Annette Blair by My Favorite Witch Page B

but the summer we were five, we met in Boston Common, Mel’s nanny and my mom looking on. About a week later we met Vickie there, and the three of us have been best friends ever since.”
    “Is Vickie the friend who sells vintage clothes?”
    “Right,” Kira said, somewhat surprised. “I can’t believe you listened that closely. Anyway, Mel grew up in a mansion, but she always liked our small houses better. Vic’s mother spread affection like icing, so that was understandable, but Mel liked my house, too. Not sure why. It was the smallest, the noisiest, and had the most kids running around. Busting at the seams, literally. Still is, most days.”
    “Sounds great to me. I think I would have liked your house better as well.”
    “Poor little rich boy.” She patted his cheek.
    Jason grabbed her wrist and held her hand in place, loving the feel of her skin against his face, the two of them eye to eye for the first time since the rink, neither of them giving, neither looking away, for too long to be comfortable, but he didn’t care.
    “Hockey lessons in less than an hour,” Kira said, sucking the heat right out of him.
    “Right.” Jason rubbed his nape, so flummoxed, so freaking beguiled, he felt bewitched.
    He watched her write a few more notes in her day planner, the hoops in her ears swaying with each shift of her pen.
    He wanted to shock her out of hiding, which is what he feared she was doing by wearing nothing but black.
    “I’m looking forward to hockey practice,” she said.
    “Figures. Most hockey players who turn to coaching are considered to be washed-up, you know.”
    Kira raised a brow, as if he’d made her point, and he was pissed. “I am not washed-up! The NHL wants me back, and I’ll be there before you know it. You’ll see. Meanwhile, I hate the idea of coaching, just in case you didn’t know.”
    “I saw you with those hockey sticks. My ass, you hate the idea.”
    “Don’t talk to me about your ass,” he said. “I’m trying not to remember how good it felt in my hands.”
    “Can it, Ice Boy. If my ass is so hot, why did the Penis get the grope on every female with a pulse?”
    Jason tried to take her arm, but she pulled away.
    “For that matter, why did you let me fall out of the elevator and leave me there? Talk about rejection. Yeesh.”

Ten
    JASON couldn’t believe Kira thought he’d rejected her. He took her by the shoulders. “If I had stepped out of that elevator, Gracie would have known what we were up to. I stayed out of sight to save your reputation.”
    “My what?” She mocked him with a laugh. “Get serious.”
    “I am serious. A staff as big as ours would have been talking about you, looking down at you.”
    “But not at you?”
    “Well, no. I’m a Gilded Age throwback, remember? They expect me to—”
    “Hit on anything that moves?”
    “Speaking of hitting, Tillinghast must have been hit with a few too many fast balls, if he couldn’t see what he had in you.”
    Kira looked as if he’d insulted her intelligence.
    “What?” he challenged. “No comeback? Good. Damned if you haven’t been shocked silent, and about time. You don’t even know your own worth. That deadbeat ballplayerhurt you and I’m sorry, but stop hiding behind all that black. I like the real you.”
    She stood so still, Jason was able to run his hands through her crown of copper curls, the way a kid tests a candle flame to see if he can touch it without getting burned. “Tell me the real reason you always dress in black,” he said.
    “The real me wears black,” she said so softly, he barely heard, but her eyes spoke a different language, one comprising heat and desire, “to look professional.”
    “You do look professional, but you also look sexy as hell. I see sex in those straps you call shoes, in defiance of everything, including the weather. I see sex in your black outfits, even if you don’t, but I can’t help feeling you’re hiding under there.”
    “Get real. What you