To Wrangle A Witch (Southern Sanctuary Book 3) by Jane Cousins

them?  Dancing naked in your face one
minute and acting all mysterious and absent the next.    Goddess
help him he should prefer the latter but every instinct he had craved the
former.  No, he had to be strong.  Keep his distance, avoid all
personal contact and for pity sake stop spying on her like a school boy with a
crush.  He just had to survive a few more days. 
    Hmmmm…
how annoyed would Vaughn be if he rang every hour requesting an update? 
Reaching for the phone he decided there was no time like the present to find
out. 

 
     
    Chapter
Ten
     
    The
next two days passed without incident.
    Locke
holed up in his office, working online non-stop with his team based worldwide
to finalise the merger contract details.  Considering there was eighty
million dollars changing hands nothing could be left to chance, as he, and the
opposition attorneys reviewed the proposed final document, every word, every
apostrophe, had to be checked and double checked.   Goddess, the binding requirements for the document
alone had required a three hour discussion.  Locke’s patience was
definitely beginning to wear thin.
    Perhaps
the only thing more maddening was the amount of rigid self-control it took for
him to stay away from the glass wall of his office, the one that over looked
the courtyard.  Too often he found himself restlessly pacing the room
distracted, his hand seemingly of its own accord reaching out to part the
curtains.  In an attempt to control the habit he allowed himself to check
on Serena every two hours, just to confirm her health and well-being of
course. 
    So
instead of wandering to the window every five minutes he now found his
attention fixated on the passing minutes counted off by the clock.  And if
it wasn’t bad enough that his wanton wiccan houseguest ruined his concentration
during daylight hours, he spent his nights tossing and turning.   Plagued by disturbing dreams of her covered
in nothing but flower petals, a saucy smile on her face as she danced for him…
but always just out of reach.
    Serena
for her part seemed to understand that his work had reached a critical point
and from the glimpses he had caught from afar was focusing all her energies on
restoring her magic back to optimal levels.  This seemed to require her to
spend every waking moment in the courtyard garden. 
    Even
the change in weather the morning after Nell came to dinner failed to faze
her.  Instead she happily skipped through the increasingly muddy garden as
the rain fell, intermittent showers the first day and a steady relentless drum
the next. 
    The
sight of her soaked to the skin, t-shirt clinging wetly, her hair plastered
down and that Goddess darn sexy smile that lingered on her lips as she all too
often raised her face to the sky and sipped at the raindrops as if they were
the equivalent of French champagne sent from the heavens was slowly,
irrevocably, driving him insane. 
    When
Hadleigh rang on the third morning he pounced on the phone in record time,
barking a hello.
    “Problem?” 
His sister’s voice sounded faint over the never ending rain pounding on the
roof, would it ever cease? 
    “Everything’s
fine.  Works a little hectic though, why are you calling?  Did
something happen?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Cryptic
much Kitten?  What’s going on?”
    “We
had a breach… or so Marcus tells us.  They came in through the air vents.”
    “I’m
extrapolating from your lack of details that you didn’t kill them.”
    “No.” 
Hadleigh’s voice was tight with tension and frustration.  “We’re not even
sure what they were after.  They didn’t come near the trap.”
    “You
think they were after something else?”
    “Unless
it was a scouting party.  We’re still looking into it.  How’s the
witch doing?”
    “Serena?” 
He strode over to the window, yanking back the curtains.  Into the third
day of rain the courtyard was a drenched muddy mess, the foliage dipping and
swaying frantically under