Free Lure of Song and Magic by Patricia Rice Page A

don’t like me. I got that. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as the project starts up. But for right now, this is what I do. I put all the pieces of the puzzle together and make things happen.”
    Had he been sitting there in his pricey shark suit, his white teeth gleaming in a practiced smile, she could easily have dumped the smoothie over his head for insulting the worth of her books. But he was sitting at her little mosaic-tiled kitchen table in a fluffy white robe sipping a strawberry-colored smoothie and scowling.
    She trusted the scowl more than the smile. That he was able to still be his usual manipulative self while wearing a knee-length robe said he was so full of himself, so certain of his masculinity, that he didn’t give a damn how he looked. She liked that even better.
    â€œHow many hours of my day do you need?” she asked. “I can only parcel myself out so many ways, and I won’t give up the day care time.”
    â€œThree,” he said instantly.
    â€œTwo,” she countered. “You can use my wireless and pool while I’m at the school. I’ll come here and give you two hours of my time. And then you’re gone. Sayonara. Auf wiedersehen . Out of my hair until the next day. And I get weekends off.”
    â€œHow about dinner? My treat. I hate eating alone.”
    â€œYou’re going to push until you knock me down, aren’t you?” She carried her smoothie outside and arranged herself on a lounge chair.
    She had a feeling Dylan Oswin was the ultimate test of Zen.

Chapter 8
    Oz couldn’t imagine why anyone called this woman Seraphina. There was nothing angelic or serene about the tense, vibrant female burning up the keyboard in the lounge chair beside him.
    It had taken another hostile argument to persuade her to pull her chair next to his so he didn’t have to shout across the pool at her. If it ever rained in California, he had a feeling they’d get no work done at all because she wouldn’t share a space as small as a house with him. Working in the great outdoors was all she could manage.
    While he was conjuring images of sharing a bed, even when she was wearing that concealing hoodie. Bad Oz. He knew better. He’d just never found someone so stubbornly resistant to his usual charm. Which forced him to study her more.
    And the more he watched her, with her cropped red hair bent over the keyboard, her slender nape vulnerable, the deeper he dug his hole. He liked polished, sophisticated women who knew the score, women who used him just as he used them—mutual itch scratching, some newsworthy gossip action, a few good dinners where they could see and be seen, and then sayonara , as Pippa had so colorfully said.
    So his attraction to the skinny elf with freckles on her unpainted face was confusing. And distracting. He kept checking out her slender pianist’s fingers flying across the laptop’s keyboard and wondering how they’d feel in his hair. Which led him to wondering if she had any curves at all beneath the ugly hoodie. Which led to more distraction than he could afford.
    â€œMuppets are expensive,” he warned when she went off on a creative tangent. “Besides, they’ve been done. And so have costume characters. Why should kids relate to talking ducks?”
    Her wicked blue-green eyes glanced up from the keyboard to spear him with a frosty glare. “Kids need security, the comfort of the familiar. Half the adult population of this country dislikes change, so don’t expect kids living in a world they don’t understand to accept surprises. People even hate clowns. You don’t want a children’s show to be too original. Just original in a familiar way.”
    Her phone rang, leaving Oz to ponder original but not , while she leaned over to punch the speaker button.
    The torrent of Spanish spilling forth ripped Oz straight out of his musing. He spoke fluent Spanish, but this flood of