Fates, she was afraid he was going to consider her crazy.
    He just sat behind the counter, watching her with those amazing blue eyes. He had rich black hair and a square jaw. He even had a dimple in his chin. When she had seen that, she wished Kyle were with her so that she could point out how charming a dimple was.
    But of course Kyle, being eleven years old and male, probably wouldn’t have thought the dimple as charming as Vivian did.
    The headache seemed to grow, as if it were alive. She had to do something about it—find out what had happened to Henri—or Dexter, which he seemed to prefer—and see if he had some aspirin or something, anything to make this pounding go away.
    Vivian stood, careful not to step on the adventuresome kitten. She was glad that Dexter had locked the front door. The little one, Marco Polo, seemed to have inspired all the others into exploring. Mom didn’t care; she slept after a particularly draining feeding session.
    The store had strange lighting. The fish tanks provided most of it. Somewhere nearby a man with a Southern accent talked about bluesman Robert Johnson.
    The radio. It was only the radio.
    The scratchy sound of an old recording filled the store, clashing with the hum of the cash register. One of the kittens meowed, and it sounded like someone screamed—at least to Vivian’s sensitive ears.
    She needed to lie down. She’d got a sense that there was someplace for her to do it in the back. She’d had migraines before, often after a lot of concentration, particularly psychic concentration. The migraines usually passed after a short nap.
    She used the counter, and then some displays, to help herself toward the back. The fish, moving in their tanks, seemed to follow her, as if they were concerned. She was imagining everything.
    A short nap, and she could drive out of here, out of poor Henri/Dexter’s life. The man had just been trying to live like a normal person, even though he clearly was not. Just the mention of those women had put him into a panic.
    They had some kind of history—the women had even referred to it—and it wasn’t something he wanted to revisit.
    Vivian would return to them and make them go to that restaurant, Quixotic, instead. Or she’d go there herself, bring