Free The Wellspring by M. Frances Smith Page A

we’ll do our very
best to make it happen, I promise.”
    “Oh, no,” he corrected her. “Not you and
Marc, or your group as a whole; I meant you, personally. Just you,
Yule.” A teasing smile tugged at the corners of his inviting lips
and Yule suddenly felt embarrassed by how closely she’d leaned
toward him, but was trapped into remaining that way or draw
attention to her awkwardness. “So you’d better consider this with
caution before such reckless commitment.”
    “Look before I leap?”
    “I’d be a cad if I didn’t caution you.”
    “I don’t think anyone would describe you as a
cad,” she replied.
    “Some stories don’t reach the gossip
broadcasts,” he told her and Yule wondered if she blushed, because
it was as if he knew how she spent her idle hours. He leaned back
in his chair after a moment, releasing her from her tether and she
leaned back too. “I don’t want you to commit to my desires until
you have a firm grasp of the depth of that commitment.”
    “Oh,” she responded in a voice much smaller
than she intended. She couldn’t help focusing on the word, desire.
It tickled in the pit of her stomach and made her uneasy in a way
that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “I suppose it’s only fair to
expect reciprocation for a favor.”
    “It’s the way of this world, I’m afraid,” he
agreed.
    She nodded at that. “If you didn’t expect
some kind of return then everyone would be lining up around the
block asking for—whatever.”
    “Quite right,” he sounded as if he were
congratulating her on an astute finding.
    “I’m not sure that there’s anything I can
particularly do for you, I’m afraid,” she admitted.
    “Nonsense, you’re just the girl for what I
need,” he dismissed her observation and didn’t notice, or didn’t
care, that Yule internally bridled at being called a girl. “I want
to hire you for about, oh, a month.”
    “Hire me?” She blinked in surprise. “I don’t
understand.”
    “It’s my Executive Assistant, St. John, you
see,” he explained apologetically, still pronouncing it, Sinjin.
“He’s taken a leave of absence and the secretary with whom he
saddled me as a substitute is driving me quite mad with her
inquiries.”
    “Inquiries?”
    “She’s a normal so naturally she has a
limitless font of questions regarding magic folk—some of them
should embarrass her, but she seems impermeable to that particular
emotion.” Yule couldn’t help the smallest of grins at that
observation and he noticed. “Yes, go ahead, have a laugh at my
expense, but she bedevils me, I swear it.” This was spoken with
beleaguered melodrama intended to make her laugh, and she did. “The
point is, I need a competent assistant who won’t ask silly
questions until St. John returns,” he finished and this statement
stopped her laughter.
    “You—you mean me ?” she stammered. “You
want me to be your secretary?”
    “Assistant, by no means executive, but
someone who has some common sense, organizational skills, and
perseverance. And who won’t blather on about whether I use magic to
brush my teeth,” he added. “Could anything be more ludicrous? My
teeth?”
    Yule smiled again. “They’re very nice teeth.”
His eyebrows rose at that and she shrugged, eliciting a smile from
him. “So you need someone to manage paperwork and such around your
office while—”
    “The hell with my office, I have dozens of
competent office personnel, I need someone to keep me organized
abroad. You’ll accompany me to Atlantis. I expect to be there
nearly three weeks.”
    Yule thought her heart and breath stopped at
his casual announcement. Atlantis, the birthplace of all magic
folk, transported to the dimension of magic over ten thousand years
ago, now part of Earth again. The homeland from which she was
forever barred for her stunted, impotent power. It was an
impossible opportunity and he was extending it to her as if
suggesting they go around the corner to the coffee