Read Under Her Spell for Free Online

served the cold cucumber soup. Vivien, Cypress Point's only pediatrician, told a few funny stories about new parents who called her, frantic with worry, whenever their baby so much as burped.
    Bryony, lost in her own thoughts, let them talk. She was starting to have second thoughts. Stealing a glance at Zach's handsome profile, she wondered if perhaps she had been too hasty. There was something cold about his eyes, something in his glance that made her feel she were nothing but an amoebae under his microscope. Uncertainty mingled with excitement in the pit of her stomach. Her confidence began to drain away.
    At that moment, Zach turned his head gave her a searching look. His dark eyes awoke new and uncomfortable sensations. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat, and she could feel her heart slamming against her ribcage. Bryony looked away, unable to bear his scrutiny, and pretended to concentrate on the grilled fish Kevin had set in front of her. "This is absolutely delicious," she said.
    "It certainly is," Zach agreed, an amused smile hovering on his lips. Bryony refused to look at him. She knew he was laughing at her. She took a dainty sip of her chilled white wine and trying to pretend she couldn't sense him next to her with every inch of her body.
    As the dinner progressed, she participated in the conversation only in response to her sister or her brother-in-law's comments. When Zach directed an occasional question her way, she answered politely but with a hint of frost in her voice.
    When Vivien went to fetch the dessert, Bryony jumped up to help her sister in the kitchen. Vivien wouldn't hear of it. "I'm the hostess tonight," she said, dribbling cherry syrup over slices of cheesecake. "If you've got to do something, go get a bottle of your love potion before Zach changes his mind."
    "Or I do," Bryony said, but she obeyed.
    Her workshop was upstairs in a glass-enclosed room facing the ocean. Bryony's own bedroom, bathroom, and small sun deck took up the rest of the second floor. Here Bryony stored her extra merchandise, dried her herbs, filled catalogue orders, and manufactured her love potion. She loved the room, which had once been her mother's study.
    She'd furnished it with an overstuffed velvet couch, white lace curtains, a unicorn tapestry in scarlet and gold, and several crystal vases full of bright dried flowers. Working there made her feel like a character from one of her fairy tales, like Rapunzel in her tower.
    On an impulse, she drew a leather-bound book from the bookcase. Its worn cover was butter soft and stained by the touch of a hundred hands. Bryony traced the title with one finger. Love Magiks , it said.
    She opened it carefully and brushed her palm over the brittle, yellowing parchment, remembering how she had found it in one of San Francisco's antiquarian book stores and felt a sudden, overwhelming need to own it. It was like running into an old friend quite by accident. Bryony had often wondered idly if the book might not possess some magical powers of its own.
    She flipped to the page marked by a silk-tasseled bookmark and read the words scratched into the paper with a quill pen, though she knew them by heart. She'd had them printed on a card she gave out with every bottle. Despite its familiarity, the warning made her shiver a little: If you will take a man for your own, give him this love philter. Yet do so not lightly, nor if you are not for each other. For that will lead only to misery.
    Underneath this inscription the author had written a neat column of ingredients and specific instructions for mixing them. Bryony closed the book and slid it back into its place. She pressed cool fingers against her throbbing forehead. Would this crazy bargain with Zachary Callahan "lead only to misery"? She didn't know, but she was about to find out.
    Bryony eased up the lid on the cedar chest where she stored extra vials of the love potion and selected one crystal container at random. She clutched it so