Chapter 1 Midlife Meltdown. Cue Magic #2
There was also pine. And rain on hot concrete. And that specific scent of a man who actually knew how to use tools instead of just owning them for decoration.
"Oh my God, I summoned a demon. I summoned a demon with bad poetry and now I'm going to die and they'll find my body and—wait, why does the demon smell good? Do demons smell good? Is that part of the temptation thing?"
The smoke swirled faster, tighter, forming a column in the middle of her kitchen. Lightning crackled inside it—actual lightning, indoors, which her insurance definitely didn't cover.
The floating tools arranged themselves in a circle, some kind of supernatural greeting party.
A figure materialized in the smoke.
Tall. Broad. Human-shaped but in a way that made human seem like an inadequate category.
"—and Susan will plan my funeral and she'll serve those dry-ass lemon squares and tell everyone I tried my best—"
The smoke cleared.
A man stood in her kitchen.
No—not stood. Existed. In a way that made standing look like something lesser mortals did while this man simply occupied space with authority.
Six feet and change of confused Scottish irritation, wearing worn jeans that fit in ways jeans shouldn’t be legally allowed to fit, and absolutely nothing else. Just wet hair, broad shoulders, and an expression that suggested murder was an option he was actively considering.
His chest was a geography lesson in things Cassie had forgotten existed.
Shoulders that could carry lumber. Or emotional baggage.
Or her, if she asked nicely. Arms that had muscles with actual purposes, not gym-sculpted vanity, but the kind you got from swinging hammers and hauling materials and doing mysterious manly things with wrenches.
He was barefoot. His feet were actually nice feet, which felt like an unfair detail to notice while her kitchen was flooding, but there it was. Even his feet were annoyingly attractive.
His skin was pale but not office-worker pale—more like Scottish-winter pale with a side of "I work outside but Scotland doesn't believe in sun." There were scars. Little ones that told stories about tools and time and a life actually lived.
A tattoo curved around his left ribs—something Celtic that probably meant something profound but right now just gave her eyes a path to follow down to where his jeans hung low enough to be criminal.
His hair was dark with silver threads that caught the light, wet like he'd just stepped out of a shower.
It was just long enough to look like he forgot to get it cut rather than styled it that way.
Water droplets dripped from his w and traced paths down his chest that Cassie absolutely did not follow with her eyes.
(She did. She absolutely did. Three times.)
His face was... annoyed. Spectacularly annoyed.
The kind of annoyed that involved a jawline that could cut glass and cheekbones that belonged in a museum dedicated to making women stupid.
He had crow's feet around his eyes that said he'd smiled once, maybe in 2002, but had since thought better of it.
He was holding a wrench.
Her wrench.
The one she'd just been using.
Which was still dripping sink water.
"What the bloody hell—" His accent hit her like a baseball bat made of sexual awakening. Scottish. Deep. The kind that made words like "bloody" sound like foreplay. Rough around the edges like he'd gargled gravel and washed it down with whiskey.
His voice rumbled from somewhere deeper than his chest, possibly from the earth's core, through a filter of frustration and what sounded like a truly impressive collection of swear words he was holding back.
He looked around her kitchen like it had personally offended him—taking in the floating tools, the sparkling air, the smoke dissipating, the spellbook still cheerfully open on the counter.
His expression went through several stages of grief in rapid succession: denial, anger, bargaining with reality, depression that this was his life, and absolutely no acceptance whatsoever.
Then he locked eyes with her.
Blue. Of course they were blue. Not regular blue.
Not sky blue or ocean blue or any of those cliché blues.
These were Scottish loch blue, the kind that looked gray until the light hit them, then turned into storms with opinions.
The kind of blue that made poets write terrible metaphors about drowning and not minding.
They were also furious.
"Who the hell are you?" they said in unison.
Then stared at each other, processing.
His eyes narrowed, taking her in—the wine glass at 11 a.m., the rage-cleaned kitchen, the period sweatpants, the tank top with its wine joke, the general aura of a woman one bad day away from arson.
She took him in—the everything about him that was making her brain static and her hormones throw a party she hadn't been invited to in years.
Cassie broke first. "I asked first."
"No, lass, I distinctly asked first."
"We asked at the same time."
"Which makes me first by default, as I'm the one who was just—" He gestured vaguely at the air, the movement making his chest do things that weren’t fair, “—yanked through bloody space while in my own damn bathroom!”
That explained the wet. And the shirtless. And the way water was dripping on her kitchen floor in a very attractive puddle.
"I—you—there was a spell and the sink was leaking and—" Cassie's brain short-circuited as another drop of water traveled down his chest, taking the scenic route over his abs. "Why are you in my kitchen?"
That’s what I’d like to know.” He looked at the wrench in his hand—her wrench, the one she’d just been using—like it had materialized there without his consent.
Which, she supposed, it had. “One minute I’m getting dressed, next minute there’s this pull, like someone’s grabbed my soul by the bollocks, and now I’m holding some stranger’s tools in her kitchen.
He tried to set the wrench down.
It didn't budge.
He frowned, shook his hand. The wrench remained firmly attached, like it had been superglued to his palm.
"The fuck?" He shook harder. The wrench stayed put.
"Oh God, I broke you." Cassie stepped forward, then immediately stepped back because he smelled like cedar and sin and something that should require a prescription. "I broke a Scottish man. Is that a crime? That feels like a crime. International incident? Do I call the embassy?"
He was still fighting with the wrench, increasingly agitated. His bicep flexed with effort, which was both concerning and mesmerizing. "What did you DO?"
"I don't know! The book said to fix what's broken and I said the thing and you just—appeared! With my wrench! That I was just using! Under my sink, which is still leaking, by the way, so if you could just—"
"The book?" His eyes narrowed dangerously. "What book?"
She pointed at the spellbook, still innocently open on the counter, pages gently fluttering like it was pretending to be normal.
He went very, very still. The kind of still that happened before tornados. Or murders. Or Scottish people saying things that couldn't be taken back.
"You read from that. Out loud. Without any training or protection or basic bloody sense."
"It's my book!"
"It's a grimoire, you daft woman!"
"I'm not daft! I'm having a very reasonable response to a shirtless stranger in my kitchen!"
"I'm not strange, I'm Scottish!"
"That's not better!"
They glared at each other across the kitchen, breathing heavily. The floating tools rotated slowly between them like lazy satellites. The pipes had moved on to "Let's Get Physical," which felt pointed and inappropriate.
The magical sparkles were starting to settle, coating everything in a fine shimmer that would probably never come out of the grout.
And Cassie became aware that she was having an argument with a half-naked man who'd materialized in her kitchen, while holding day-wine and wearing a shirt that advertised her alcohol preferences.
This was not her finest hour.
But God, he was magnificent when he was angry.
He tried to walk toward the door.
Made it three steps before hitting an invisible wall with a solid thunk that would have been funny if it wasn't terrifying.
"Oh, that's not good," he muttered, pressing his hand against nothing and meeting resistance. Like glass that wasn't there. "That's very not good."
He backed up, rubbed his nose where he'd smacked it, and tried again at a different angle. Same result. The air just... stopped him.
He tried the window. Same result. Then the back door. Then, in desperation, the cat flap.
"Why can't you leave?" Cassie's voice pitched higher with each word. "You need to leave. I didn't mean to summon you. This is a mistake. A big, wet, Scottish mistake."
"You THINK?" He spun to face her, and wow, angry really looked good on him.
Unfairly good. The kind of good that made her consider terrible decisions.
"You've bound me here with your wee spell, haven't you?
Christ, it's always the new ones. Always the middle-aged awakeners who think magic is just Pinterest with sparkles. "
"I am NOT middle-aged!"
"You're literally holding a glass of day wine."
She looked at her wine glass. Traitor. "That's... that's from last night."
"It's Thursday morning."
"Your point?"
"My point is that I was in my own bloody bathroom, in my own bloody house, minding my own bloody business like a normal bloody person, and now I'm trapped in a stranger's kitchen wearing nothing but my work jeans because you couldn't be bothered to call a proper plumber!"
"I tried! He can't come until Tuesday!"
"So you decided to kidnap one instead?"
"I didn't know you'd be IN the spell!"
He dragged his free hand through his wet hair, which just made it do things that were probably illegal in several states. Water droplets flew off, catching the light like tiny crystals. One landed on her arm. It was warm.