of Blaine’s breathing, he slipped his clothes on. His heart hurt, and there was a dull ache in his chest. He’d get over it. He always did.
He glanced at the unmoving blue eyes. You made your choice, cat. He slipped on his shoes and quietly padded for the door. Once out of the bedroom, he lit a small, glowing light in his palm and waited for the flying furry missile to hit his neck. It didn’t come.
He sighed. Could he stand to lose Aloysius too? Could hearts really shrivel? He slipped out of the apartment.
Jonesy stared bleary-eyed through the car window at the front of the antiques shop across the street, where he’d seen the two men go inside hours before. The blond guy never seemed to do anything interesting at his apartment, so Jonesy had decided to follow him today when he’d left the coffee shop with that other professor and that freaky feline. He wasn’t sure what the hell he was seeing, but he’d damned near gotten killed by some bizarre thunderstorm that didn’t produce a drop of rain and seemed to be centered right around here. So much around here that, when he’d looked up the street, the sky appeared clear, but above his head it was like freakin’ fireworks. Glad that’s over.
He settled back in the car seat a little farther. Wait. He looked closely through the lights of the store and saw a figure slip out of the door. Just the blond. No other guy and…. What the fuck? No cat. The guy went everywhere with that cat. Even into restaurants. Why would he leave it behind?
The blond man set out down the road toward the coffee shop they’d left much earlier. That mane of hair was hanging down his back, and he looked… what? Mussed came to mind. He’d read earlier in a bio online that the other professor, the one who must live here, was gay. So what had Blondie been up to with the fag? Looked pretty damned suspicious. The guy seemed into men. He’d gone to that restaurant with that dark-haired guy, and Jonesy sure hadn’t seen any babes joining them like you’d expect with a couple of good-looking men.
He glanced at his watch. Only 10:30 p.m. Seemed like it should be after midnight, but they’d gone in early. The boss would want to know. He reached for the cell phone.
Chapter Eleven
Lavender wiped a tear. “I love you, darling, but I have to go.” She looked at her beautiful sweetheart’s sad face. She wished she had the nerve to just have sex with him, deplete her power, and make herself useless to the community as a baby witch breeder. But she couldn’t. She was their best hope. She couldn’t quite muster the selfishness to take it all away and leave Killian holding the bag with some other female witch. Besides, she had no idea what her father would do to James if she had sex with him. She shuddered.
The bench outside the library hurt her butt, and they’d been doing some heavy petting, which had left her sore in both body and heart. “Daddy will be royally pissed if I miss my 11:00 p.m. curfew.”
He snorted. “Shoot. If you’re old enough to be married off to some man you don’t know, then you’re old enough to stay out as long as you want.”
She straightened her sweater and skirt. She looked like she’d been doing… exactly what she’d been doing. That wouldn’t be popular at home. “Don’t be pigheaded. You know that’s not how it works. He thinks I’m studying with friends, and he gets suspicious if we study past eleven. Ranting about it isn’t going to change a thing.”
He perched on the edge of the bench and dropped his head in his hands. “Sorry. I know. I just feel so damned helpless.” He looked up at her. Gods, that handsome face, so full of love and despair. He ripped her heart out. “There’s got to be something we can do. You say that guy they’ve got you engaged to is nice. Won’t he help us? We could go to him. Explain.”
“Sweetheart, I have explained. He doesn’t want to marry me any more than I want to marry him.”
“Well, shit, that means he’s an imbecile.”
“James, do you want him to be trying to keep me?”
“No. But what guy wouldn’t want you?”
“This guy. He has someone else too.”
He dropped his head back in his hands. “Poor guy.” He looked up again. His desperation