Read Online Mistress of Magic by Heather Graham - Free Book Online Page B

wouldn’t like a beer or something? Anything, just to relax? Or are you really such a pillar of virtue?”
    “Well, you know, really, I don’t believe in sloshing my way through a date—”
    “Aha! So it is a date!” he said with a laugh. “Well, trust me, I appreciate the fact that you don’t want to slosh your way through it. I don’t want to slosh through it, either. But truly, I don’t think that one drink would send you passing out limply in my arms.” She gazed at his arms as he said the words. He could have sworn that a little shudder passed through her. Was it really all that bad?
    “I will try to keep my food on my plate,” she promised.
    He shrugged. “Hey. There’s not much you can do to bother me.” He leaned forward and whispered softly, “I mean, after all, I’m out with you already. And look at the way you’re dressed.”
    Her cracker went slicing through shell again. This time the entire claw went flying up. It landed in his water glass.
    “I wasn’t drinking it anyway,” he assured her quickly.
    “I wasn’t apologizing,” she said.
    “The waitress is coming. Sure you don’t want anything?”
    “Yes. I want to be eating with that elderly gentleman over in the corner there. Or with that couple with the toddler spitting applesauce over his bottle.”
    “I meant, do you want anything to drink?”
    “No!”
    The waitress brought his beer. Reggie turned to her. “I’ll take whatever you have on draft.”
    “Can I, er, help you with that lobster?” Wes asked Reggie politely.
    “No!”
    The waitress brought Reggie’s beer quickly, set it down and departed even more quickly. Reggie instantly picked up and swallowed down a long draft, eyeing him with a great deal of hostility over the rim of the glass.
    She set the glass down with a little smack against the table. “There. Is that an improvement?”
    “Hey,” he murmured lightly, lifting his hands palms upward, “anything is an improvement.”
    She picked up her lobster cracker with a vengeance. Her eyes were flashing a beautiful emerald color.
    Dinner could get very dangerous, he warned himself.
    “You insisted on dinner,” she reminded him. She had managed to get the tail section of her lobster split. She set into the white meat with the little three-pronged fork she had been given. She speared a morsel of meat and set it delicately in her mouth.
    He found himself staring at her mouth. She went for another bite, finding the meat, dipping it into the melted butter, placing it in her mouth.
    A little sheen remained on her lips from the drawn butter. He found himself still staring at her in fascination. Growing warm. She had a beautiful mouth.
    Just as he had earlier, he mused that it was really the kind of mouth that almost asked to be kissed. Beautifully defined. Full. Sensual. Glistening now, and so enticing that he almost reached out a finger to touch her lips.
    “You did, remember?”
    “What?”
    “You insisted on this dinner. If you’re not pleased—”
    He forced his eyes from her mouth and focused on his beer glass. He drew his fingers idly around the rim. “Oh, I’m pleased. Just as pleased as punch.”
    She stopped chewing. She leaned forward. A stray tendril of ebony hair had escaped from the saloon girl’s knot at her nape and danced softly against the ivory beauty of her face. She spoke softly, huskily. “All right. I’m supposed to be grateful for what you did for Max, I suppose. I am grateful. But you’re supposed to be Max’s friend. You’re supposed to support him. You did, it’s done. We’re all grateful.”
    He sighed and leaned closer to her. “Reggie, I do have faith in Max. That’s the point here. If Max isn’t guilty of an evil deed, then it seems that someone else is.”
    “What do you mean, if? ” she asked, blinking. Ink-dark lashes fell over the beautiful green of her eyes, then rose again. “We know that Max—”
    “We both agree that Max is innocent,” he said. “But since we