Free Totally Spellbound by Kristine Grayson Page A

moment, he didn’t see the three women trailing behind
them.
    A blond, a brunette, and a redhead.
They looked so ordinary that at first he didn’t recognize them.
Then they grinned at each other, in unison, and he knew who they
were.
    The Fates.
    Only they looked like half of
themselves—all the power and energy that they’d always carried had
disappeared. They seemed almost…normal.
    He shook that thought out of his head
as the other redhead—the one with the kid—came up to him. She was
built the way women should be built: sturdy, buxom, and broad, a
good handful for a man who was tired of the scrawny things that
passed themselves off as modern women.
    The redhead said, “Sorry to bother you
again. Chapeau Enterprises is inside?”
    Her voice was rich and
beautiful. This one had incredible life force, and the most
charming thing about her was that she didn’t know it.
    “Yeah,” he said. “It’s—”
    And then the Fates surrounded him,
yammering all at once. The redhead stood back, looking amused. The
boy stayed in the middle of it all, and it wasn’t until the Fates
finished speaking (they were greeting John, which he was trying to
ignore), that the boy actually spoke:
    “You know Robin Hood?”
    He sounded like a star-struck fan.
John looked at the Fates in great surprise. Didn’t they know better
than to talk like that? No one was supposed to know mages’ real
identities. Even though Robin Hood was not Rob’s real name, it was
close enough to get everyone in trouble.
    “What’s going on here?” John
asked.
    Clotho slipped her arm through his. It
startled him. He had never been touched by a Fate
before.
    “We need Robin to do us a small
favor,” she said.
    “A teensy-tiny favor,” Lachesis said,
moving a little too close.
    “An itty-bitty favor,” Atropos said,
flanking him on the other side.
    John was surrounded, and he didn’t
want to be. He was too polite—damn his chivalric upbringing—to
shove women aside, much as he wanted too.
    Besides, these three terrified him
more than almost anyone else he had ever met.
    “I don’t think Rob is in a favorable
mood,” John said.
    “Nonetheless,” Clotho said.
    “We do need to see him,” Lachesis
said.
    “Then why not pop in and visit him
yourselves?” John asked.
    Atropos sighed. “It’s so very
complicated.”
    “Take us to him, would you, John?”
Clotho asked, and now he wanted to sigh. But he didn’t.
    Instead, he did what they asked—and
hoped he would survive the consequences.
     

 
     
Ten
     
    The Mini Cooper caught his
attention.
    Rob stood at the window
with his hands clasped behind his back. He had felt the weird
little car before he had seen it, drawn to the window as if he were
going to see a party.
    And then the car had slowed and
disappeared under an awning as it pulled up to the curb. For a
brief moment—an hallucinatory moment—Rob thought he had seen that
gorgeous woman from the night before, but of course he
hadn’t.
    That was the effect of
thinking about her all night and talking to John about her all
day.
    Rob moved away from the window and sat
in his chair, unable to look at the stock prices continually
changing on his computer screen or to think about anything that had
to do with work. Even after eight hundred years, thinking about
another woman felt like he was betraying Marian.
    Maybe John was right. Maybe Rob was
clinging too hard to the past. He certainly couldn’t change
it.
    Imagine what the Fates would do to him
if he tried.
    At that moment, his door burst open.
John hurried in and tried to shove the door closed behind him. A
slender female arm flailed against the wall, as if its owner were
trying to force the door open.
    “Um, Rob,” John said, his face turning
red from the effort of holding the door closed. “It’s not my
fault.”
    Rob frowned. He hadn’t
seen John like this in decades. His face was flushed and sweat
covered, his eyes wild, and his shirt drenched. He’d lost his suit
coat