“Wine?”
I spun to see Sam in the kitchen. “Yes, please.” I hadn’t even noticed him move away from me. Walking into the living room, I took a seat on the black plush couch. It was so comfy, I could’ve fallen asleep there.
“So, what can you tell me about the collection downstairs?” I accepted the glass of red and he sat down beside me. “Or is it a secret and you’ll have to kill me if you tell me?”
He laughed and sipped at his wine. “It’s been in my family for a very long time. Sometimes new pieces come in through private auctions, some are found or acquired through other means, but most were collected and stored in their respective ages.”
“So, you can trace your family line back so far? And you just, what, started collecting whatever you could?”
Not that I was complaining. History deserved to be preserved, especially from those days. War upon war destroyed a lot of information, and the winners tended to write their own version of events for the books. To know the other side, to find something refuting the history we knew today, would be a discovery of astronomical proportions.
I turned toward him fully. “If this is some kind of family mandate or whatever, why are you running a bakery in Boston instead of out in the world making new discoveries? Maybe collecting things from today that would be artifacts a hundred or a thousand years from now?”
“I’m sort of like a dragon,” he said. “I guard the treasure.”
“And someone else finds it?” I guessed. “Brings it here?”
He nodded, though the smile had slipped from his face. “Up until a few years ago, yes.”
There were pain and anger in those words. He'd lost something or someone. Curiosity nagged at me, but a first not-date was much too soon to push sensitive issues.
I changed the subject. “So, will you tell me about your magic? Does your whole family have it?”
“Yes, actually." He opened his palm and a small flame sprouted. "A lot of us have similar abilities, but each of us tends to have something unique the others don’t have.”
“Do you use your magic a lot around me?”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t use it as much as I’d like. Bad things tend to happen when I do.”
“So you’re almost like me.” I held my fingers over his hand. The flame was just as hot as a candle would’ve been. I grinned and met his gaze. “I can’t create fire from nothing yet, but I can control it.”
“Sometimes.”
I stuck my tongue out. “Most of the time. When my emotions get unbalanced, like when I’m extremely nervous or angry or—”
“Horny?”
Heat rushed to my cheeks, but I maintained eye contact. “Yes, horny. When they take on an extreme edge, that’s when my magic goes haywire. Most of the time, though, I have control.”
Our noses were centimeters away when he stood abruptly. “Would you like a tour?”
I set my wine down and took his proffered hand. “There’s more?”
“Oh yes, Lexi. Much more.”
There were still a ton of questions I wanted to ask, but his tone sent a shudder down my spine. I followed him into the hall to the closed doors. One of them was a small study with several bookshelves. Another was a huge library, and I wondered how many books were actually in this place.
I ducked in there long enough to see more modern languages on the shelves before Sam grabbed me. Then we found his bedroom at the end of the hall. He had a four-poster triple king bed with red silk sheets and a black duvet. I only vaguely registered the other furniture in the room and my body temperature started rising.
“One last thing,” Sam said. He led me to a spiral staircase I’d overlooked in one corner beside glass double doors that opened onto a balcony.
Disappointment flooded me when we didn’t stop there, but knowing what the rest of his house looked like, I was excited to see what he kept beneath his personal bedroom. Was it the most valuable of all his treasures? A room for practicing his magic?
Or a fucking indoor pool?
It was as big as an Olympic pool, and the entire thing bubbled like a giant hot tub. Just to the left of the stairs was a shower big enough to fit his bed in, and to the right were doors leading to a patio. There were real stone floors, just like in the shop, and plants around the sides gave the sweltering room a tropical feel. My mouth fell open and I suddenly felt unprepared.
“I don't have a swimsuit."
