Must Be Magic (Spellbound) Read Online Free PDF Page B

it increasingly hard to remember that they didn’t like each other.
    Liking Darby hadn’t ended well for either of them, and while part of him wondered if they could be civil to one another after this weekend, he knew they were better off sticking with the way things had been for the last few years.
    He was better off.
    So why was it he ended up watching her walk ahead of him, her sandals dangling from her fingers?
    Correction, one sandal.
    He glanced back and saw the other one still on the step. He backtracked to grab it. “I think you forgot something.”
    She turned around a little too quickly. “Whoa. Careful. The path is crooked over here.”
    “I’ll be sure to watch my step.” He met her halfway and handed her the sandal.
    Which slipped right through her fingers.
    They both bent to grab it, and like something out of a bad comedy, his chin connected with her forehead, and he bit his tongue.
    Darby laughed. She probably had enough alcohol in her system to dull the pain from their collision.
    Rubbing her forehead, she looked up at him. God, she was beautiful. It was so easy to see that when she wasn’t glaring at him or calling him an ass.
    “Night, Councilor.” She turned and started down the path.
    He should go inside and tell Dante that he might want to make sure his sister got back to her bungalow without falling into a bush along the way. Except Dante wouldn’t appreciate that kind of suggestion coming from him. More than likely Dante would turn it into some kind of confrontation, especially when he’d looked to be itching for one all night.
    Bryce sighed and strolled along behind Darby.
    More than once she looked over her shoulder at him, and after a near collision with a palm tree at the edge of the path, he really wished she wouldn’t.
    “I know what you’re doing,” she called back a minute later.
    At least one of them did. “I’m just taking a walk.” In the opposite direction of his own bungalow.
    She paused. “So you’re not following me?”
    “Nope.”
    “The same way you weren’t watching me inside?”
    So much for simply trailing her and making sure she got inside without face-planting in the sand.
    Shaking his head, he caught up to her. “That wasn’t what it looked like.”
    “Of course not,” she readily agreed, though it sounded like she was trying not to smile when she said it.
    He stuffed his hand in his pockets, cringing when she stumbled for the second time in thirty seconds.
    “I never drink this much, you know?”
    “I seem to remember you drinking a lot once before.”
    “That—” she swiveled around like she was going to poke him in the chest, “—was entirely your fault. You never warned me how potent White Russians were.”
    “You only had three drinks that night.”
    “Three strong drinks. I’ve never been able to stomach the thought of mixing milk and alcohol since.”
    She finally did manage to poke him, except halfway through the motion, she tripped over nothing and fell against him.
    He wanted to blame it on the alcohol, but he remembered the handful of times she’d fallen or lost her balance during the week they’d spent together. At this rate, they’d make it back to her bungalow by sunrise.
    And by sunrise he might have forgotten how close she’d come to driving a permanent wedge between him and his family. If he’d found her struggling like this outside the courthouse back home, he was pretty sure he would have turned around and headed the other way.
    Darby tipped her head back, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip.
    Probably.
    Her gaze dropped to his mouth.
    Maybe.
    After a quick look to make sure Dante wasn’t coming up the path behind him—and wouldn’t that just make Bryce’s night?—he swept Darby up into his arms.
    She squealed and scrambled to grab on to him. “Don’t you dare drop me.”
    He laughed. “I won’t.”
    “Promise?”
    Her expression was so serious his smile faded and he nodded, caught up in how blue her eyes