Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
LEO
Leo stared at his phone for eleven minutes before making the call.
The number for La C?te d’Azur was saved in his contacts—had been for years.
He’d dined there a dozen times, impressing clients and sealing deals over architectural appetizers and wines that cost more than most people’s monthly rent.
The ma?tre d’ knew him by name. The chef had once created a tasting menu in his honor.
It was exactly the establishment where a man took a woman when he wanted to do things properly.
If you’re going to pursue her, the lion inside him rumbled, at least commit to it.
Leo wasn’t pursuing anyone. He was simply…
making a strategic decision. The past two weeks of fighting this pull toward Junie Reed had accomplished nothing except sleep deprivation, an inability to focus on the investigation, and an increasingly vocal animal half who had zero patience for Leo’s denial.
He was a strategist. He knew when a position was indefensible.
“La C?te d’Azur, how may I assist you?”
“Leonidas Castellan. Reservation for two. Saturday evening.”
A pause. The subtle intake of breath that meant his name had registered. “Of course, Mr. Castellan. We have availability at seven-thirty. Will that be satisfactory?”
“Perfect.”
He ended the call and sat back in his chair, studying the ceiling of his room at the Siren’s Rest. Four hours of driving each way.
A restaurant designed to impress the most discerning supernatural elite.
A woman who’d thrown a spoon at him during their second conversation and had called him an insufferable know-it-all.
This was either a brilliant strategy or spectacular self-sabotage.
His lion didn’t seem concerned which.
He found her in the inn’s garden courtyard.
Junie was perched on the stone wall surrounding Avine’s herb beds, bare feet dangling, a cup of coffee cradled between her palms. Glimmer was coiled around her shoulders, scales catching the early light in ripples of purple and green.
She looked soft in a way she rarely allowed herself to appear—unguarded, lost in thought, the sharp edges of her wit temporarily sheathed.
The animal inside him went very still. Watching. Wanting.
Leo cleared his throat.
Junie startled, nearly dropping her coffee. Glimmer’s head whipped around, tongue tasting the air, scales shifting color.
“Castellan.” Junie recovered quickly, mask sliding back into place. “Lurking in gardens now? That’s very gothic villain of you.”
He approached the wall, keeping a distance between them. Professional distance. The sort that was supposed to prevent him from noticing her. “I have a proposition.”
Her eyebrow arched. “That’s a dangerous word choice.”
“Dinner. Saturday evening.” He kept his voice steady. As if this were any other business arrangement. “There’s a restaurant I think you’d find interesting. Four hours from here, but worth the drive.”
Junie’s cup paused halfway to her lips. Her eyes narrowed—that suspicious squint that meant she was searching for the angle. “This isn’t an investigation thing?”
“It’s a dinner thing.”
“A date thing?”
Date. Such a simple term for an act that felt like stepping off a cliff without checking for a parachute first.
“If you’re amenable.”
Her lips twitched. The corner of her mouth curving upward in that way that made his lion rumble with satisfaction. “God, you talk like a contract sometimes.”
“I will take that as a compliment.”
“You would.” She took a sip of coffee, studying him over the rim. Glimmer had gone still, scales that complicated amber that Leo had learned to recognize as feelings neither of us wants to examine. “Four hours is a long drive. What if we run out of things to talk about?”
“We’ve been sharing meals for two weeks. We haven’t run out yet.”
“Breakfast conversation is different. Lower stakes.” She tilted her head. “What if I hate the restaurant?”
“Then we’ll leave.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
She was quiet for a moment. Leo watched her process—the way her mind moved behind those sharp eyes, weighing options, calculating risks. He recognized the pattern. It was the same thing he did before every major decision.
The realization hit him like a physical blow. They weren’t that different, he and this chaos witch. Both of them building walls out of different materials—his from discipline, hers from humor—but walls, nonetheless.
“Fine.” Junie hopped down from the wall, bare feet landing silently on the garden stones. “Saturday. But I’m warning you, I have opinions about restaurants.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
She walked past him toward the inn, close enough that he caught her scent—herbs and magic and something uniquely Junie that made the predator inside him press hard against his restraint.
“And Castellan?” She paused at the door, glancing back over her shoulder. “If this is some elaborate scheme to interrogate me about cipher patterns over overpriced appetizers, I will absolutely make a scene.”
“Noted.”
Her laugh followed her inside. Leo stood in the garden, watching the door she’d disappeared through, his lion purring with satisfaction while his human brain cataloged all the ways this could go catastrophically wrong.
Saturday. Three days away.
He could survive three days.
He could not, as it turned out, survive three days with his composure intact.
Every shared meal became charged. Every accidental hallway encounter left him vibrating with awareness. The coffee he left outside her door each morning—a habit he refused to examine too closely—now felt like a declaration. The pastries she left outside his felt like an answer.
Thursday night, he found her in the library again. She was surrounded by papers covered in reconstructed cipher symbols, frustration evident in the tight set of her shoulders. Glimmer was draped across the back of her chair, scales pulsing slowly purple.
Leo meant to pass through. Grab the historical records he needed. Leave.
Instead, he found himself stopping at her table. “The third symbol grouping. Try rotating it ninety degrees.”
Junie looked up, startled. Then annoyed. Then—when she actually tried his suggestion and watched the cipher pattern suddenly click into place—amazed.
“How did you know that?”
“Pattern recognition.” He pulled out the chair across from her. “May I?”
She gestured permission. He sat.
They worked in silence for an hour. Two. Shoulders gradually relaxing. The air between them shifting from charged to easier. More comfortable.
“You’re different when you’re working,” Junie said eventually.
The truth was that puzzles and patterns were the only place he let himself relax, because they had rules that made sense, unlike everything else.
That sitting across from her, working on a shared problem, felt safer than dinner at any restaurant.
“Saturday,” he said instead. “Seven-thirty. Dress for upscale.”
Junie’s smile shifted. Softened. “Way to dodge the question, Castellan.”
Saturday arrived with clear skies and a knot in Leo’s stomach that no amount of discipline could untangle.
He dressed carefully. Dark suit—not his most expensive, but well-fitted enough to convey intention. A shirt the color of deep burgundy that his pride’s PR consultant had once claimed “shows you’re capable of warmth.” He wasn’t sure he agreed, but he was willing to experiment.
Junie met him in the inn’s lobby.
She’d abandoned her usual witchy-apothecary aesthetic for a deep green dress that matched her eyes and draped in ways that made the lion inside him growl low.
Her hair was swept up, exposing the curve of her neck.
She’d even managed makeup without Glimmer’s interference—though the snake was notably absent.
“Glimmer’s sulking in my room.” Junie caught his look. “She doesn’t approve of formal dinners. Or being left behind. Or you, specifically, though I think she’s warming up.”
“Warming up?”
“She only hissed at your coffee cup twice this morning instead of the usual four times.” Junie smoothed her dress—a nervous gesture Leo had never seen from her before.
“Is this okay? You said upscale, but I wasn’t sure how upscale.
The options in Haven Shores are limited unless you want surf-themed cocktail wear. ”
“You look—” Beautiful. Devastating. Like every reckless choice he’d spent a lifetime avoiding. “—appropriate for the venue.”
Her eyebrow arched. “‘Appropriate for the venue.’ Wow. Be still, my heart.”
“That’s not what I—” He stopped. Started over. “You look beautiful. I’m having difficulty with vocabulary.”
The flush that spread across her cheeks was deeply satisfying. “Oh. Well. Thanks, I think.”
She took his arm when he offered it. The contact burned through the fabric of his sleeve. Leo led her to the car, held her door, rounded to the driver’s side with the predator inside him practically vibrating beneath his skin.
Four hours. He could maintain composure for four hours.