Free Bedroom Eyes by Hailey North Page A

away from the counter wall. From behind it inched Mrs. Merlin, all-purpose incense stick in hand.
    The woman said, “Honestly, some men just don’t know when to take no for an answer, do they?”
    Penelope smiled at her newfound ally. “Thanks for coming to my rescue. But David would have stopped.”
    Mrs. Merlin snorted. “Honey, when you’ve been on this earth for as long as I have, maybe you’ll get a better grasp of human nature.”
    Wanting to believe David would have stopped, Penelope didn’t argue the point. “How did you manage this diversion?”
    Mrs. Merlin patted her incense stick. “Fastest vaulting I’ve ever done. With this baby I just might set an Olympic record.” She winked. “And the toothpicks were just too, too handy.”
    “Well, thanks, but you might have burned my house down, you know.”
    “Phifil! Better to take that chance than let that man have you for dinner.”
    Penelope nodded. “Good point.”
    “Besides,” Mrs. Merlin said, “it’s only my candle spells that seem to end up causing trouble.”
    Penelope started the water to boil for the pasta and whisked together the sauce ingredients she’d prepared earlier. “Oh, you mean like shrinking yourself to six inches tall by mistake?”
    “Yep. Only I’m quite certain that if you measured you’d find I’m actually six and a quarter inches.” Mrs. Merlin had inched the top off the sugar bowl and stuck a finger in for a taste. “I sure am hungry,” she said. Sucking on her finger, and talking around it, she said, “Your Tony wouldn’t have forced himself on you.”
    “How do you—” Penelope looked over from where she stirred the sauce. “He’s not ‘my Tony.’ But how do you know that?”
    “His aura was much too violet and he has very old eyes.”
    “You saw him?”
    Mrs. Merlin nodded. “When he looked under the bed.”
    The spoon stopped in mid-rotation. “He saw you under the bed and didn’t say a word?”
    “Like I said, he’s the kind of man who would’ve stopped the first time you told him to, no matter how much he wanted to keep going.”
    Penelope hugged her arms to her sides, unaccountably pleased by Mrs. Merlin’s words.
    “Besides, I only winked at him.”
    “Right.” Penelope let the whisk slow under her hand. “I’m sure he thought you were some sort of voodoo doll.”
    Mrs Merlin smiled a most superior smile. “I suppose that’s why he winked back at me.”
    “He did what?” The whisk quit moving.
    “I am awfully hungry.” Mrs. Merlin circled a tiny hand over her belly.
    Penelope frowned and tried to remember the look on Olano’s face when he’d risen from beside the bed, but she drew a blank. She’d been concentrating on the way he rose all in one motion, more graceful than a panther bunched to spring. The man with bedroom eyes moved with the speed and grace of a big cat, and distracted as she was, she hadn’t been able to read the expression on his face.
    The sauce burbled under her unseeing gaze as she pictured the man with bedroom eyes.
    Tony Olano.
    She sighed and for a moment forgot that he annoyed her. For a moment he became the man she’d imagined earlier, standing beside her as she accepted the Best New Chef award. She felt the warmth of his touch when he placed his hand in hers, a warmth that traveled up her arm into her heart. She glowed with accomplishment, but most of all with the feelings he ignited in her.
    “You’re never going to feed me, are you?” Mrs. Merlin dusted her hands together.
    Penelope jerked back to her surroundings. “Why do you say that?”
    “Just look at that sauce.”
    “Oh, no!” The once-beautiful alfredo sauce lay scorched and thickened into paste under her perfectly still whisk. Just when would she learn to keep her mind planted firmly on planet Earth?
    “I don’t suppose you have any oatmeal?”
    “Oatmeal with Caesar salad?”
    Mrs. Merlin held forth her hands in a begging gesture. “You have salad, I’ll have