Totally Spellbound by Kristine Grayson Page A

Good King John and the evils of government until the wee hours.
The only reason we laughed back then was because of Friar Tuck,
young Will, and yours truly.”
    Rob sighed. “I suppose all our success
in those days came from that lack of seriousness as
well.”
    “No need to be snide.”
John ripped the flesh off a chicken leg. In that moment, with that
movement, he looked like an old king—the kind Rob had always
opposed—not King John the Pretender, however; more like King Henry
the Eighth, a gluttonous, ruinous king if there had ever been
one.
    “Look,” Rob said, “we have a lot more
important things to do than think about some woman I’m never going
to see again.”
    “I think we need to think
about her.” John picked up a second chicken leg. The first one,
reduced to bone, had gone onto a plate John used only for discards.
“If we don’t think about her, you’ll miss the first chance you’ve
had in decades, maybe centuries. And I, as a good friend and boon
companion, can’t allow that to happen.”
    “Why?” Rob asked, not sure if he cared
about the answer.
    “Why?” John waved the chicken leg as
if it were a pointer and he was a professor giving a lecture. “Why?
Because I’m the person who spends the most time with you. And it’s
been a long, long time since someone has challenged
you.”
    “How do you know this woman would
challenge me?” Rob found more cherry tomatoes buried on his plate.
He set them aside. They all looked as fresh and good as the first
one.
    “Because,” John said, “she already
has.”
    Rob looked up. John’s
mouth was smeared with barbecue sauce, and the chicken leg was half
gone. John grinned at him like a little boy who’d just won a long
argument.
    “Being in that bubble was not a
challenge,” Rob said. “It was an accident, I’m sure. I’m sure I
built the thing wrong—”
    “After doing it for
hundreds of years? Not likely.” John gnawed the last of the flesh
off the chicken bone, then set it on top of the other. If he
remained true to form, he would make a small sculpture out of the
remains of his food before the meal was done.
    “Let it go,” Rob said.
    John shook his head. “I’ve been
puzzling over this all morning.”
    “I don’t pay you to think about women
on company time,” Rob said.
    “You don’t pay me,” John said. “We’re
partners, and I can do whatever I damn well please. I probably
should be in Ethiopia right now, overseeing the new vaccination
program, but I’m tired of watching children getting stuck with
needles. I need a new focus, and I’ve decided that’s
you.”
    “Lucky me,” Rob muttered.
    “Look, we have lackeys to oversee all
the various giveaways and training programs and medical camps. I’ve
done some of this stuff for nearly five hundred years. A man needs
a break now and then.”
    “So you’re focusing on my love life
because you’re bored,” Rob said.
    “Your love life?” John’s eyebrows went
up. “Now that’s a phrase I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use.
And, oddly enough, I hadn’t used that phrase in this context
either.”
    Rob finished the cherry tomatoes. The
rest of the lunch looked like overkill. What had he been thinking,
getting this much food?
    He always felt a little discouraged
when he was done with a buffet. So much went to waste when so many
people went hungry.
    He shook his head.
    “And thinking about the poor
unfortunates isn’t going to get you off the hook
either.”
    Rob raised his head, feeling slightly
surprised that John had read him that well.
    “Sometimes people need to spread out,
do something new, get a different perspective. You’re running on
fumes, Rob.” John grabbed a napkin and wiped off his mouth. “So the
woman’s a distraction, but she’s a good one.”
    “Who’s impossible to find, according
to you.”
    John shrugged. “If we keep our vow and
only use our magic for work-related things.”
    “That’s an important rule,” Rob said.
“If we