It Must Be Magic Read Online Free PDF Page A

did, because I wanted to talk…” She trailed off, looked at him, quirked her mouth and started over. “About Erika. And your dad.”
    She tipped her head yet again, and her hair fell across her shoulder to caress her breast. Tanner lost his train of thought.
    “Roscoe’s such a doll,” she went on. “You must be so happy that he’s with Erika. My parents moved to Florida. It was warmer, and my mom wanted to be somewhere warm. Only she didn’t like the dry heat in the desert.” She glanced up, as if realizing she’d prattled on way too much. “Anyway, I miss them. So it’s great that Erika has her grandpa with her.” She stopped and looked at him. “I’m babbling, aren’t I?”
    He smiled but didn’t contradict her.
    “I don’t usually babble —” Again she stopped. “I do babble, but I’m babbling more than normal. You make me nervous.”
    He
made her
nervous? She
unbalanced
him.
    He didn’t want to delve into the why of it. “Having Dad around has been great for Erika.” He needed the conversation back on track. “Speaking of Erika, she’s why I came over.”
    “She is so smart. She knew all about auras and psychic scams. She’s very grown-up.”
    His daughter was his weak spot. He could talk about her all day, he was so damn proud. “She’s got a good mind.”
    Lili let out a gasp he felt as well as heard. “She’s the cutest little thing. So blond. And all those big blue eyes.”
    “All? She has more than two?”
    She laughed, a seductive sound even worse — or better — than the gasp. “You know what I mean. She’s like a little Heidi. And she loves Fluffy. I’ve never seen a girl more devoted to her cat.” She hugged herself and oohed.
    The woman made him dizzy, the way her body moved, her exuberance about utterly everything. He didn’t think she was capable of giving a straight yes or no answer or completing a thought in only one sentence.
    He looked at the cats milling about the kitchen floor or licking now-empty food bowls as if there might be one missed micron. They licked paws or jaws or chests with swipes of long tongues. And he couldn’t help thinking about…licking. And food. And Lili Goodweather. “Are you a vegetarian?”
    She turned her head and looked at him out of the corner of her eye as if she couldn’t figure out where that question came from. Neither could he. Food associations. He also had this odd desire to know more about her.
    “You
talk
to animals,” he clarified. “You don’t eat them?”
    “Oh no, I’m a total carnivore.” She wiggled her shoulders, touchable, bare shoulders. “I mean, I don’t eat a cow after I’ve talked to it, but I rarely talk to cows, anyway. I figure it’s nature. You know, the predator and the prey. If Bigfoot decided to have me —” she put a hand right between her breasts, in case he didn’t know who the
me
was she referred to “— for dinner, why, that’s in the natural order of things.”
    Damn. He imagined having her for dinner. Or dessert. Or both. He’d been having blatantly erotic thoughts about her almost from the moment she’d let him in her door. Not that he didn’t have his share of sexual thoughts. He was red-blooded, after all, but there was a time and place for that. Neither of which was now with this woman.
    “Look, I have to insist that you don’t carry on with the talking-to-animals thing around my daughter.”
    She stopped, her mouth open as if more words were dying to pour forth. “You don’t want me to talk to Fluffy?”
    “Fluffy is off-limits.”
    “But he’s traumatized.”
    Unfortunately, it couldn’t be helped. “No talking.”
    “You don’t understand.” Her eyes widened. “His fear will fester in his internal organs. Thoughts can do horrible things.”
    “Fluffy’s a cat.”
    “Mr. Rutland. Cats are delicate creatures. We’re talking about Fluffy’s quality of life here. Don’t you care?”
    She stared at him as if he’d grown horns out of his head and started