room window lined with plants and a humongous bowl holding a mound of crystals and rocks.
On a console table where she dropped her keys were two substantial chunks of green agate. He felt their strong balancing energy.
Above the table in an ornate, shabby chic frame was a beautiful photograph of a sea cove. The image stirred something inside him. He looked closer. There was a familiarity to it he couldn’t place at first.
“Cornwall,” she murmured at his shoulder. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Merlin’s cave,” she explained as recognition blazed to life in his mind.
“Tintagel Castle,” he murmured. “I can’t believe you have a picture of it. Have you been there?”
The tinge of sadness in her voice touched him when she muttered, “No. Never been, but my brother has.” She pointed at the bottom left corner. “He took the picture and signed it for me.”
Without a doubt, a substantial amount of strange shit lived in his head, including the legend and lore around Tintagel and the location of Merlin’s crystal cave. What were the odds a chance encounter with a fey girl would lead to them staring at the image?
There were no coincidences. Right?
Arnie glanced at her face in profile. Her eyes were focused on the unusual photograph. The golden glow around her swirled with a new energy he couldn’t quite make out.
His heart thumped, and an unfamiliar stirring low in his gut triggered his subtle senses—the world beyond the big five. Unless he was working and it was necessary, Arnie kept his intuitive abilities on lockdown, but Summer pushed him to wander beyond the boundaries.
She broke the enchantment building around them by pulling on his sleeve. “Let’s make a mess in the kitchen.”
When he started to follow, his steps quickly halted as a city-sized sofa came into view. It was by far the tackiest thing he’d ever seen.
He mumbled, amused, “Uh.”
She glanced back and forth between his face and where he was looking. “It’s fantastic, isn’t it? I found it in a consignment store, and since people weren’t lining up for a 70s Brady Bunch-style upholstered monstrosity, they practically begged me to take it when I gave it a second look.”
“Oh, man.” His amused smile turned to laughter. “Awesome,” he told her with enthusiastic approval.
“Really? You like it?”
“Hell, yeah! I like how you see the beauty in something truly, truly awful.”
She made a face, and her eyes swept him from head to toe and back again. “It’s as if I knew someday a big man needing a big sofa would come through my door.”
They headed into the kitchen so he could finally be relieved of the bags cutting off the circulation to his fingers. He dropped everything except the painting on the table.
Summer took her artwork and held it up. “Yours is better.”
“I beg to differ.” He chuckled. “You followed directions, whereas I approached the exercise in a freeform way.”
“You added a bat signal in the sky.”
“Yeah”—he sniggered—“and it’s gonna look badass in my office.”
Smiling at each other felt as natural as breathing. He wanted to lose himself in her energy and learn what made her tick.
“What’s in the bags?” she asked.
Before he had a chance to react to the question, she dumped the booty from his CVS shopping spree onto the table. A can of whipped cream rolled to the edge, but she scooped it up before it went crashing to the floor.
“I don’t know what to say,” she managed to bark in a choking laugh. “Is this normal first-time equipment?”
“You have a dirty mind,” he scolded in a mocking way. “The whipped cream is for the animal crackers.”
“Animal crackers?”
He dug through the stuff and produced the iconic animal-shaped cookies in a distinctive red box. She regarded him with smirking amusement.
“What?” he drawled. “You’ve never filled your mouth with tigers and added a shot of aerosol?”
She snorted with laughter. “No!”
“Well, then you’re in for a treat.”
She ripped the cap off the whipped cream, shook it, stuck out her tongue, and dropped her head back. When she upended the can and released a stream of white into her mouth, his dick elbowed him in the ribs and asked if he was paying attention.
“What else ya got?” she asked through a mouthful of cream.
When he didn’t immediately answer, she prodded him for a response. “Arnie?”
“Oh, um, yeah.” He couldn’t think straight—not with all her lip licking and pleasured moans.
Without waiting, she began to rummage through the snacks and other items. The face mask made her blush. So did the container of