Spell Cat by Tara Lain Page 0,37
was just how she felt. Helpless and hopeless. “Tell me his name. Maybe I can talk to him, and the two of us can figure something out.”
She jumped up from the bench. “No!”
“Why not? It might work.”
“Please stop. I have to go.” How do you repair a cracked heart?
He grabbed her hand. “Come on, you’re consenting adults. How can they make you marry? This is America, for crap’s sake.”
She pulled her hand away and swiped at the tears that flowed down her face. “I can’t explain. I can’t. And I have to go. I love you.”
“I love you so much.”
Sobbing, she ran toward the corner on the other side of the library. Her father’s chauffeur would be waiting for her—the chauffeur who would drive her one mile closer to marrying Killian Barth. One mile away from the man she loved and wanted to stay with forever. The chauffeur who took her home to Daddy. She stopped. Okay, get a grip, witch. She swiped at her wet cheeks. She wasn’t married yet. She started walking as if her whole world wasn’t crumbling.
Behind her on the bench, Jimmy Janx cried.
Nicholas Karonoff took the cell from his ear. There she was. Dot of eleven. She didn’t give him overt reasons to be angry with her. He watched her walk from the entry hall. Clearly she’d been crying, damn the witch. He didn’t like the report he’d just gotten from that idiot Jonesy. “Lavender!”
She stopped in the archway to the living room but didn’t come in. “Yes, Papa?”
“I wish to speak to you. Please come with me.”
He led her down the hallway to his study. He wanted to grab her arm but knew better. He knew not to touch someone he loved when his anger was hot. He’d learned that with a couple of wives. Of course, in Russia, the authorities thought differently about such things than they did in this country.
Inside the room, he sat behind his massive mahogany desk. She sat across from him. She was his daughter, all right. Usually being before him at this imposing desk made people cringe. Not Lavender. She looked him straight in the eye with no fawning or wheedling.
He stared at her for a moment, and she stared right back. Such a pretty girl to be so impossibly stubborn. He held up his cell phone. “I have been receiving reports on your fiancé.”
She looked startled but quickly recovered. She was a cool customer, as the Americans said. “You don’t think it surprises me that you have him watched, do you?”
Her insolence inspired a little pride. So like him. “Are you aware that the Master Witch consorts with known homosexuals?”
She sighed. “That is hardly surprising, since everyone above the age of three in all of witchery is aware that Killian is a homosexual. The fact that you all choose to ignore that reality and go on with this sham wedding is a travesty.”
“Nonsense. It is a lifestyle he chooses. He is supposedly the most powerful witch in generations. He can decide to live another way.”
She shifted in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, Papa, that’s ridiculous and you know it. Killian can no more decide to be heterosexual than I could suddenly decide to be a man, and I’m very nearly as powerful as he. Even witches are subject to certain laws. You know we may change other physical matter or even simple animals, and we can change people’s perceptions of us, but we cannot change our own biology any more than a human can.”
He gave her a tight smile. “Yes, well, the known homosexual in question is a human.” Ah, now she looked uncomfortable. Good. Squirm, girl.
She shrugged. “So? Killian lives and works in the human world. I’m sure he knows human homosexuals as well as every other kind of human.”
“One he chose to spend the better part of a night with and whose company he was seen to leave looking thoroughly debauched.”
She was silent.
He leaned back in his chair. He enjoyed sparring with her, but this was no game. “It appears your fiancé has chosen to compromise his abilities given by the great Powers by sexually consorting with a human.”
She leaned back and sighed. “You don’t know that. But if he did, we have all driven him to it. The man has to find love somewhere, for crap’s sake.”
“Lavender, don’t be crude.”
She rose and leaned over his desk toward him. “Be warned, Father. The only thing that will make Killian go