Your Wish Is His Command Read online

  The master would never get his nap with that old foghorn blustering like she was.

  Vana smiled. She’d been able to manage a fairly good sleeping draught that Mrs. Hamm had really taken to. Alas, it was the middle of the afternoon and Mrs. Hamm would never be persuaded into napping during a Sunday gathering.

  Peter stumped up the steps. “I’m not taking a nap, Mrs. Hamm. I’m not in my dotage!” Still, he allowed the housekeeper to herd him up what remained of the curved staircase.

  “Don’t fret, Vana,” Peter said as he passed her, his hand unerringly finding her shoulder as it always did.

  No, no doubt about it. Although Peter might come across as being dotty, he was as sharp as a needle.

  But she would fret. After all, this was her fault. Honestly, varnish? How hard could that be?

  With her screwy magic, pretty hard, apparently.

  Vana sighed, kissed the air, her Way of doing magic, and poofed! herself inside the armoire in Peter’s bedchamber. Travel magic wasn’t as difficult as conjuring things, and once she’d practiced it, there’d been no mishaps similar to today’s incident—

  Well, other than the time that Mr. Peale and Mrs. Hargetty had been too engrossed in what they shouldn’t have been doing to each other to notice her sudden appearance in the drawing room, that is.

  The door opened and Peter strode in, followed by Mrs. Hamm, who immediately set about flustering around Peter, arranging pillows and fluffing the comforter in an effort to get her master settled.

  “Stop fussing, Mrs. Hamm.” Peter tossed the silk pillow he’d bargained off old Mustafa in the souk onto the divan he’d won in a card game in Kiev. “It’s the middle of July. I am not cold, nor am I tired. I told you. It’s her again.”

  Mrs. Hamm and the rest of the staff thought Peter’s “her” meant his wife, and Vana was fine with them thinking that. After all, Peter talking to his dead wife was more believable than him talking to a live genie, and since his supposed downward spiral into madness had begun in earnest after Millie died, it garnered him a certain amount of pity. Which was why Mrs. Hamm went about picking up the pillows and refluffing the comforter with merely a chorus of “Yes, sir”s and “Of course, sir”s tossed about with a fair number of “hmmm”s.

  Vana sighed, torn between wanting Mrs. Hamm to believe Peter—for once—and feeling bad that she’d contributed to Peter’s “madness” yet again. Really, she was just trying to do her job in the best way she knew. Was it her fault that her training had been cut short by a ruthless antiquities dealer who’d snatched up and stoppered her bottle before she’d been given clearance to become a full-fledged member of The Service, that noble rank of Servitude every djinni aspired to?

  Okay, so maybe she shouldn’t have been in that bottle, since, according to The Djinn Code, a genie shouldn’t be inside a bottle until she was assigned one. (Or someone accidentally locked her inside one, as had happened with that antiquities dealer.)

  A couple dozen masters over the centuries, a few boat rides, one horribly memorable trek lashed to a mule, and here she was in the New World with Peter and the vanishing staircase.

  Mrs. Hamm let the cord fall that held back the window curtains on one side of Peter’s bed, then rushed around to do the same to the other side, bathing the room in shadow and stifling heat. It would soon be sweltering.

  “There, there, Mr. Peter, you’ll feel better after you wake up.” Mrs. Hamm pulled the comforter up to Peter’s chin.

  No wonder Peter was getting sleepy. He was probably suffering from heat stroke. The minute Mrs. Hamm left, Vana would get rid of the covers and cool things down. She could manage that most of the time, which came in handy for making Peter’s favorite drink or lowering the temperature in the house on a hot day.

  She’d never tried to do so on a grand scale, however. Too much potential for trouble. She could only imagine how a snowstorm in July would go over. For today, though, she’d magick a few little cool spots all around Peter. They ought to do the trick.

  Vana puckered her lips and kissed the air as the door closed behind Mrs. Hamm and she—

  No! Not actual spots! Holy smokes, she’d given Peter cold sores!

  Trying to keep her panic at bay, Vana puckered up again.

  “Don’t do it, Nirvana.” Peter’s voice was deeper and sadder than she’d ever heard. And he’d used her full name. He never used her full name.

  “Whatever it is you think you’re going to do, don’t. I can’t take any more right now, Nirvana. I just can’t.” Peter sat up on the bed, the horrid spots looking like some tropical disease.

  “First the bear, then the stairs, and now this. This has to stop. We need your magic in good order if we’re going to turn those dishes back into children.” He lifted her bottle out of a drawer in the bedside table where he kept it, and pulled the stopper. “You’ve been trying so hard recently, Vana. I think you need a rest. Don’t you?”

  A rest? Vana bit her trembling bottom lip and rolled her shoulders back. She couldn’t rest. The children and everyone else would be stuck in their enchanted forms unless she could figure out how to undo them. She needed to keep practicing.

  “Vana?”

  She sighed again. At least he’d asked. Most masters would have ordered her.

  Most masters probably would have sent her into the Light by now.

  She opened the armoire door and walked across the beautiful Persian rug he’d bought in the same souk where he’d found her bottle.

  She stood next to his side of the bed, her head bowed, her hands linked in front of her. “I am sorry, Peter.” He’d never insisted she call him “master,” a kindness for which she’d forever be indebted to him. He’d never made her feel like his servant.

  Until now.

  “Vana, it’s just for a little while. To give you time to calm down. To give everyone time to calm down. That’s all. Just a little while.”

  Vana nodded. Peter was trying to be kind. She knew that.

  That she felt like a failure was all her own doing.

  One last breath of the stifling July air, and Vana dematerialized from the room and entered her bottle in a plume of pink smoke.

  As her body regained its corporeal form, the stopper filled the hole above her head, sealing her inside where, theoretically at least, she could do no harm.

  Later that evening, Vana braced herself against the cushions on her divan as Peter climbed the steps to the attic (ones she’d never attempted to varnish), placed her bottle stopper-side up in a trunk, cushioned it with a handmade shawl, and closed the lid—his way of protecting her from someone taking her from him, another kindness for which she was forever grateful.

  ***

  Two days later, Peter was killed in a wild horse-and-buggy accident that Vana had had nothing to do with.

  And no one knew about the bottle in the attic or the genie locked inside.

  A Naked Man In The Kitchen

  There’s a naked man in my kitchen.

  The thought registered just as the terse, “Who the hell are you?” had Jolie Gardener spinning around faster than a figure skater on speed.

  He had the nerve to ask this? He of the broad shoulders, six-pack abs, and other, nice, um, parts...

  Really. A naked man. In her kitchen.

  Well, technically, she was in a naked man’s kitchen. Even more technically, she was in a naked Todd Best’s kitchen—and there wasn’t one hint of self-consciousness or embarrassment on his part.

  Of course with that body, there shouldn’t be. The guy should flaunt his nudity for the world to see. Which, at present, consisted of one single, solitary person: Jolie Gardener, aspiring writer and personal chef extraordinaire.

  “Well?” His hands slammed to his hips.

  “You’re naked,” she squeaked, which, really, was the only way to state that kind of obvious.

  “I’m what?” Mr. Six-Pack Abs glanced down.

  Jolie tried not to—so unsuccessfully it was pitiful.

 
“Shit,” he muttered. “I am. I, uh, fell asleep last night…”

  As butter sizzled in the new super-slick omelet pan on the top-of-the-line range, Jolie’s gaze alternated between some rock-hard abs and a scruffy eight a.m. shadow while her fingers danced along the speckled granite countertop in search of a napkin, placemat, oven mitt… something.

  Mercifully, they scooped up a thick dishtowel that, in her world, would constitute a very plush, very luxurious hand towel from The Ritz or The Four Seasons, but which, here, apparently, was used to soak up water from designer flatware. She dangled it in the direction of Mr. Au Naturel. “Here.”

  He placed an empty bottle of Jim Beam on the island countertop with a clink, then took the towel with a grunt. “So, who are you, what are you doing in my kitchen, and would you mind turning around?”

  She turned. “I’m the new girl the agency sent over.”

  “Hell. There better be some aspirin left,” he muttered beside her, his bare (of course) feet making no sound on the limestone floor.

  She peeked over at him.

  His eyebrow soared skyward.

  Right.

  She turned back to the sizzling butter. Which had started to burn. Sigh.

  He rummaged around in one of the drawers as she carried the pan to the sink. Trying to impress the new boss on her first day with his favorite omelet ranchero and she burned the butter. Not good, but then, it wasn’t exactly her fault because nowhere in those papers she’d signed with her employment agency, Domestic Gods & Goddesses, was mention made of an optional dress code. And she didn’t care how much they were paying her, nudity did tend to throw one off. As for the alcohol-before-breakfast debacle, she wasn’t even going to address that. His rudeness said it all.

  And here, she’d been worried about making a good impression on him.

  A click of plastic bottle cap followed by a shake of the bottle, the fridge opening, a gulp, then Naked Guy sighing punctuated the silence before she turned on the faucet. She cleaned out the pan, all the while the Naughty Girl side of her brain screaming, “Turn around!” with the other, Jolie side, going, “You want to keep this job?”

  Self-preservation being the backbone of her existence since being dumped into the foster care system, she decided to listen to the Jolie side—no matter how much groaning Naughty Girl did.

  Naughty Girl, however, couldn’t resist a peek, and was rewarded with a swish of his longish golden hair, a flex of his well-defined arm, and an accompanying sizzle to her own nerve endings.

  So not good. Jolie had known he was a hunk before she accepted this position. Had had quite the crush on him, too. How could she not? The guy had been plastered all over every magazine in the country for years, most especially here in his hometown.

  Todd Best. The Best, as the media had dubbed him. And rightfully so. The man’s landscape paintings were hanging in every high-end hotel, public library, and courtroom in the country. Even the White House, for Pete’s sake. Not that she had an eye for art, but when a painting looked like the scene down the road and made her think she was standing there, feeling the leaves rustling by, smelling the fresh cut grass, hearing the birds singing in the trees and the ducks quacking on the pond, the whole set-up, that, to her, was talent.

  And, of course, there’d been his fairytale marriage. But then, sadly, his wife had died suddenly and he’d moved out of their home, turned the reins of his company over to his brother, and put down his paint brushes.

  Yes, Jolie had known exactly who she’d be working for. That’d been half the incentive.

  “So, new girl, do you have a name? And what are you doing here today?”

  Since he was talking, she assumed it was safe to turn around.

  The old adage about making an “ASS out of U and ME” proved true.

  Although he was the one with the A-S-S. And what a nice one it was. As was the muscled shoulder leaning against the stainless steel of the microwave above the stove, and the ninety-degree jut of his jaw line, the sculpted cheekbones, a perfectly proportioned brow, the fall of hair over his forehead…

  She tore her gaze away from the visual smorgasbord and, traitors that they were, her eyes headed south.

  Thank goodness he had the dish towel spread across his nether regions like a loincloth. But a hot guy in a loincloth was just as distracting as a naked hot guy. And she’d seen him in both. Or not in both. Whatever.

  She ordered her eyes back on the pan. “Um yes, I do have a name, and as to what I’m doing here, I think that’s obvious—burning the butter for your morning omelet.” She raised the pan to illustrate and managed a quick push with her hip to get him to back away from the stove so she could start cooking again, praying all the while she wasn’t hitting something vital.

  Luckily, the guy had quick reflexes—or a good hunch—’cause he stepped out of the way before her hip came anywhere close to anything important, saving them the extreme embarrassment of that.

  “How’d you get in?” Mr. Clothing-Optional asked.

  Okay, what was the protocol here? How long did one actually have to converse with a buck-naked human being before someone said something about it? Or did a strategically placed dishtowel negate all observances of nudity?

  “Look, um, Mister.” What did one call their bare boss? Todd? Sir? Big guy? “How ’bout you go freshen up a bit and I’ll make breakfast. We can have our chat when we’re both, um, well, prepared for the day. ’Kay?”

  “Fine. I’ll get dressed. Then we’ll talk.”

  “You do that.”

  As he sauntered—okay, maybe that was her overactive imagination, because could one really saunter with a Jim Beam-sized hangover?—from the fourteen-foot-ceiling kitchen with its state-of-the-art appliances that looked as if they’d come out of their packing boxes yesterday, so stainless steel shiny she could have used them as a mirror to fix her lipstick—if she’d worn lipstick—and she inhaled enough oxygen to jump-start primordial ooze.

  Which posed a whole new set of problems for this job. How was she supposed to focus if she kept getting sidetracked by the physical?

  But she would.

  She could.

  Heck, if she could outwit social workers and manage to keep her teenaged self out of the gutter, not to mention, actually make something of her life, she could certainly keep her own libido in check.

  She had to. Her job, her livelihood, and all her dreams depended on it.

  ***

  Each step up the goddamned grandiose stairway reverberated through Todd’s skull, setting his teeth on edge and his stomach roiling. Why the hell hadn’t the builder put carpet on these stairs?

  Todd grabbed his head with one hand, keeping the other one hovering above his groin with the damned kitchen towel. It’d be funny if it weren’t so ungodly pitiful.

  He, a grown man, hiding his modesty behind a piece of eight-by-twelve cotton because he didn’t have enough sense to pass out in his own bed.

  He kicked open the bedroom door and grimaced. Bare, tan walls, minimal furniture, and the fucking king-sized bed mocked him.

  He knew exactly why he’d chosen the couch.

  And he wasn’t about to dwell on it. He’d done enough dwelling last night. More than enough, apparently.

  He barreled through to the bathroom, his refusal to dwell on the reason just one more part of the person he’d become in the past two years.

  And the poor woman downstairs who’d had to witness the person he’d become last night… God, wasn’t it just perfect she’d shown up this morning?

  Todd grabbed the shower handle and turned the water full force to hot. He’d burn the alcohol out of his system if he had to. No one deserved that greeting her first day on the job. Even if it was his house.

  Todd sucked in a breath as he stepped beneath the pelting liquid fire and realized he wasn’t as tough as he pretended. He turned the spigot back to warm and leaned his forehead against the cool ivory tile, and listened to the phone ring in his bedroom. Let the machine
get the fucking thing. He couldn’t deal with the calls and the goddamned hounding.

  Not today.

  The water ran into his eyes and he wiped it away with the heels of his hands. Why today? Why’d she have to start today?

  Why’d she have to start at all?

  Why wouldn’t they all just leave him alone?

  The Morning After

  This wasn’t her hotel room.

  The suit jacket tossed on the chair was Lara’s first clue.

  The discarded matching pants on the floor in front of it was her second.

  The dip in the mattress as someone got off the bed behind her was her third.

  Oh my God. What had she done?

  Well, it was pretty obvious what she’d done, but, oh God...

  Lara clamped her eyes shut as that someone came around the foot of the bed, peeking only when she heard the bathroom door slide open.

  Oh my. The guy’s bare naked ass looked really good. Probably better out of those pants than in them—too bad she didn’t remember what it’d looked like in them.

  Too bad she didn’t remember him.

  The door clicked closed and Lara shot to her feet—to the second shock of the morning.

  She was wearing only a t-shirt. And it wasn’t hers.

  She didn’t want to think about whose it was or how she came to be in said t-shirt; she just wanted to grab her dress, shoes, and purse, and get the hell out before her one-and-only one-night stand finished doing whatever it was a one-night stand did the morning after.

  She scooped the dress off the dresser—no, she wasn’t going to think about how it’d gotten there—tore his shirt up over her head then the dress down over it, and bagged looking for her bra. She just wanted out.

  Her shoes were next to the chair—one was under it—and her purse, thank God, was hanging on the hotel room door.

  Twenty-five seconds. That’s all it took her to escape from the most un-Lara-like thing she’d ever done in her life.