A Sinful Trap - R.G. Alexander

Chapter One

Bailey dangled from the attic wearing nothing but a t-shirt and her lucky Wonder Woman boxers. Her first thought—after a few surprised shouts of disbelief—was that she’d made the wrong wish on that falling star she’d seen a few months ago.

Instead of a pair of Ewan McGregors, she should have asked for a handyman. A threesome with the handsome actor’s celebrity look-alikes could have been fun, but in hindsight, someone whose steady shoulder could be tapped when things went bump in the night made a lot more sense. Someone, for example, who might have noticed that the attic’s ladder at the small inn where she lived and worked was too old to survive 130 pounds of irritated innkeeper stomping to the top.

She adjusted herself, elbows braced on the sides of the opening and boobs smooshed on the dusty ledge in front of her, wondering if this day would ever end.

At five o’clock this morning, she’d been fixing a clogged toilet. By eight, she’d lost her appetite and was haggling with the plumber on the phone while helping a guest find his teeth so he could have some complimentary muffins.

They’d been in the linen closet. (His teeth, not the muffins.) And no, she hadn’t asked why.

Things had spiraled from there. Cyndy, her part-time help, was too sick to cover the desk, which meant missing lunch with her best friends, Kaya and Dani, as well as a much-needed stop at the grocery store. She’d had to settle for the last slice of leftover pizza while her guests fended for themselves.

Cooking wasn’t in her job description. A good thing, since the stove had been on its last legs for more than eight months and she’d never learned how to use it to begin with. If she couldn’t microwave or toast it, her meals usually came in a to-go box.

Thinking of food made her stomach growl as she considered simply climbing the rest of the way up and sleeping in the attic for the night.

“This is ridiculous.”

You should have wished for wings.

She slid the swoop of bangs out of her eyes and thought again about the falling stars she and her friends had wished on. Was that the night it happened? When she’d started to lose control of her life and her infamous five-year plan?

Until then, everything had been on track. When she’d shown up in town at sixteen, she’d been focused on the future. At first her only objectives were shelter, food and gainful employment. But each success since then, each obstacle she conquered, had led her to the next, reinforcing her safety net until nothing and no one could threaten it. Or so she’d thought.

Now The Enchanted Inn, her beloved problem child of a bed-and-sometimes-breakfast, had a new owner—that wasn’t her—and the last girls’ night she’d shared with Kaya and Dani had started with sangria-soaked wishes and ended barely a week later with a handsome wanderer turning into a coyote before Bailey’s eyes.

A fucking coyote.

That happened months ago and she still wasn’t over it.

Maybe you should focus on getting over your fear of falling first.

“Good plan.” Who cared if no one had come out to investigate her shouts of terror? That didn’t mean she’d spend the night broken or bleeding in the hallway until one of her guests got up for the day.

It probably didn’t mean that.

She only had three visitors at the moment, a couple in their late seventies and one shy woman from North Carolina who believed aliens from Sirius had told her to come to Sedona. The first two were deaf without their hearing aids, and the other fell asleep to recordings of pulsars and quasars whizz-beeping in her headphones. Of course they hadn’t heard her.

This was one of those moments when she wished she weren’t running this place entirely on her own. Another wish? Why not? If magic was real, it was about time it started working for her. She’d even welcome that coyote, Stax, right now if she could. Though as far as she knew, he only put out if someone had already returned the favor—the way Dani and her boyfriend Liam had.

The idea of seducing him hadn’t even occurred to her before now. She loved to flirt, but she hadn’t really wanted anyone—supernatural or otherwise—in years. Not that she had time for a relationship.

Bailey shook her head to get her focus off her celibacy problem and back to the immediate one that was likely going to land her in the hospital.

There was no way around it.