Page 10 of Hexed Up

“What?” I squeak, gaze leaping back to meet his. “No!You’rein love withme.”

He opens his mouth. Shuts it. Then snorts.

“I didn’t ingest the potion,” he says smugly.

“You did inhale it, which is enough.”

“You can’t be serious?”

“I know it sounds ridiculous,” I confess – because I’ve seen the string of women coming and going from Mr Hottie’s flat – tall, willowy super-model types, “but would you usually strip down naked and wait for me in the bedroom because you thought …”

I trail off. Yep, Damien is right. The potion has worked. Mr Hottie has only ever shown an interest in scolding me, never in jumping into bed with me. I am not his type. And as hot as he may be, he isn’t mine. I have a soft spot for bad boys – tattoos, leather jackets, and motorbikes. Not men in neatly pressed clothes with a respectable job and enough money to invest in a pension. Okay, I’m trying to wean myself off the bad-boy addiction, but it’s not exactly cured yet.

Mr Hottie pulls a face and, is that my imagination, or does the man who never misses bin-day and probably never farted at an inappropriate moment in his life, blush, those finely chiselled cheeks receiving a dusting of pink?

“You may be right,” he says, “so what can we do to fix this?”

I fidget on my seat. “Ahhh.”

“Ahhh?” he repeats, not looking happy with me at all. If this is a man in love he needs to work on his facial expressions. “That doesn’t sound good. Are you telling me this potion isn’t reversible?”

“Oh no, it is reversible,” I say, happy to deliver some good news. “It’s just that no one has ever asked me to reverse a love potion before.”

“Probably because the recipient of the potion was never aware their feelings had been tampered with.” He scowls at me. “Do you realise how wrong that is on so many levels?”

I want to point out that the love potion only works if there’s a little bit of something there already – a spark, an attraction, a certainje ne sais quoi.However, as that clearly wasn’t the case in our situation, I don’t really have a leg to stand on.

“Sorry,” is all I can mutter pathetically.

“Do you know how to make this antidote?”

“Yessss.”

He narrows his eyes. “Once again, I’m not loving that response.”

“I can do it. It’s just going to take some time – both to hunt down the ingredients and to brew the potion.”

“How long?”

I do the maths in my head. “About ten days.”

“Ten days! Can’t you speed things up?”

“Absolutely not. Potion brewing can’t be hurried. The risks are too great.”

“What kind of risks?”

“I don’t think you want to know,” I mutter, thinking of that ear wax removing potion I messed up which resulted in the client growing a crop of mushrooms from the sides of their head.

Mr Hottie flops back on the arm chair and drags his hand down his face.

“And so I’m stuck with these …” he glances over at me, “feelings for you in the meantime.”

I swallow down hard because the man’s eyes are stunningly beautiful and pretty hypnotising – especially when he saysfeelings. I pinch myself hard on the thigh. Because these ‘feelings’ are not real and I need to keep my head screwed on straight.

Still, I can’t help murmuring, “What kind of feelings?”

His blue eyes linger on my face and then trail slowly over my body, taking an especially long time to meander down my bare legs.