The Professor Woos The Witch (Nocturne Falls Book 4) Read Online Free Page B

work through the summer to pay the bills. Construction has been my job of choice since I was a teenager. So, yeah, I know what I’m doing. Not all of it, but most. Like I said, the rest I’ll contract out.”
    A math professor who also worked construction? That explained the lean, tight body she’d seen yesterday. She had a sudden vision of him standing in front of a classroom. If her math professor had looked like Cole, she’d never have passed. Or she’d have done a lot of extra credit. “I’d be happy to help you with that. Recommending contractors, I mean. I know most of them. And which ones you should avoid.”
    “Thanks, I’d appreciate that.” He handed her a plate. “I’m impressed you didn’t put the hard sell on me to list the house with you.”
    She sat at the large round table in the seating nook. A hammer and tape measure lay beside a jar of strawberry jam and a stick of butter in a cut-glass covered dish. “I don’t believe in the hard sell.”
    He laughed. “Are you sure you’re a realtor?”
    “You say that like you think we’re in the same category as personal injury lawyers and used car salesmen.”
    Kaley moaned as she bopped back into the room and took a seat at the table beside Pandora. “ Dad .” Her eyes went skyward. “Enough with the boring house talk.”
    He gave his daughter a look. “Did you apologize?”
    “She did,” Pandora offered. “Thank you.”
    Kaley sighed. “Now can we talk about witch stuff?”
    Cole balanced his plate, Kaley’s plate and a third plate of toast on one arm, then dug a handful of silverware out of a drawer and came to the table. He dropped the silverware with a clatter. “Kaley, how many times do I have to tell you? Witches aren’t real.”
    Pandora passed out the silverware. “I hate to eat your food and tell you you’re wrong, but you’re wrong. And Kaley really needs a mentor.”
    “See, Dad?” Kaley said.
    He handed Kaley her plate and sat before addressing Pandora. “I get that the town is invested in this whole Halloween shtick, but you can’t tell me you think witches are real.”
    “I don’t think they’re real. I know they are.” Pandora helped herself to the jam. A big dollop fell off the knife and onto the table. “Bother.”
    He looked at her. “Did you just say bother ? What are you, a Disney princess?”
    “I don’t curse.”
    “Why not?”
    Because her magic was broken, and a curse from a witch’s mouth, however casual, could still mean something. “I’m a witch and witches’ words have power. We have to be careful.”
    “Witches.” He shook his head in plain disbelief.
    Pandora considered the facts. If his daughter was a witch, and considering her lineage and ability to see auras, there wasn’t much question about that, then he needed to face the truth. If Kaley didn’t get a mentor to teach her, she’d never learn. Or she’d learn the hard way, and that was a dangerous path. “Well, I am one. My mother’s one. So are my two sisters. And so was the woman this house once belonged to.”
    “Get out!” Kaley’s eyes rounded. “That is so cool.”
    Cole stared at Pandora with obvious unhappiness in his eyes.
    She shrugged and spread jam on her toast.
    He took a long slug of coffee before finally putting his cup back down. “How can you make that claim?”
    “Because it’s true.”
    Kaley nodded, smiling. “See, Dad, I am a witch. Also, like, is that all the bacon there is?”
    “Kaley, give us a minute, honey.”
    “Yes,” Pandora said. “Let me educate your father, then you can worry about bacon.” Pandora made a face at him. “You inherited this house, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “So how can you not know your own family? Gertrude Pilcher was a witch. And a fairly well-known one, too.”
    “I’m not related to her. I’m related to Ulysses. He was my great-uncle on my mother’s side.”
    “Why didn’t your mom inherit the house?”
    “She passed away five years ago. Cancer. I might have