Will’s ridiculously handsome face appeared in his office door, a brilliantly white smile blooming at the sight of Sonja. Living in the Bayou could really wear on the old self-esteem when you were just a regular-looking guy. Not to mention those magazine perfect-looking guys could also turn into dragons and tigers and honest-to-God bears. But Will was a nice guy, and he made Sonja happy–and he’d thought to include Leonard in a couple of “dude gatherings” with Bael and Zed, which was pretty cool of him.

“Hey there, sweetheart,” Will purred, kissing her in what could be considered a professional manner. “Just in time. I made coffee.”

“That’s why you’re my favorite,” she told him, as Will waved them into the office.

“I was just reviewing some cases for Charlotte,” Will said.

As he was walking through the door, Leonard dropped the binders he was holding. He was stepping forward as he did this and his foot connected, kicking the binders across the floor and under Will’s desk. Because, of course, he did.

“Charlotte” was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Huge, thickly lashed eyes the color of the summer sky seemed to dominate a delicate heart-shaped face. Her lush mouth was painted a blushing pink he would happily spend hours contemplating if she wouldn’t find that sort of thing creepy. Her thick dark curls were pulled back from her face in a neat twist at the crown of her head, a complement to the crisp blue scrubs she wore. And she was so small. He’d never seen someone so proportionately petite outside of the Tinkerbell cartoons his nieces loved. How was it possible to fit so much into one tiny package?

“No, don’t call women ‘things,’” his brain chided him. “You know better than that.” But all other cognitive functions were just gone. His brain had abandoned him. Blood rushed to his cheeks and he felt the familiar rush of anxiety that was almost always followed by disaster and broken glass and once, the destruction of a life-size fiberglass blue whale at a natural history museum.

He focused on the breathing exercise his mother had taught him, focusing his rampant thoughts and slowing his heartrate. He thought of the forest near his parents’ weekend cabin, deep and green and shadowed. He thought of the music of the river behind the cabin, the water dancing over the moss-covered rocks. The forest had been his happy place as a child, unlike the classmates who had been warned never to wander out of their sterile, safe suburb. The more he calmed his nerves, the less the curse would affect him. And the fewer whale replicas would suffer.

Will eyed Leonard, but having reviewed Leonard’s case extensively, said nothing beyond, “I’ll get those.”